An Open Letter to Michael R. Zaeske

24 October 2oo7

Dear Mr. Zaeske,

Your inability to serve as a mediator in the affair here at Port Austin—a position you had previously sought—is now readily apparent in the e-message to which I am responding … first, I want to thank you for the ad hominem attack, for it illustrates the truth in what the Apostle Paul writes about there being divisions among those who call themselves disciples to reveal who is genuine (1 Co 11:19), but you must do a better job than you have at labeling your photographs. And if you are going to attack a person, you should not make an attack so easily refuted, for as your bathroom photographs reveals, that building was not habitable and was being used as a poultry shed and wood shop.

In late November 2005, I rented a cabin near the lake as a residence for the very reasons that your photographs show: although we had a verbal agreement with the two different owners of the building (even had a contract with Rick Fields through the Realtor Brenda Heilig), we never had the authority to throw away those things which you pictured in the dumpster [there should be at least one more dumpster of trash and usable building materials left by Rick Fields and Philip Frankford—that dumpster full must still be in the building, molding, breeding disease, making use of the building increasingly problematic]. And what you show in the photograph of the dumpster features a mattress with Edwards’ name written in black marking pen across its end. I’m quite certain that in the dumpster were the boxes of Servants’ News that Edwards unloaded in the building in 2004.

As for an ad hominem attack against you, Mike, you are much too small of a fish for me to fry, especially when you have fried yourself. I have no interest in those things you might or might not have done in the past. I have business deals that went sour in the years when I was an outboard-chainsaw dealer. I still owe—from February 1979—six hundred dollars to the radio station in Kenai, Alaska. I still owe a flintlock rifle to a party for whom I lost their address in 1998. So I have those things for which I am not satisfied in my history. But leaving the cleanup of a building I had spent a month hauling out trash most every day, and informing the owner that I would need another three weeks to finish, is not one of those things. Frankly, Carolyn thought I should have left all of the mess there considering that Fields, upon contact from Edwards, backed out of signing the contract to which he had twice previously agreed.

As a covering wife, Carolyn is especially thankful that Fields did not sign that to which he agreed. She went along with the proposed purchase because I thought the building would, when cleaned up, make a large enough base from which we could both conduct business and ministry as well as live … I noticed that there were no photographs of the two rooms we used as office facilities. What happened? Did your camera not work where there was no or little mess? Al Raines was, before we rented the cabin, in both of those rooms so he could have identified them for you.

Your photographs are badly misidentified, but they are adequate to show the condition of the building that we had agreed to purchase from Rick Fields, to show the amount of cleanup necessary before the building could have been used, and to show the potential of the 6,000 square foot building (there are a lot of square feet of that building that you have not shown). And as far as having left a cat or more than one cat in the building, I did not. Because my no-tail tom had roamed at will on the hill, he had sired some half-tail feral offspring. You apparently encountered some of his feral offspring that had taken up residence, along with a family of raccoons that I knew about, in the building after I left off hauling out trash.

Now, you have, by revealing your previously concealed attitude, exposed yourself for the hypocrite that you have been when offering to mediate between Terry Williams and Norman Edwards. Understand this well: no hypocrite will enter the kingdom of heaven, for no hypocrite’s righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees (Matt 5:20). You have spiritually fried yourself. Repent while you can, if you can. You probably cannot repent, but please, for your sake, pray that God allows you repentance, for you will have condemned yourself with your e-mail message. My prayer is that you repent, get away from Edwards—you don’t presently see how he has effectively slain you—and bring forth fruit worthy of Christ Jesus. Edwards does not have the Spirit of God, but is a deceitful workman who works as an agent of the Adversary. You have made yourself into another such workman.

As an aside, Edwards or his son had entered the building during a night in the spring of 2006 and had exchanged a white telephone cord with a black one just so we would know that he had been there. Nothing else was disturbed. But after that incident, we made it more difficult for anyone to know whether we were present in the windowless building. During the weeks you stayed with Edwards, you would not have known even if you had attempted to enter the building; so you can speak with no firsthand knowledge about when we were working and present in the building and when we were not.

Again, pray for repentance. And if repentance is granted to you, the Port Austin Sabbatarian Community will consider whether the marking you have taken upon yourself should be removed.

Respectfully,
Homer Kizer

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