| Author |
Message |
Lydell (Lydell)
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 21, 2002 - 12:23 pm: |     |
Agreed Jerry!
What we were needing was not to see what the future would hold, Jerry, but encouragement for the now. And hearing on either one of those involves the same thing....pursuing Him. |
Carol_2 (Carol_2)
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 21, 2002 - 2:18 pm: | |
lydell, i'll let sabra tell you about joyce's conference, she was able to attend most of the meetings, whereas i was only able to attend friday night (which was awesome - she talked about fear, and moving forward even when we are afraid - something i struggle with!) i also saw over 200 people answer a call to give their lives to Christ, which i've never before experienced, so that was really cool too. sabra & lydell, and any others in the southeast that may be interested, there's a women's conference in birmingham toward the end of september that i'm considering attending. beth moore will be one of the featured speakers, and she is a fantastic writer (my opinion.) special musical guests will be larnelle harris and margaret becker. if you want to check it out you can find it by going to lifeway.com - insideoutsider: i definitely agree with you, i know i definitely have a high sensitivity to anything that hints of legalism - love and prayers to all of you!!! carol |
Sabra (Sabra)
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 21, 2002 - 4:33 pm: | |
Lydell,
I am very open to prophetic words. I have heard some definate prophecies that came true and you could feel the annointing of God on the prophet. I'm finished being closed-minded. I trust in the Holy Spirit to reveal whatever He wants me to see and to keep me from false teachings. Joyce doesn't teach on Sunday so you might could have come-maybe next year we can all meet up down there. It was AWESOME, on choices, choosing wisdom instead of foolishness. Sat. morning she had 4300+ stand up for the baptism of the Holy Spirit (which I know is HIGHLY controversial) Carol missed it, I wished she could have come, it was so incredible! One girl had been deaf for 18 years because she had LOST her eardrums and she was healed, there were others but that was truly awesome. Sorry to get off topic, I don't really have a word for the topic, except, we all need to let God lead us to where He wants us to be-He is truly able to do that!  |
Colleentinker (Colleentinker)
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 21, 2002 - 6:06 pm: | |
So well said, Sabraówe all need to let God lead us to where He wants us to be. And Inside/outsider, I love how you said the only thing worth going to the mat for is the cross, and the cross alone.
I remember reading a story in the Review many years ago that has haunted me ever since. An Adventist woman wrote about being crippled for many years and finally allowing herself to be taken to a prayer and healing service where she was healed and walked normally for the first time in years. She was overflowing with thanks to God, and she went home praising Him for restoring her, telling her acquaintances and friends what God had done for her.
Some Adventist person, I can't remember for sure but I think it was her pastor, subsequently paid her a visit and told her that such healings were not from God. They were Satanic, she was told, and she should not think she should be praising God for this miracle.
Fearful that she had truly sinned against God, she knelt down and pleaded with God to remove the gift of her healing and "repented" for her pretension in assuming such a gift was from Him.
Her disability returned, and she was writing the article thank God for bringing her to her senses and preventing her from living in a miracle from Satan.
Even though I read this story many years ago, I was as horrified then as I am now at what she did. When God heals a person, and that person gives Him all the glory, it is blasphemy to insist such grace is from evil. God DOES gift his people with gifts from the Holy Spirit, and he passes out the gifts according to His will for the building up of His body. When the Pharisees accused Jesus of casting out demons by the power of Beelzebub, Jesus said that blasphemy agains the Holy Spirit is the unpardonable sin.
And Jerry, I didn't mean Jesus didn't defend his "theology" or defend the truth about God. I simply meant that he didn't defend his own reputation. He did not engage in arguments to prove his own guilt or innocence or legitimacy. When the Pharisees asked him by whose authority he did the things he did, he would not answer directly. He did not belabor his identity or legitmacy in Nazareth where no one could believe that a home-town boy could be a prophet, let alone Messiah. He always spoke the truth, defended his Father, and called people to integrity. He did not make his own feelings the focus of his energy. In fact, he even said he did nothing except what the Father told him to do. He was completely submitted to his Father's will. His own reputation was not important; the truth about his Father and his ministry of reconciliation was.
