Posted on 06/16/2013 5:47:16 PM PDT by workerbee
When you are taking flak, you’re on target. It’s your choice to stay on the front lines or fall to the rear; but you should pray for guidance on where He wants you.
NO! I wouldn’t mock other people’s mysteries or spiritual experiences, as I’ve got some of my own. We’ve got to take these stories as they are told, I think, unless of course they are of the abduction by the aliens kind. I can’t and don’t try to determine if they are falsehoods, let somebody else do it.
Anything and everything that leads one away from God by His Plan, is simply following the same path as the Adversary. Yoga and meditation are counterfeit substitutes for fellowship with God which at best are good for nothingness, and at worse, might invite in an unwanted evil guest.
I would stay away from Ouija boards. Back in the early 80’s, my younger brother’s best friend and his older brother and sister were fooling around with the board, asking it questions. The planchette began to move without any of the three’s help. It spelled out a message. The message was that the older brother would die in a car wreck, giving a specific day too. They were a little freaked out but kept the session going. They were sitting on the floor in one of the bedrooms during this. The closet door was opened. The older sister looked towards the closet and let out a scream, got up, and ran from the room. The two brothers went after her to calm her down and find out what happened. She said she saw a demon in the closet.
Being an Irish Cathoilc family, when their mother got wind of the story, she blew her top and threw the board in the garbage can out in the alley. While doing so she was cut on the finger by the planchette.
The older brother was a little nervous about being told he was going to die in an accident. As the day that he was told drew near, he became even more nervous. That day came and he was involved in a car crash, but he wasn’t injured. They all figured it was dumb luck.
It doesn’t end there. The older brother moved out to an old farmhouse a few miles outside of the city. One day my brother and his best friend went there to spend the night. They were hearing funny noises in the place and the older brother tells the two that he thinks the place is haunted. The older brother was a gearhead and had an old motorcycle he was working in the basement, the motor was partially disassembled. They hear what they thought was a motorcycle running in the basement, go down and see the damm motor on the bike is running. That would have been enough for me, I would have been out of there after that, but my brother and his friend stayed. My brother went to the bathroom, and while washing his hands looks in the mirror to see what he described to me as an evil looking old lady inside the mirror, looking back at him. As he left the bathroom, the shower curtain rod flies off and hits him on the head. My brother and his friend left the place after that.
I don’t think any of this was coincidence. His friend and his siblings invited that evil in by playing with the Ouija board.
Right on, tho a bit on the impressionist side. I was thinking more of an Heironymus Bosch surrealist picnic with a parade of flagellants winding down the lane.
unless your are an exorcist why would you want to read about demonic possession?
It is fiction but The Screwtape Letters tell you every thing you need to know about evil
You got free bumps and a couple of innocent jokes, what’s to complain about? Do I believe in the devil? You bet I do, but I have little to say about it, except to relate some experiences, which I won’t do today. Still, I tend to agree in some way with #67.
Lucid dreaming and sleep paralysis are two agnostic descriptions of very real spiritual situations.
It appears that when fallen angels, are disobedient to their charge and are in a different domain, the laws of God are such that we are unable to take action in any fashion if they are present, until they violate our domain.
Sleep paralysis is a pseudo-intellectual attempt to disqualify a very real experience and memory of exposure to the angelic domain. It isn’t scientific, but rather it ignores direct human testimony to such events.
Perhaps it is time for you to check out what The Word of God has to say...I recommend that as a reliable source. And when it comes to ‘interruptation’, rely on the Holy Spirit.
Anything by Malachi Martin is good.
There’s a few books by Montague Summers, the originals are expensive and they’re all risky. Summers was a bad guy.
There’s the book of abramelin the mage, which is basically a grimoire from someone who knew his stuff, where most of them are myth and fantasy. Again, not something to poke aimlessly at.
The Dark Gods, by Roberts & Gilbertson.
Oh, and Ouija boards are bad for you.
As far as yoga, my husband’s spiritual advisor (a saintly priest!) said the exercises were fine but the religion behind yoga should be completely avoided.
>>(snip) Personally, I believe that most of this stuff is hokum, most possessions actually are psychological or mental illness and maybe charlatanism, etc., but that a small slice of it is something altogether different. Something very real. BTW, that is the general view of the Catholic Church, too, FWIW.
Didn’t seem to do the 3rd Reich or the Aztecs much good. How many battles through history were joined after intense sacrificial petitions for victory from a host of anthropomorpized id monsters. Victory went to the side with the best intel, leadership and discipline. None of these “magicians” are on Las Vegas’ watch list, not a one.
This mumbo jumbo is nothing more than various flavors of hypnosis, hysteria tooling and authoritarian sadism, the reasons for which need to be better understood by our superstitious Freeper peasantry.
Alright, then I apologize.
I’ll leave you with a question: If a deceitful demonic presence wanted you to let your guard down, what form would it take in this day and age?
Quix was obsessive and apparently too annoying for some, hence his involuntary absence, but I never doubted his sincerity or his Christianity. However, if a fellow Christian feels led to issue such repeated warnings, maybe ridicule is the wrong response.
