Sermon 90 - Who haven’t seen yet believe

Sermon 90 - Who haven’t seen yet believe

John 20:29

Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

Hebrews 11

1 Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.

...

13 All these people were still living by faith when they died.  They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth.

I may have mentioned before, in another sermon, the story of a woman who was giving her testimony.  Her testimony was that she had, at the age of four years old, accepted the Lord into her life, and her faith had not changed from that day to this.  Since, as I very dimly recall it, the lady in question was in her early twenties, I have always felt that it was rather a shame that, in the ensuing twenty years, nothing had modified or added to her faith at all.

But the point of this sermon is not necessarily about growing your faith, so I won't belabor that point.  The idea that I would like to take away from that story on this occasion is that the experience that she had, at four years old, must have been a fairly significant one.  I have, over the decades of my life in association with the church, and with Christian testimonies, heard many similar stories.  Their stories about the experience that one has in terms of a direct encounter with the Almighty.  The experience the person recounting the experience generally speaking talks of being flooded with light, or with love, or with an experience of warmth, or of being held tenderly in the arms of God.

And I have to admit that I have never had this experience.  Given the recounting of these testimonies, and the recounting of these experiences, I feel that if I had ever experienced anything like it I would have remembered it.  I never have.  Some may see this as a failing on my part.  Some may assume that I would have had this experience, had I only had sufficient faith.  A number of people would undoubtedly say that there is something wrong with me that I have existed for six or seven decades in my Christian Life and have never had any experience like this.

Recently someone pointed out that all of the psalms in the book of Psalms, all one hundred and fifty of them, have at least one verse that praises God.  All of them except for Psalm 88. Psalm 88 is the only one that is unrelieved gloom and complaint.  In my life, Psalm 88 is pretty much my guiding light.  I have probably mentioned in my other sermons that I suffer from depression.  And I have suffered from depression pretty much all of my life.  At least as far back as my middle teenage years I have suffered from depression.  At one point it was cyclical, and while I was married it was somewhat mitigated, and certainly the timing of the cycles was different.  Interestingly, particularly given the relationship strong relationship between grief and depression, immediately after Gloria died I was not suffering from depression for a period of a little over a year.  Subsequent to that, I went into a depression, which has been unrelieved, now, for at least four years.  So, yes, I would say that Psalm 88 is pretty much my standard piece of scripture.  (Well, there is also Ezekiel chapter 24 verses 16 and 18, but Psalm 88 seems to fit the bill pretty closely.)

So, my life is difficult, and I also have no particularly glorious experience to look back on and use that to bolster my faith through difficult times.  And many people in the church would say that both of these facts are my own fault.  They would say that I don't have sufficient faith.  They would say that there is some unresolved or unacknowledged sin in my life.  They would say that if I had faith, or would only acknowledge my sins, I would experience God's love, or my problems would be removed.

There are two problems with this position.  One is that I freely confess that I am a sinner.  I am quite well aware that I am a sinner.  I'm not going to compete with Paul in his claim of being chief of all sinners, but I am definitely well aware of the fact that there is nothing in my life of righteousness that is able to even marginally overcome the fact that I have a sinful nature, and have to constantly fight against selfishness and self-centeredness, not to mention pride.  I know that I have been unkind to people.  I know that I have been uncharitable.  You only have to look at me to know that gluttony is definitely a problem.  So, no, I'm not sure where anybody could claim that I have unconfessed or unacknowledged sin.  I'm sure that there are sins that are unacknowledged because I have forgotten them; after all there have been so many.  I still have some faith.  And I cling to the passage of scripture where someone confesses that he does believe, but asks for help with his unbelief.  I do believe in God.  I do believe God's promises.  And one of the reasons that I believe God's promises is the other problem with the Christian position that my problems are all my own fault.  God does not promise that we will have a life of unrelieved happiness.  God does not promise that our life will always be easy.  God, in fact, constantly promises that we will have difficulties.  The Bible is so full of instances of this promise that we will have difficulties in our life that it is hard to pick out any single passage that illustrates this point.

God does also promise that all will be made well.  God promises that we will be given rest.  God promises that all tears will be wiped away from our eyes.  Frequently God uses the example that the pain of childbirth is mitigated by the joy of bringing a new life into the world.  Of course, more than half of the human population don't really understand this joy.  It is truly said that only a woman who has given birth without an epidural can understand the pain and suffering of a man with a cold.  It is also truly said that it's a good thing that men didn't have to give birth, or the human population would go it's extinct within one generation.  But I think that we can take it as read that all of these mentions in the Bible promise that whatever sufferings we go through now, eventually (and by eventually I am including the period after we physically die) our joy will be so great that any pain and difficulty that we have in this life will be forgotten our joy in being with God.

