THE CHRISTIAN QUESTION

 

One of the most confusing things to me is the desire on the part of Christians to pray for world peace. I cannot find anywhere in the New Testament where we are supposed to do anything of the sort. The peace we are supposed to pray for is personal, not generalized. Look at Matthew 10:29-30 or John 16:22. The only place it is more generalized is in the Old Testament in Psalms where it tells us to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, one particular place, not even all of Israel.

Why is this confusing to me? Because we are also supposed to be praying for Jesus' return. If you have read anything in the Book of Revelation then you know that this will not be a peaceful transition by any means. There will be massive earthquakes, famine, disease, and war.

There is, as of this writing, a war in the Middle East between Israel and the murderous terrorists that think themselves freedom fighters. A little clue, freedom fighters don't use the people that they say they are fighting for as shields to protect themselves. This leads me to another confusing question.

Why is the Jewish population the United States overwhelming Democrat? Think it through for a moment. The people who are demonstrating for the support of the murderous terrorists vote Democrat. Congress persons and some University leaders who support those terrorists are Democrats. The supposed leader of this country, through back-channels, has supported the terrorists by helping their major supplier, he is a Democrat (he actually employs people that have said they are loyal to that supplier over the USA.) I suppose we really shouldn't be surprised, these are the same people who gave us the KKK. The ultra or alt-right which is anti-Jew, anti-Black, and basically anti-anything that doesn't look or think like them are the tiniest fraction of the population who would vote for the Nazi party instead of the Republicans if it ever had a chance of winning. The Democrat party, on the other hand, is huge and the youth that is growing in the Democrat party are showing themselves to be anti-Israel and anti-Jew. These are not myths. Watch or read the news for yourselves.

I will not pray for world peace. I pray the God gives me, my family, and my friends peace. His peace. I pray for those who would consider themselves my enemy that they may know the peace of the one true God.

KM

THE DEATH OF A CHURCH

This is one of the toughest articles I have ever had to write. The church that I have been attending for some time, 5 Hills Cowboy Church in Kempner, Texas has fallen prey to an evil that I have a hard time defining. Read on and learn how a Church can be killed from the inside.

Several weeks ago (in mid-August) 5 Hills Cowboy Church had a Congregational Meeting after the church service. This was supposed to be an informational meeting to let the church know what was happening with finances, building, etc. It became something else. Perhaps to fully understand, you should watch at least a part of this video that happened prior to the date of the Congregational Meeting where the two Elders were asked by our Pastor to preach because he was on vacation: https://fb.watch/nheNfyh1nQ/

The video isn't a Biblical sermon, it is a fear-mongering harangue (with a LOT of misinformation).

Back to the Congregational Meeting. During the meeting, the Pastor indicated that he felt the Bylaws by which the church was operating were not Biblically in order (he is correct). This led to an actual argument, in front of the Congregation, between the Elders and the Pastor. An argument that became very heated by the Elders getting extremely angry. Somewhere in there, the Holy Spirit decided that I needed to speak up. I do not actually remember everything I said, but others have told me that I spoke about there being a spiritual thorn in the side of our Pastor and that it was OUR JOB to help draw that out.

Still, people left the meeting confused, hurt, and angry.

In the week that followed, the Elders decided to FIRE the Pastor. As I have read the current Bylaws, there does not appear to be any basis for his termination except that he did not agree with the Elders. Understand, the Bylaws do give the Elders the ability to remove the Pastor, but only for specific reasons and NONE of these applied.

5 Hills Cowboy Church is a member of the American Fellowship of Cowboy Churches (the AFCC). The AFCC does not dictate to the individual churches nor does it own the churches or their property.

The week following the firing of our Pastor, the Elders first stated that it was a misunderstanding and that they really wanted him to take a sabbatical, this was an obvious lie. Then they said that the Pastor left the meeting and quit, which was another obvious lie. If I understand 1 Timothy 3 2:7 correctly (where the qualifications of an Elder are defined) this act of lying immediately disqualifies them from their position.

