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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

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.

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.

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."

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.

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

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?    

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.