Praise God for calling each of us and revealing himself to us in completely individual and unique waysóbut always with his cross at the center of his relationship with us!
Colleen |
Sabra (Sabra)
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 21, 2002 - 7:55 pm: | |
Wow Colleen! What a story! No wonder my mother always thinks it's the devil healing people! Where in the Bible does it say the devil wants to see anyone healed of anything? Steal, kill and destroy doesn't sound like any healing to me! You know, God seems subtle at times. He miraculously healed that woman but when she rejected His blatent intervention in her situation, He just took it back and let her go on with her mindset. That should be a lesson to all to never underestimate God's power. It does amaze me that people think the devil has so much power, but let it be God and they doubt. |
Janet (Janet)
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 21, 2002 - 8:24 pm: | |
Colleen, I can't believe you shared that story! I remember reading it, and being "haunted" for years...Thank you so much, for sharing the answer!!! I remember Adventists using that story to discredit any hint of healing in other denominations/churches. Thank you for pointing out what Jesus calls it.
Janet |
Colleentinker (Colleentinker)
| | Posted on Thursday, August 22, 2002 - 10:20 pm: | |
Janet, I can't believe you read the story, too! That was A LONG time ago! (At least it seems like it now; we're not really all that old, are we?!)
I know how frustrating it has been to Richard and me as we have been told periodically since leaving the church that God's blessings are from Satan. I am so grateful for the love of Jesus and for his breathtaking grace that provides for us and does the impossible in us.
Praise Jesus!
Colleen |
Sabra (Sabra)
| | Posted on Friday, August 23, 2002 - 6:05 am: | |
Oh, Colleen, don't feel alone. I'm told all of the time that blessings are from satan. Well, it appears I'm getting the blessings while they struggle in depression, despair and physical infirmities. Wonder what god blesses them with that? |
Kme (Kme)
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 28, 2002 - 3:52 pm: | |
Colleen,
Thank you so much for that story. I too had always been taught that that kind of healing was from Satan, and not just in the SDA church but from another Seventh Day Observing church. It has been puzzling to me to see someone like Joyce Meyer whom I greatly respect and am blessed by refer to healings of that manner.
This is a little off subject yet seems appropriate to ask here, I was recently told a story by an Adventist about a missionary pastor who lost his young daughter to an illness I believe. He and his wife were so grief striken of course that months later they were sitting on their front porch and a little girl looking like their daughter appeared in the yard, ran up on the porch and got in the pastors lap and called him daddy. The pastor wanting to hug his so-called daughter but being grounded in what he believe pulled back from her and said something like get behind me Satan in the name of Jesus, and the little girl disappeared.
The person who told me this was trying to press the point of death being an unconsious nonexistant state, and how detrimental it would have been had this pastor believe in an eternal soul etc... This story has haunted me over the past few months, since I now believe differently than SDA teaching on this subject.
Colleen, I would particularly appreciate your thoughts on this. Though anyone feel free to express their thoughts, please.
kme |
Carol_2 (Carol_2)
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 28, 2002 - 7:39 pm: | |
hi kme! just my two cents, and i am by no means any kind of authority, but two things that i immediately think of when i hear a story like this. first, i question these kinds of stories because they're always second or third hand - i've never heard a story like this first hand, and second, why do we never EVER hear of any non-sda's / non "soul-sleep" believers, being deceived in this way. if it were as adventists claim, you would think that satan would be taking control of non-sda's left and right if it were that easy, by just sending a dead loved one to them to mislead them. i hope i don't sound as if i'm making light of this. i know in my life there are still many times stories are told by sda friends that creep me out or scare me because of my background. but now i find myself trying to look at it first, of course, biblically, but then also logically which is something i never did before. along that line dale ratzlaff brings out something that never once occurred to me as an adventist that now i think should have been so obvious. if the sabbath was such an important issue in the early church, why were the early gentile believers not questioning Paul about this very important issue; how to keep it, when it was, etc., etc. anyway, i'm just trying to point out how it has helped me to start trying to look at some of these things with more common sense and logic than i did in the past. hope this might help a little, and remember, don't be afraid! He will be with us ALWAYS, and fear is not from HIM! love and prayers to all, carol |
Lydell (Lydell)
| | Posted on Thursday, August 29, 2002 - 6:52 am: | |
Actually, Carol, my husband's aunt (who was not SDA and really still a babe in Christ) told him that she was having frequent visits from her dead husband. The things she was being told by "him" were off the mark. My husband had a talk with her about this. The appearances stopped afterwards as far as we know. |
Loneviking (Loneviking)
| | Posted on Thursday, August 29, 2002 - 7:02 am: | |
I'll never forget out 'ingathering' one night with a pastor when I was a teenager. We stopped at one house and the lady there had studied with this pastor briefly in the past and invited us in.