In the ensuing weeks, obviously feeling empowered since there have been no consequences for their actions, the Elders have:

1. Removed people from the membership roles

2. Fired people from positions in the church for no valid reason other than they disagreed with their actions. Including removing people while in front of the congregation.

3. Interrogating people whom they suspect have a differing opinion than their own.

4. Barred specific people, physically, from entering the church

I have attended a different Cowboy Church (Open Gate Cowboy Church) for the last couple of weeks and it is 180° the opposite of what I am seeing at 5 Hills Cowboy Church. While Open Gate Cowboy Church I have seen a steady influx of people who were attending 5 Hills Cowboy Church and have now left. One of these people (who was removed from their membership and physically denied entrance to the church) was a FOUNDING MEMBER of 5 Hills Cowboy Church.

Through all of this the AFCC has offered to help, to send people to guide, but they have been rebuffed by the Elders at 5 Hills Cowboy Church.

5 Hills Cowboy Church is a dead church. There is simply no other way to state it. When a church becomes an exclusive club where you can only be a member if you agree with the dictators in charge, it is no longer a church and is totally outside the will of God. It has been allowed to become this way by people who could have stopped it. Irreparable harm has been done to the church and NOTHING will bring back many of the people who once made 5 Hills a real church, a place where the Holy Spirit fell, and Christ was in charge.

Stay in prayer for us please,

KM

THE EMP FALLACY

 

While we live in a time where our and other governments have discovered just how much they can control the public through fear, with the willing assistance of the media, we really need to step back and think some things through. It is true that we have little control over an actual pandemic, not something cooked up and/or refined in a laboratory of course, but something may nature might spring on us from the shadows. Even there, we should be vigilant and make sure that the issue isn't being overblown for the sake of more governmental control and we are living in a time where the government, and especially the executive branch, want to control almost every aspect of our lives (as in most socialist and communist countries, there is a blatant attempt to force their ideology upon us.) Back to the subject at hand.

There have been books and movies made about what the United States would look during and after an Electromagnetic Pulse attack by an enemy. For those that don't know or need a refresher, such a pulse is released whenever a nuclear weapon is detonated. It also happens in other ways such as a major solar flare or even a lightning strike. The difference is that a purposeful EMP, as a weapon, is created when a nuclear device is detonated twenty-five miles above the US and would destroy most electronics, high-voltage transformers, vehicles (including tactical ones), and other electrical machinery. Supposedly this would knock the United States of America back to the early 1800's or 1700's. It is projected that over 90% of the population would die within a year. The effect is actually much worse and is most likely global suicide.

If you have never heard of the Chernobyl disaster, there are books and documentaries galore on the subject. What it boils down to is that on April 26, 1986 the number four reactor in the Chernobyl (in he Ukraine) nuclear power plant had a meltdown. The subsequent radioactive cloud spread across Europe and went as far as Canada. Scientist today state that the full effects of the radiation dump that day will never be known. There are 92 nuclear power plants active in the United States today. The Department of Energy (the guys in charge of regulating the power plants) would have us believe that in the event of an emergency, the reactors would SCRAM or dump enough coolant onto the radioactive rods to prevent a meltdown as they are retracted. On March 11, 2011 the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan had a THREE reactors meltdown. The accident was triggered by the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.

So, imagine for a single moment that the US came under an EMP attack. Some critical components in the 92 nuclear power plants would likely not survive. The result would most likely be a series of meltdowns on a scale never before imagined. The resulting radioactive cloud release would spread first across the entire northern hemisphere and then, eventually, begin to leak over into the southern. It would be like something right out of the book and movie “On The Beach.” People, animals, and plants would all be affected. There would even, most probably, be a cascading effect as people in other countries abandoned their posts at their nuclear power plants and those began the meltdown process.

So, any enemy, foreign or domestic, that would perpetrate such an attack or any attack that does not include immediate occupation is basically committing suicide. Are there some out there that would do it anyway? I'm sure that some countries run by fanatical leaders who believe their deaths are worth it, or some leader already dying and wanting to take everyone else with them might try. It is up to the rest of the ENTIRE world to prevent them from succeeding if everyone wants to continue living. Are you listening Putin and Xi Jinping?