In another sermon I have noted that, in the book of Joel, God specifically says that He will restore the years that the locusts have eaten.  God has acknowledged that not only are there difficult times in our lives, but also often we don't see the restoration of what has been lost in periods of difficulty in our life.  And God has said that those times of difficulty, and all the losses that happen because of those times of difficulty, will be restored to us.  Yes, there are times in our life of difficulty, and pain, and loss.  And, eventually, all of those losses will be made whole.  God will restore to us the years that the locusts have eaten.  God will give us recompense for our pain; and a recompense that will wipe away our tears, and will give us back everything absolutely everything that we have lost.

And there is the wonderful chapter of Hebrews 11: the faith chapter.  It starts out with a definition of faith; that faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not yet see.  It goes on talking about a number of people in the Old Testament.  Some of the stories of faith of these people are perhaps a little bit difficult in terms of our definition of faith.  But, about halfway through, it points out that all of these people were still living by faith when they died: they didn't yet receive the things that they were promised they welcomed them from a distance.  They were living by faith.  They believe that God would fulfill his promises, even though very often those promises for the far distant future.  There is, as an example that Hebrews 11 doesn't touch upon, the prophecy of the coming of Christ.  In Isaiah, we specifically have the promise of a child born to a virgin.  Isaiah did not see this happen.  This happened seven hundred years after the prophecy was made.  But those who believed God, and believed God's promises, believed that it would happen.  And those who believed, and were ready when it did happen, did rejoice to see it.  Yes, there were those who did not believe and who opposed the fulfillment of the prophecy.  But we have the rejoicing of both Simeon and Anna, who saw, in the infant Jesus, the coming of the Messiah, and rejoiced.

There is another reason to believe in faith itself.  That is the story of Thomas.  Yes, doubting Thomas.  No, I'm not going to get into the issue of in order to believe greatly it is necessary to doubt greatly; although that may have a bearing in what I'm going to talk about here.  But Thomas said that he would not believe until he saw, and put his hands into the wound in Jesus' side and the wounds in his hands.  And when Jesus appeared and Thomas was there, Jesus noted that Thomas saw and believed, but went on to note that blessed were those who had seen who had not seen and yet had believed.

I have not seen.  I have not seen Jesus and I have not seen the wounds.  I have not seen the glory of God, or the Holy light that some people talk about in their testimonies.  I have not felt the warmth, and love, and assurance that other people have talked about when they talk about their experiences in the presence of the Almighty God.  I have not had these experiences.  I haven't heard the voice of God, I haven't seen God or His holy light; I haven't felt the warmth and comfort; I haven't experienced these things.  I haven't seen.

And yet I believe.

My life is difficult.  And yet I believe.  My life is a string of endless days; endless hours; wishing that I were dead and could go home to be with my maker and my God.  My life is filled with pain and difficulty.  I find no joy in life.  I wish it were otherwise, but Paul prayed to have a thorn in his flesh taken away, and it didn't happen.  So I wait.  Somewhat impatiently, to be sure, but I wait for the day when God will fulfill his promises and I will have rest, and the tears will be wiped from my eyes, and the years that the locusts have eaten will be restored.  And the pain that I am going through will be replaced with the joy of a new life.

Sermons: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/09/sermons.html

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MGG - 7.05 - Dead - Church coffee

So, Gloria is dead, and I my life is over (although I'm still breathing), and I'm in a new town, and the second new town within a year, so I'm trying to not exactly rebuild my life, but build a new life.  So, as I often do, I turn to volunteer work.  But I'm brand new in town, and I haven't yet made any contacts, and I don't even know what kind of volunteer work there is available around here.

One of the first churches that I visit (and, yes, church shopping is also one of the ways of trying to build a new life), on my very first visit to this particular church, is noting that one of the church ladies, a pillar of the church, one of the kitchen and coffee ladies, has died.  Her service is to be the following week.

I know about kitchens.  I know about cooking, but I also know about kitchens. I know about church kitchens.  I don't know about this particular church kitchen, but I know about church kitchens.  I also know the necessities for receptions following services.  So, I contact one of the church kitchen ladies, and I know that I expect that, given the status of the woman who has died, that all the church kitchen ladies will want to attend the service.  So I volunteered to be the one staying downstairs, and also prepared to do the last minute necessities just before the service ends, and everyone troops downstairs for the reception.

