A Small Update for the Fall.
And Prayer Request.
Note: sorry for disrupting the normal posting cycle. But I kind of needed to get this out.
This photo is most likely the closest idea to my ideal vacation. The only thing really missing is a cup of coffee, a lawn chair, the dog, and perhaps a fishing pole. It reminds me of times along the Colorado River in SE Utah or Baker Lake in Washington State. Ahh… the memories of days gone by.
It would be nice at some point to have something in this life that is steady, and unchanging. But all things do seem to change and so does the world of social media and writing. I like Substack, and I do enjoy what it has brought to the table for authors like myself. However, there are rumors of a change in the wind.
Back in the springtime, I started to feel like the Lord was impressing on me look at other platforms and post on this as well. I looked around, tried a couple like Medium, and was not very impressed so I stopped looking. Now I did not stop because I felt like the Lord was wrong or anything like that. I stopped because life got busy and I got lazy.
Substack Subscriptions
Not that long ago the owner of Substack, Hamish McKenzie put out a post called, “The Price of Payments.” Boiling down the article, Hamish is highly considering upping the cost. This 30% increase, combined with what already exists would affect everyone at every level. The combined total would jump from 12.5 % to 42.5% So as an example with paid subscription… say you gave a hundred dollars, $42.50 would go to Substack, and $57.50 would come to me.
As you can imagine Hamish McKenzie has received a LOT of pushback, as a lot of authors have expressed how much they do not like this. It is unknown at this point if Hamish will increase the price or not after hundreds of authors jumped on him. It has actually been several months and he seems to have dropped this idea… for now. So hopefully Hamish learned his lesson.
This has caused me to keep my eyes open and keep looking around a bit more and so far I am not jumping up and down with excitement over what I am finding. At some point, I will start trying out some of the other platforms I have found. But until then I would like to hear any of your experiences, and your reviews with other platforms.
Substack Reporting system
In one of my previous jobs, I often had to write reports and do research into things related to book sales to find trends and such things. This platform (Substack) provides a fairly robust number reporting system. I have not done a serious deep dive into the numbers related to this Stack until recently. My reasoning was, I know that the numbers become more reliable over a longer period of time. So with a full year in place, I started to crunch numbers.
I am no longer confident of Substack’s reporting system, it is becoming INCREASINGLY useless. They’re not solid and seem to be influenced by factors that they are not telling us. Case in point I know of several people, including myself who live in Idaho. Yet no numbers are being recorded for that state. People's views are not always being reported, and if you bring this to Substack’s attention. No human being ever responds back. You only get a canned AI response that goes around and around.
Therefore all the numbers I give in this update are “hopefully ok…”
Because of this, it is hard to plan forward with any degree of reliability. There are plans (as some of you know) to use the Podcast video feature, but not if there will be no audience. And especially if there is no audience that will pay for the extra work put in.
The Body of Christ
It seems, (at least from what I am seeing) that the majority of the people that God has shaken awake are deciding to stay awake. I have watched the X/Twitter IHOP crowd, they generally have not stopped their pursuit of justice. Small numbers are now waking up in other places, like Texas and Fort Mill South Carolina as they examine their own backyard spiritual messes.
I say this of Morningstar because of stories I have now heard of MSU student who has actually walked up to the front counter, demanding their money back and left. Add to this the report that Rick is possibly paying staff to stay quiet. Then in the Moravian Falls church, Rick stepped in to speak, discovering he only had six people to speak to. Yes, people are waking up. This to me is all part of the prophetic fulfillment that I will be covering on October 16th. called, “Checkmate.”
To all those who are still fighting, here is something for you. “I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false.” Rev 2:2
Posts
As I have stated my stack is a mixed bag of topics and ideas, and this is simply because I am often on many different subjects in life. However, to keep from driving my readers insane, I have limited things down to just a few categories as you see on the main page.
I did however add a “Jesus Stuff” category after I posted “Ten Things.” That simple post took me by surprise, it exploded, doubled the subscriber base and I heard from many people. This caused me to double down and seriously think over some of the subjects and produce posts related to that kind of thinking. Click here for the full list of related posts.
https://rfoster.substack.com/t/jesus-stuff
I have also added a section called “Icabod,” along the top bar of the page. This is a biblical word directly out of 2 Samuel meaning, “The Departed Glory.” The posts in this section are directly connected to the ongoing evidence with my former employer, Morningstar Ministries.
https://rfoster.substack.com/t/icabod
Now that the 100th post is done, I am going to continue to jump around through other topics. But the deep dive into Jesus Stuff has caused my thinking to alter just a bit. I find myself pondering some of these other subjects just a bit more from a Jesus perspective. Not that I am saying that I think like him, because I am fairly sure he does not spend a lot of time thinking about various science fiction shows.
100th post after effects
It seemed to me as I approached the 100th post that the Lord wanted me to open my mouth on the deeper issues of Morningstar. I actually started writing this post weeks before it came out, as well as before Chris resigned. The timing of this was totally God.
I knew it would be not liked in certain areas, so I expected pushback and certain people to unsubscribe. To my surprise in the first four hours, it broke the viewership record for my stack. The previous was 120, “The Good, The Bad, and the Unqualified” was already at 145 and the Holy Spirit told me when I saw the number that it would be at 500 within a week. It hit that number way on day five, and it’s still growing and being shared.
Also, there were no unsubscribes and I gained a small handful of former Morningstar people. This most likely was the result of several current Morningstar people sharing it many, many times.
But there was a spiritual backlash. On the day of the post a sudden, strong wind blast hit our home without warning. It felt like a freight train hit. One moment it was calm, the next it was not. It ripped a hole in the greenhouse, and the path up the hill, that I take the dog every day up to a place I always pray was suddenly blocked by a tree. It fell almost into the center forcing me to take another route into the center. Also, my back went out in a weird way that has affected me for a few days.
As I and others pray for the breaking of witchcraft, the pain is releasing, and slowly, my back is becoming more normal. One of the crazy things about spiritual backlash is it’s almost never a one-time thing. These spirits like to revisit a target many times. So if you could keep us in your prayers, we would appreciate it.
Current Top Ten Posts
Generally, as most of you know, my regular posting is not news and prophetic reports concerning Morningstar and various ministries. But this has been a bit of an assignment the Lord put me on for many years. Please know that this kind of reporting will only be happening from time to time until the assignment is completed. As an example, “The Calling, Part Two” will be posted tomorrow.
Weather
It’s getting crazy, especially in the red states. People are documenting many things on the radar connected to weather modification. Yes, this technology is real. Pray for the victims in the East. At this moment, there are three more hurricanes out there.
The stronger my faith and the higher my knowledge of God's truth and courage to share, the enemy comes at me. He got me good last winter but as usual God turns bad into good. I rebuke Satan everyday, and once we learn the power of the faith David used to defeat Goliath, we can really keep him away. Jesus taught us but Satan's done a good job of burying it. I to have wondered how to get God's message out there... but I trust he'll supply that when it's available. May God bless you with wisdom and guidance!