Have a wonderful day and week.

KM

THE DECEPTION

 

The subtlety by which we have been led astray is amazing. The worst part is, everything has been predicted, laid out like a map, and we have collectively missed it. Let's look at some examples.

Is or has the climate been changing, or more correctly, has the global temperature been rising over time? There are those that accept what the climatologists say (even though they have admitted that some of the data has been tampered with) and there are those that don't believe it. Both camps are probably partially right and partially wrong. The best kind of lie is one that contains just enough truth that refutation makes you look like an idiot. I will direct you to Revelation 16:8 and 16:12. Yes, the temperature is rising, no, nothing humans do will have any effect on it. Still, the fear it instills is a great method to control a large segment of the population. It generates revenue for and power for those who crave it most.

In a related issue, Congress and the Executive Branch are very aware of how fragile and vulnerable our electrical grid is. Yet, many in Congress and the current administration insist on taxing it even further. Worse yet, the push to move from gasoline to electric vehicles is almost insane when you consider what will happen should the grid fail even for a short time. The entire transportation system, food and goods, would vanish for an indeterminate amount of time. Now, there is an attack on natural gas powered appliances which will make the strain even worse.

The extreme focus on 'gender' and 'pronouns' is another misdirection. It was predicted in 2 Timothy 3:1-4. What people are calling gender does not change your sex. X chromosomes and Y chromosomes don't care what you call yourself. As far as I can see, the pronoun issue is a lot like when some females wanted to move from Miss to Ms. The difference is, with the pronoun issue, you can be face some consequences depending on what state you are in and where you work. Can you, for one second, imagine the thoughts of someone standing completely outside of our various cultures and looking in? Why such a hard push for 'gender' and its related components? Simple, the majority is always sane. If the majority accepts this, then anyone who does not becomes the outlier and can be deemed insane and stripped of their rights.

While I am sure that what we see on the news is only the most extreme examples that can be found, females competing in normally male dominated sports is nothing new, the opposite is far more rare. If we look at the 'trans' in women's sports that are being shown to us, they tend to be sex-born-males that have failed in male sports. I can't help but feel sorry for them, look at what they had to do to win. In the 'normal' world it's called cheating. The Olympics used to test for this sort of thing.

I am sure that some of you reading this will disagree with me on some or all of it. That's okay, you're allowed to be wrong. My main point is, we (I include myself) are all being manipulated. Keeping us angry, keeping us scared is good for politics and good for certain businesses. It hands control over our lives to others. This is the exact opposite of what the founders of our country wanted.

Keep your eyes open and your brains working,

KM

NO OUTRAGE?

A few days ago a man got into a political argument with a teenager. The man subsequently ran the teen over with his vehicle killing him. The killer claimed he felt 'threatened' by the youth who he characterized as a right-wing extremist. The teenager had no weapons on him. The murderer was charged with vehicular homicide and released on $50,000 bond. In an article yesterday, he claimed that he wanted his life to go on as normal, after all, he has a job, a family, and a life. My question is this, where is the outrage over a man killing a teenager because the teen held an opposing political view? Where are the riots and screaming mobs, or are these only reserved for a particular group of people in this country?

This man does not deserve to have his life go on as normal. He should face the same intense pressure and scrutiny as Derek Chauvin and Kyle Ritter had to go through. The media should be on this person's doorstep probing his politics, religion, ethics, background, mental health, etc. But there is no outrage, after all, it was a white man killing a white teen who happened to hold conservative beliefs.

Shannon Brandt, by his own admission, murdered eighteen year old Cayler Ellingson in cold blood. This wasn't just vehicular homicide, it was premeditated murder. Mr. Brandt planned and executed this violent crime with full knowledge and intent of what he was doing. Cayler Ellingson had not pulled a weapon, and had not attempted to attack Mr. Brandt, so there is no 'stand-your-ground' excuse here.