So, on the appointed day and time I come along and help, as I can, setting up for the reception.  And, as noted, I volunteered to be the one who has to stay behind and keep an eye on things, while all the rest of the church kitchen ladies get to go up and attend the service for their fallen member.

And, just after everyone has left, somebody that I know from the church comes into the downstairs area, and asks if they can have a cup of coffee before they go up to the service.  This particular church has a two hundred cup coffee urn, which has, in fact, been filled and set perking by the coffee ladies, well in advance of the need for it following the service.  I know, from long experience, going back all with way to my university days when I bought the coffee and supplies for Regent College, that this particular type of coffee urn generally takes a little over an hour to perk its way through and produce coffee.  But, as I say, the coffee ladies have already done their work, and the thing has gone through its entire cycle and the red light has gone off, which indicates, on this particular urn, that the coffee is ready.  So, I tell him so, and say that it's okay for him to get a cup of coffee.  He takes a cup, and draws out a nice steaming cup of hot water.  It's completely clear, although it smells very vaguely of coffee, and it is quite obvious that although the urn has been filled with water, and has gone through its perk cycle, no coffee was actually ever put in with it.

So I race up the stairs, and find one of the church coffee ladies, and inform her of this fact, and also the fact that I have no idea where the coffee is kept in their particular kitchen, nor how much coffee they decide to put in their coffee.  She comes down, and we refill the urn with water, and she puts the coffee in this time, and we set it going, and she heads back upstairs to the service.

As I said, the service was for one of the ladies who was a pillar of the church, and everybody wanted to contribute and so the service was a little bit longer than most similar services.  It was in fact a little over an hour before the service was over, and by the time everybody did troop downstairs, we did have the urn of coffee ready to go.

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/03/mgg-704-dead-sermons.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/03/mgg-708-dead-cissp-online-seminar.html

Algorithms vs lookup tables

I have been working on a science fiction novel for some years now.  I haven't gotten particularly far with it, and I rather doubt that it will ever even be finished.  However, it, in a roundabout way, prompted the idea for this essay.  I suppose the only reason that I am mentioning it is because it is an example of a contention that I have that pretty much any kind of thinking can prompt some useful ideas, and that if you are stuck on something, start thinking about something else.  Generally speaking, thinking about something else will prompt some ideas about what you think you are supposed to be thinking about.

(I don't really have an awful lot of sympathy for those who profess to be afflicted by writer's block.  I can't really say that I have ever been afflicted with writers block.  Maybe I just don't have enough experience, but I do have an awful lot of experience in writing, and in doing all kinds of writing.  Like I said, generally speaking, if you get stuck and can't move forward with a particular piece of writing, then start thinking and writing about something else.  Very often writing about something else leads to thinking about, or some ideas about, whatever it is that you think you're supposed to be writing about.)

The idea that came to me was one that I have frequently had when I have been teaching about technology, and frequently at a very high level.  I am old.  Old people are not supposed to be in the forefront of technology.  And, indeed, I cannot claim that I am in the forefront of any particular field of technology.  But I am teaching those who are.  And one of the things that I have realized, over the years, is that being up on the latest technology is not as important as having a foundation on the basics of technology.  Understanding that knowing the latest app, or programming language, or agentic process with artificial intelligence, or the most recent technology architecture technology with regard to quantum computers, isn't as important as understanding the basics of the bulk of the architecture that is in use today.  As Newton said, we see further because we stand on the shoulders of giants.  We have to understand where we are in order to see where we can get to.

But this is a broad and general outlook.  The particular idea that came to me was one that goes back to a course that I took on machine and assembly language processing, and the building of functions with hardware circuitry.  When you were designing at this most fundamental level, programming with direct machine language, rather than using a higher level language to speed up the process, you start to understand that there are two ways of doing anything: using an algorithm, or using a lookup table.

Computers do arithmetic with binary arithmetic.  When we want to get an answer from a computer, however, we ask it to present it to us in decimal, which is what *we* are used to using.  So, if you are not just calling for functions from a programming language, you have to build your own conversions from binary numbers to binary coded decimal.  There are two ways that you can do that.  You can use the algorithms that will convert a binary number into pieces that can then be used to display decimal numbers on the screen.  Or, you can simply create a lookup table, and directly convert the binary number into a series of pieces that can be displayed on the screen.

