Well, it keeps me off the streets at least!

I notice that this happens to be my 6,666^th article posted on my website. Hmm, should I be worried? Well, unless you are a hardcore biblical prophecy buff and concerned about how Revelation 13:18 might fit in here, we should be safe. And this piece is not even about eschatology! But let me speak a bit more to all this.

I posted my first CultureWatch article on April 5, 2006. But a bit over 300 pieces that I had written prior to that I added to this site and post-dated them. So around 6350 pieces have been newly written in the past 18 or so years. The average would be one article per day, although sometimes I can pen two, three or even four pieces in a day.

But I try to keep it to just one piece a day now if possible, as some folks have said that they just cannot keep up with all the stuff I post here. I usually tell them that I am having trouble keeping up as well!

If each article averages some 1500 words (and I am half-guessing here), then you will find 10 million words on this site – well, 9,999,000 to be precise. I of course do more than just write articles. I have authored around a half dozen books, I speak and teach and preach at various places, and I do all sorts of more normal stuff as well.

Barring some major health episode, I assume I will keep on doing this for some time to come. I have no retirement plans, and I cannot see why I should stop doing what I am now doing. So if I keep writing at the current rate, by about the year 2033 I should have my 10,000^th article up! Or to use another metric, some 15 million words.

By way of a bit of background, I was writing my first pieces when I was around 15 or so – back in my wild hippy days. I helped to edit and underground newspaper back in the late 60s, early 70s, so some of my first published articles appeared in that format.

I wrote a lot because I read a lot and thought a lot. And part of the reason I read a lot, back in my high school days, was because I was not much involved in any of the in-crowds at school. I was a bit of a loner and outsider, I guess. So reading was one way that I kept busy. More details of that part of my life can be found here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2012/06/27/coming-home-my-testimony-part-1/

So why write?

I have explained before why I do what I do. We all have our own gifts and talents given to us by God. Some of you are great handymen who can fix things or build things. I have availed myself of some of these folks over the years, including one champ who built my floor to ceiling bookcases – and at a very reasonable rate.

Some of you are great at all things automotive. If I break down on the road somewhere, some of you could come along and help discover and fix what needs fixing. Some of you are great cooks or wonderful gardeners or fantastic mothers, and so on.

As to some Christian ministries, some of you are gifted pastors or preachers or counsellors or evangelists or missionaries or intercessors. Speaking of prayer warriors, let me post something I just put on the social media the other day:

One of the most powerful things going on in the world, and most Christians don’t know even about it: Every day countless believers meet in hundreds of online prayer meetings, whether on zoom or elsewhere. I just took part in one again tonight. Such an honour and blessing and encouragement to be with these champion prayer warriors. Around 100 people from around the nation and beyond praying for this nation and for God’s Kingdom to break through.  Many of these groups meet all the time. Why not join them?

While I have some of the other Christian things over the years that I just mentioned above, perhaps my main gifting is teaching, and writing is one form of this. My reading habits are reflected in what I teach and write about. So looking at my site will give you a good idea of what I am into.

Early on in my Christian life I grew to love reading books on theology, apologetics, ethics and the like. As to those three areas alone, you will find on my website 1510 articles on theology, 881 articles on apologetics, and 2157 articles on ethics. And there are subsections to these larger categories.

For example, the ethics section can be broken down as well:

-Abortion (416 articles)
-Bioethics (133)
-Capital Punishment (26)
-Drugs (36)
-Euthanasia (67)
-Homosexuality (1,005)
-And so on

And more practical and spiritual type pieces can also be found on my site, with 1,453 articles in my ‘Sermons and Devotionals’ section. While I still write plenty on the culture wars, on politics, on social issues, I am tending to write a bit more of late on these more devotional, biblical and theological topics.

All of these topics are important, but at the end of the day, what really matters is for every person on the planet to get right with God through the finished work of Christ. And those who are Christians need constant reminders to grow in their faith, to seek God more, to press on to holiness, and so on.

Being an avid reader, many of my posts on this site reflect this. (And as I have said before, my late wife actually read more than I did. Perhaps 95 per cent of her reading was fiction, while perhaps 95 per cent of my reading is non-fiction.)