It was fairly late at night, say nine or nine thirty, and we are sitting around her kitchen table. We hear the toilet flush and the pastor asks her as to who else is in the house. She says 'Oh, that's just my husband. He died a few months ago but he hangs around anyway and still follows the routines he used too. He's getting ready for bed.' Of course the pastor briefly tried to convince her otherwise, but the whole experience was really creepy.
Anyway, I don't doubt but that Satan could come back and impersonate someone. But as I see it the Bible teaches that there is no communication with those who have gone on. So, if you do get a communication there could be only one source---right?
Bill S. |
Kme (Kme)
| | Posted on Thursday, August 29, 2002 - 9:17 am: | |
Well, Carol2,Loneviking and Ldell, thanks for your thoughts. I too think that it does have to be Satan since the Bible clearly instructs us not to consult the dead, and that the dead don't know anything that goes on down here. I need to search for the texts on this, but doesn't it say that the dead know not of the earth below or the heavens above? That raises some questions for me. I studied this some when we first left the SDA church a couple of years ago, and was reasonably grounded in the belief of the soul passing on to somewhere. But haven't spent a lot of time on it.
My aunt told me recently, that my grandmother saw her dead mother at the foot of her bed one time. They both were Adventists. Of course my grandmother is now dead too. It is scary to me. Obviously, the SDA's have no more protection from this sort of thing than anyone else, for their belief in soul sleep. However, they do believe it to be Satan because of their belief, same as we do because of our knowledge of the Bible.
Thanks
kme |
Carol_2 (Carol_2)
| | Posted on Thursday, August 29, 2002 - 4:48 pm: | |
hey guys - i agree with what you're saying, didn't come out exactly right - i definitely agree that the Bible teaches there is no communication with those that have passed on, and certainly satan can deceive someone in this way. the point i was trying to make are the "scare tactic" stories i've frequently heard from sdas, usually used to prove their point about soul sleep. it's amazing how those stories are usually there when they need them. anyway, i thank God that He is able to keep us from deception, and that just because we may not have the sda belief of soul sleep, satan cannot reach us by sending the appearance of a dead loved one to mislead us. love and prayers to all, carol |
Colleentinker (Colleentinker)
| | Posted on Thursday, August 29, 2002 - 5:34 pm: | |
I agree with all your conclusion above. The Bible teaches that there is no communication between the living and the dead. I've also noticed, kme, that Adventists seem to have this sort of experience or fear frequently. Of course, that doesn't mean that others don't as well, but it is interesting that belief in what I believe to be a heresy is often attacked by a phenomenon which that heresy is supposed to counteract!
Christians who believe that their spirits go to God do not seem to be confused by such a thing, perhaps because they are grounded in scripture as the inerrant word of God. Adventist and Jehovah's Witnesses who espouse soul sleep as only one of many scriptural deceptions seem to be more vulnerable to deception in general. Maybe that's why the appearance of a "dead" person is so unnerving. Since to them the whole Bible must be "interpreted", experiences can make them doubt their interpretation, and a new deception can seize them.
Whether or not we've had experiences of this particular nature, we've all been under various forms of spiritual attack. We can know that attacks and deceptions will come to us, and we can also know that He who is within us is stronger than he who is against us.
I believe that our safeguard is to continually surrender our minds and hearts and days to Jesus, asking him to fill us with the power of His Spirit and to give us His discernment and wisdom. He will protect us, even when we're not aware of the attack. Our call is to abide in Him.
Praise God for unveiling truth!
Colleen |
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