Whether you choose an algorithm or a lookup table will depend on how much work you were doing, and partly on how much processing time is going to be used by the algorithm versus simply using a lookup table.  Partly this is determined by the size of the numbers that you were working with.  There are going to be some situations where an algorithm is far superior, but there are also going to be situations where a lookup table is much quicker and easier, not only to create, but also to use.

And I as I was thinking about this fact, I realized that the current grand interest in artificial intelligence, the large language model, is created using neural networks, Bayesian analysis, and Markov chains.  But that is what we use to *create* the large language model, itself.  When we *use* the large language model, the large language model is acting as an enormous lookup table.  An enormously complicated lookup table, it is true.  But, in the end, it is merely a lookup table.  This explains a lot of the limitations of large language models.

Looking back through the history of artificial intelligence, lookup tables feature very prominently.  ELIZA, or doctor, one of the earliest successful artificial intelligence programs, used a lookup table, although the lookup table was used to discard parts of language that were not essential, allowing the program to concentrate on the more important and relevant aspects of a conversation and therefore appear to be very wise in its questioning of its clients.  Expert systems are a rather odd kind of lookup table, using a binary tree to ask yes and no questions to get to the basis of an answer for a particular expert field.

Current large language model artificial intelligence systems are incredibly expensive, require enormous data centers to operate, and have a voracious appetite for stupendous quantities of energy.  To put it bluntly, they are incredibly wasteful.  They are massively expensive, contribute to e-waste, and are going a long way to driving global warming.  We need to change things.

We need to look at some efficiencies here.  And, in the same way that dealing with very large numbers when we are trying to code binary numbers into decimal representation, we need to stop thinking about lookup tables, and start thinking about the more efficient, in the long term and on the large scale, algorithms.

We need to stop playing around with systems that use enormous amounts of computer hardware, and massive amounts of energy to drive them, in order to give us some interesting but possibly not important results.  We need to start looking at the algorithms of actual intelligence.  What are we actually doing when we are thinking.  How are *our* thinking processes adaptable to silicon hardware.

And so we come full circle in this essay.  We have developed writer's block for ourselves by focusing too long on lookup tables in creating our artificial intelligence.  It is time for us to look at, and do the harder work in creating, the algorithms necessary to develop true artificial intelligence.

AI topic and series

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/01/ai-000-intro-table-of-contents.html

MGG - 2.0a - Teaching - sailing, lightning at Gull Lake

(By the time that I remembered to write this up, I couldn't figure out whether it properly belongs with teaching, or with stories about work.  So, in terms of what has already been posted on the blog, it more easily fits here in the numbering scheme, so we'll leave it here, and see if anything happens later.)

As noted with the story about scouting, I had some experiences with outdoor education before I actually got into the formal education system as a teacher.  One of the experiences was that I was asked to be a sailing instructor at Gull Lake Baptist Camp in Alberta for a summer.  I hadn't lived in Alberta for any time prior to this, although I had visited for brief times, so it was interesting to learn the difference between living in a rain forest, and living on the prairies.

While I had done a lot of volunteering as a camp counselor in summer residential kids camps, this was my first experience as sort of full-time summer program staff for such a camp.  We didn't have to bunk in with the kids as full-time staff, so we did have our own accommodation.  I bunked in with another one of the male full-time staff, the two of us in a small, four room, log cabin.  The log cabin was constructed of cottonwood logs, and was definitely showing evidence of the reason that very few people build log cabins out of cottonwood logs.  Living in a rainforest I am familiar with the number of different types of tree species, and particularly those that can be cut up for firewood.  Cottonwood is unique in my experience in that it goes directly from a water logged state, to being rotten punk wood, with no indeterminate state of being useful for, well, pretty much anything.

One of the interesting aspects of living on the prairies was that of thunderstorms.  It's not the thunderstorms don't happen in the rainforest: these days we have constant evidence of the fact that thunderstorms can ignite wildfires in remote locations, which can make it very difficult to deal with those fires.  However, living in a rainforest, even on an island, thunderstorms are relatively few along the coast, and, in other places, generally don't happen where they are visible to you.  So, this was the first time that I had the experience of being able to see lightning storms, and be reasonably certain of being able to see a lightning strike, even if that lightning strike was several miles away across the lake and fields.  Another of the staff who was interested in photography and I went down to the lakeshore one night, when there was a thunderstorm that was striking on the other side of the lake, and we were accompanied by my housemate, who was terrified of the fact that we were down on the beach, obviously the highest point on the beach, and therefore, in his mind, subject to lightning strikes, even though the lightning was striking on the other side of the lake.

