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Honestwitness
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Username: Honestwitness
Post Number: 114
Registered: 7-2005
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 29, 2006 - 6:54 pm: |     |
I think I remember seeing an EGW quote recently mentioned on this forum that insinuated Satan was able to answer our prayers to God, instead of God answering them. I've searched for that posting but can't seem to find it. Would you (whomever it was) mind sharing that quote again?
Thanks,
Honestwitness
(Message edited by honestwitness on August 29, 2006) |
Helovesme2
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Username: Helovesme2
Post Number: 619
Registered: 8-2004
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 29, 2006 - 7:29 pm: | |
quote:All heaven watched with the deepest interest the reception of the message. But many who profess to love Jesus, and who shed tears as they read the story of the cross, instead of receiving the message with gladness, are stirred, with anger, and deride the good news of Jesus' coming, and declare it to be delusion. They would not fellowship those who loved his appearing, but hated them, and shut them out of the churches. Those who rejected the first message could not be benefited by the second, and were not benefited by the midnight cry, which was to prepare them to enter with Jesus by faith into the Most Holy place of the heavenly Sanctuary. And by rejecting the two former messages, they can see no light in the third angel's message, which shows the way into the Most Holy place. I saw that the nominal churches, as the Jews crucified Jesus, had crucified these messages, and therefore they have no knowledge of the move made in heaven, or of the way into the Most Holy, and they cannot be benefited by the intercession of Jesus there. Like the Jews, who offered their useless sacrifices, they offer up their useless prayers to the apartment which Jesus has left, and Satan, pleased with the deception of the professed followers of Christ, fastens them in his snare, and assumes a religious character, and leads the minds of these professed christians to himself, and works with his power, his signs and lying wonders. --Spiritual Gifts Vol 1, pg. 171
I don't know if this is the one you are referring to, but it is one that I found.
I'm so glad that I can trust God to hear me when I cry out to Him and do not have to worry that it will somehow not get to him because I got the postal code wrong!
Blessings,
Mary |
Jeremy
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Username: Jeremy
Post Number: 1471
Registered: 10-2004
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 29, 2006 - 7:35 pm: | |
Honestwitness,
Here is the quote from EGW:
quote:[...] Then I saw the Father rise from the throne and in a flaming chariot go into the Holy of Holies within the vail, and did sit. There I saw thrones which I had not seen before. Then Jesus rose up from the throne, and most of those who were bowed down rose up with him. And I did not see one ray of light pass from Jesus to the careless multitude after he rose up, and they were left in perfect darkness. Those who rose up when Jesus did, kept their eyes fixed on him as he left the throne, and led them out a little way, then he raised his right arm and we heard his lovely voice saying, wait ye, I am going to my Father to receive the Kingdom. Keep your garments spotless and in a little while I will return from the wedding, and receive you to myself. And I saw a cloudy chariot with wheels like flaming fire. Angels were all about the chariot as it came where Jesus was; he stepped into it and was borne to the Holiest where the Father sat. Then I beheld Jesus as he was before the Father a great High Priest. On the hem of his garment was a bell and a pomegranate, a bell and a pomegranate. Then Jesus shewed me the difference between faith and feeling. And I saw those who rose up with Jesus send up their faith to Jesus in the Holiest, and praying, Father give us thy spirit. Then Jesus would breathe on them the Holy Ghost. In the breath was light, power and much love, joy and peace. Then I turned to look at the company who were still bowed before the throne. They did not know that Jesus had left it. Satan appeared to be by the throne trying to carry on the work of God. I saw them look up to the throne and pray, My Father give us thy spirit. Then Satan would breathe on them an unholy influence. In it there was light and much power, but no sweet love, joy and peace. Satan's object was to keep them deceived and to draw back and deceive God's children. I saw one after another leave the company who were praying to Jesus in the Holiest, go and join those before the throne and they at once received the unholy influence of Satan. (The Day-Star, 03-13-1846, paragraph 1.)
This is from the original publication of this vision. An edited version appears in Early Writings of Ellen G. White, pages 55-56.
Jeremy |
Jeremy
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Username: Jeremy
Post Number: 1472
Registered: 10-2004
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 29, 2006 - 7:37 pm: | |
I had forgotten about that one, Mary!
Jeremy |
Flyinglady
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Username: Flyinglady
Post Number: 2769
Registered: 3-2004
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 29, 2006 - 8:14 pm: | |
I just cannot imagine God letting Satan into heaven after he was thrown out. Why would God let him in Heaven after what he did??? It does not make sense.
