1. IS OUR LIFE REALLY THE RESULT OF A CAREFULLY
   WRITTEN SCRIPT THAT WE OURSELVES WRITE
   PRIOR TO INCARNATING?  

The biblical answer is a qualified no.  Only a few key events in our lives are divinely foreordained, perhaps only one.  God always respects our freedom, including our freedom to make bad decisions that thwart or delay divine support of our ordained destiny.  Key events in the lives of my brother and myself dramatically illustrate this point.  I will share our story if there is interest.  For now I will confine myself to 3 biblical examples:

(a) In God’s call to Jeremiah, He declares: “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations (Jeremiah 1:4).”  But in the fulfilment of this call, a whiny Jeremiah makes mistakes and often complains about how God handles issues.  

(b) Hezekiah, one of Israel’s greatest kings, becomes mortally ill and is told by the prophet Isaiah that God decrees this illness as the vehicle for his predestined death (see Isaiah 38).   But in a moment of weakness, Hezekiah bitterly intercedes with God to extend his life.   Through Isaiah, God reveals that the script has now been changed and that Hezekiah will be granted 15 more years.  But the moral of the story is this: be careful what you ask for; you just may get it.  In those 15 years, Hezekiah gives birth to a son, Manasseh, who turns out to be one of Israel’s most evil kings.  In retrospect, it seems preferable that Hezekiah would have gracefully accepted his death at the scripted time.  That way, Israel would have been spared the evil reign of Manasseh.

(c) The story of Joseph is the story of how immoral acts that God never intended were blended into a divine plan to preserve Israel’s ancestors and save Egypt from mass starvation in a time of famine. Joseph's brothers were rightfully displeased by his egotistical flaunting of his self-aggrandizing dreams.  But they were wrong to sell him into slavery and then lie about it to their father Jacob.  Still, in Joseph’s later dramatic reunion with his brothers, he implies that God molded the consequences of these immoral acts into a glorious purpose.  As Joseph puts it,  “Even though you intended to harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people (Genesis 50:20).”  

The notion of a partially scripted life can best be understood in term of a chess analogy in which God is likened to a grandmaster.  A grandmaster playing a novice has no control over the novice’s moves.  But he knows he can control the game to a limited extent and that the final outcome is certain.  By sheer luck the novice can occasionally create unanticipated obstacles and can even pout and refuse to move.  The grandmaster can even occasionally let the novice win to build up his confidence and learn some lessons.   So it is with God.

The notion of a carefully written life script is undermined by the oft-repeated prophetic insight that the future is seldom fixed.   God often tells Israel that because she has sinned (e.g. by ignoring social justice or chronically worshiping false gods), a certain divine judgment must be carried out.  But  when the people repent, God suspends the threat, the purpose of which, after all, was merely to induce spiritual transformation and reform.  In this respect, conventional notions of divine omnipotence and omniscience are later philosophical  distortions of the Hebraic mentality.  The biblical God often encourages the perspective that His mind can be “changed” by loving intercessory prayer.

To help us fulfill aspects of our destiny, God takes advantage of His perspective “outside of time.”  It is important to note what Paul DOES NOT teach about predestination.  He does not teach, “Those God predestined He also foreknew;”  Rather, Paul teaches, “Those God foreknew He also predestined (Romans 8:29).”  Foreknowledge precedes predestination.  God knows how I will abuse my free will and make poor choices.  That foreknowledge helps God intervene to ensure that I
have a chance to fulfill at least some important aspects of my foreordained life script.  

2. WHY WOULD HE ALLOW SUCH AWFUL TRAGEDIES
   LIKE THE TSUNAMI THAT TAKE SUCH A HUGE
   TOLL IN LIVES AND SUFFERING?  OR MIGHT WE
   HAVE TO SHED OUR BELIEF THAT GOD IS
   NECESSARILY "LOVING" AT LEAST IN TERMS OF
   HOW WE UNDERSTAND THAT WORD?

I will address Roger’s second question here first.  God makes it clear that His ways and thoughts are very different than our ways and thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-9).  God is in effect saying, “Beware of excessive anthropomorphism." Practically speaking, we should limit our claim that God loves us to what God has done for us in history (e g. sending Jesus) and what God promises to do for us in both this life and the next.  Still, if God willed the recent tsunami, then any claim to His loving character is open to serious challenge.

But I don’t believe God willed that tsunami.  It is well known that the Bible teaches that at creation God brought order out of primordial chaos.  What is less known is this:  the Bible also teaches that God has never gained complete control over the forces of chaos.  The Bible is not a scientific book.  Its teaching about chaos is a poetic way of saying that God set the laws of nature in motion at creation, but does not micro-manage the operation of those laws.  Chaos has nothing to do with the demonic. Apparently the Creator’s penchant  for free creatures beyond His control requires a universe that He does not completely control.  Ecclesiastes 9:11 is a good example of this biblical teaching about chaos: “The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor favor to the skilful; but all are victims of time and chance (Ecclesiastes 9:11).”  At the same time, God reserves the right to empower us to fulfill aspects of our destiny and to mitigate the destructive power of chaos [blind chance} through prayer, faith, and love.  Thus Paul can insist: “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him (Romans 8:28).”  Notice the implication that “all things” might be working against us, but that God is “plugging away” for the good, trying to salvage a wonderful purpose from often horrid disasters that He never intended.  

3. WHERE DOES GOD FIT IN?

If there is no careful script for my life, then to what extent is God willing to help me discover spiritual truth or, more specifically, the truth about astral exploration?  A clue to this mystery can be found in the most influencial NDE ever reported, that of George Ritchie, now a psychiatrist.  Ritchie’s NDE inspired Raymond Moody to do his NDE research and Moody became the major catalyst for modern interest in NDEs.  The Being of Light identifies Himself to George as Jesus and takes him on a tour of hellish and heavenly astral planes.  George offers a description of one such astral plane that is reminiscent of Focus 27: e.g. “Enormous buildings stood in a beautiful sunny park that reminded me somewhat of a well-planned university.”  The technology on display  in these buildings created an atmosphere  “brimming with the excitement of great discovery.”  Yet this was not the true Heaven.  As good as these people were, they were not permitted to see Jesus.  Nor were denizens of the lower planes permitted to see Him.  Only in a much higher heaven was recognition of Jesus’ presence permitted.  This insight helps explain a discrepancy between Swedenborg’s astral adventures and those of modern adepts like Bob Monroe, Bruce Moen, and Robert Bruce. Swedenborg is routinely overwhelmed by Christ’s presence during his travels, but modern adepts rarely encounter Him or God.  Not that Swedenborg was superior to these modern adepts.  But unlike them, it was a top priority for Swedenborg to encounter and learn about the astral presence of Christ and its significance.  We tune in to only those astral frequencies for which we are ready at a deep level of being.  

Enormous variations in our spiritual attunement account for the many discrepancies in adepts’ perspectives about the structure of the astral realms.  If only a few key events in our lives are foreordained, then the rest of our spiritual discoveries depend to a considerable extent on our initiative, insight, and creativity.  So where does God fit in to these varied quests?  A clue can be found in the biblical God’s reluctance to reveal the full-blown truth in one magical revelatory episode.
Let me explain.  

Many of us are troubled by the capital punishment prescribed in the Pentateuch for sins like adultery (Leviticus 20:10).  But when Jesus encounters a Pharisaic attempt to enforce this penalty, He shames them into desisting with His famous challenge, “Let Him who is without sin cast the first stone (John 8:7).”  What does this imply about Jesus’ attitude to the severity of the Pentateuchal penal code?   Jesus recognizes that many of these Mosaic laws are cultural distortions of God’s will.  This point is clear from Jesus’ statement: "Moses only wrote this commandment only because of your hardness of heart (Mark 10:5).”  The commandment in question is Moses’s law that a Jew can divorce his wife for any  "indecency" (Deuteronomy 24:1-4).  Jesus’ contemporaries conceived “indecency” to include a woman’s growing wrinkles or burning dinner! Jesus’ response is that God wants us to enter marriage with the idea that it is a lifelong partnership.  But Jesus also believes that life is too complex to be governed by legalism. So he presents His teaching on divorce not as an absolute, but as a guideline for which there are exceptions (e.g. Matthew 5:32; 19:8).  The important point is this: Jesus makes it clear that much of the Law of Moses attributes principles to God that do not accurately reflect divine values.  To correct his problem, God would not exempt the Jews from the hard work of upgrading their spiritual quest and self-awareness by their own efforts.  The same can be said, I think, about astral exploration.      

The most dramatic expression of how cultural bias prevents an accurate picture of God’s revelatory impulses from being drawn surfaces in God’s stunning confession in Jeremiah 7:22-23:

“For I did not speak to your fathers, or command them in the day I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices But this is what I commanded them, saying, "Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you will be my people.”

God’s confession contradicts the impression created by the Pentateuch that Moses’ lawgiving efforts were entirely authorized by God.  In antiquity sacrifices were so universal that one can speak of a Jungian sacrifice archetype embedded in the human unconscious.  God simply used an already existing priestly practice as the framework for imparting insights that were more important to Him.  Thus, Jesus makes it clear that God offers revelation within an outmoded Jewish legalism with the expectation that this legalism will implement key loving princinples: e.g.

“However you want people to treat you, so treat them, for this sums up the law and the Prophets (Matthew 7:12).

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the great and foremost commandment.  And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets (Matthew 22:37-40).”  

Jesus reminds the Pharisees that morality is revealed to serve the best interests of people, not vice versa.  Thus, He reduces the countless Jewish Sabbath laws to just one principle: “The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath (Mark 1:27).”  And he reduces the countless Jewish dietary and purity laws to just one principle: “There is nothing outside the man which, going into him, can defile him, but  the things that proceed out of the man are what defile the man (Mark 7:15).”  For Jesus, life is too complex to be governed by a rigid set of moral rules.  So when our best interest clashes with moral precepts the precepts can be set aside.  

Similarly, the prophetic role implies that religious doctrines are only valuable insofar as they promote a loving spiritual consciousness.  When doctrines fail to serve this purpose, they are temporarily nullified by God!  For example, Israel relied on ritual sacrifices in the Temples as their means of securing divine pardon.  But when their rituals no longer promote loving justice, God suspends them and the doctrines that support them: e.g.  

“I reject your festivals, nor do I delight in your solemn assemblies.   Even though you offer up burnt offerings..., I will not accept them;...Take away from me the noise of your songs;...But let justice roll down like rivers and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream (Amos 5:21-24).”

Note God’s sarcasm about food and drink sacrifices in Psalm 50:13-14: “Shall I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of male goats?  Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving.”  

Excellent commentary!  Thank you for writing it and posting it.

I especially like your analogy of God as the chess master and human beings as the novice.

Freebird

"That foreknowledge helps God intervene to ensure that I have a chance to fulfill at least some important aspects of my foreordained life script."

Hi Don-

Thanks for your thoughtful response.  My problem is, if we accept the premise that God  on occasion intervenes in our lives, it then opens up a whole host of conundrums (conundra?).

How does He pick and choose?  Presumably all of us have a role to fulfill but many of us are cut short.  The tsunami is a good example because of its magnitude, but any newspaper in any town will have stories of smaller but nevertheless tragedies all the same to those affected.  It never ceases to amaze me that a person will express gratitude to God for having missed a flight that crashes and kills all aboard, as if God didn't much care about the hundreds of other folks who showed up at the airport in time.

Personally I've concluded that God is unknowable and all attempts to do so are going to fall short of the mark.  It seems as if the only way He is described is in human terms....angry and full of retribution at times, loving and caring at others.  Regardless, there is always the element of human emotions  attritutable to Him because that's the only way we can hope to understand.

A close friend of mine, a Jehovah Witness, tells me that Jehovah is a jealous God and demands that we call Him by his proper name. As if God cares about what name to be called.   A human trait for sure, and therefore we ascribe that same trait to Him.  

One time as we were sharing a drink, I started to give a short toast to our friendship, but he quickly withdrew his glass.  Seems that by so doing I was about to dishonor Jehovah, since I was giving tribute to a human being instead of my friend's God.  Same reason btw that they don't celebrate birthdays or anniversaries.  

So after many years of wondering and sometimes agonizing over it, I have given up and just figure that God "is" and let it go at that.  (I can't even imagine a God that desires to be worshipped, but then that's a whole other thing.)

Thanks again for the biblical lesson.  I look forward to your post on channeling.

Roger

Roger

I'll address 3 of your 4 points here.

(1) I can't even imagine a God who desires to be worshiped.
_________________________________________

Why not?  Where do you detect problems with the 5 premises of this simple argument?  

(a) Everything originates with the Creator and everything "returns" to the Creator.

(b) Pure Unconditional Love (PUL) serves as the "magetism" that ultimately draws all creatures with higher intelligence back to the Creator through retrievals, evolutionary soul progression, etc..  [Set animals aside for now.]  

(c) The more intimate and self-conscious one's bond with the Creator, the more easily progress can be made in the pursuit of this grand scheme.

(d) Since PUL is the most important force that expedites the scheme, directing PUL to the Creator can deepen one's bond with "Him."   Put differently, if God wanted PUL to be a key force to fulfil "His" grand scheme, why would He not desire PUL to be directed to "Him" as well?    

(e) Worship involves praise, adoration, awe, and surrender, but, done properly, boils down to the direction of PUL towards the Creator.  

Therefore, God desires our worship, not in the sense that He needs it or is lonely or insecure without it, but to help implement "His" grand scheme.  We need it more than "He" does.

(2) Personally, I've concluded that God is unknowable and all attempts to do so are going to fall short of the mark.  
_________________________________________

Roger, do you mean that we can know nothing about God or that our knowledge of God is limited, but susceptible to being upgraded?  Paul taught that we cannot hope to "know" God in this life, but that we can sense that God can come to "know" us.  But, you say, if God is omniscient, how can He "come" to know anything?   Paul is not talking about God learning facts about us; he's talking about God coming to know us in a personal way analogous to the way a man comes to intimately know his wife through their relationship.  So the Bible often speaks of God and Christ as the husband and Israel and the church as the bride. When Paul speaks of God coming to know us, he has in mind a wordplay on the Hebraic concept of sexual union as "knowing."   From a metaphysical perspective, this means that there are various ways or levels by which God can bond with us.

I like the way "THe Cloud of Unknowing," a Medieval classic of Christian mysticism, puts it.  According to this treatise, we can never know God, but we can sense God coming to know us in the aforementioned sense.  Imagine God as the sun shielded by a fluffy, thick cloud.  Through meditation and worship, we can ascend to the cloud, but we can't see the sun.  Yet we can sense the sun's presence by the warmth and diffused light in the cloud.  After our meditation is over, we leave the cloud knowing that the sun (= God) came into intimate, if mysterious, communion with us in the cloud.  