But there was another thunderstorm incident that was closer to home, as it were.  We were having a staff meeting, which happened to be held in the log cabin that was my residence, when we heard a thunder that happened at the same time as a brilliant flash of light.  This obviously meant that the lightning strike had been relatively close to us, and presumably somewhere on the camp.  So we all spilled out of the cottage, and had a quick look around all the buildings that were on the property, noting that none of them showed any evidence of lightning strikes.  When we reassembled back at my log cabin, we realized that one of the trees, immediately outside an unused door, showed evidence of missing bark and missing splinters of wood, which seemed to be evidence that it was a lightning strike.  When we examined more closely, we realized that there was heat damage to a clothesline that ran from the tree to a post holding up a small covering over the doorway, and then noticed that from that particular post, the handrail beside the door also showed some damage and missing splinters of wood.  When we got back inside the house, we found that, yes, the lightning strike had entered the house, and blown out a chunk of plaster--immediately behind the chair in which I had been sitting during our meeting.

I should note that the time as sailing instructor was not without incident itself.  The sport of sailing is not unknown on the prairies, but nobody in the camp had any experience with sailing or sailboats.  Therefore, when they were deciding what kind of boats to buy for the sailing program, they had simply asked another organization what boats they had recently purchased.  The boats in question shall not be named because it is probably unfair to tarnish their reputation given the problems with one particular model of their sailing craft.  These particular boats constantly surprised me, all summer long, with different ways that they had to injure or kill you.  The first thing that we learned was that the two-piece molded fiberglass construction was joined together with channel rail, and that the channel rail had extremely sharp edges, with no attempt to cover those edges.  Therefore, when we were lifting the boats on and off the beach, an awful lot of the kids got cut fingers handling the boats.  Eventually we developed a number of safety protocols for the use of these boats.  One of the rules was that no camper was to be allowed to hoist the boats in or out of the water.  Another was that no camper was to be allowed in the boats without an adult who had at least some experience with sailing with them.  We found that the sailboats would not sail without their jib actually in place.  We found that this sailboats would not sail if only the jib was in place, and if the mainsail was not operable as well.  We found that the boats were extremely slippery, and that the seating, on the gunnels, was not stable and that it was quite easy for anyone who was on board and sitting on the gunnel to slip off the gunnel and fall overboard.  We also found that it was quite easy for the boats to turn turtle, as the term has it, turning completely upside down.  Generally speaking it was relatively easy to bring the boat upright again by standing on the bottom of the gunnel, grasping the center board, and using your weight to bring the mast back up.  But on one occasion, when we were doing that, in the middle of the lake, I was not able to move the boat to an upright position, or bring the mast up at all.  I was sailing with the camp director on that particular occasion, and observed that I had never seen this particular inability to right the boat.  He suggested that the mast was stuck in the bottom of the lake.  I observed that the mast was only eighteen feet high, and surely the middle of Gull Lake was not that shallow.  He nodded thoughtfully at my observation, and then repeated, maybe the mast is stuck at the bottom of the lake.  When we got the boat back upright, and observed mud on the top of the mast, we verified that his assumption had been correct.

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2025/01/mgg-20-scouts-beans-and-explosions.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/01/mgg-21-teaching.html

Sermon 89 - Purple Peacock

First indications that my purple peacock plants might produce this year.

Sermon 89 - Purple Peacock

John 12:24

Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed.  But if it dies, it produces many seeds.

I have never actually bought seeds for purple peacock beans.  I was given four pods by a fellow gardener one time.  Instead of eating the beans, I opened up the pods, extracted the beans, dried them, and later used them as seed.

Purple peacock beans grow, cook up, and can be eaten like green beans.  They have a slightly tougher outer skin, and a slightly milder flavor.  The outer skin is purple, but, if you cook the beans, some of the purple color disappears, and you tend to end up with either a mottled or striated mix of purple and green, which can be quite colorful depending upon the recipe you cook them in.

A couple of years ago I planted some purple peacock beans in a mixed garden patch.  I planted two of the seeds beside two very large sunflower plants.  I had a large number of poles stuck randomly around the garden.  Purple peacock plants grow quickly and prolifically, generating a large number of tendrils, and twining around and over pretty much everything.  They spend a long time producing vines and leaves, and it's only after a few months of producing vines and greenery that you finally get a few small purplish flowers.