Diana |
Jackob
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Username: Jackob
Post Number: 300
Registered: 7-2005
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 - 6:10 am: | |
I disagree with Ellen White about the fact that Satan answered those who "get the postal code wrong" (good words, Mary, thank you) but Satan can answer prayers directed to God. Billions of people are praying to God, not to Satan, and receive answers which are keeping them unsaved. Many catholics are praying to God through virgin Mary and receive answers to their prayers. They became more involved in deception because of a healing in their family and so on.
The best example is Ellen White and adventism.
quote:"After the passing of the time in 1844 we searched for the truth as for hidden treasure. I met with the brethren, and we studied and prayed earnestly... When they came to the point in their study where they said, "We can do nothing more," the Spirit of the Lord would come upon me. I would be taken off in vision, and a clear explanation of the passages we had been studying would be given me, with instruction as to how we were to labor and teach effectively. Thus light was given that helped us to understand the scriptures in regard to Christ, his mission, and his priesthood. A line of truth extending from that time to the time when we shall enter the city of God, was made plain to me, and I gave to others the instruction that the Lord had given me." (Review and Herald, May 25, 1905)
All the adventists leaders directed their prayers to God. And God responded with a theory oppposed to the gospel, the finished work of Jesus Christ, meaning the investigative judgment. The supernatural experiences of Ellen White made clear to all that a supernatural power was involved. Satan or God?
They even prayed to understand the message of the Bible. Sadly, the experiences of Ellen White had taken the place of the Bible as sufficient. "We can do nothing more", said them and waited for an extra-biblical explanation. For the pioneers the Bible was not sufficient, they needed something more, and a confirmation of the truth.
The experience of an supernatural answer is not in itself a confirmation that God responded to our prayers. There is a great mistake to move the infailibility from the Bible toward the experiences, from the objective truths of the Bible to the subjective experiences we all have.
quote:The Christian religion is the only religion that bases its message of salvation on objective historical events rather than on subjective experiences. Our salvation was secured by historical events outside the realm of our own experience ñ that is, by the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Christ. Acting in Jesus Christ, God did something for us two thousand years ago. ìHe has taken us into His favor in the person of His beloved Son. ì Eph.1:6 Knox. ìIn Christ our release is secured and our sins are forgiven.î Eph. 1:7, N.E.B. And there is an empty tomb to prove what God has done for us.(Protest or Perish, present Truth Magazine
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Grace_alone
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Username: Grace_alone
Post Number: 161
Registered: 6-2006
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 - 6:52 am: | |
I'm not sure I believe that Satan answers or intercepts prayers from God, but I do believe he jumps on opportunities when we put our faith in something or someone other than God. Satan certainly deceives people into thinking it's from God, but I really believe that's a result of us sinners trying to take God's matters into our own hands.
For instance, the whole "Great Disappointment". The people put all their energies and resources into setting a date for Jesus' return. Of course, that's anti-biblical as Jesus plainly said "no one knows the time or day". So when Jesus didn't return, you get anger, disappointment and a group of people so humiliated that they try and cover it with a "new truth". From that, an anti-biblical doctrine was born. Deceit upon deceit.
It was horrifying to read EGW's words though. She truly didn't believe that God was omnipotant/omniscient. It's so obvious through her writings that Satan deceived and used her for his own agenda.
Leigh Anne
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Helovesme2
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Username: Helovesme2
Post Number: 620
Registered: 8-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 - 7:50 am: | |
I'll also offer that just because God answers us doesn't mean that we are 'right'. To refer to scripture, God 'sends his rain on the just and on the unjust.' Christians cry out to God and are healed. Non-Christians cry out to the 'nowhere and noone,' to false gods, or even to curse and blaspheme and are healed. Christians suffer agonies and catastrophies and deaths. Non-Christians suffer agonies and catastrophies and deaths. Christians experience success. Non-Christians experience success.
God is working in all and thru all for ALL of us.
To hear from God does not give us reason to therefore claim that we must be right. In the Cain and Abel story for example, it was CAIN that God talked to. And AFTER he'd murdered his brother no less. We in fact have no record that God talked to Abel at all! That doesn't mean that Cain 'had it right'. Rather, Cain was the one who needed set right.
So far as Satan 'answering prayers' to keep us from being saved, I suppose it could happen, but I think it's much less common that we might imagine. I think our own minds do a good job of obscuring issues when we don't WANT to see the truth. I also think that when we seek God with our whole heart, we will find Him, no matter what culture, religion, ethnicity, church, or family we find ourselves in.
