Hi Don,

   I've had a number of issues with this site in recent times as well.  I've had to change my password some 6 to 8 times now within a period of a month or so, because I kept getting username/password do not match messages (while entering in both correctly).  At first I thought it was Bruce doing it, because he had banned me awhile back, but currently I don't think he had anything to do with it, since another member told me similar happened to them, and they are in good graces with Bruce. 

But yes, something whacky sure is going on at this site.  It seems that the security certificates haven't been updated since my web browser says the site and the connection to same is not secure. 

  I don't really know enough about computers, the internet, etc to know what's really going on, and if this site is being attacked or targeted by immature hacker types or not. 

   I tend to think of you more as "The Don", more like in the Godfather mafia based movies, than the President, but that's just me (I'm joking).

   Just the Justin whose been on this site for some 11/12 years. 

Recoverer 2 wrote on Apr 26^th, 2017 at 10:28pm:


  I get the sense of A LOT of Oy Veys, some definite head shaking, occasional laughing, sometimes weeping, and once in awhile, a combo of two or more of the above at the same time.     
   

Perhaps also, some gnashing of teeth. 

I doubt that Jesus views this site as a ghetto. I believe he is way beyond trying to feel good about himself by looking down at others as ghetto dwellers.

Quote:

I believe it was disrespectful for Don to use the term "New Age Ghetto" at this forum.

2 PREMONITIONS AT PRINCETON [but not my last one there, which will be treated separately in my next planned post, because it was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life.]

(2) My next premonition after Dallas's accidental shooting happened just before Christmas at Princeton Seminary. I regularly dined with a great and very witty guy named Ted in our refectory. Ted already had 2 masters degrees and had just been accepted into the NT doctoral program at Cambridge U in England. I went to his dorm room to borrow his Cambridge catalogue, so I could apply to Cambridge as one of my potential grad schools. When Ted gave me the catalogue, I again seemed to see his skeleton in a premonition that his death was imminent. This time, though, I said nothing because I had no idea where the danger lay and, in any case, I had been unsuccessful in deterring Dallas from his hunting trip. When I returned to seminary after Christmas vacation, I learned that Ted and his friend Ken were driving home for Christmas together, but their car spun out on ice and crashed into a pole. Ken broke his arm, but Ted was killed. When I reflected on why I was given this premonition, the only interpretation that made sense was that I was meant to pray that Ted would be spared. Unfortunately, I could not bring myself to accept that the premonition was accurate and instead just tried to put it out of my mind. But I would soon learn that my premonitions were always accurate.

(3) My next premonition at Princeton Seminary came in the form of a nightmare in which my life was threatened and I pleaded with God for mercy. The next day, I drove to the Newark College of Engineering, where I was doing field work as a chaplain assistant. As I was driving home in the dark on a freeway, my motor suddenly died and my car slowed to a stop. I was fortunate to walk off the freeway through the heavy traffic and my car was totaled by another car shortly thereafter. I called 2 friends, Mike and Peter, from my dorm and they came and picked me up. Both of them said they too had experienced a nightmare the night before. At least in this case, the premonition seems intended to alert me to my personal danger and to induce me to pray for God's protection.


L

(4) My next premonition is not the most evidential, but I experienced it as part of the 2nd most spiritually profound day of my life. [ I'll share the most spiritually profound day in the section "Religions and Their Beliefs" under a more appropriate heading.]

I was in the final 2 months of my senior year at Princeton Seminary. I had applied to various doctoral programs in New Testament and Judaism, but since I was 16, I had always dreamed of getting my doctorate at Harvard. As a 16 year old soccer player in Canada, I received a serious eye injury that threatened me with blindness and my Winnipeg doctor urged me to have the surgery in Boston. So my Dad accompanied me on the long train rides to Montreal and then to Boston, and a kind Christian Armenian couple took me in as a total stranger, while I convalesced from the surgery. Mr. Chorlian drove me around Boston and eventually around Harvard, bragging about how great a university it was. In my time of crisis, I needed a dream and the thought of getting a Harvard doctorate became that dream. But now in my last 2 months at Princeton, my friends were warning me that I had no chance of admission because I lacked a sufficient academic background for the program.

At Princeton, I had taken a preaching class with George, but he wasn't really a friend. Still, somehow he heard about my dream from a friend and decided to pay me a visit in my dorm room. When I opened the door, George just radiated warmth and love. He said, "Don, I've been praying for you, and the Lord has given me assurance that you will be accepted at Harvard soon." At once, my anxiety vanished and George's premonition about me became mine as well.

The next evening started horrendously. Anne, an attractive fellow student, came to my dorm room in a rage, accusing me of calling her on the phone and telling her she was too emotionally unstable to be a seminarian. I liked Anne because she had been a great comfort to me when my close friend had been killed in a car wreck. How could she think I'd do such a thing? Well, I was a friend of her boyfriend John who had just broken up with her, and I guess she wrongly thought he had confided in me about the break-up; and the guy who called her must have sounded like me.

In the midst of Anne's harangue, there was another knock at my door. I was told there was a phone call for me on the pay phone in the middle of the dorm. I excused myself and raced to the phone. It was John Strugnell, the Harvard professor who controlled the Dead sea Scrolls at the time, calling to inform me of my acceptance with a scholarship. Imagine my emotional roller coaster ride from false accusation to the news that fulfilled a long-time dream! When I returned to my room, Anne demanded to know who that was, and her jaw dropped when I told her. Evidently, she feared that John was calling me to warn me about her imminent tirade!