(3) It never ceases to amaze me that a person will express gratitude to God for having missed a flight that crashes and kills all aboard, asi if God doesn't much care about the hundreds of other folk who showed up at the airport and died.
________________________________________
         
Me too, but how would you intrepret E. Stanley Jones's premonition about his plane crashing?  (I may have posted this story before, but it bears repeating.)  ESJ, a Methodist, was one of the greatest missionaries to India in the 20th century.  
He was scheduled to speak at a missionary conference in Dehli.   When he went to the airport and got in line to buy his ticket, an inner voice suddenly ordered, "Get out of line!"  He ignored the voice as irrational paranoia, but the voice became more insistent as he drew close to the front: "I said, get out of line!"  Startled, he left the line and sheepishly returned home.  How would he explain reneging on his promise to be a keynote speaker at the conference?  The plane crashed killing over 200 people.  

When the press found out why ESJ left the line, they rushed to interview him.  A reporter angrily asked, "So you believe that God loves a Christian like you so much more than Hindus that He warned you and sent 200+ Hindus to their death?   ESJ replied, "Oh no, I'm sure that God loves all those Hindus at least as much as He loves me.  It's just that I'm the only one who was listening (reluctantly at first)  for His voice."

Roger, I'll save my interpretation of this incident until I read yours.  Then I'll address your 4th question: "How does God pick and choose?"

Don

P.S. I don't know if you saw Glen's response to your post buried within my "agenda" thread.  

Hi all,  I haven't posted on this site in quite a few years but have returned from time to time when Bruce has written a new book just to see if others got as much out of it as I have and to see how others are progressing on our quest of understanding.  

I would like to thank Beserk and others for the pleasent experience of theological / metaphysical discussions stated from love.  

Too many times have people defended their belief systems with a sword instead of a loaf of bread and a glass of wine.   Its refreshing to see intelligent discussions from different points of view.

Thank you all.

Hi Don-

My problem re worship stems from my own lack of a relationship with the Creator.  I'm not even sure God exists, and even if He does, does that therefore mean that we survive death?  Perhaps not.  Our egos cannot fathom extinction, so we convince ourselves that we continue on for all eternity.  But suppose God "simply" put everything in motion without a corollary purpose that His creations would never die?  Isn't that at least theoretically possible?

Also, I wonder if another agenda of the Seth/Elias crowd is to make God into such an impersonal Being that worshipping Him becomes passe?  Seth says God is "All that Is".  That's fine but how the heck do we get close to a Being that is so impersonal?  

(As an aside, I wonder how many devotees of Seth and Elias spend time worshipping God?  Intriguing question, don't you think?)

Your (c) hits the nail on the head.  How do we achieve that state of intimacy?

My only thought on the ESJ incident is that God had a mission for him that needed to be fulfilled.  But that's a lame reason, because I can't therefore conclude that 200 other folks had zero mission.  I remember an incident when I was about 12, I had a sense of foreboding re. a neighbor's request that I cut their grass with their power mower.  I was almost done mowing when the blade hit a pipe hidden by tall grass and a piece of scrapnel barely missed my eye.  So maybe the other 200 people or at least some of them also had a vague sense of impending doom but shrugged it off.  

We "know" things via our brains, a physical thing that probably is totally irrelevant to our spiritual self if indeed it exists.  Maybe we can intuit God but to intellectually know Him is, at least for me, pretty near impossible.......or at least until I purge the Seth description from my consciousness!

Roger,

Well, let me take a brief stab at your 4th question about how God might "pick and choose"  who lives and who dies in events like the recent tsunami.   Of oourse, the honest answer is that I don't know.  But 3 factors prevent this from being debilitating to my faith.

(1) As you suggest, sometimes we just don't listen to divine impulses intended to warn us of impending danger.  Years ago, I was driving home from a day's college teaching and I sleepily stopped at a light with no care in the world.  My view of crossing traffic was obstructed by parked trucks.  When the light turned green and I stepped on the gas, an inner voice yelled, "Stop!"  Startled, I put on the brakes just as a large truck came barreling through the red light.   My car would have done its impression of a pizza if I hadn't stopped.  I guess I hadn't yet fulfilled my life purpose.  

(2) God wants neither completely robotic humans nor a completely robotic universe.  The Bible teaches that God controls neither our free decisions nor the outcomes of natural laws.  In other words, He doesn't control the forces of chaos either in our lives or in nature.  Perhaps this sometimes means that some of us don't get to fulfill our life purpose.  But within the context of His self-imposed limitations, God does occasionally respond to our cries for help and to our need for protection and healing.

For example, last week my Dad told me his pastor was going to quit because of a growth in his throat that made him mute.  The growth had been thoroughly examined by invasive medical procedures and the inference drawn was that surgery was urgently needed.  But first the church elders anointed the pastor with oil and prayed for his healing.  The growth vanished and his voice returned to normal  The doctor had no explanation for this miracle and the pastor joyfully shared his healing testimony a couple of Sundays ago.  

The mystery of suffering cannot be eliminated, but its core question can be constructively rethought.  The crucial question is this: within His self-imposed limitations, to what extent is God willing or able to honor our faith and prayers for His intervention?

(3) The third factor applies the insights drawn from my "Agenda" post about the distribution of pain, suffering, and hardship.  From God's perspective, the value of our free will is directly porportional to the strength of our incentive to choose contrary to His will.  This incentive is strongest in a moral order in which pain is distributed unfairly rather than evenly or fairly.  This insight is relevant to your question about why a loving God might permit the indiscriminately large loss of life in the recent tsunami.  If God prevented such events from occuring, the distribution of pain would be more rationally comprehensible.  But then the incentive to choose contrary to God's will would be somewhat diminished and God's existence would be more strongly confirmed.  As the Russian parable cited in my "Agenda" post tries to make clear,  God's purposes in self-disclosure may be undermined by an overwhelming confirmation of His existence.  

But as you honestly point out, the real issue for you is your skepticism about both the existence of a loving God and our postmortem survival.  If you could be convinced of the former, then surely it would be easier for you to accept the latter.  Therefore, I will shift gears and try to address both issues.  Since you asked about the miracles in one of my UMC churches, I will begin by describing the 3 miracles that had the greatest impact on me.

3 MIRACLES AT ALLENS HILL UMC CHURCH

I will present the 3 most impressive Allens Hill miracles in the reverse order of impact.  As I recall, I've posted descriptions of 2 of these 3 miracles in the past year or two, but without an explanation of their relative impact on my faith.

(1) Leonard was a man of unimpeachable integrity and kindness--a dear friend whom I had often visited.  I had supported him in his agony over his health problems and those of his wife, brother, and cousin.  So I was surprised that he seemed so little affected by the tragic deaths of his son Jeff and his family in a private plane crash.  Curious, I finally asked his wife Helen about this when Leonard wasn't around.  She glowed and said, "Oh, Leonard received confirmation that his son's family was OK after the crash."  More curious now, I wondered why Leonard had never shared this story with me.  So I gingerly waited for the right time to ask him.  He grew misty-eyed and shared his incredible story with me.

A day or so after the funeral, Leonard got into his son's pickup to do some errands.  As he approached the end of his driveway, hs noticed someone ernerging from the deep ditch and approaching the truck.  It was his son Jeff!  Leonard was paralyzed with shock.  Jeff walked up and asked, "Dad, do you mind if I take the truck for one last spin for old time's sake?"  A numb Leonard quickly moved over and let Jeff drive.  Jeff reassured him that his wife Karen and their 2 kids were OK on the other side.  Jeff then clarified his investment and overall financial situation to help his Dad tie up loose ends.  Finally, Jeff turned left on a deserted country road, drove about 2 miles, and stopped the truck.  He mused, "Dad, I love you, but I'm not permitted to go any further."  He got out of his truck, walked towards a nearby clump of trees, and vanished just like the deceased baseball players in the movie "Field of Dreams."  Leonard drove home, still in a state of shock.  

The next day he was still overwhelmed with grief and decided to go for a long walk in the woods behind his house.  Overwhelmed by sadness, he sat down on a log and wept profusely.  Then he heard footsteps.  It was Jeff's deceased wife Karen.   She approached him and asked firmly, "Didn't we tell you we were all OK?  You get back in the house and comfort Mom!"  This second incident broke the back of Leonard's grief.

Leonard now gazed into my incredulous eyes with a pained expression on his face.  He sensed my skepticism and confessed that he had kept this experience a secret out of fear of ridicule.  i could not help my skeptical facial expression.   This account is so disanalogous to my life experience.  But it is perfectly analogous to Jesus' resurrection appearances in which He allowed his wounds to be touched and cooked and ate fish with his disciples.  I felt ashamed at my reaction because I had badgered Leonard to share his story and because he is an absolutely credible witness.  Rationally, this experience is the most compelling evidence for postmortem survival I've ever encountered.  But personally, two other Allens Hill miracles impacted me more powerfully because I was a "player" in both incidents.  

(2) I had just preached a sermon on Jesus' Transfiguration on the mountaintop and, without planning to do so, I blurted out, "And some of you will have your own mountaintop experiences this coming week."  I immediately felt ashamed for this unplanned remark.  That week John and his wife went mountain-climbing in Colorado.  On a tiny ledge John found a ring that fit him perfectly.  Around the same time, Bob noticed his mother's ring on his made bed, a ring that had been missing for 40 years!   His mother had long been dead and Bob had only lived in his current house for 3 years.  Bob excitedly called his friend and told him the news.  His friend excitedly reported that he too had just discovered his mother's ring on his bedroom chest of drawers.   In both cases, the rings vanished after just a couple of days.  I don't know whether John's ring also vanished.

Now let's try to grasp how these 3 events interconnect and relate to my unpremeditated announcement in church the prior Sunday.  A few months prior, I had preached on the Prodigal Son parable in which the ring is a symbol of the Father's love for wayward humanity.  A key point in the Transfiguration story is that Moses and Elijah return from the dead to be with Jesus on the mountain in His disciples' presence.  2 deceased mothers were apparently able to exploit this theme to reassure their sons of their love and survival beyond the grave.

John's discovery of hs ring on a tiny mountain ledge established a connection between my mountaintop
comment and the ring materializations.  The materialization and dematerialization of the mothers' rings established a connection wth the return of Moses and Elijah from the dead.  But these connections took considerable reflection to recognize, so the impact of these incidents, though powerful confirmation of postmortem survival, was not quite as potent as my third experience.

(3) I had just preached a sermon on Jacob's long-
delayed encounter with his brother Esau in the wilderness.  Jacob had cheated his brother out of his birthright and feared that Esau wanted to kill him.  Before the unavoidable encounter, Jacob had a reassuring visionary encounter with God in the wilderness.  My sermon was entitled "Finding God in Unexpected Places."  At the conclusion, I found myself blurting out, "And some of you will soon find God in unexpected places."  Again, I had not planned to say this and was embarrassed at the prospect of being discredited.

This is what happened that fateful Sunday afternoon.  A church family, the Crosses, were driving north to Rochester when they paused at a rural intersection.  Some one said, "It looks pretty down there.  Why don't we turn right and check out the scenery for a few miles?"  Mr. Cross turned right, but after a few miles their motor died and now they were stranded in the deserted countryside in the middle of nowhere.  

Around this time, the same Bob who witnessed the ring materialization was driving home from Rochester.  As he approached the same intersection, this thought popped into Bob's mind:
"I looks beautiful down there and I've never explored that road."  He turned left and arrived at the Cross's car just a couple of minutes after their motor konked out!  He gave them a ride home and all was well.   This synchronistic event occured shortly after my prediction in a sermon about another improbable wilderness encounter between people during which God's loving presence was manifested.  This miracle had an even greater impact on me, perhaps because its details were easier to verify and because its meaning is more immediately apparent than the ring materialization episode.

But two earlier experiences in my life confirmed the existence of a loving God even more powerfully for me, though both experiences myst be categorized as rather weird.  In both cases, the experiences were directly relevant to my life purpose.  So they bear on the issues we're discussing in this thread.  I will share them in my next post here.

Don  

Don-

Thanks for posting these stories.  Reminds me of something I saw on this website.  Below is the link and the story is "Cathy's Verified Contact".  It's a fascinating story although I take issue with it being characterized as a verified contact.  It could also be an example of an amazing coincidence.  

http://www.afterlife-knowledge.com/what_saying.html

I look forward to your next post.  I consider you to be a valued member of this board and hope you'll stick around.

Roger

This is an excellent discussion.  Keep it coming!

Personally, I've witnessed many horrible events.  Because of this, I've stopped asking why or how these things happened because I can see that there is no answer.  We can ask ourselves why did all those people die in the tsunami, or in any other natural disaster.  Why did Princess Diana die in a car crash?  Why have many "anonymous" people died from diseases, accidents, etc?  I think we're all here for a certain length of time and when our time is up, it's up.  I don't know if God plans this out in advance or if it's random, but I don't think it matters.  The point is that we have to live each day as if it's our last.  I hope there is an afterlife (I think there is) but if there isn't, will it matter?

Dear Polly,

Thanks for sharing your reaction.  You are right: God clearly has an exit strategy of varying lifespans for each of us.  The question is whether those lifespans can be shortened by the forces of chaos over which God does not have complete control.  We must learn to know what we don't or can't know and to become more accepting of unsolvable mysteries.   The purpose of my post is to try to clear away the mental debris that prevents the sufferer from humbly bowing before the mystery and getting on with their lives.

Don

wrote on Feb 12^th, 2005 at 2:20pm:

The question is whether those lifespans can be shortened by the forces of chaos over which God does not have complete control.

Yes, I agree that is the question!  I don't have the answer, but I tend to think God lets things happen for reasons which we are not supposed to know while we are here.


Quote:

We must learn to know what we don't or can't know and to become more accepting of unsolvable mysteries.

Yes, I completely agree.  We have to accept the fact that many things that happen on earth are mysteries which we will never find the answers to.  And I don't think we are meant to, so banging our heads against the wall trying to find answers to these things is pointless.  It's best to accept whatever has happened, know that there is some purpose for it, and move forward with our lives.

DATES WITH DESTINY

We've been discussing whether any of our life experiences are divinely scripted.  I want to share 3 experiences that bolster my conviction that at least some key events are predestined.

This date with destiny arrived at an anxious period of my life.  I was in my last year of Princeton Seminary's MDiv program.  I had recently changed my plans and now wanted admittance to the Harvard doctoral program in Scripture and Judaism.  But I lacked the requisite specialized courses and two of my friends' applications to this program had been rejected.  I was assured that I had no chance either.  But what would I do then?

One night [yet another] Roger came to my dorm room.  Roger and I had taken a class together and had once had lunch with a group of guys in the cafeteria.  Beyond this, I didn't know if he cared whether I lived or died.  Yet that night he came enveloped in an atmospere of PUL.  [Both Roger and I are straight guys!]  He knew I was anxious about my Harvard application.  He told me that he had been praying for me and had received assurance that I'd be accepted.  I normally experience such pious assurances as well-intentioned wishful thinking.  But this was different:
in the presence of that PUL Roger's assurance became my own.  I thanked him, but to this day Roger has no idea how grateful I am for his prayers.