Will we know everything at first? Of coure not! But God doesn't give us doctrinal quizzes to see if we have everything straight before taking care of us. God answered my prayers as an SDA and later as a member of the SDARM as well. Does that mean my doctrinal understandings were pure? Or even close? NO!
Did those answers to prayer slow my learning to know Jesus for myself? NO! Did they make me think that a particular doctrine was therefore vindicated? Sometimes. Did they keep me from learning the truth so far as I know know it? Not when I finally became willing to surrender everything and all of me to God!
What of the early Adventist stories? First of all, if you're trying to establish truth by basing it on a fallacy you're going to screw up the results, no matter how many times you call on God to vindicate you. If you are based in deceit, and are asking ways to continue in deceit, the father of deceits would be quite happy to help you - and within his rights too.
But even in the middle of the deceit, there were 'early Adventists' who did surrender their own ideas to God and were 'brought right' - most of the Millerites, in fact, seem to have left the errors of Timesetting and to have returned, humbled, to their previous churches. William Miller himself is reported to have repudiated his prophetic interpretations and turned to a simple faith in Christ for salvation.
The conclusion I come to is that God hears our prayers, and works with us, no matter where we are. As we plead and dig for Him, he reveals Himself. If we reject him we open ourselves up to the devil. If we confuse his revelation of Himself with a vindication of our own ideas and theories about Him we move to shaky ground.
As we submit to Him, He disillusions us, but only in order to replace our illusions with Reality (from glory to glory). He takes up the mists of our pet deceptions and misconceptions and blows them away, giving us glimpses of his vastness and the wrongheadedness of our narrow ideas.
But ultimately, while He DOES bring us to correct doctrine, the point of our learning is coming to know Him, to walk with Him, to be filled with Him, and to overflow!
Blessings,
Mary |
Jackob
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Username: Jackob
Post Number: 301
Registered: 7-2005
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 - 10:24 am: | |
I have some friends in adventism who are not like myself, a third-generation adventist, but they came in adventism from the eastern-orthodox church. Both claimed that they were led supernaturally to this church.
One of them recognized that not through the Bible, but as an answer to prayers to God for knowing the true church. At oen time, he prayed in distress being on the streets going home and turning around he saw a adventist church. He believes that this was the leading of God.
He was brave enough to hear my story and he recongizes that IJ and other teachings of the church are in oppposition with what he calls "the apostle Paul's gospel". But he thinks that I make a mistake renouncing my faith because "there are a lot of contradictions in the Bible" and we must live with them as with contradictions between Ellen White and the Bible. He says that these contradictions are only apparent, that because of our finite minds we cannot see or make a harmony between them.
At an unconscious level he belieevs that i'm leaving adventism especially because it was the religion of my parents, and because I lacked a profound christian experience, I rejected it. Not like him, who was lead by God.
Many adventists who are first generation like him thinks that if adventism is wrong, practicaly God does not exist. Why? Because when they prayed to Him with all the sincerity a man can muster to be blessed with truth, God responded leading them into adventism. But if adventism is a mistake, thsi means that their entire regligious experience was a fake. It means that when they entrusted their souls to God, God didn't answered them truly, but let them to be deceived.
This is a huge problem, I confronted myself with it, and almsot was absorbed again in adventism. I was on the point of swallowing all my doubts and going back in adventism. I believe that only the sovereign grace of God rescued me and practically forced me out from the deception.
The problem is this: these guys entrusted their souls to God, and they ended in adventism. The problem is how to trust in a God who in the past left them to experience a deception, even if they prayed to Him for a revelation of His truth.
My salvation came from the fact of recognizing that I cannot put my experience above the objective truth of the Bible. That this objective truth has the ultimate word, and not my experience. And, like Mary said, to surrender everything, including my experience to God. Certainly God answered many of my prayers as an adventist. Certainly I was also deceived in adventism, and under the influence of the doctrines of the demons. But it was not up to me to decide what answers to my prayers came from God and what answers were only a fake and kept me in adventism. I was put in the situation to forget everything that was behind me, everything, and live in the present, with the clear words of the Bible. The past is past, and the present is the present, so I had chosen to live in the present.
It was a choice between objective revelation and subjective experience. |
Jeremy
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Username: Jeremy
Post Number: 1473
Registered: 10-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 - 10:27 am: | |
Jackob, I agree with you, except that those early Adventists, for example, were not praying to God, but to a different god.
But those who are children of God certainly don't have their prayers answered by Satan. He is not powerful enough to intercept our prayers. I also believe that God can answers prayers that are prayed by unbelievers if He so chooses.