Suddenly, her mood changed and, alarmed, she asked me, "Are you OK?" I mumbled, "Fine, under the circumstances. Why?" She replied, "Because your right hand is gushing blood from the palm and is streaming onto your pants!" At that time, I had always dismissed stigmata as a Catholic superstition and I have never experienced this before or since. But my "stigmata" evidently convinced Anne of my innocence and she hastily left my room. I just sat there with a beautiful blend of elation and sorrow, as I thanked God for George's kind intercessory prayer in my behalf. The providential timing of these events served as a powerfully loving reminder that God has my back and wanted to make me aware of His protective hand in an unforgettably dramatic way.  Even now, I often savor the sweetness of His presence in those 2 days. 

I can't recall any subsequent conversation with George.  I wish I could track him down to make him aware of how momentous his thoughtful prayer and follow-up visit had on my life.







May 31, 2016
Report

TWO PREMONITIONS DURING MY HARVARD DAYS:

(6) A young woman I had dated briefly in Boston asked me to take her to the New England Flower Show. Reluctantly, I agreed to do so. After I got all flowered out, I noticed a card reader at a table who charged $5 for a reading. Bored and curious, I walked up to her, paid the $5, and sat for her reading. Let me first confess that I have never done anything like this before or since, and would not recommend dabbling in any form of divination. I report this experience only to illustrate how the mind can have paranormal premonitions that it receives from its ability to operate outside the spatial-temporal realm.

The lady asked me to draw 3 cards. As she looked at them, she made these 3 points:
(a) She observed, "Stop seeing that woman (my date); she's not your type." I'm glad my date was not within earshot. The card reader was right, but how did she know that woman was not my wife?
(b) She then told me that very soon I'd be actively involved in working with children, and that I was ideally suited to do so. I skeptically thought, "I'm a single doctoral student with little time on my hands, and I don't want to have anything to do with children right now."
(c) Thirdly, she told me that I would soon be offered a job in a very exotic place, but that I should turn the offer down. I told her, "I haven't even applied for any jobs. I'm half way through my Harvard doctoral thesis and a job would take me away from my research." She smiled and reassured me that the job offer was imminent. I was stunned to discover that predictions (b) and (c) were fulfilled within a couple of days.

(b) The next day my dissertation advisor called me to ask why I was overdue on my latest dissertation chapter. I made excuses, but soon learned that this was not the real purpose of his call. He said that was the President of the Arlington Youth Soccer Association and that he needed a coach for an under-12 boys team. He had overheard me say at a social function that I used to play soccer in Canada. I reluctantly agreed to coach the team. It proved to be one of my most satisfying recreational experiences ever. Those boys became like the sons I'd never have as a single man. In my 2nd year of coaching the team, we made it all the way to the county championship game of our section of Greater Boston (losing 2-1). I coached youth soccer for the next 5 years and loved it.

(c) Within 2 days of my encounter with the card reader, I received a stunning phone call. It was from the chair of the department of religious studies at Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland. He was offering me a summer teaching position, which I declined. He got my name from someone at the University of Toronto. The card reader had told me that I'd receive a job offer from an "exotic" place; and to me, Newfoundland is about as exotic as it gets! She had rightly advised me to turn down the job offer.

(7) I was developing a friendship with Linda, an attractive young Harvard grad student who was separated from her unfaithful husband. She was wrestling with the question of whether it was right to divorce him. She had recently prayed about this and then felt prompted to quickly open her Bible to the first verse her eyes glanced--Jesus' prohibition against divorce in Mark 10:11-12. She asked me whether I thought his was a valid way to find divine guidance.

I responded that her method was called bibliomancy, which was a form of divination and, as such, might fit within the category of the Bible's prohibition against divination. On the other hand, St. Francis of Assisi had used this method in deciding whether a certain candidate was a good choice to be one of his followers; and I myself once used bibliomancy to receive a sign of God's guidance for a difficult decision and had immediately received a very specific answer that turned out to be valid.

While pondering what else to say, I suddenly blurted out, "Linda, give me yourBible!" In the split second, I held it, I instantly jammed my finger inside and found it pointing to Deuteronomy 24:1, which endorses divorce for anything the man finds objectionable in a wife. Now Linda's Bible was the thickest Bible I had ever seen because of all the detailed notes at the bottom of each page and I'd never seen it before. There is no way I could have found that verse in the split second I took to point my finger inside this Bible.

A stunned Linda wryly exclaimed, "So are you claiming that your guidance trumps my guidance?" I replied, "No, Linda, I once used this method and received effective guidance. But then I got obsessed and thought, "Wow, I'm going to use that method for all my major decisions!" To my dismay, I found that I could routinely instantly find a perfect verse to address the issue I had in mind. But this method lacked any predictive efficacy and proved to be useless as a tool for future guidance. So what I'm saying, Linda, is that there can be a thin line between genuine divine guidance and the meaningless paranormal ability to instantly find texts that suit your goal. So I'd advise you to study everything the Bible says on this subject and then listen for God's guiding impulse, but don't trust bibliomancy. It can be unreliable." Linda got the divorce. What amazes me in retrospect is my premonition that pulling this stunt on Linda would actually work very well.

I later shared this story with a professor friend and his wife and they challenged me to see if I could perform this feat with their Bible! They handed me their Bible and said, "Why don't you see if you can zap your finger onto a verse about some kind of grain or chemical? I did and twice in a row, my finger instantly pointed to a verse that mentioned "wheat!"