I have, elsewhere, written a sermon or devotional about broad beans as an example of God's Providence.  Purple peacock beans don't produce edible material in quite the same variety as broad beans do, but purple peacock beans definitely surpass broad beans in terms of actually producing food.

I probably planted five purple peacock plants in that mixed garden.  The greenery overtook pretty much the entire garden.  When once the beans started to produce, I probably took, at a conservative estimate, five kilograms of beans off each plant.  I could have taken more, if I had allowed the pods to grow to their full size, and if I had maintained a regular schedule of harvesting later into the season.

Jesus once spoke a parable about the importance of sacrifice, even the sacrifice of your own life.  He noted that a single seed was not very much, but that, when planted in the ground it died, but then produced a harvest, of thirty, or sixty, or even a hundred times the original grain.  The purple peacock beans that I planted outdid that by a considerable margin.  Each seed was approximately two grams in size.  Each plant produced at least five kilograms of food.  That's a 2500 times increase.

We can find other, even more prolific, examples.  An apple seed, less than a gram, can produce a tree which, after a few years, yields dozens of kilograms of apples every year.  And, of course, I have also, elsewhere, noted that God doesn't seem too concerned with efficiency.  God provides for us profligately, showering abundance on us.

Garden series

Sermon 2 - Broad Beans

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/01/sermon-2-broad-beans.html

Sermon 3 - Blackberries

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/01/sermon-3-blackberries.html

Sermon 33 - Transplanting

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2025/02/sermon-33-transplanting.html

https://open.spotify.com/episode/5Fr2al8f0bNT9fTo1nYzwV

Sermon 57 - Leaven

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2025/02/sermon-57-leaven.html

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3oguUslGkpVxkiFlCjxeAj

Sermon 59 - Corn

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2025/03/sermon-59-corn.html

https://open.spotify.com/episode/1XxT0do4aFywpZPwPWrvHv

Sermon 83 - The Years the Locusts Have Eaten

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/04/sermon-83-years-locusts-have-eaten.html

Sermons: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/09/sermons.html

Review of "Animal Farm" by Angel Studios

I have seen quite a number of productions by Angel Studios.  And I know the book "Animal Farm."  In fact, I have seen multiple movie or video adaptations of "Animal Farm."  So I was a bit surprised to see that Angel Studios would be doing a version of "Animal Farm." The productions by Angel Studios have happy endings.  "Animal Farm" does not have a happy ending.  George Orwell wasn't very big on happy endings.

But then the movie started, and I thought that this must be some different story, since the first animal we are introduced to is Lucky the pig.  I don't remember the part that Lucky the pig plays in George Orwell's "Animal Farm."  Oh, but wait.  Then we are introduced to Boxer, and Napoleon, and Snowball, and Farmer Jones, so maybe we *are* in Orwell's "Animal Farm."  Except that we also have some giant mega corporation buying a farm, and a drone, called Moses, which don't appear in "Animal Farm."

So it's confusing.

The story development of Orwell's "Animal Farm" proceeds pretty quickly, with Snowball being exiled, and Napoleon starting to take over.  (However, the allusions to the Russian revolution are a bit rushed, and therefore lost.)  Angel Studios is very heavily Christian oriented, so it isn't terribly surprising that the story relies less on political machination, and much more on temptation.

The plot of the original "Animal Farm" gets severely messed with, but the theme of new revolutionaries re-implementing the old dictatorship proceeds pretty much as it always did.  Electricity is good, then bad, then good ... and then maybe bad?  Then we get the ending of the "Animal Farm" book, but this movie doesn't finish.

Then we kind of go all "Animal *House*" for a while, and then we finally have a ... well a kind of an indeterminate ending, but I suppose that it could be *seen* as a happy ending.  At least there are a lot of warm and fuzzy sounding platitudes before we all sit and look at the stars, and consider that all the animals who went to the slaughterhouse could be coming back as stars.  Maybe.  Maybe you only come back as a star if you went to the glue factory instead of the laughterhouse.

The moral of the story is that farm markets are good, and wearing hazmat suits is evil.  (The reason why is too complicated for your little piggy brain.)

Or maybe that you can never go wrong as long as you remember that Snowb... Napo... Luck... Boxer is always right.  Except when he's wrong.

Or maybe that someone pretending to be your Dad is always evil.  But people who claim bast friend status are good.

Or maybe that astrology is based on your dead friends coming back as stars.

(Possibly Angel Studios should stick to making feel good films for adults, and avoid simplifying literature for kids.)