Jeremy |
Helovesme2
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Username: Helovesme2
Post Number: 623
Registered: 8-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 - 11:48 am: | |
Jackob wrote:
quote:these guys entrusted their souls to God, and they ended in adventism. The problem is how to trust in a God who in the past left them to experience a deception, even if they prayed to Him for a revelation of His truth.
Jackob, I can indentify with that sense of betrayal. It happened to me as well, and caused me quite a bit of agony. What I think I've learned from from my own experience of it is that God doesn't think or plan the way we do. Living with Him means walking, not settling into one 'place'.
Being God's kid doesn't mean we won't get confused, won't wander, and will not suffer. Christianity is simple (surrender to and walk with God). Christianity is NOT simplistic (God led me here, so He must mean me to keep to this particular heading till I die. Or, God led my dad here, so it must be where I'm supposed to be too).
God led Abraham into Egypt, and then led him out again. And then later God led Jackob to Egypt, and Jacob never did leave. . . But God raised Moses to lead the children of Jacob back to Canaan.
I think God does bring some people thru Adventism, even bring them into it, on their way to and with Him. We do not know the 'story' of each person. Some of the people who have 'ended up' in Adventism will not stay there. Some will stay, but their children will leave. In all of it the thing I take from it is listen for God's directions for you. Do the work He sets before you. Seek for Him in every turn and twist of the road.
The goal is 'higher up and further in' with God. While there is only one 'Way, Truth, and Life', Jesus meets us where we are and takes us from there. Many times our path and the path of the Christian next to us will differ - and sometimes even seem contradictory! Always though, and ultimately, God brings everyone who wholeheartedly seeks him to Himself.
To use some biblical examples: take David and Jonathan; Naaman and Elisha; Elijah and Ahab's servant Obadiah. This is why we are not called to judge each other, but rather be living witnesses of the work God is doing in our lives.
To reference my own experience, I believe God brought me from SDAism to the more fundamentalist SDARM. Why? I don't know. But I have a few ideas - for one, it was in the process of switching that I came to know for the first time that God actually love ME, not just 'the whole world'. That God really cared who I was, what I did, and where I would end up eternally, from a personal love for me, not just an accountant's disinterestedness.
Did God put me where I could learn that? Yes. Was there error mixed in with my understanding? Yes. Was the SDARM the 'end' God brought me to? No. Could I therefore say "God brought me here, so this must be where he wants me to stay"? No!
Each of us stands before God, and God is the judge of where our allegiances lie. God is the one who is working with us. And God is the one who ultimately will complete His work in us. In the meantime, we get to cooperate with Him, sharing the joys we find, admitting our mistakes, and warning of the pitfalls we have tripped over.
"For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ." 1 Cor. 3:11. If Jesus is our foundation, he will bring us thru and purify us from all the sediment and stubble that we might sometimes mistake for the foundation instead. Each time Jesus faces us with another peice of that stubble and says 'this or Me' we get to choose. He will not keep us from ever running into sediment and stubble. He has promised to walk thru it with us.
Blessings,
Mary |
Jackob
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Username: Jackob
Post Number: 302
Registered: 7-2005
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 - 12:00 pm: | |
I agree with you Jeremy that they prayed to a different god. But in their minds they directed their prayers to the true God, not a false God. I still have to meet the adventist who's believing that he directs his prayers to a false God.
The idea is that being in adventism we all worshipped a different God that the real God, because our image of God was distorted. We did the best with out limited and distorted information.
After all, have we not prayed to know God, the true God? This implies that we recognized our limits, and the possibility to have misconceptions about God. These were also the prayers of my adventists friends. They prayed to the true God who they didn't know asking Him to guide them in the true knowledge of Him. They cannot be blamed for their ignorance.
Their responsability arises from the fact that they believed that because they prayed to the true God, the religious and spiritual experiences which followed their prayers were from God. With other words, they took these experiences as good in themselves because these experiences came after they prayed to God. Another adventist friend of mine said: "I asked God for bread, are saying that He gave me a scorpion?"
Even if we know the true God, we are open to deception if we are not testing our present experiences by the objective standards of the Bible. Otherwise we open our mind to all sort of experiences, good or bad. |
Colleentinker
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Username: Colleentinker
Post Number: 4526
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 - 12:08 pm: | |
Mary and Jackob, thank you for your powerful posts. I agree with you. I agree, Jeremy, that those early Adventists were praying to a "different god"óeven though they thought they were praying to the real God. I think their situation is explained in Mary's post when she talked about them embracing deception and praying for ways to confirm their deception. They were not praying according to God's will but according to their own perceptions. As Jackob said, instead of trusting the Bible alone, they trusted their own experiencesóand they opened themselves further to the input of the father of deceptionóSatan.