Shortly thereafter, I had a date with destiny tinged with intrigue and synchronicity.  Ann was my friend John's girlfriend--or so I assumed.  I liked her.  She had been a source of comfort after news of a friend's untimely death.  But unknown to me, John had just broken off the relationship.  Ann seemed to assume that John and I had conversed about the impending break-up, but we had not.  An anonymous caller had told her that she was unstable and unfit for seminary.  Evidently the caller sounded just like me.  To my horror, she stormed over to my room and angrily accused me of making this call.  I was in despair.  How does one defend oneself against such a  false charge?

In the heat of her harangue, the pay phone rang in the hall.  It was for me.  It was the Harvard professor who controlled the Dead Sea Scrolls.  He called to tell me I'd been accepted into Harvard's doctoral program with a nice scholarship.  How awesome was the shift in my emotional state from despair to a powerful sense of God's loving and vindicating presence!  When I returned to my room, Ann angrily asked, "Who was that?"  When I told her, she was stunned and her expression became uncertain.  During the ensuing awkward pause, she suddenly asked, "Are you all right?"  I said, "Sure, why?"  She replied, "Just look at your pants!"  Blood was gushing from the palm of my right hand and covering my pants.  Now I'm not Catholic, and so, have never believed in the stigmata (the bleeding hands of Jesus, first experienced by St. Francis).  But Ann evidently did.  She saw the timing of my Harvard acceptance and my stigmatic experience as signs of my innocence and sheepishly excused herself.  This left me wondering what might have caused such bleeding.
I went to my door to see if I might have cut my hand when I opened it, but was never able to come up with a satisfactory explanation.  This whole episode overwhelmingly confirmed for me that God's script for my life at least included doctoral studies in early Christianity and Judaism.

(2) My parents and younger brother D (age 18) helped me move to Cambridge.  D was happy for me, but sad about his own life.  He worked hard, but his high school grades were mediocre.  After they dropped me off, my Dad and D went on a bus tour of New York City.   D was deeply moved by all the derelicts and homeless people he saw in the streets.   Just then, he received his call to be a doctor.  

When he returned home, he went to the Med School, announced his new intention, and asked for more information.  The admissions officer took one look at his grades and laughed: "Forget it!  your grades are low and admissions to Med School are highly competitive."  D snapped, "Grades won't be a problem!"  False bravado?  Hardly.  D sailed through the honors microbiology program with straight A+s.  I was delirious with joy for him.  His date with destiny had suddenly made him a brain.

When D entered Med School, he bought me a Moving Star sapphire ring for Christmas.  Because this gift stems from the most transformative period of D's life, it ranks as my most treasured possession.  D is currrently practicing medicine in Colorado.  I often wonder whether the exorcism he had performed at age 16 was part of his calling to be a healer [On this see my "Agenda" post.].

(3) I've saved my most important life experience for last.  I was 16 and well on my way to becoming an agnostic.  I was detecting problems with biblical authority and  was growing increasingly cynical about the charismatic manifestations I was witnessing in my Pentecostal church.  For example, I had experienced the intense ecstasy of speaking in tongues.  I knew this experience was potent enough to cure heroine addiction.   But I now thought my own experiences of this could be explained naturally as the product of wishful thinking and manipulation.

But I was going to give God one last chance.  I went to Manhattan Beach Camp in Western Manitoba.  After the evening services, people would tarry at the front and get swept away by ecstasy.  But not me!  Empty and disillusioned, I went for a long walk in the country.  I told God I was at a crossroads.  If He wanted my allegiance, He had to bless me in a convincing fashion, almost against my will.  I felt that this demand bordered on blasphemy, but I was desperate.  That evening, I fasted for the evening meal and put the money reserved for it in the offering plate.  As usual, I knelt without emotion at the front after the service.  Eventually, everyone left but me.  My heart felt like stone.  My fists were clenched in my determination not to give way to a contrived experience sparked by my pressing need.

It was then that I was immersed in the most transforming experience of my life.  One moment I was defiant and resistant, the next I was swept up in what I can only describe as the "wind" of the Holy Spirit.  Acts 2 mentions that the early church's first outpouring of the Spirit was preceded by "a rushing mightly wind," but I had never taken this image seriously.  Now I had to!

Seemingly against my will, I was possessed by the Holy Spirit.  With each passing moment I was engulfed by wave after wave of liquid love.  The intensity of this love increased dramatically with each wave until it became so powerful I feared I might die.  I felt as if my ego might at any second be absorbed in the divine mind.  It is heart-breaking to even try to describe it.  I can only say that the experience of the sweetness and goodness of God's love was over 100 times more powerful than anything I've experienced before or since.  The whole episode lasted about a half hour.

Soon spectators started trickling into the deserted amphitheatre and quiety sat down to watch me.  I asked one of them why she was there and she said, "Because your face is glowing!"  A stoic Lutheran minister approached me to ask if I would lay hands on him.  He was visiting out of curiosity and wasn't into this sort of thing.  But the instant I touched him it was as if I had electricuted him!  He exploded in other tongues and was enveloped by ecstasy.  At that moment, if you had brought me a blind person, I would have had no doubt that he would have been healed.

But there is a sobering dark side to this adventure.  When it ended, I tried in vain to recreate it in my mind.  My memory bank had nothing with which to compare it.  The contrast with normal consciousness was depressing.  And then there was the disturbing message that the Spirit impressed upon me during the experience.  The Spirit told me that my theology was flawed, but it was simply not His way to dictate the truth to me.  He said that living the right questions was more important for me than believing any answers.
He encouraged me to make it my lifelong quest to probe His mystery.  He even gave me the impression that He wanted me to forget about speaking in tongues now and to have the denomination in which I was reared.  These messages were not dictated to me.  They came in what Robert Monroe would call a rote, a ball of thought that needed to be contemplated and unraveled.  This event has defined the course of my life.

After this experience I became clairvoyant in many ways for several years.  For example, I often knew when certain people would die.  Once when I was about to leave my apartment, an inner voice yelled, "Sit down, you're going to hear about a death that will affect your life."  At once the phone rang.  It was the chair of my Theology department, saying, "The professor who was supposed to teach the summer grad course in Scripture was just found dead in bed, and you're the only one around who can teach his course.  Will you do it?"  I gladly accepted this assignment.  

On another occasion, I was playing bridge with some Education professors.  A colleague, Joe, had just died of cancer and his widow, Elie (another Education professor) was in mourning.  After the bridge, I suddenly found myself saying to Paul (the Dean), "Elie has been contacted by Joe and is wondering if her experience is real.  Tell her I can assure her that it is indeed real."  Curious, Paul contacted Elie and told her what I had said.  She confirmed that she and her family had just returned from Pennsylvania.  In the car, the family erupted into laughter for the first time since Joe's funeral.  Ellie was in the back seat, when she suddenly had a waking vision of Joe from the waist up--laughing.  
He telepathically communicated to her, "This is the way I want to see you.  I'm OK.  Don't worry about me."  Elie had told no one of this experience.  These examples could be multiplied.  

Don

wrote on Feb 14^th, 2005 at 4:23pm:

(3) I've saved my most important life experience for last.  I was 16 and well on my way to becoming an agnostic.  I was detecting problems with biblical authority and  was growing increasingly cynical about the charismatic manifestations I was witnessing in my Pentecostal church.  For example, I had experienced the intense ecstasy of speaking in tongues.  I knew this experience was potent enough to cure heroine addiction.   But I now thought my own experiences of this could be explained naturally as the product of wishful thinking and manipulation. But I was going to give God one last chance.  I went to Manhattan Beach Camp in Western Manitoba.  After the evening services, people would tarry at the front and get swept away by ecstasy.  But not me!  Empty and disillusioned, I went for a long walk in the country.  I told God I was at a crossroads.  If He wanted my allegiance, He had to bless me in a convincing fashion, almost against my will.  I felt that this demand bordered on blasphemy, but I was desperate.  That evening, I fasted for the evening meal and put the money reserved for it in the offering plate.  As usual, I knelt without emotion at the front after the service.  Eventually, everyone left but me.  My heart felt like stone.  My fists were clenched in my determination not to give way to a contrived experience sparked by my pressing need. It was then that I was immersed in the most transforming experience of my life.  One moment I was defiant and resistant, the next I was swept up in what I can only describe as the "wind" of the Holy Spirit.  Acts 2 mentions that the early church's first outpouring of the Spirit was preceded by "a rushing mightly wind," but I had never taken this image seriously.  Now I had to! Seemingly against my will, I was possessed by the Holy Spirit.  With each passing moment I was engulfed by wave after wave of liquid love.  The intensity of this love increased dramatically with each wave until it became so powerful I feared I might die.  I felt as if my ego might at any second be absorbed in the divine mind.  It is heart-breaking to even try to describe it.  I can only say that the experience of the sweetness and goodness of God's love was over 100 times more powerful than anything I've experienced before or since.  The whole episode lasted about a half hour.

Don,

That's an amazing story!  You must feel very blessed to have experienced this.  It is especially amazing considering that God actually took you up on your challenge and did what you asked of Him -- He proved Himself to you in order to win your faith.  That's pretty rare.  Obviously God intended for you to go into ministry.

I have often wondered why God selectively reveals Himself to some people and not to others.  I guess it's all part of His plan.  My whole life, I have yearned for supernatural experiences that would prove to me the truth of God, so that I would be free of all doubts about spiritual truth.  I have been fortunate enough to have had a few profound dreams and revelations, but nothing that I know with 100% certainty was of a supernatural nature.  The closest thing to certainty I have experienced was when I was praying to Jesus Christ and I heard a resonant male voice speaking in my left ear, answering the question I had asked in prayer.  It was not just a normal chatter in my head, but significantly louder and clearer than that, so I believe it really was the voice of Christ speaking to me.  However, the thing the voice said went so blatantly against a belief held by most Christians that I'm sure they would tell me it must have been a demon responding to my prayer instead of Jesus.  But if so, then that's very frightening because it would mean any answer we hear when we pray to Jesus could be coming from demons instead of Jesus, which calls into question the authenticity of all divine revelation.

I have a question for you, Don.  You said you found out that the experience of speaking in tongues is potent enough to cure heroin addiction.  There are some things I'd love to be cured of.  Should I try really hard to speak in tongues?  I've never been able to do it.  To what extent should a person actively seek out spiritual experiences in order to gain what they want in life?  Honestly, if I could be cured of my illnesses and be able to serve the Lord more effectively, I would do anything necessary.  I've already tried lots of prayer, and having other Christians pray for me.  I was even put on a prayer list of a monestary.  I have not tried fasting but that's because I am too thin to fast -- it would make me severely ill.  The only reason I have not tried tongues and exorcisms and anointings and stuff like that is because I think if I tried these things and they failed, I would lose my faith in Christ.  I prefer to keep my faith rather than lose it.

I guess what I'm asking is this:  Your experiences have taught you that it's good to keep seeking out supernatural intervention in order to bolster your faith and help you in your life.  You have received the help you needed when you sought the help of God.  What would you recommend to a person like me who has not received help? -- that I try harder to seek God with tongues, fasting, exorcisms, anointings, etc. -- or that I accept that, like Paul, I have a "thorn in the flesh" that God chooses not to remove?  Right now I am at a point where I basically have concluded that the thorn will not be removed no matter how much I plead with God.  But is it possible that God is expecting me to seek out other methods of supernatural intervention in order to receive His blessings?

Putting the question in more general terms, does God ever change His plan for a person if they beg and plead hard enough, long enough, in the right way?  Or is it really set in stone, and there's no way you can convince God to alter the trajectory of your life?

Freebird

Freebird,

Your questions here are so profound and important that I must weigh them carefully before responding.  A new post might be advisable.  But let me make a suggestion right now.  I go on long walks of 7.2 miles about 5 days a week.  I will designate a certain section of this journey the Freebird section and devote it to prayer for your needs.  Would you mind detailing your afflictions in a private message?  I ask this because, if there's one thing I've learned about prayer, it's the importance of engaging the imagination.  Jesus taught how to do this, but that's another story.  The more concretely I can imagine your need the easier it is to pray with believing faith.  In your private message, let me know what the doctors have told you to grant or deny you hope.

Before my cancer (now cured), I pastored a UCC church for 3 years and had a weekly prayer meeting.  When requests came for people I'd never met, I requested a picture, if possible, for the same reason I'm asking you for more details in a private post.  

Let me give you one example that illustrates both the promise and the frustrating mystery of prayer.
One lady in our group brought 3 Jewish people I'd never met to our attention --Elaine, Larry, and baby Jack.  Elaine had metasthetized cancer.  Larry had a malignant brain tumor, and baby Jack had a third of his brain missing and so his death was considered imminent.  We passed their pictures around and prayed for them regularly.  Elaine's cancer went into remission, Larry's tumor vanished, and baby Jack revived, was able to leave the hospital and is still flourishing.

When I left the church, the prayer meeting was cancelled.   Soon Elaine developed a different serious illness and Larry's tumor returned.  I don't know, but I suspect that they needed the continuing support of a prayer meeting.  I've seen this pattern before.  

Give me a week to respond to your questions.

Don

wrote on Feb 14^th, 2005 at 9:51pm:

Freebird, Your questions here are so profound and important that I must weigh them carefully before responding.  A new post might be advisable.  But let me make a suggestion right now.  I go on long walks of 7.2 miles about 5 days a week.  I will designate a certain section of this journey the Freebird section and devote it to prayer for your needs.  Would you mind detailing your afflictions in a private message?  I ask this because, if there's one thing I've learned about prayer, it's the importance of engaging the imagination.  Jesus taught how to do this, but that's another story.  The more concretely I can imagine your need the easier it is to pray with believing faith.  In your private message, let me know what the doctors have told you to grant or deny you hope.

I am very appreciative of your willingness to pray for me.  :)  At this point, I am in a mode of living each day at a time and trying to serve the Lord as much as possible while I still can, with great fear of what the future holds in my life.  At least I no longer have the fear of eternal hell which I used to have as a fundamentalist.  I will send you a private message detailing my situation.