At this time Shannon Brandt is walking around, a free man, living his life. Cayler Ellingson is dead. He will never go to college, have a job, fall in love or raise his own family. Mr. Brandt made sure that Cayler Elliingson would never be able to do any of these things. So, I ask again, where is the outrage?

Stay safe and watch out for the Shannon Brandts out there.

KM

3D PRINTER REVIEW – ELEGOO NEPTUNE 2S

 

I have decided to do an in-depth review of the aforementioned ELEGOO NEPTUNE 2S 3D printer. This is the first 3D printer that I’ve owned and operated. I will be reviewing the printer based on several criteria:

1.    Delivery (does it come within the time-frame stated by the company.)

2.    Packaging (does the product come undamaged and is the packaging sufficient to protect it.)

3.    Ease of assembly

4.    Ease of setup

5.    Ease of Part Prep

6.    Printing

7.    Speed of printing

8.    Noise

9.    Final product produced

10.Customer Service

My rating system is:

One Star – Very Poor, Run, don’t walk away from this.

Two Stars – Poor, not at all recommended.

Three Stars – Fair, there will be challenges you have to overcome.

Four Stars – Good, I can recommend the product.

Five Stars – Excellent, this is highly recommended.

For item one (1) delivery, the product was promised within five to seven business days based upon the shipping criteria that I gave them (free shipping.) The product was delivered late on day four, so they exceeded the expectation.

My rating on Delivery…Five-Stars.

The item came in a heavy cardboard box, undamaged, with soft foam packing cut-out to hold the individual pieces. I consider it well protected. Expectation here was met.

My rating on Packaging…Five-Stars.

We come not to item three, ease of assembly. This is where things go just a little off the rails. First, you need to understand that this printer comes only partially assembled. You are expected to do a lot of the assembly yourself. All well-and-good as this is one of the reasons that the cost of the unit is so low ($190 if you buy directly from Elegoo.) There are problems here though that Elegoo should address.

First is the User Manual that comes with the unit in the box. This is a terrible document and isn’t much help for someone who has never put one of these together before. The pamphlet is mostly pictures with confusing dialog. It is actually obvious that an engineer helped put this booklet together, not thinking about the novice. Fortunately, Elegoo was wise enough to include an assembly video on the TF card that comes with the unit. This is far more helpful when it comes to instructing you on how things go together. The problem here is that the video shows things going together at two, three, or four times the speed that they actually do. I found myself replaying sections time after time. This brings me to the second problem with assembly of the printer.

There are six different size screws (all hex head) and five different size hex wrenches to go with them. This, along with a couple of different crescent wrenches with three sizes. There are also six different sized connector ends that have to be plugged-in in various places, one so small that I had to use tweezers to get it lined up. Most of you reading this probably know that I am a Lean/Six Sigma Senior Master Black Belt. I can tell you that the concept of Design For Assembly (DFA) was nowhere present when this model printer was on the drafting table. It honestly is not that hard to set up to use a common screw (two at most) and a common connector (again, two at most.) In fact, it isn’t that hard to set it up that NO screws are needed, but that is advanced DFA and I would have been ecstatic with some of the basics. I want to make sure that you understand I have taught and implemented Design For Assembly/Design For Manufacturing at multiple companies in several countries including the USA, Mexico, Canada, France, Switzerland, and China. DFA/DFM has reduced costs for these companies by as much as 50%.

Finally, with the assembly, they leave you to figure out that little tricks you need to know to make things go together properly all on your own. Things like, keeping the nuts at the very end of the screws when putting the filament holder on. The problem is, these aren’t things that are just ‘good to know,’ they’re critical to getting the unit put together properly.

My rating on Ease of Assembly…Two-Stars.