I’ve often wondered what I stumbled into when that happened, whether my brain was playing perceptual tricks or some sort of veil had been lifted.
In young adulthood I tried to understand it better and to resolve it by taking charge. Carlos Castaneda stuff.
Wrong. Don’t dabble.
It would take the form of another human being close to me, a friend or a family member. That is it would invade this person, without him knowing it happened.
How sure am I of the above? Not at all, but that's the best answer I can think of at the spur of the moment!
I believe you may discover that those who have been directly exposed and knowingly are cognizant of that exposure fall into 2 camps.
1) Those who ignore their experience and evidence and place veracity in worldly explanations such as psychology.
2) Those who address the situations directly, seek veracity in an explanation, are led to Christianity and find worship of God through faith in Christ as being their best resource and more worthy than studies of demonology.
There also is a third camp, which is really witchcraft, more than dedication to veracity and the truth.
There are 2 issues involved.
1) Demonic Influence.
2) Demonic Possession.
Believers are indwelt by God the Holy Spirit, and for this reason cannot be demonically possessed. They may be heavily tempted and influenced by demonic influence.
Demons, aka fallen angels, may be an entire range of creatures. They aren’t all the types depicted in movies, though those are based upon reported events.
For a believer who is continually attacked, and is victorious in rejecting temptation, they frequently are then attacked by persons close to them who are in turn tempted by demonic influence or possibly even possession.
Possession doesn’t mean the person is acting nutty and violently. They might be very worldly, calm, rational, and keenly observant.
One observation,...when a person is in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing, in the right manner, they frequently will be attacked.
What you are describing sounds a lot like sleep paralysis/waking dreams.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=ask-the-brains-sleep-paralysis
It is not uncommon to have auditory and or visual hallucinations; to hear voices and or see or sense the presence of someone or something watching you and or the feeling of being touched, sat on or held down, choked or strangled, suffocating or the feeling of being drug out of bed, having the blankets pulled off of you, of bugs crawling on you, of falling or flying during an episode of sleep paralysis. Sometimes people also experience what seems to be hearing “explosions” or loud bangs very close by or inside their heads. Over the years people of many different religions and cultures have attributed this to a demonic presence or witchcraft and some think this explains the phenomena that some have reported as being “alien abductions”. But it is simply just a disruption of the normal sleep cycle.
I have on a few occasions although not for many years, experienced sleep paralysis and it can be terrifying. You feel like you are fully awake and you are awake but only sort of, as part of your brain is still in REM sleep. During REM sleep your brain is very active (this is the part of the sleep cycle where dreams and sometimes nightmares occur) but your muscles are extremely relaxed. If you go into REM sleep too fast or wake up suddenly during it, you can feel like you are paralyzed, hence the feeling that you are being held down or restrained by some force.
As best as I understand it, if you go into REM sleep too quickly or come out of it suddenly, your conscience brain tries to make sense of that feeling of paralysis, which is not really paralysis per se but an extreme state of muscle relaxation, while the part of your brain that is still in REM sleep tries to fill in the blanks, hence a “waking dream” and the visual and auditory hallucinations.
When I’ve experienced such, I have always been able to attribute it to times when I have been either overly tired, off my normal sleep cycle like when I was working some odd rotating shift work or overly stressed or a combination of or all three and that fits with what is known about occasional bouts of sleep paralysis.
More recently I’ve experienced the loud banging or explosion sound, usually when I am drifting off to sleep. The last time it happened was last week and I was convinced there was a very bad thunderstorm as it sounded like a loud bang such as with a close lightening strike. But there were no thunderstorms nor where there any nearby explosions, it was all quite literally in my head. I also have had more episodes recently of violently jerking when I’m just about to fall asleep. It’s not restless leg syndrome, as it is my whole body violently jerking, sometimes it comes with the feeling that I was falling from a great height.
Over the last year, I find increasing that I feel extremely tired during the day no matter how much sleep I get or think I’m getting or how early I go to bed or how late I sleep, and I find that I wake up often during the night and have many other symptoms associated with sleep apnea including very odd and sometimes extremely disturbing dreams and waking up feeling like I can’t breathe and acid reflux that wakes me up during the night. So I’m seeing my doctor next week and getting a referral for a sleep study. I’m not looking forward to getting fitted for a CPAP but if that is what it takes to get a good night’s sleep, I’m willing to give it a try.
FWIW, I do not own nor have I ever owned or ever played with a Ouija Board nor do I believe in ghosts and goblins or the incubus or the succubus. I did take a few Yoga classes some years and never slept better. : ),
I respect your opinion. I also respectfully maintain my own.
As to your civilization/war examples: you omitted one critical element: the spirit and will of the people fighting. Even if every religion and all things supernatural are hokum, the spirit and will of the people is critical for a civilization’s survival. Agreed?
If you disagree, then may I suggest reading any serious book on warfare that teaches victory is only achieved by breaking the enemies’ will to fight? Try Sun Tzu, which is still required reading at our military academies. BTW we as a nation have forgotten this (even though our military is taught it before being fed a bunch of PC hokum), which is why we keep losing wars after utterly dominating on the battlefield.
For some people, in fact most people, faith is critical to maintaining such spirit and will.
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