Thank you,
Freebird

While we're on the subject..I just wanted to share an experience or a few...First I would like to add that I am still on a journey to find God. But reading this has reminded me of certain..I don't know..I call coincidence. I'm not sure how to start, i'm just going to write it.  I became aware of myself at about the age of two. I remember that day clearly. I climbed out of my crib and it was my first taste of my reality and of BEING who I was, am, and always will be.  Does this make sense? Not sure where i'm going here, but I will continue..Anyway..at about the age of 5 or 6..I remember that my mom had me say a little prayer each night before I went to bed. One night I remember doing my cute little thing..on my knees, against the bed with my head down and hands together. I remember saying a prayer and I got so overwhelmed with emotion one night and said something like  "God, please I can't lose you THIS TIME. I will try my best to not forget you. Please don't forget me."  Anyway, this has always stayed with me, all of my life. There is something within me that reminds me of this prayer I said. And here I am today at the age of 31, still searching.lol  In high school, a close friend of mine asked if I would like to go to an all girl/religious private school to just check out for a day.  If we liked it, we could just leave the regular high school we were attending, and attend there instead. So I went with her mom and her to check it out. I was walking into classes that were of interest to me. I walked into the choir class. The teacher asked me to take a seat and join in singing hyms with the other students. I wasn't really religious, but I loved to sing. So I took a seat next to a very nice girl.  During a break..the girl said that she remembered me. Especially because of my name. It is unique. Then she went ahead and introduced herself. I was shocked. Because I also remembered her! When we were children we met at a  summer camp from WAY across the country. Which was also her home town.  Now, the reason this was strange..was because I was always, I guess I could say, looking for signs from God.  This girl knew so much about the bible when we were children. It was a regular summer camp for gymnastics, but she would preach to me and others all of the time. She was like a little adult in a childs body.  And here we were several years later, sitting right next to each other, hundreds of miles away in, a "religious" school. Coincidence??  I'm not sure.. Next experience..About 7 years ago, I was going through a painful experience and found myself needing God in my life. It was so frustrating. So yes, I yelled at him saying to show himself. I was just an emotional wreck. I was looking everywhere on the internet. I ran across one site... I can't remember the mans name. But he claimed he found Noahs Ark..so I read it..he also claimed that during this search he saw a man which appeared to be Jesus. Yes, I'm still skeptical of this story he told..but anyway...as I was sobbing by reading this story and having endless nights crying to a God that  I wasn't even sure was there..I heard this loud shouting from below my apartment building across the street.  It was a man with a big sign across his chest saying "God loves you." So the timing of the event was weird, and that also, in all the years that my friends had lived in that small town, they had never witnessed someone standing outside, shouting gospel. Is this another  coinsidence??  

Don-

I too am struck by the experiences you had.  I read your post last evening and must have lain awake for a couple of hours mulling all of this over in my mind.

There are really two levels of "miracles" represented by your stories.  First, the experience itself of receiving PUL.  This is a term that is sometimes used too loosely in my opinion, but your eloquent account of how it felt moved me immensely.  It also confirms for me what I have always thought....PUL is not a commodity that people can just "send" to one another like a can of beans.  It is a deeply profound, totally inexpicable experience that can only originate from God....or perhaps IS God Himself.

But the second level of the miracle is how preciously rare it is.  The very fact that you were chosen to receive it, and the fact that it turned your entire life around, is awesome.  Distinguished clergymen and women the world over who devote their life, sometimes living in hardship and facing possible death in order to serve others in need.....what % do you suppose received the gift given to you?  

And therein lies the dilemma that kept me awake last night.  Why is it so rare??  Considering the life changing aspects of it, wouldn't you suppose God would want others to experience it also?  What would be the downside if such a gift were given more freely?  I have no answers, and am hoping you might.

In another post you said "Since PUL is the most important force that expedites the scheme, directing PUL to the Creator can deepen one's bond with "Him."   Put differently, if God wanted PUL to be a key force to fulfil "His" grand scheme, why would He not desire PUL to be directed to "Him" as well?"  

Two questions here- are we able to replicate the level and intensity and purity of PUL that you received from God?  Or if not, would something short of that suffice?  And if we can't feel even affection, how do we instill such an emotion toward a God that some of us simply do not know?

And you had said when you had that experience, you were feeling empty and disillusioned.  So does that mean that God can send PUL to someone who hasn't reciprocated?  I would guess God did that to you because He wanted to affect the rest of your life.  But then why wouldn't He want to do the same for the untold thousands or millions who also are at personal crossroads in their life and for whom such an experience would literally be life changing?

Also the story of Leonard and his encounter with his deceased son.....once again, the same problem arises.  That was a wonderful experience for Leonard, but why is it so damn rare??  We all, sooner or later, will grieve a loved one's passing, including those who had tragic and senseless deaths (senseless at least to the survivors).  How about all of the parents of young men killed in Iraq?   How marvelous a blessing if their sons could just for a moment return to them?  Yet it doesn't seem to happen.  

You know, I have less trouble believing these accounts than I do in figuring out why they are so incredibly far and few between.  

Come on Don, give us some pearls here.  Or if not at least send some sleeping pills my way.

Along these same lines, I had asked you a while ago how the demons pick and choose their victims.  Since young people are especially vulnerable to possession, why isn't that something that is more widespread?  

Do you suppose these experiences, from the most beautiful to the most ugly, have a common reason as to why they are so rare?

Last, do you still preach? Do you have a church?  What is the denomination?

Thank you for your wonderful stories of love and compassion.

Roger,

I won't forget your new questions, but will take time to cogitate my replies.  For now, I want to share a story that might help you fulifil your longing.
I sense that your quest is humble enough and open enough to make you wonderfully vulnerable to a similar experience.  I preface the story with these remarks.  I've claimed that almost everyone who reads "Hostage to the Devil" will be convinced of the reality of the demonic.  I say this not merely because of the chilling evidence amassed by Malachi Martin, but also because the reader will actually begin to feel the energy of evil.  I believe that the same effect sometimes occurs in the opposite direction.  That is, if you read examples of what it feels like to be filled or baptized with the Holy Spirit, you open yourself up to the prospect of receiving your own experience, though not all these encounters are alike.   You might ask, "But I lack the basic Christian convictions that might attract the Spirit to me."  Ah, but that can be an advantage.  There are many levels of experiencing God's presence.  The most powerful level is experienced when God decides to stalk you after your long frustrating period of stalking Him.  Your lack of expectation makes the experience all the more convincing when it happens.  

My story is about Charles Finney's conversion.  Finney (1792-1875) is arguably the most influential American preacher who ever lived.  His preaching sparked what historians call "The Second Great Awakening," in which many thousands were converted, but, more significantly, in which many of the future leaders of American Christian denominations were converted.  It is often asked why the USA is more religious than European nations.  Finney is a major part of the answer.

Finney was a lawyer who delighted in poking holes in Christian answers to life's basic questions.  A great debater, he overwhelmed many Christians with his clever arguments.  But he made one fatal mistake.  He maintained an open-minded spiritual quest, which made him vulnerable to divine ambush.  That ambush gave him an experience which, much to my amazement, is virtually identical to my own.  Compare the two reports and you will see what I mean.  Here then in his own words is part of what happened to Finney:

"Without any expectation of it, without ever having the thought in my mind that there was any such thing for me, without any recollection that I had ever heard the thing mentioned by any person in the world, the Holy Spirit descended on me in a manner that seemed to go through me, body and soul.  I could feel the impression like a wave of electricity.  going through and through me. . .It seemed like the breath of God.  I can recall distincty that it seemed to fan me like immense wings.  No words can express the wonderful love that was shed abroad in my heart.  I wept aloud with joy and love. . .I literally bellowed out the unutterable gushings of my heart.  These waves came over me and over me and over me, one after another until...I cried out, `I shall die if these waves continue to pass over me.'  I said, `Lord, I cannot bear it any more.'  Yet I had no fear of death
(Charles Finney, "Autobiography," p. 22)."

We've discussed the mystery of why some live and others die during major catastrophes.   I cited the E. Stanley Jones premonition about the Indian plane crash as an intriguing case in point.  In my ensuing post, I'd like to discuss the Oklahoma City bombing from the same perspective.   Why?   Because Tim McVeigh grew up down the street from me and his Dad lives a few blocks away.

Tim is the most prolific American mass murderer in U.S. history (168 killed).   When his execution was scheduled, the media set up camp by his Dad's house and hounded his acquaintances and school teachers for "dirt" on Tim.   Interestingly, the cooperation of the locals was minimal.    Tim had to come to terms with his parents' divorce.   In his teens he served as an altar boy at a nearby Catholic church.  I know a woman whose sister dated him.  She said Tim was a very nice and sweet young man.   He worked at the local Burger King.  His teachers remember him fondly.   No one around here condones his atrocity.  But they didn't want to desecrate the reputation of the wonderful young man they used to know.  He was somehow wooed by evil during his service in Desert Storm.  He  blamed the government for the fiery cult deaths at David Koresh's compound.    But that hardly solves the mystery of why he did what he did.

Visions from other worlds surrounded this disaster. The relevant testimonials are recorded in Robin Jones's book "Where was God at 9:02 A.M.?"  Barbara Rickner viewed the city skyline from a distance in her car.   She reported: "A huge cloud rested over the city skyline...that cloud was filled with hundred of angels' wings."  A 6-year-old girl on a swing set claimed, "An angel in the sky told me they were coming for the babies."  Most of the children in the Murrah building's daycare center were killed.  From her car Patrice Hutchinson saw the spirits of souls released from the blast.  Even agnostics reported a powerful sense of God's Spirit at the blast site.  

Valerie Koelsch's fate warrants special mention.  Val often referred to her 3 families: her natural family, her church family, and her Credit Union family in the Murrah Building.  Her mother, Rosemary, was away in Dallas when she heard about the bombing.  Her flight home was delayed by a thunderstorm.  While seething with frustration, she suddenly had a waking vision of  a glowing, radiant Valerie in the airport.  Val twice said, "I'm all right, Mom."  A few days later, Val's crushed body was retrieved from a stack of collapsed floors.      

But what I really want to discuss are the cases that pose the question: why did some live, while others died?  It is tempting to say that survival was totally random and that no divine providence operated in this terrible catastrophe.  In my next post, I will share 3 incidents that might challenge this assumption in the same way that the E. Stanley Jones case does.  I'll share the incidents and let readers interpret them as they wish.

(1) Tate Wise was to try a case across from the Murrah building.  His father, Robert, began each day with an hour of prayer, part of which was devoted to the protection of each of his 4 grown children.  30 seconds before the Oklahoma City blast, Tate was looking out the window surveying the business district.   Around the time his Dad prayed for him, he felt an impulse to move away from the window.  The explosion shattered the window, but Tate was spared.  Unfortunately, the roof fell in on his secretary.  She might have benefited from the prayers of Tate's Dad!   Her tragedy is depressing, but I'm still impressed by the synchronicity of Tate's impulse and his Dad's prayers on his behalf.

(2) First United Methodist Church was just around the corner from the Murrah building.   Pastor Nick Harris was going to tape 4 radio broadcasts that Wednesday morning in the sanctuary; so he arrived at 7 AM to review his material.  Gus Alfonzo, his sound engineer, was going to be there at 8:30 AM and he was never late or absent.   Yet at 8:50 he called to say, "I forgot!"   So Nick went downstairs.  The sanctuary where he and Gus would have been was reduced to a horrible tangle of broken glass, dislodged bricks, and wooden beams.   Nick's associate pastor, just happened to be away in Enid that morning.   The double window in his office, frame and all, blew in and slammed across his desk and chair.   A sales rep had to cancel his appointment that morning.   It is at least interesting that 4 unusal events prevented 4 people from being in the danger zone where they would otherwise have been at  the moment of the blast.  

(3) Of course, not that all the Christians were spared!   Tom Hawthorne and Ken Harvey were Christian soul mates.   They often spent hours discussing the Bible.  On the Tuesday before the explosion, Tom hurt himself falling off his rickety ladder while pruning branches.  Tom asked Ken to go with him on Wednesday to the social security office in the Murrah building.   Tom, a union official, was going to try to help a man with glaucoma qualify for assistance.  Afterwards, he wanted Ken to bring his ladder and help him finish the pruning.  Later that night, Tom told Ken's answering machine, "Hope your ladder works.  See you tomorrow."  At 7:10 the next morning Ken called and offered to to do the driving.  Tom replied, "No, I'll come and pick you up at 8:30."    Incredibly, after twice reminding Ken to be ready, Tom never showed up!  5 days later, rescuers retrieved Tom's body from the wreckage.  In my view, Tom's bizarre amnesia after his 2 reminders to Ken is more than coincidental and reminds me of Gus's amnesia about his duties at the UMC church.

Providence may be at work in all 3 cases, though I'm most impressed with (3).  But what about those children in the daycare center?  Ugh!  What do you think?

THE BEST EXAMPLE OF SYNCHRONICITY
AND DIVINE PROVIDENCE KNOWN TO ME:

This post began with a biblical justification for a paradoxical mystery.  On the one hand, God wants an unpredictable universe; so He created a universe in which He does not micro-manage the forces of chaos in this world.  On the other hand, God can intervene in response to our prayers and faith.  From this perspective the big question is: to what extent is God willing and able to intervene in times of disaster?  This next episode is both faith-inspiring and troubling--faith-inspiring because of the divine orchestration of life-saving events and troubling because we don't know why this sort of protection is not offered more frequently.

It was a cold Wednesday night in Beatrice, Nebraska in March of 1950.  Choir practice was scheduled for 7:30 PM at the Westside Baptist Church.  The choir director, Martha Paul, had never been late in 17 years and insisted that every choir member be there early, so that they could begin singing at 7:30 sharp.  Punctuality was particularly vital that night because it was the last practice before the annual Easter cantata.   22 people were expected: the pastor, the choir director, the pianist, a teenage  trio, and 14 choir members, including the 2 children of 1 member.   Just when practice was scheduled to start, a gas leak caused a huge explosion that blew up the whole church.  But instead of 22 casualties, this is what happened.

(1) Pastor George Norbert planned to arrive at church at 7:15.  but his young daughter, Susan, complained of a very soar throat and asked Daddy to get her a punch drink.   George told her he was in a hurry and she'd have to wait till he got home from church.   But Susan continued to demand some punch.   George finally agreed, but then Susan tripped over a throw rug and spilled the red punch all over her white pinafore dress.  George now had to respond to her cries for help and this made him late for church.  

(2-3) Martha, the choir director, had to be there 15 minutes early with her daughter, Marilyn (the pianist).  Marilyn was tired from work.  So for the first time ever, she insisted on taking a brief nap and promised to be ready on time.   Uncannily, she couldn't stay awake even after several angry arousals from her mother.   Then the electricity went out, plunging the house into darkness and ensuring that mother and daugher would be late.  

(4-6) The trio of teenage girls wanted to be at church at 7:15.  Donna was supposed to pick up Rowena and Sadie.  But Donna somehow misunderstood this and expected Sadie to pick up her and Rowena.   After a frantic phone call, Donna apologized and promised to track down her Dad to borrow his car.   This hassle made all 3 girls late.

(7-10) Ted Charles was having dinner at Margaret McKinter's with his 2 sons, whom he planned to bring to choir practice.  But despite several protests from Ted, she wouldn't stop talking and this problem made Ted and his 2 boys late.  Herb Kipf also lost track of time in his struggles to finish a letter he as writing.    So he was late too.