Let’s move on to Ease of Setup. This was another area that needs some improvement. There are a couple of basic things that need to be done before you can start printing. One of the most important is leveling the bed (the area where the part sits as it is being made.) You would think this is pretty straight forward and, if you live in backwards-world, it probably is. Under the bed are four ‘wheels’ to help level the bed. Where I come from, when you turn a wheel right, you would expect something to go in or up…not the case here, this actually lowers the bed in that corner. I suppose if you are left-handed, this might be pretty cool, but according to Wikipedia, roughly 90% of the human population is right-handed. Again, a DFA issue. Once you figure that out, it is pretty smooth sailing for leveling the bed.

There can also be issues with the bed ‘wobbling.’ This is taken care of by adjusting some nuts under the bed…nuts that are ridiculously tight. I had some real fears that I was going to break something on the printer I had to pull so hard. Some simple adjustment knobs for this would have been nice, but maybe it would have added some cost to the unit as well. Once we are past these problems the basic setup is pretty much done.

My rating on Ease of Setup…Three-Stars.

Part prep is an important part of 3D printinig. In order to 3D print a part, you somehow have to get that part design into the printer. The Elegoo Neptune 2S does this through the use of a piece of software called Cura and a TF card. What Cura does is look for your model in a variety of formats (.stl, .gltf, .obj, etc.) and lets you manipulate size and orientation and then ‘slice’ your model. Slicing is putting the model into a series of ‘slices’ that the printer can use to build a part file in Gcode. This file can then be transferred to the TF card so it can be plugged into the printer for use. Seems simple enough. Except…there doesn’t appear to be anyway for you to manipulate other important data directly in the Cura program initially. Information like nozzle and bed temperatures. This is ‘hidden’ in a bar above the viewing stage. The manual for the Elegoo version of the Cura program is online (I had to search for it myself.)

 

Once the part is loaded into the Cura program, which is easy to do, slicing it is as simple as pushing a button. You then can load the sliced part back onto the TF card for use. I had to make sure that it was loaded onto the top menu or the printer could not find the part (you cannot load it into a file folder, at least I couldn’t, and have the printer find it.)

 

My rating for Part Prep…Three 1/2 Stars.

 

Printing the part, I initially had some issues. For some reason, the part would begin to print and then, after a few minutes, the entire thing would move on the bed ruining the printing. I went back and double-checked that the bed was level (a VERY big deal) but it made no difference. I then tried to contact Elegoo about it and what I should do, I will get to that later. Rather than waiting for an answer back, I resorted to asking a group on Discord that I am a member of. After describing the problem and my settings, I was told that my nozzle temperature was a little too cold and how to make the adjustment. I did this and, sure enough, the part stayed in place.

 

I rate Printing at…Four Stars.

 

Print speed is highly dependent upon the size of the part you are printing the amount of ‘fill’ you are putting into the part (typically set at 15%,) and, I assume, the quality of the part, though I haven’t found a separate setting for this. I printed a part that was approximately twice the size of a normal miniature (my daughter wanted a unicorn) which took about an hour and a half. I consider that fairly fast. Actual miniatures can vary from fifteen minutes to a half hour. I have seen and heard about other printers and how long it takes, so I consider the Elegoo fast.

 

I rate Print Speed at…Five Stars.

 

The Noise that the Elegoo Neptune 2S makes is minimal. In fact, it is the quietest printer I have encountered to-date (we had a 3D printer at one of my work places and the noise would drive you nuts after a while.)

 

I rate Noise at…Five Stars.

 

We finally come to Final Product Produced. The printer does make a nice part. The parts require a lot of trimming as the base is too wide and there are a lot of stringers. Overall, though, if you keep an eye on what it being made, you can get a really nice part off of the machine. Like all filament printers, it will not give you very fine detail, but it does as good a job as any parts I have seen from filament printers. There is one problem, and it is not an unusual one for any printer.

 

Getting the part off of the bed is difficult. This seems a little ironic after the initial problem of not getting it to stay in place. There are some ‘tricks’ that help. One is to heat the bed to about 70 degrees C and then use a can of compressed air on the part to cool just the part. You can then use a good flat spatula to get the part up. Just be careful as these parts are fairly fragile.