Thus some entire sections are devoted to my reading likes and habits. If you go to my ‘Book Reviews’ section, you will find 766 posts so far. True, not everyone is a full and proper book review, but still… And even if they were, with over 8000 volumes in my personal library, that still means that less than 10 percent of my books have been reviewed so far. I have a feeling I will not get to all of them!

Another section folks might like is my ‘Quotations’ section. I have been collecting quotes for years now, and have them in numerous documents, arranged by subject or author. Thus there would be many thousands of quotes I have saved.

So more and more I am putting them to good use. While many of my articles – perhaps most – will feature at least one or two quotes, some pieces are largely just made up of quotes on a certain topic. Thus I might have quotes on prayer or holiness or revival.

I might have quotes on education, or socialism, or theodicy. Ot I might have pieces featuring quotes by Tozer or Lewis or Muggeridge or Scruton or Chesterton or Lloyd-Jones. All up that section has 216 posts so far, with more coming on a regular basis.

Also related to all this is my section on ‘Bibliographies.’ I only started this category recently, so there would be more of my previous articles that I need to add to this, but so far there are 92 posts here. You will find bibliographies on all sorts of topics, from feminism to transgenderism to Islam to Communist China to the New Age Movement to the Puritans.

And if you are really into books and reading, well, I now have a new section on ‘Books and Reading’! It has 33 articles in it so far. So this broad area at least is pretty well covered, and I will always fund more to write on such subjects.

Obviously other quite large categories exist, indicative of where I am coming from and what my interests are. I am a Christian of course, so my ‘Christianity’ section has 4,316 articles. Being involved in the culture wars so very much means that I have 2503 articles in that section.

Comments

And this site happens to also be interactive. That is, I don’t just write and post articles, but I allow comments to come through. Of course I have to moderate every single one that arrives first, before deciding if I post it, and then if I reply to it.

I do have clearly stated commenting rules on my site. But so many comments come in that ignore these rules. For example, I demand a full name, among other things. And obvious trolls, those with nutter remarks, and haters and arguers who contribute nothing to the debate but animosity and bile are not given a run here.

Thus there would be perhaps 20,000 (?) comments that have ended up going to the bin over the years. However, I just looked it up and there are 90,056 comments that HAVE been posted here. And plenty of these (thousands) would be from my critics, opponents, naysayers and others. So we can forget the nonsense when the other side claims that I censor every post that differs from my own point of view.

But speaking of comments going straight into the trash, there can be some really ugly, nasty, poisonous and hate-filled ones indeed. Many could not be printed here, even if I wanted to. Those haters are just gonna hate. And as is most often the case with the secular left, they offer little evidence, argument or reason. Instead, it is mainly heaps of hate-filled attacks, ad hominems, vile slurs and filthy language. You gotta love how they “argue” and “debate”!

All of which is good reason for you NOT to have an interactive website. Unless you have a thick skin, a lot of patience, and nerves of steal (backed up by a lot of prayer), these comments and commentators will wear you out, wear you down, and discourage you – which is exactly their aim.

So if you want to set up a website to showcase your writings, carefully consider first whether you will allow comments in. It really is a fulltime job just dealing with all of them. It is not a job for the faint of heart, and most folks will not have the time nor the will to put up with it all.

The worst of all of course is when the death threats come in, but there have not been so many of these for a while now. But simply getting the daily comments filled with diabolical hate and venom can be a real trial. But I know I have many folks praying for me, and that is what sustains me and the ministry. I would be toast by now if it were not for that prayer cover. Thanks everyone.

And please keep praying for all the trolls and haters who regularly come here to spew their toxic animosity at me. The funny – and good – thing is, if they are reading even some of the articles they are so viciously attacking, that means they are being exposed to much-needed truth.

And over the years a few of these arch misotheists and Christophobes have actually abandoned their spiteful ideology and embraced Christ and Christianity. That makes all the savage attacks well worthwhile.

Oh, and a big shout out to faithful Annette in Perth who has actually proofread every single one of my articles. Give that woman a medal – she is a superstar!

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