(11-12) Two young mothers, Mary Jones and Agnes O'Shaunessy, were both choir members.  Mary was at Agnes's house just 2 blocks from the church.  On this night, Agnes insisted on watching some of her favorite TV show, but, oddly, both women lost track of the time, and so, were both late.  

(13) Gina Hicks lived very close to the church.   Her  mother was behind in her preparations to host a church women's organization the next night and asked Gina to skip practice and help her get the house ready.  Gina protested that her help could wait till after choir practice and went for her coat.  Just then her frustrated mother became embroiled in an attempt to break up a quarrel between 2 other daughters.  Hearing the commotion, Gina changed her mind and decided to stay and help.    
[No report is availabe on why the other 9 were late for church.)

The first of the late choir members heard the huge explosion as they drew near the church and then  witnessed the resulting devastation.  They were paralyzed by the certainty that many choir members must have been killed.  To their dismay and great joy, they soon discovered that everyone was safe.  

Present at the horrific scene, was Erma Rimrock.  She approached the huddled choir and told Pastor Norbert: "Pastor, last week my brother and I purchased the old closed-down Methodist church down the street as an investment.   I want you to know that you can hold services there as long as you need to."

That's all very interesting and does raise some interesting questions, but I would first ask--why did the explosion have to happen in the first place?  

I know people who worked in the World Trade Center and for some reason or another missed work that day and were spared.  One had been laid off from her job a few months before 9/11 and another had overslept and got to work late (and this person is NEVER late for anything).  So the question is, why are some people spared from tragedies and others aren't?

Don-

Somehow I can't conceive of God actually making these kinds of decisions and interventions.  Guardian angels seems to be a more likely explanation altho the same problem is presented in terms of who gets saved and who doesn't.

I posted this some time ago on Linn's website, but it fits into this discussion so I'll repeat it here.  One summer when I was about 10, a friend and I got on our bikes and rode along a rural road a couple of miles from our cottages in Canada.  We had our jars in order to collect pollywogs from a ditch alongside the road.  Very few cars used that road, and even today, many years later, there is not that much traffic.

Anyway, we got to the ditch and were busy catching the pollywogs when a small convertible pulled up and stopped on the opposite side.  A man came over and said he was a doctor, and said he should examine us to see if we were healthy or some such line.  I was to be first, and he told me to lie on my back as he proceeded to straddle me.  He told me to open my mouth so he could examine my throat.  He tried to put his fingers in my throat but I had (have) a very strong gag reflex which seemed to slow him down from doing whatever he had in mind.

Just at that point, another car came alongside his, and the lady driver stopped and called over to us, asking if everything was ok.  The man immediately jumped off me, ran across the road, jumped in his car and peeled rubber getting away.

We got on our bikes and headed back where we told our parents what happened.  They called the police and they came over to take the report.  It was at that time that my friend, in telling what he saw, told the police that the man was edging me over to where there was barbed wire strung between some fence posts, apparently trying to get my head under the wire.  I was unaware of this at the time.

I have no idea what his objective was, there was nothing sexual in what he was doing, so my only guess is that he intended to kill me for his own pleasure.

But here's the thing....we told the police about the woman who stopped, but neither one of us saw her drive away.  We saw the man take off, but the woman and her car just literally disappeared.  The road at that point was empty of other traffic and visibility was clear, so it would have been impossible for neither one of us to see her leave.  

I can halfway understand why maybe I was in too much stress to notice, but my friend who was just a few feet away from me would surely have seen her leave.  The fact that he didn't, nor did I, makes me reasonably convinced that she was an angel who appeared at the precise time to save me from what probably would have been either some sort of attack or possibly even murder within the next minute or two.

But I am perplexed as to why.  Thousands of kids are killed or attacked.  Why was I saved?  My life since then has been totally without major consequence.  I haven't accomplished anything out of the ordinary.  No inventions, no works of art, etc etc.  A wife and two kids and a Fed Govt career.  So why was I selected?  I'll probably never know, any more than the people in your story about the church or about the man who avoided the airplane crash by getting out of line at the ticket counter.

So we are left with one of at least two possibilities.  One, it's all a crapshoot.  *hit happens.  Or there is a method to all of it that is so mysterious that we can't know the answers and maybe never will.

Your own experiences of the PUL and the stigmata and other things you have recounted should convince you of the reality of the afterlife.  Maybe we need to stop trying to find proof and live our lives as best we can.  Tomorrow will take care of itself.

To Polly and Roger,

I've already addressed the mystery of how God "picks and chooses."   Of course, I wouldn't presume to know how in a specific case.  The disadvantage of detailed biblical discussions is that the reader sometimes can't see the forest for the trees.  So this time, let me list 7 principles that seem consistent with Scripture without getting bogged down in chapter and verse citations.  I'd be interested in knowing what you think.

(1) God has a varied lifespan and exit strategy in
    mind for each of us.
(2) God has a certain scripted events for our lives
    and will ordinarily protect us and guide us until
    we experience those events.
(3) But God wants an unpredictable universe.  So
    He does not micro-manage the effects of
    Nature's laws.   The forces of chaos can at times
     interfere with God's plans.
(4) We can choose to ignore the impulses that God
    sends us in time of danger or crisis.  
(5) God does not foreordain our choices which can
     interfere with and even alter God's plans.  For
     example, raging hormones may stifle our
     receptivity to wisdom and divine guidance and
     thus prompt women to marry the wrong men.  
(6) The Bible identifies several principles that are
    essential to an effective prayer life.  Most
    Christians give these principles little thought
    and pray as if God just needs information about
    our needs.   If meditation and prayer are the
    foundation of an intimate relationship with
    God, then one's life might be adversely affected
    by ignoring these disciplines or by failing to
    apply their divinely revealed principles.
(7) In mysterious ways our welfare is to some
    extent subject to the jurisdiction of guardian
    angels.  These angels are probably higher non-
    human intelligences, but may sometimes be
    discarnate humans.  In either case, they may
    not be infallible and their mistakes may
    occasionally lead to tragedy.  

Roger,

I'm impressed by your report of what is probably a childhood guardian angel experience.  A real woman might not have paid attention, or if she did, might have been too scared of the man to intervene, or might have assumed, with 2 boys present, that the 3 of you were just horsing around.   And like you say, where did she come from and how did she vanish so quickly?  

I've shared my story of how an inner voice once shouted "Stop!" when I started to drive through a green light and, with my side view blocked by parked trucks, failed to notice the big rig speeding through the red light on course to cream me.  But let me share my Dad's story about his agnostic acquaintance's conversion through an encounter with a guardian angel.  

This man thought Christians were simple-minded and naive and he often bated them into arguments that he generally won.   He was an oil baron in Alberta, Canada and a good friend of the Premier of the province.  One day he was driving to a conference in a skyscraper in downtown Edmonton.  As he drove, he was musing about a recent religious debate and brashly posed this challenge to God:  "OK God, if the Christian God is real, then let someone approach me at the door of the building hosting the conference and ask, "Alms please."  He set up this condition because it was unheard of to see panhandlers in this business area.  

He forgot about his whimsical challenge as he approached the skyscraper's front door.   Suddenly, a Scotsman dressed in a kilt stopped him. looked him in the eye, and asked, "Alms please."   Our oil baron ignored this request and whizzed on by, but then quickly realized the significance of what had just happened.  Within a few seconds, he had whirled around and raced out the door.   The scotsman had vanished.  The area was open and large and the scotsman could not have raced out of sight that quickly.  Dad's friend was so impressed by this angelic response to his challenge that he became a devout Christian and shared this testimony with my father.

Don  

Don-

You caused me to consider another angle....it could have been a real woman who was compelled by the spirit world to arrive at the very moment I was in danger and was further compelled to stop and ask what was going on.  After all, this was the 1950s, a relatively innocent age, and as you say, child abuse/abduction/murder was simply not something on which people focussed.  But that doesn't explain her sudden disappearance.

As long as we're recounting stories, years ago I had a boss who was pretty much a hard bitten, cynical type who made no bones about being an agnostic if not an out and out athiest.  If anyone ever got on the wrong side of him they were toast.  Touchy feely he was not!

His wife at the time had MS and she was confined to a wheelchair, unable even to feed herself or use the bathroom.  He never spoke unkindly about his situation but on the other hand he was openly having an affair with a younger woman who worked in our office as well as fooling around with his secretary.

After working for him a few years and gradually coming into his confidence, he told me the following story.  One evening he was at home, I think in his bedroom, and suddenly he was filled with the conviction that someone was in the room with him.  His eyes were drawn to the wall near the ceiling, and he told me there appeared an outstretched hand with one of the fingers pointing at him.

He told me that it was the most beautiful hand he had even seen.  He knew no human hand could ever be so perfect.  It was breathtakingly beautiful, so much so that he said he knew instinctively that he could not bear to see the rest of the figure.  He said the sheer beauty of the hand was overwhelming, and I got the impression it was almost painful for him to look at it, and he knew that there was a message meant for him but he was unable to clearly discern it.

He agonized over its message.  He pretty much concluded it was meant to tell him to put his personal life in order and devote his life to his wife.  But he also said there wasn't anything threatening, or menacing, or reproachful about it.  The hand gradually faded, he never did see anything else (nor did he want to!).

I knew him well enough at that stage to know that he wasn't joking about this.  It was totally against his character to talk about anything relating to God or the afterlife.  He was not religious and unsympathetic to those who were.

I lost touch with him and never knew what became of his wife or his girlfriend who he (and she) claimed would marry when his wife passed away.  But his vivid description of how he was virtually paralyzed by the magnificence of the experience has stayed with me for many years.

Roger
ps- Have  you had a chance to consider my other question as to how demons choose their victims, and since children are especially vulnerable to possession, why it is that there are so few cases?

Roger,

Perhaps you wonder why I create and reply to posts and questions the way I do.  I don't approach this site in my old professorial way.  I want my answers to feel prompted by the heart rather than by a mind on the defensive from surly attacks.  At times, even replies I deem rational don't feel appropriate in this settng.  At other times, I feel the need to create the kind of hysteria that my "Agenda" post generated.   I often feel that true stories, however, mystifying, are more helpful than even valid critical analysis.  

Anyway, back to your last post.  For me, spiritual and paranormal experiences that defy the preconceptions of the percipient are particularly compelling. Examples of this include: (1) the early church's reluctant admission that God's love never permanently abandons anyone after death; (2) an anti-religious Robert Monroe's repeated and  uncomfortable witness [apparently] of Christ's performance of  retrievals; (3) your agnostic ex-boss's waking vision of a heavenly being's beautiful hand.  Such experiences seem to refute Seth's claim that we create our own reality.  

You asked me how demons choose their victims.  Peck expresses the conventional wisdom on this: that we wittingly or unwittingly invite them in (e.g. through Ouija boards).   I shudder to think what might be included in the category  "unintentional invitation."   Perhaps the tendency of young children to converse with imaginary playmates makes them more vulnerable.  Stiil, I suspect this is not the whole story.  In my young cousin E's battle to ward off possession, it seems that he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time--in a car outside a house where his Dad had just performed an exorcism.

You then ask why there are so few cases of demonic possession of young children.  I don't know, but genuine cases are rare for every age group.  Malachi Martin conjectures that only about 1 of every 100 reported cases of possession are genuine.  The other 99 cases are misdiagnosed personality disorders.   Most people imagine that in Jesus' superstitious times, possession was rampant.  In fact, prior to Jesus, possession was virtually unknown in the Mediterranean world!   I mean possession by a demonic entity, not possession by a quasi-benign god or spirit.  The latter type of possession was not uncommon.  But after Jesus, Greek and Jewish exorcists show up all over the place.  Jesus had no influence on most of these exorcists.  So one wonders whether Jesus' incarnation coincides with changes in the spirit world that made the exorcism of demons a new possibility.

At the same time, I think childhood possession is more common than one might think.  When people are possessed by a discarnate human, the discarnate's memories seem to merge with and  become those of  the victim.   In my view, past life recall in young children is more likely attributable to possession.  Ian Stevenson is the most famous proponent of childhood past life recall.  Yet in his celebrated work "Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation" he repeatedly admits the possibility that his reincarnation cases are really possession cases--for good reason.  

In one of his cases, a child, Ravi Shankar, was born 6 months AFTER his 'prior personality' (6-year-old Munna) was murdered.  So Ravi was conceived 3 months prior to Munni's death.   In another case, a child Jasbirwas was over 3 1/2 when his `prior personality' (Shobha Ram) was poisoned to death.  In pro-reincarnation cultures, you would expect young children to interpret their possession memories as reincarnational memories.  Granted, though most cases of childhood past life recall stem from pro-reincarnation cultures, there are a few American cases as well.   But these American children can't be expected to come up with the abstract explanation that their minds are absorbing alien memories!  Besides, why don't we more often hear of the phenomenon of young American children going through the phase imagining past lives?    

Don-

Ever read Michael Newton's two books?  If not I suggest you check them out.  They offer a unique perspective on our physical life and afterlife, at least to me.  

They really are the accounts of his clients who were placed into deep hypnosis.  The stories they tell tend to be quite consistent, and if nothing more, certainly make for fascinating reading.

Many of the NDE accounts say that for a split second, the person has a complete sense of knowingness about everything.  All of the mysteries fall away, but then of course the answers are forgotten once the person returns to the body.  Makes me wonder whether that will happen to us when we die.

An aside....aren't there stories about Tibetan monks who, after years of intense meditation, are able to levitate?  I say stories, since to my knowledge, this ability was never doumented.

Roger,

After years of researching the question, I'm quite confident in my skepticism about reincarnation.  But I've only superficially browsed Newton's books.  On your recommendation, I'll try to make time to give him closer scrutiny.  

Don

P.S.  Of my recent Barnes and Noble book purchases, I'm most excited about Howard Storm's "My Descent into Death."  This is a much fuller and more rewarding account than the abbreviated online version that I know you've read.  I'm particularly intrigued by the chapter entitled "The Past and the Future."   Evidently Jesus Himself shared this material which resembles both biblical visions and Robert Monroe's time travels.  I've just browsed it so far, but I'll keep you posted about its most novel and engaging claims.