 

I am going to rate Final Product Produced at…Four Stars.

 

I need to talk about Elegoo customer service. This is what drags the overall rating down the most. The only way to Elegoo is through their email client. This means that you are going to have to wait hours (at least) before you hear back from them. When you are in the middle of a problem, you really don’t have that kind of time. I asked them about the problem of the part not staying in place on the bed. The response (several hours after I was done) was to clean the bed with alcohol and level it. This was actually an incorrect response since the solution was to increase the nozzle temperature. Imagine if I had to go back and forth with, “That didn’t work.” “Well try this.” It would have been ridiculous considering the time factor involved. This is always the issue when you are dealing with customer service located either in a different country or massively different time zone.

 

The only way that can see to overcome some of these problems is a better trouble-shooting section in their manual (they have one, but it doesn’t cover a lot of the eventualities possible) or online. I have had to help create these types of systems, so I know it can be done.

 

I am going to have to rate Customer Service at…One 1/2 stars.

 

My overall rating for the Elegoo Neptune 2S printer is 3.8 stars.

 

It is probably a decent printer for someone just getting into 3D printing, but there are obvious issues that Elegoo should address.

 

Since, as you know, I am careful about copyrights, I am only going to include a couple of pictures of finished products and not the printer itself.

 

Have fun, stay safe!

 

KM

 

 

THE SUPREME COURT DECISION

 

One of the most stunning lies people are being told about the recent decision which overturns the previous one on Roe vs. Wade is that abortion is now illegal. That is NOT TRUE. The decision by the Supreme Court turns the matter back over to the individual states which is where it originally resided. A huge part of the problem, of course, is the way that this is being presented in the media.

 

Let’s start with the decision and what it really means. Each state can now enact its own laws concerning a woman’s reproductive rights. Roughly half of the states have or are going to make it harder or impossible for a woman to get an abortion there. At least a quarter of the states are going to make it easier. Almost no one is likely to use common sense about it. If you have read any of my previous posts, you already know my stance on abortion, but I am going to try my best to leave that out and just talk about the reality here.

 

We have a media that is inflaming the public and helping to incite riots and death threats. This is patently illegal, but we cannot expect the Department of Justice to act on it since it is currently being used as a tool of the radical left. The radical left wants abortion to be available to any woman (no, sorry, men can’t have babies) at any time for any reason. The Supreme Court has said, okay, no problem, but that’s up to the state you are in to decide. Essentially, what the court has said is, there is NO CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO ABORTION, and they are correct. Read the Constitution and you will find there is nothing in there about it. Instead, you will find that all people have the right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. It doesn’t say you can decide to end a life or that you are guaranteed to be happy. That just isn’t in there or any of the amendments.

 

So, my question is, what is the purpose of the rioting, vicious protests, and death threats? Shouldn’t these people be directing their energies at making sure their state will have the access to abortion that they want? That won’t happen by using the tactics that they are, that will happen by putting the people in power that they will do their will. Unfortunately, reason isn’t something that works with radicals.

 

Please understand that I am in no way advocating for abortion in any form. I am simply stating the way to go about making the change you want now. But also understand that the media has lied about what the court has said, and the President of the United States has lied about what the court has said.

 

Telling Congress to pass a law about abortion will be worthless in the end. Even if it were to pass, it would be challenged back in the Supreme Court and struck down. That isn’t a prediction, it’s a fact.

 

I have recently seen a number of corporations that say they are going to provide free help for those that want an abortion but are now in a state where they can’t get one. I guess that’s okay if those corporations are willing to take the consequences (expect boycotts and even some lawsuits.)

 

I do see the odd hypocrisy on both sides of this. The far left wants the ability to abort even up to (and in some case AFTER) birth but is against capital punishment. The far right wants no abortion but wants to be able to execute criminals for certain crimes. In the end, what you believe is up to you.

 

I know that this post won’t really change your mind on anything, you will go on believing and supporting whatever position you have. But I do hope that at least it gets you thinking.

 

Stay well, stay safe,

 

KM