Hi Guys,

Good questions, Roger, and I am enjoying reading all of the responses.  The question about why God allows natural disasters and the following dialogue alluding to the question of whether or not God "picks and chooses" who to "save" or help or allow to perish.  For me, this has been a lifelong dillema and I have had that question posed to me SO many times by people feeling angry with the Creator.  I have decided that to me, it is not so much about WHY things happen or FOR what reason, but rather WHAT reason can I make of what has happened for me as an individual?  I mean, when we talk about life, reincarnation, etc. we are not simply talking about a single event but a series of events which shape, affect and create the essence of many lives.  If one man lives through a plane crash, then his time is not come, it may even be a second chance to finish something, may be an opportunity to examine things in his life that bear scrutiny. I in no way think humans are spared from tragedy simply because they ascribe to a certain religious belief.  I DO believe, however, that spirit help is there and that we have the power to call upon that help.  Is it really external or inernal?  Quite the question if you consider the idea that God is not as much outside of ourselves but more a physical part of each of us through his gift of life, his energy.  When another dies there may be many people in his/her life which will be affected. Who is to say that there is not one among them that will benefit in some way from the passing of this person.  If one is to take stock in Michael Newton's works, it could have been a prearrangement of sorts from the beginning of their lives.  MY question is, why is it that when something like the Tsunami or 911 happens, then it is a tragedy, but when thousands of people die in wars daily or monthly it is not? I consider it as great a tragedy that a small child is beaten to death by parents who do not love it or want it, or when someone dies from exposure because they cannot afford to pay their fuel bill, or someone is killed on the highway because yet another human being needs to be where THEY want to be just that much more than being cautious.  I agree with what was written above about this Creation being on its own without God guiding every single event.  We seem able to understand and accept free will when it allows us the comfort of doing what we want without having to justify it, but we cannot accept that free will exists in all things.  Personally, I also feel many of our "natural" disasters are not all that natural as what we are doing to the planet has surely affected many forces of nature.  The only way I can accept or understand God in my own mind and heart is comaparing the God Source to my own feelings as a parent. I do not believe God to be angry or vengeful or any of the things we ascribe to our human nature.  PUL is not an emotional thing. It is quite ligical really. There is nothing for which we are not forgiven if only we can forgive ourselves and in doing so there is no way to not forgive all others. THIS is what God wants.  Do we have conditions on how we love our children?  Do we not want to embrace them even when they have done things wrong?  Do we stop loving them because they are not perfect?  Anyway, just some of my thoughts here.  This is a great topic by the way.  

Love,
Cheryl

Hi Cheryl

One of your statements profoundly expresses what must be a top priority for our spiritual quest:

"To me, it is not so much about WHY things happen or FOR what reason, but rather WHAT reason can I make of what has happened for me as an individual."

The best answers to the why question can only clear away our mental debris that robs us of our transformational potential.  Frequently, theological or philosophical clarity is little more than a booby prize because it offers us just enough spirituality to inoculate us against the real thing.

I suspect that much emotional harm has been inflicted by the King James mistranslation of Romans 8:28: "We know that all things work together for good to those who love God."  The better modern translations are more faithful to the Greek: "We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him."  This translation makes it clear that "all things" may be conspiring against you, things that God never intended for you.  things that make God's Spirit "groan" in empathy with you (so the poetic image of Romans 8:26). In the face of tragedy, God longs to  create circumstances that help us salvage something beautiful out of a tragic situation.  What God needs from us is the "holy perception" of our predicament that this can happen.

Joseph beautifully expresses your attitude in his climactic confrontation with the brothers who had intially planned to kill him, but instead sold him into slavery.  Joseph has risen from slave to vice regent of Egypt and, through a clairvoyant dream, has glimpsed a coming famine and helped Egypt prepare for it.  He reassures his terrified brothers:

"Don't be afraid.  Am I in the place of God?  You intended to harm me, but God intended this for good, to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives (Genesis 50:20)."

Hi Don,

Actually, one of my very favorite Bible stories to this day.  And a perfect example of PUL and forgiveness.  Yes, indeed what King James has done to change the original idealogy behind the words.  I have been searching for more works which have a more direct translation of the original text where available. I was raised Southern Baptist but always had my own sense of what God was.  I just couldn't buy the idea that when I was six, Jesus loved me no matter what color, race, or creed, but when I turned thirteen, he became angry, judgemental and only liked Baptists! Hmmm. It has been my great pleasure coming to my own relationship with my Creator and I find the "mysteries" quite invigorating.  Sometimes it is as simple as letting go.

Love,
Cheryl

I will try to bring this thread to a close by finally responding to the questions Roger posed on p. 2 (reply #19) in response to my life-changing spiritual experiences reported on p. 1 (reply 14 with reference also to reply #9):

"Two questions here--are we able to replicate the level and intensity and purity of PUL that you received from God?  Or if not, would something short of that suffice?  And if we can't feel even affection, how do we instil such an emotion towards a God that some of us simply do not know?"

I will gradually respond with 3 planned posts.  My first post will deal with the importance of achieving right-brain dominance.  My 2nd post will give two examples of how right-brain dominance played a decisive role in facilitating a life-changing encounter with God.  The 3rd post will share some very simple principles which, if correctly practiced, will (I believe) make such a life-changing encounter with God inevitable.  [I'll submit my first post tonight.]

THE IMPORTANCE OF ACHIEVING
RIGHT-BRAIN DOMINANCE

To prevent death in extreme cases of epilepsy, doctors sometimes sever the corpus collosum, the nerve bundle that separates the brain's two hemispheres.  Experiments with these patients confirm the theory that the left brain is the seat of language and logic and the right brain is the seat of intuition, insight, perceptual organization, and spacial relations.  In function, the nerve signals from these brain halves act in an X crossover.  The left brain controls the right side of the body, and the right brain controls the left.  

For example, a patient can easily identify and describe a pencil placed in his right hand when the hand is out of view and behind a screen, but is unable to do this for a pencil similarly placed in his left hand.  Information from the left hand goes to the right brain which lacks language.  But if one places an object in the right hand when it is out of view and asks the patient to use this hand to select the same type of object from a group of various types of objects, the right hand cannot do this, but the left hand easily succeeds because it is governed by the right brain which specializes in perceptual and spatial relations.

The left brain remembers the name, but the rigfht brain remembers the face.  When a female patient viewing a series of slides was presented with a picture of a pin-up nude on the left side of her visual field, she was unable to identify the slide, but squirmed, smiled, looked uncomfortable, and finally remarked, "Oh, that funny machine!"  

Current theory suggests that we shift hemisphere dominance many times during a day's tasks.  These shifts suggest a four-stage process of creativity:

(a) Preparation (left-brain dominance): a period of baffled struggle in which one tries to solve the problem within one's existing cognitive structures
(b) Incubation (right-brain dominance): One gives up, exhausted, and relaxes active use of the existing cognitive structures.
(c) Illumination (right brain dominance): Insight is created by the emergence of new, more appropriate cognitive strucures.  As Einstein put it, "The words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought."
(d) Verification (Left brain dominance): The "happy" idea must now be elaborated or tested against experience to find out if works.

Here are just two examples of how this shift in dominance led to scientific breakthroughs:
(a) Archemides' Discovery of the Principle of Specific
    Gravity:
Archimedes (287-212 BC) was assigned the task of determining whether his ruler's new crown was solid gold as alleged.  He knew that silver and gold had different weights, but he needed to know the exact volume of the crown to test its composition.  It seemed an endless task to measure the thickness at each point along its face (preparation). While puzzling over this problem, he went to the baths (incubation).  Suddenly, as he stepped into the water, he had it!  He noticed that the water level of the pool rose slightly as he stepped into it.  He could determine the volume of the crown by the amount of water it displaced (illuminaton).  Verification through replication was easily achieved.

(b) Kekule's Discovery of the Benzene Ring:
For days he had been working on the problem of the molecular structure of these hydrocarbons, without success (preparation).  In frustration one afternoon he dozed off by the fire (incubation).  He had a dream about dancing atoms seizing their own tail like a snake.  "As if by lightning I awoke." Kekule's insight was that the structure of benzene
was not a chain but a closed ring like a snake biting its own tail (Illumination).  This insight led to one of the cornerstones of modern science.

Robert Monroe's Hemi-Sync process holds promise and potential in tapping the right brain's intuition and perception to facilitate quality OBEs (FJ 18-19).
OBE adept, Ingo Swann was the subject of several experiments in which he attempted to travel in an OBE through a wall to identify various targets in a box near the ceiling.  The type of response errors that Swann made with concrete targets suggested right-brain processing.  For instance, he was successful with the color and shape of the targets, but generally could not name the object.

A 4-STAGE PROCESS FOR SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION OR CONVERSION

The sequence of uneasiness and solution in the typical process of spiritual transformation often proceeds through 4 stages analogous to those involved in the creative process just discussed:

   Spiritual Stage   Dominant Brain  Creativity Stage
1. existential crisis  left                    preparation
2. self-surrender     right                  incubation
3. new vision           right                  illumination
4. new life                left                    verification

1. Existential Crisis (left brain dominance):
There is a dissatisfyiing discrepancy between what is and what one feels ought to be with regard to one or more basic life questions.  If these questions can neither be buried by more pressing problems nor solved within existing cognitive structures, an existential crisis results.

2. Self-Surrender (right brain): Trying and failing to regain existential meaning drives one to the point of despair and hopelessness, so that there is a loss of disciplined focus or at least diminished contact with one's day-to-day reality.  The grip of one's old way of thinking about the crisis loosens.

3. New Vision (right brain): A dawning new outlook transcends the old way of thinking based on the old cognitive structures and thus feels "bestowed" from a transendent realm outside of oneself.  

4. New Life (left brain): The converts often speak of a new "state of assurance" which includes (i) a loss of worry, especially loss of those concerns that produced the crisis, (ii) a new sense of truth in which mysteries of life become more lucid and empowering, (iii) a sense of newness to the objects in one's environment, and (iv) a new zest for life and an increased affection for others.  In short, one can deal more effectively with a wider range of experiences and people.  

Stage 4 is essential to the creative conversion process because, after stage 3, some people allow their restored left brain dominance to warp their perspective on their conversion, so that they either escape into otherworldly fantasies or impose rigid conceptualizations on their experience in the form of dogmatic beliefs and rules of conduct.  

(a) First Example: ST. AUGUSTINE (354-430 AD):
Existential Crisis:  Augustine was a troubled youth.  He was often caned in school, sexually active to the point of fathering a child out of wedlock, and after 11 years of devotion to a strange cult (Manichaeism), he became a disillusioned skeptic.  He describes his dramatic conversion to Chrisitanity thus: "Troubled in mind and countenance, I turned to Alypius: `What ails us?  What is it?  What have you heard?  The unlearned...take heaven by force, and we with our learning, and without heart--just look at us wallow in flesh and blood!  Are we ashamed to follow because others have gone before...?'  Such words I uttered, but...my forehead, cheeks, eyes, color, tone of voice, spoke my mind more than the words I uttered.

Self-Surrender: He then retreated in anguish to a small garden, threw himself down under a fig tree and cried to God for an end  to his spiritual impurity.

New Vision: "So was I speaking and weeping in the most bitter contrition of heart when I heard from a neighboring house a voice (I don't know whether it was a boy's or a girl's voice.) chanting and often repeating, `Take up and read; take up and read.'  Instantly my countenance altered.  I began to speculate on whether children were inclined in any kind of play to sing such words: nor could I recall ever having heard the like.  So checking the torrent of my tears, I arose; interpreting it to be none other than a command from God to open the book and read the first chapter I should find...I seized, opened, and in silence read that section on which my eyes first fell, `Not in drunken orgies, nor in sexual promiscuity and a lack of moral restraint, nor in rivalry or jealousy; but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and stop obsessing about ways to indulge your fleshly desires (Romans 13:13-14).'  No further would I read; nor needed I to do so: for instantly at the end of this sentence, the light of serenity filled my heart and all the darkness of doubt vanished away."

New Life: From this experience St. Augustine went on to become bishop of Hippo and one of the most influential Catholic theologians of all time.  He wrote the first spiritual autobiography in history.

(b) 2nd Case: A 28-YEAR-OLD AIR FORCE OFFICER
Existential Crisis: He had been born into a wealthy family, but his parents had divorced on his 16th birthday.  Shortly thereafter, he began to drink heavily and use a variety of drugs, narrowly escaping being expelled from school.  After graduation, he joined the Air Force.  But his drug use did not stop; it intensified, as did a general sense of depression and personal worthlessness.  In a desperate attempt to fight the depression, he threw himself into his job, often working over 100 hours a week.  Although these work binges produced considerable success and recognition, they invariably ended in exhaustion, booze, drugs, and more depression.

Self-Surrender:  Finally, while stationed in Berlin, he sought a 10-day leave to rest and recover, for he feared he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.  He went on a retreat to the Alps.  While there, he walked out one morning and sat quietly on a mountainside, trying to get some perspective on things.  He felt lost and desperately in need of something to take control of his life.

New Vision:  Suddenly he knew that he'd found it.  Previously only a nominal Catholic, he now began to feel an unexpected assurance that God existed, and more importantly, that God cared about him him and accepted him just as he was.  And if God did that, then he could now care about and accept himself.  A cloud had been rising from the valley toward him when he sat down.  As it approached, the feeling of being lost intensified.  Then the cloud engulfed him in a fog.  It was in the midst of this fog that he felt assurance that God was in control of his life.  As the fog passed, he found that "there was a whole new me inside."  This change was underscored by a changed perception of his physical surroundings; there was now a warm, luminous glow to everything.  The green valley, the white clouds, the trees, the grass were all bathed in an almost iridescent light.  

New Life: Though it was several years before his spiritual transformation was complete, the young man is convinced that this experience  saved his life.  The sense of contact with God that began there has stayed with him ever since; indeed, he now considers his mountaintop experience to be rather bland compared with the experience he has each day of the loving presence of God.

This is my last post before summer.  I offer these tidbits in response to private messages and Roger's request for tips about how to attract a wonderful experience of the divine.  I offer only a starting point stripped of extensive theological doctrines which would immerse you in a left-brain mentality.  I encourage you to print this post out and play with my suggestions in your own way at your own pace.  
 
1. GOD ADDRESS: THE RIGHT BRAIN

When people in crisis exclaim, "Where is God?"  I feel like replying, "God is a little bearded man sitting on an elegant little throne in you right brain.  What I mean is that no one ever experiences OBEs, or more importantly, God's loving presence through left-brain dominance, which unfortunately defines my state of mind during my prior token work with the Gateway CDs.  
Right-brain dominance is the key to becoming a "player" in the subtle game of spiritual progress.
In my view, the first rule of a healthy spiritual quest is to stop "trying" to believe.  Make "try" a swear word.  Trying is a mentality that traps you in left-brain dominance and is incompatible with the first key stage of a spiritual breakthrough, self-surrender [See my prior post.]  Jesus instead taught us to boldly act on the assumption that we have all the faith we need.  

The second rule is to reach a point where you are not content merely to explore ideas and arguments.
Instead, focus on methods and techniques that offer the hope of creating the ideal right-brain dominance to achieve a spiritual breakthrough.  What I now share is a method that works for me and which I have never seen fail to work for others in their search for sacred experiences.  It is a distinctly Christian system.  

2. GOD'S TELEPHONE  NUMBER:

To experience God's loving presence, it helps to attune your mind to God's lofty vibrational frequency.  The simplist way to do this is to memorize and regularly meditate upon a prayer of intense longing that captures the essence of Christian spirituality.  Do this until the longings expressed by the prayer become your own deepest longings.  In my view, nothing serves this purpose better than the Prayer of St. Francis:

"LORD, MAKE ME AN INSTRUMENT OF YOUR PEACE.
WHERE THERE IS HATRED, LET ME SOW LOVE;
WHERE THERE IS INJURY, LET ME SOW PARDON;
WHERE THERE IS DOUBT, FAITH;
WHERE THERE IS DESPAIR, HOPE;
WHERE THERE IS DARKNESS, LIGHT;
WHERE THERE IS SORROW, JOY.

O DIVINE MASTER, GRANT THAT I MAY NOT SO
MUCH SEEK TO BE CONSOLED AS TO CONSOLE;
TO BE UNDERSTOOD AS TO UNDERSTAND;
TO BE LOVED AS TO LOVE.
FOR IT IS IN GIVING THAT WE RECEIVE;
IT IS IN PARDONING THAT WE ARE PARDONED;
AND IT IS IN DYING THAT WE ARE BORN TO ETERNAL LIFE.  AMEN

3. YOUR SACRED SPACE

Once you know God's phone number and address, you need transportation to get there.  The best transportation can be found in a sacred space.  I wager that a church would not yet do the trick for most of you.  I recommend a beautiful quiet outdoor spot at the end of a lovely walk.  My favorite sacred spot is a picnic table under a canopy beside Honeoye Lake  in the Finger Lakes region of New York.  To get there, I walked about 1/3 mile along a forest trail that took me over a couple of quaint wooden bridges over large streams.  To this day, I treasure a certain spot on that trail where I was clairvoyantly made aware that I would shortly meet a new couple for whom I would play an important spiritual role.  They needed a healing miracle and our prayers for this were granted.   We became good friends.  We all have different tastes; so pick a spot that evokes a sense of peace and serenity.  Perhaps, you would prefer an indoor spot, say, a quiet room in your house or a small chapel in a church.  

Once you have identified your sacred spot, regularly perform two distinct meditations there.
The first meditation contains 3 stages:
(a) Begin by feeling awe and gratitude for the beauty of your surroundings and for the blessings in your life.  (b) Then seek a state of harmony with everyone in your life.  Do this by confessing your shortcomings to God and allowing yourself to feel forgiven.  Then consciously release all your hidden grudges against people who have hurt you.  Don't worry about whether you believe a loving God is actually listening to you.  At this stage, you can at least achieve a deeper self-acceptance through silent confession.  (c) Then and only then ask for specific needs of yourself and others to be met.  You don't need to believe anything to formulate simple petitions.  As you do this, keep two things in mind: (i) This is an experiment you can abandon at any time.  (ii) God promises to meet the needs behind the request rather than our specific request.  We don't always know what is best for us.  

The second meditation should be directed to the implications of this divine promise:

FOR I KNOW THE PLANS I HAVE FOR YOU, DECLARES THE LORD, PLANS TO PROSPER YOU AND NOT TO HARM YOU, PLANS TO GIVE YOU HOPE AND A FUTURE....YOU WILL SEEK ME AND FIND ME WHEN YOU SEEK ME WITH ALL YOUR HEART (Jeremiah 29:11, 13).

In your sacred space, you meditate on this promise by asking yourself what changes you are willing to make in the event that God communes with your spirit in a life-transforming way.  Would you be willing to use your gifts to serve God?  What might that entail?  Would you be willing to search for a compatible church to develop PUL with other like-minded people?  And what would a compatible church look like?  I suggest that you not consider churches simply by denomination.  I also suggest that doctrinal agreement should be a lower priority than a church where you quickly sense God's presence and power. For both meditations, take as much or as little time as you are comfortable with.

I will periodically check my private mail on this site.  So if this strategy interests you, I would be delighted to discuss your progress.  It's been inspiring to sense the honest spiritual quests of many posters on this site.

Good-bye for now,
Don

Your writings have had a great impact on my search for a more spiritual life.
Specially last posting....
God bless you.
Sincerely.
Eduardo R Maron

Here is Seth on God and being a part of God:

Seth (Session 204): "There is no real division between you and God and I-only a unity you can not as yet understand…Your finger is a part of your physical organism…It does not know what your brain is doing…Your toenail is also a part of you…In the same way we are related to God. You are a part of God in that you are  part of the consciousness that is, but you are not apart from a god who looks down on you and speaks…There is…no hell or heaven. These ideas have been distorted through the ages…You could call hell a separation from the mainstream of consciousness called God, but this is impossible actually…I do not want to puncture idealistic balloon. Buddhists are perhaps closer, but no religion comes close really...The man or woman feeling identity with each day that passes comes close. Sentiment is practical. The idea of birth each day is close. Those who cry when they hurt a flea come close. Those who appreciate the consciousness in every rock, tree, bird come close. Hatred is death. All things are sacred and every thought is a reality and has it own potential for creation and destruction. Experiencing every moment comes close…Any idea of a God, no mater how distorted, will triumph, for He exists in everything that you know. And when you kill so much as an ant, so do you kill part of Him in most practical terms."

Be well & happy,
Barrie

Barrie,

Even though your quote is a great one, but  I believe those who doesn't read Seth can be easily misinterpret. IMO the following  from the "Dreams,Evolution and Value Fullfilment" express more correctly Seth explanation about the nature of the "God"

"Creation occurs in each moment, in your terms. The illusion of time itself is being created NOW. IT is therefore somewhat futile to look for the origins of the Universe by using a time scheme that is itself, at the very least, highly relative.

Your NOW, or present moment, is a psychological platform. It seems that the universe began with an initial burst of energy of some kind. Evolutionists cannot account for its cause.

Many Religious people believe that a GOD exists in a larger dimension of reality, and that he created the Universe while being himself outside of it.

He set it into motion. Many individuals, following either persuasion, believe that regardless of its source, the universe must run out of energy.

Established science is quite certain that NO energy can now be created or destroyed, but only transformed. Science sees energy and matter as being basically the same thing, appearing differently under varying circumstances.

In certain terms, science ans religion are BOTH dealing with the idea of an objectively created universe. Either GOD *made it*, or physical matter, in some unexplained manner was formed after an initial explosion of energy and consciousness emerged from that initially dead matter in a way yet to be explained Instead, consciousness FORMED matter. As I have said before, each atom and molecules has its own consciousness. Consciousness and matter are one, but consciousness INITIATES the transformation of energy into matter.

In those terms, the *beginning* of your universe was a triumph in the expansion of consciousness, as it learned to translate itself into physical form.

The universe emerged into actuality IN THE SAME WAY, but in different degree, that any idea emerges from what you think of a subjectivity into physical expression.

The consciousness of each reader of this book EXISTED before the universe was formed (in your terms), but that consciousness was UN MANIFESTED.

Your closest approximation- and it is an approximation ONLY--of the state of being that existed before the universe was formed is the dream state.

I will purposely avoid using the word GOD, because of the connotations placed upon it by conventional Religion. I will make an attempt to explain the characteristics of this divine process, that I call the process "All That Is".

All That Is is so much a part of its creations that it is almost impossible to separate the "creator from its creations", for each creation also carries indelibly within it the characteristics of its source.

Each portion of consciousness is a part of All That Is (a process, not a thing), and that the universe falls together in an spontaneous, divine order and each portion of consciousness carries within it indelibly the knowledge of the whole.

DATES WITH DESTINY

We've been discussing whether any of our life experiences are divinely scripted.  I want to share 3 experiences that bolster my conviction that at least some key events are predestined.

This date with destiny arrived at an anxious period of my life.  I was in my last year of Princeton Seminary's MDiv program.  I had recently changed my plans and now wanted admittance to the Harvard doctoral program in Scripture and Judaism.  But I lacked the requisite specialized courses and two of my friends' applications to this program had been rejected.  I was assured that I had no chance either.  But what would I do then?

One night [yet another] Roger came to my dorm room.  Roger and I had taken a class together and had once had lunch with a group of guys in the cafeteria.  Beyond this, I didn't know if he cared whether I lived or died.  Yet that night he came enveloped in an atmospere of PUL.  [Both Roger and I are straight guys!]  He knew I was anxious about my Harvard application.  He told me that he had been praying for me and had received assurance that I'd be accepted.  I normally experience such pious assurances as well-intentioned wishful thinking.  But this was different: in the presence of that PUL Roger's assurance became my own.  I thanked him, but to this day Roger has no idea how grateful I am for his prayers.

Shortly thereafter, I had a date with destiny tinged with intrigue and synchronicity.  Ann was my friend John's girlfriend--or so I assumed.  I liked her.  She had been a source of comfort after news of a friend's untimely death.  But unknown to me, John had just broken off the relationship.  Ann seemed to assume that John and I had conversed about the impending break-up, but we had not.  An anonymous caller had told her that she was unstable and unfit for seminary.  Evidently the caller sounded just like me.  To my horror, she stormed over to my room and angrily accused me of making this call.  I was in despair.  How does one defend oneself against such a  false charge?

In the heat of her harangue, the pay phone rang in the hall.  It was for me.  It was the Harvard professor who controlled the Dead Sea Scrolls.  He called to tell me I'd been accepted into Harvard's doctoral program with a nice scholarship.  How awesome was the shift in my emotional state from despair to a powerful sense of God's loving and vindicating presence!  When I returned to my room, Ann angrily asked, "Who was that?"  When I told her, she was stunned and her expression became uncertain.  During the ensuing awkward pause, she suddenly asked, "Are you all right?"  I said, "Sure, why?"  She replied, "Just look at your pants!"  Blood was gushing from the palm of my right hand and covering my pants.  Now I'm not Catholic, and so, have never believed in the stigmata (the bleeding hands of Jesus, first experienced by St. Francis).  But Ann evidently did.  She saw the timing of my Harvard acceptance and my stigmatic experience as signs of my innocence and sheepishly excused herself.  This left me wondering what might have caused such bleeding.  I went to my door to see if I might have cut my hand when I opened it, but was never able to come up with a satisfactory explanation.  This whole episode overwhelmingly confirmed for me that God's script for my life at least included doctoral studies in early Christianity and Judaism.

(2) My parents and younger brother D (age 18) helped me move to Cambridge.  D was happy for me, but sad about his own life.  He worked hard, but his high school grades were mediocre.  After they dropped me off, my Dad and D went on a bus tour of New York City.   D was deeply moved by all the derelicts and homeless people he saw in the streets.   Just then, he received his call to be a doctor.  

When he returned home, he went to the Med School, announced his new intention, and asked for more information.  The admissions officer took one look at his grades and laughed: "Forget it!  your grades are low and admissions to Med School are highly competitive."  D snapped, "Grades won't be a problem!"  False bravado?  Hardly.  D sailed through the honors microbiology program with straight A+s.  I was delirious with joy for him.  His date with destiny had suddenly made him a brain.

When D entered Med School, he bought me a Moving Star sapphire ring for Christmas.  Because this gift stems from the most transformative period of D's life, it ranks as my most treasured possession.  D is currrently practicing medicine in Colorado.  I often wonder whether the exorcism he had performed at age 16 was part of his calling to be a healer [On this see my "Agenda" post.].

(3) I've saved my most important life experience for last.  I was 16 and well on my way to becoming an agnostic.  I was detecting problems with biblical authority and  was growing increasingly cynical about the charismatic manifestations I was witnessing in my Pentecostal church.  For example, I had experienced the intense ecstasy of speaking in tongues.  I knew this experience was potent enough to cure heroine addiction.   But I now thought my own experiences of this could be explained naturally as the product of wishful thinking and manipulation.

But I was going to give God one last chance.  I went to Manhattan Beach Camp in Western Manitoba.  After the evening services, people would tarry at the front and get swept away by ecstasy.  But not me!  Empty and disillusioned, I went for a long walk in the country.  I told God I was at a crossroads.  If He wanted my allegiance, He had to bless me in a convincing fashion, almost against my will.  I felt that this demand bordered on blasphemy, but I was desperate.  That evening, I fasted for the evening meal and put the money reserved for it in the offering plate.  As usual, I knelt without emotion at the front after the service.  Eventually, everyone left but me.  My heart felt like stone.  My fists were clenched in my determination not to give way to a contrived experience sparked by my pressing need.

It was then that I was immersed in the most transforming experience of my life.  One moment I was defiant and resistant, the next I was swept up in what I can only describe as the "wind" of the Holy Spirit.  Acts 2 mentions that the early church's first outpouring of the Spirit was preceded by "a rushing mightly wind," but I had never taken this image seriously.  Now I had to!

Seemingly against my will, I was possessed by the Holy Spirit.  With each passing moment I was engulfed by wave after wave of liquid love.  The intensity of this love increased dramatically with each wave until it became so powerful I feared I might die.  I felt as if my ego might at any second be absorbed in the divine mind.  It is heart-breaking to even try to describe it.  I can only say that the experience of the sweetness and goodness of God's love was over 100 times more powerful than anything I've experienced before or since.  The whole episode lasted about a half hour.

Soon spectators started trickling into the deserted amphitheatre and quiety sat down to watch me.  I asked one of them why she was there and she said, "Because your face is glowing!"  A stoic Lutheran minister approached me to ask if I would lay hands on him.  He was visiting out of curiosity and wasn't into this sort of thing.  But the instant I touched him it was as if I had electricuted him!  He exploded in other tongues and was enveloped by ecstasy.  At that moment, if you had brought me a blind person, I would have had no doubt that he would have been healed.

But there is a sobering dark side to this adventure.  When it ended, I tried in vain to recreate it in my mind.  My memory bank had nothing with which to compare it.  The contrast with normal consciousness was depressing.  And then there was the disturbing message that the Spirit impressed upon me during the experience.  The Spirit told me that my theology was flawed, but it was simply not His way to dictate the truth to me.  He said that living the right questions was more important for me than believing any answers.  He encouraged me to make it my lifelong quest to probe His mystery.  He even gave me the impression that He wanted me to forget about speaking in tongues now and to have the denomination in which I was reared.  These messages were not dictated to me.  They came in what Robert Monroe would call a rote, a ball of thought that needed to be contemplated and unraveled.  This event has defined the course of my life.

After this experience I became clairvoyant in many ways for several years.  For example, I often knew when certain people would die.  Once when I was about to leave my apartment, an inner voice yelled, "Sit down, you're going to hear about a death that will affect your life."  At once the phone rang.  It was the chair of my Theology department, saying, "The professor who was supposed to teach the summer grad course in Scripture was just found dead in bed, and you're the only one around who can teach his course.  Will you do it?"  I gladly accepted this assignment.  

On another occasion, I was playing bridge with some Education professors.  A colleague, Joe, had just died of cancer and his widow, Elie (another Education professor) was in mourning.  After the bridge, I suddenly found myself saying to Paul (the Dean), "Elie has been contacted by Joe and is wondering if her experience is real.  Tell her I can assure her that it is indeed real."  Curious, Paul contacted Elie and told her what I had said.  She confirmed that she and her family had just returned from Pennsylvania.  In the car, the family erupted into laughter for the first time since Joe's funeral.  Ellie was in the back seat, when she suddenly had a waking vision of Joe from the waist up--laughing.  He telepathically communicated to her, "This is the way I want to see you.  I'm OK.  Don't worry about me."  Elie had told no one of this experience.  These examples could be multiplied.  

Don

Wow, that is an amazing post!  I don't even know what else to say...

When you had the stigmata, was it painful?  Just curious.  

Wow...

Polly,

I would like to claim that I deliberately relocated this post to the front to use it in my discussion with the site's skeptics and to inject my stigmatic experience into a new post's treatment of this subject.   But in fact I was merely trying to cannibalize it for personal use when I messed up and somehow caused it to appear here. LOL!  But to look on the bright side, this thread expresses my religious views and my most important spiritual experiences better than any of my other threads.  So skeptics can use it as a frame of reference.

Anyway to answer your question, I was so stunned by Anne's false accusation and the amazing synchronistic acceptance call from the Harvard professor who controlled the Dead Sea scrolls that I was in shock and felt no pain from the stigmata.  I never believed in stigmata prior to my own experience of this phenomenon.  

Don

Don,

THANK YOU for writing this. I helps to know someone's inner motivation when reading posts. My respect for you and my understanding of your intentions just grew in leaps and bounds, not that you require either from me...

"I can only say that the experience of the sweetness and goodness of God's love was over 100 times more powerful than anything I've experienced before or since"

That wonderful lady you see to the left gave me a similiar experience.

Thanks again.

Rob

Thanks Rob,

I've had my own mystical experience of Mary, though I'm not Catholic.   I'm planning a future thread on the MAJOR apparitions of Mary that will point to some common denominators that characterize many of her appearances. To me, her last major appearances (still ongoing) at Medjugorje in Bosnia--Herzegovina are the most interesting because of their prophetic relevance to the Moen-Monroe astral "Gathering", the Mayan Calendar, and New Age speculation about the year 2012 as a time of major earth changes.   It is also worth investigating whether she serves as a corrective to the overmasculinization of God in Western theological thought.  Even the Bible contains neglected feminine imagery of God.   At any rate some of Mary's  manifestations display interesting parallels to vision of the ancient Egyptian goddess, Isis.

Don    

Bob was a suicidally depressed gay man who lived out in the country about 35 miles south of Rochester. Overcome with depression one day, he felt an impulse to get in his truck and start driving around with no dsetination in mind.  He stumbled onto an unimpressive looking little church in a breath-taking location--on top of a hill looking down on a beautiful valley with a lake in the distance.  He got out of his car and felt drawn to that church.  The church was very conservative with conventionally negative views on homosexuality.  Bob sensed this but still felt constrained to attend.  

When I later became the pastor of that church, Bob and I became good friends.  Soon Bob brought a large group of gay and lesbian friends from Rochester 45 miles away.  A mutual love affair developed between these people and our members.  Love conquered theological preconceptions.  These gays and lesbians said they preferred a conservative church where their direect encounters with straight people generated loving affection to a pro-gay church where people just accept them from a politically correct perspective.  The love felt by all rendered theological positions on homosexualty irrelevant.  

But I did meet separately with all these gays and lesbians to survey all the alleged anti-gay biblical texts.  I explained why these texts did address the modern situation of homosexuality.  I have lectured at various colleges on this subject and so far have not been challenged by theological conservatives on this question!

Soon Bob started experiencing miracles.  Let me share just 2 of them that I found myself predicting from the pulpit!   I predicted the theme of these 2 miracles, not their precise details.  (1) Bob was driving down the main highway when he was divinely directed to turn off on a side road for no apparent reason.  To his dismay, he encountered a family from our church whose car had just broken down.  They too had felt an impulse to turn off the main highway down this road simply because there might be some pretty scenery!  This divinely orchestrated encounter led not only to a road rescue, but also to an awareness of divinely orchestrated synchronicities.  

(2) Bob later found his deceased mother's ring in the center of his made bed.  That ring had been missing for 39 years and Bob had just moved into a new house.  He excitedly called his friend who had experienced a similar miracle.  The ring of his friend's late mother had materialized on his dresser!  Buth rings strangely dematerialized in two days!  Bob exmperienced this miracle as a fulfillment of a prophecy I had just made from the pulpit on the previous Sunday.  
 
Among other things, Bob's guidance led a greater awareness of how God can bless gay people.  This awareness obviously enhanced tolerlance to a degree that no sermon on judgmentalism could achieve.  Bob's paranormal experiences demonstate that his impulse a couple of years prior to get in his car and drive around randomly was a divinely guided date with destiny.

Don

Hello. Really enjoyed reading this subject and all its replies. Thanks Berserk and all others. Just going to add my 2cents worth. I obtained a book that was published privately and sold privately(not sold in bookshops or internet)from Australia. It was published in 1999 and was titled "One Man's Journey" by Joseph P Yates. Some quotes:

"My first spiritual experience was in New Guinea during the 2nd World War at a small village called JEVEVENANG, on the Huon Peninsula on the way to a larger village called Satalberg. We were attached to Australian (9th Division) Troops-a company. Our group consisted of three European Sergeants and about fourteen native troops. We were in the village and could not go any further. We were cut off by the Japanese so we had to 'dig in' and we were isolated for approximately six days. We could not go forward and no other Australian troops could come in to relieve us nad our lines of communications were cut. The enemy had surrounded us and cut us off because they were removing men and equiptment from Lae to Satalberg to make a 'last stand' there and we were a threat to their passageway.

In the final two to three days of being cut off I had an experience one night while while sitting in my slit trench(fox hole). In such a situation as we were in, we spent a lot of time with our thoughts. I was had been wounded twice before and I was thinking about being wounded a third time-would the third time be final. I recalled a story from the 1st World War(1914-1918)where three soldiers were lighting three cigarettes off the one match-the third light off the match was killed. These thoughts flashed through my mind. During these thoughts I felt a 'presense' and the mental thought came to me, 'Don't be too concerned-things will be alright.' I made a promise to myself(or whoever)that I would go to church every Sunday if I came through this situation. Sure enough, within two days, we were able to retire out of the situation we were in and about 60 of us went down a gully and met other Aussie troops who were endeavouring to get to us. We did this all without any fireworks and loss of life."

Joseph P Yates was 21 years of age then. 35 years later while living on his 20 acre property in Mudgee(country Australia) he completes this above story.

"The completion of this story-my first OOBE at Mudgee re-started my spiritual journey and had a dramatic effect on me and was the beginning of my 'awareness' and my teaching. I was 56 years of age-35 years after the village incident when I was 21 years.

Thirty five years later, whilst living at Mudgee, I had an OOBE nad travelled back to the village of Jevevenang and I was 'flying' over the village.  There I was over the village in New Guinea and a strong mental thought said to me, 'Remember your promise'.

People now say to me 'Yes, you didn't go to church since you made that promise, but you built a church'. This thought never occured to me until many years later. The Centre was started approximately two to three years after the OOBE and took three years to build. So this is the story of how it all started-Whitehaven Centre."

J P Yates and his wife sold their property and the Whitehaven Centre which stood on it in 2000 and retired to a retirement area on the coast called Port Macquarie, a sort of small Florida type area in Australia. But the story continues. To go back to the time of building the Centre or Church as his friends called it.

"In another dramatic OOBE I had in the first year, I was placed in the body of Christ while out in the Spirit World. I was floating down a 'street' and I 'knew' it was back in Biblical Times(a strong knowing again). In the distance were a couple of buildings and a few men sitting down and one figure, who appeared to be Christ, was standing moving his arms and talking(spiritually). I was about 10 feet away and standing opposite him.

Within a very short time I was behind the Christ figure, and slid, or was placed in 'his' body. I became 'him' and felt like 'him' and he became 'me'. This was a dramatic moment for me, especially when I returned to my physical body later.

I had realized that most of my travels and experiences when out of the body were lessons and teachings for what I would be doing now and in the future, ie. the spiritual work.

After about two years my conscious OOBE's ceased or I was unaware of them and very rarely do I go out now. When the teachings were completed I was given a definite direction, "Now go and do'."

JP Yates had another another dramatic experience. This time on the physical reality level. It happened about the same time as the above OOBE's.

"This happened on the physical level, about twelve to eighteen months afte the OOBE to New Guinea. I was working on a job about 45 minutes from home-doing carpentry work-building extensions on a large property. The owners had gone to Sydney and left before I had arrived. It was lunch time. I had just finished my lunch and it was a beautiful day, quiet and peaceful. I was completely relaxed. I started to think of the Bible and Jesus Christ and the teachings and all of a sudden I felt an overwhelming Christ presence. I was facing a westerly direction and the horizon just lit up with a tremendous glow of white light nad I felt knowledge come into my body/mind. I found it very hard to describe the feeling and the knowledge. I felt I had been given all the knowledge there was in the world, all in the space of minutes. The best way I could describe it was if someone had  a syringe(a very large one at that)which contained all the knowledge and it was stuck into my arm and the plunger pushed in.

I could not work the rest of the afternoon. I was emotionally affected and tears rolled down my face nad I could not concentrate on my work. So I packed up and drove home to Betty my wife. nad explained to her what had happened, including standing in the middle of the lounge room in tears. It took me about two weeks before I again felt 'normal'.

All this had a dramatic affect on me. I immediately went to bookshops to look for books on the subject, knowing I must have had an experience likened to St Paul on the road to Damascus-that famous story. The best book I found was 'Cosmic Consciouness', written by Dr Bucke , a doctor who had the same experience nad afterwards researched and wrote of other peoples enlightenment experiences. It is a famous classic book."

JP Yates and his wife are in their late eighties and still alive to this date. JP Yates main spiritual calling besides giving lectures at his Centre was rescue work-the exorcism and rescue of lost earthbound beings and other energies. Sincerely. Carl and Family.  

"

 

[Very interesting, Carl!  Thanks for sharing that.]

A locale man shared his life-changing experience with a friend of mine, Lloyd.  Years ago, Jim was about to enter a store, when he accidentally bumped hard into a woman who was coming out.  He apologized for jostling her and she just smiled and said she was fine.  A heavy drinker, Jim was on his way to a favorite bar.  He ordered a beer, and as he began to drink it, the mirror in front of him seemed to come alive and say: “Here you go.  You’re going to become an abusive drunk just like your Dad!”  This message was so unexpected and so real to Jim that it haunted him for days until he turned his life around, gave up his heavy drinking, and became a devout Christian.  

Years later, he attended a Kathryn Kuhlman healing service.  I used to attend her services in the Los Angeles Shrine Auditorium when I was attending seminary in Pasadena, California.  It was always packed an hour early with over 9,000 people.  Until recently this auditorium was the setting for Hollywood’s Academy Awards ceremonies.  KK is the most charismatic presence I’ve ever encountered.  I sat with a friend [Sam] on the far end of the minister’s section on the platform to get a closer look.  [We had no right to do this because we were just young seminarians!] At one point, KK wheeled around and decided to give each of the 65 ministers a light healing touch on the forehead.  As she did so, they fell off their chairs, apparently unconscious, on the floor!  It was as if her touch electrocuted them, and I was terrified that my turn would soon come.  Sam had told me about a 280 lb. football player who wasn’t into faith healing, but who had engaged KK in conversation.  During their conversation, KK touched him lightly in a natural gesture, and he fell down like a rock!  Her touch involved much more than the power of suggestion.  Soon KK was drawing close to me.  Without looking my way, she suddenly felt prompted to stop.  I was amazed at this because she never looked my way and I thought I was masking my fear very well.  Clearly the Holy Spirit was revealing my apprehension to her.    

Well, when Jim attended a KK healing service, he was shocked by the realization that she was the woman he had accidentally bumped into that life-changing day a few years ago.  As he was awe-struck by her mediation of healing, he realized that his collision with her was no accident; it was providential.  KK (now deceased) apparently radiated blessings to all she met.  Somehow Jim’s collision with her imparted a blessing that made it possible for God to convict Jim through the message from the bar mirror!

Don

Thanks Don for your reply. Much Thanks. It never fails to impress me, on a emotional level, to hear how the positive unseen spiritual world shows its love and understanding and works through us physical beings. To keep on topic now.

I've read on other subject threads that you do not validate the use of Ouija Boards. I agree. Many years ago when I was in England, Carlisle to be exact. I was introduced to a Scotsman who at the time was the assistant personnel manager of a large canning factory. When we got to the subject of spirituality he suddenly had a change of face towards the negative. At this point I must say he was not a practicing Christian. He was an agnostic. His story from memory.

When he was at university in Scotland he lived on campus. In the same floor or building were two other guys studying the same degree as him. They both were good friends. They somehow?got hold of a Ouija board. They could not help themselves and told others about the 'contacts' they made on this board. As time passed their personalities change to the point of being in a manical expression of contact with other students. They missed lectures and became somewhat aloof in a extraverted sort of way. Eventually the university authorities issued their dismissal(expulsion) from the university. At this point the police had to be called to remove them as they refused to leave. One was placed into a mental hospital and the other went somewhere? Probably back to friends or relatives(my assumption-Carl).

I can still remember the look of utter shock on my friends face. He was definately sincere in telling me this story.

On to another side of the coin, the same coin. A few years ago I was reading about Indian Gurus when I came across  the name Ram Dass. Ram Dass was Richard Alpert a professor at Harvard Univerty. Together with Timothy Leary, another professor, they experimented with LSD, Magic Mushrooms etc in the 1960's. They were fired for this(I apologise if you or others know this). Richard Alpert made his way to India in 1967, eventually being introduced to the Indian Guru Neem Karoli Baba. He recounts how this Guru could tap people on the forehead and they would go into some sort of spiritual ecstasy and fainting spells. He, Richard, experienced this himself. He also states that this particular Indian Guru oozed love. 'A fountain of love' as Alpert explains in his various Youtube segments and on the various websites dedicated to this Guru. Richard Alpert now 'Ram Dass' returned to america and wrote a book about his Guru called 'Be Here Now' This book proved to be a major bestseller which caused the exodus of many 'hippie' americans to visit this Indian Guru in his Ashram in India. I believe this Guru died in the early 1970's. To cut a long story short, and you can read this on the various websites about him(Dass and his Guru)I don't remember the actual link or website, but you can search and you'll find it....When confronted with the hoardes of young americans and others who descended on his Ashram because of Alperts book 'Be Here Now' , Neem Karoli Baba said to a close nearby aid and this was heard by many americans sitting at his feet...."Why do all these these westerners come here to see me when they have Jesus?".... Alpert(Ram Dass)suffered a stroke a few years ago and he now lives in Hawaii. I don't follow any Indian Gurus or am a card carrying member of any traditional established religion or sect. If you want to know, I'm a fence sitter. Yours Sincerely. Carl and Family.