Jackob, I struggled with a very similar situation. My Romanian grandmother left the Eastern Orthodox church when she was 15 years old, before WWI, and joined a small Adventist home church with her sister. They joined the Adventist church because they wanted to read the Bible, and the Orthodox church did not permit its members to have or to read the Bible on their own. My grandmother and her sister were severely physically persecuted by her family. Her sister contracted tuberculosis just a few years later and died; my grandmother eventually responded to a letter her Adventist pastor shared with her. It was from a slightly older Romanian man who had emigrated to Canada and had converted to Adventism there. He was looking for an Adventist wife from the "Old Country", and my grandmother left Romania and met my grandfather, who was known to her only by the recommendation of her Adventist pastor, and married him. Frankly, she left largely because this marriage offered her a way out of her persecution which included her brother attempting to put out her eyes and her father sending her to work for the army where only a miracle of God kept her from being abused by the soldiers at night as she hid in barns.
My grandmother accepted Jesus when she was baptized into the Adventist church, and she didn't really know much about Ellen White until she got to North America. She used to tell my mother, "I wasn't baptized into Ellen White; I was baptized into Jesus Christ."
I really had to figure out how God could be leading me out of Adventism when He had clearly provided Adventism as a way for my grandmother to have access to the word of God and to meet Jesus. I have concluded a couple of things. First, I cannot see every part of reality that lay behind my grandmother's experience or of God's sovereign plan. Second, God does not leave us where we are.
In my grandma's case, she had an Adventist girlfriend who invited g'ma and her sister to church at her home. It's quite unlikely that two teenaged girls would have been able to go find a "regular" Christian church, begin attending, and receive individual attention and instruction in the Bible. Even though Adventism is a false gospel, still God arranged for my g'ma and her sis to gain access to Bibles. Together they hid in the bedroom and studied the Bible. They actually met Jesus through the word of God. And this happened in a far less "suspicious" way, at first, because it happened through the interaction with a girlfriend.
Eventually, of course, when they began to keep the Sabbath, all hell broke loose, so to speak. But they still had the Bibleóand by this time, they also had Jesus.
I've come to see the whole situation not as my leaving the church of God's choice, but of God continuing to lead my g'ma, my mom, and also me to Himself. Adventism was a convenient "tool" that God used almost 100 years ago to introduce His Word to my maternal family. But He didn't leave us in Adventism. He continued to call us to Himself. My mom and one of her brothers have also left Adventism for the sake of the gospel.
When we truly want to know Jesus, He reveals Himself, as He promised in Jeremiah: "You shall seek Me, and you shall find Me, when you shall seek for Me with all your heart." Just as God used pagan Cyrus to facilitate the Jews returning to Jersalem to rebuild the temple, so God used Adventism to give my grandmother the living word of God so she could actually come to know Him.
God is bigger than all our "isms"óand, as Mary said earlier, He does lead us into correct doctrine as we submit to Him. The point of it all, however, is to know Jesus. As we allow Him to take us and transform us, one blind spot at a time, the truth in His word becomes more and more clear. God Himself reveals Himself to us through His Spirit through His own words in Scripture. Our growth, His sovereign work, and our willingness to submit all are related.
And Jackob, you are so right: ultimately, we have to submit to the objective truth in Scripture rather than to our own experience. When our experience becomes our confirmation or our "guiding light" instead of the word of God, we move away from true spiritual growth and even into deception. Our experience must submit to Scripture rather than Scripture submitting to our experience.
Colleen |
Jackob
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Username: Jackob
Post Number: 303
Registered: 7-2005
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 - 12:12 pm: | |
Thank you Mary, it was a blesing to read your post. We may never understand God's plans with us but even if we will understand in the future, we have in the present the sure word of God to know if we are on the right path or not. |
Lindylou
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Username: Lindylou
Post Number: 159
Registered: 1-2005
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 - 7:29 pm: | |
Fascinating thread of discussion. Prayer has been a subject most puzzling to me sometimes. I recently blogged about my own experience of thinking I was praying to God and hearing His answers - only to discover that I was in great error. (http://with-all-my-heart-mind--soul.blogspot.com/) ("Betrayal")
The problem wasn't that my prayers were being answered by Satan, but rather what I thought was God responding to me - was in actuality my OWN wishful, faulty thinking. That said, I do know that satan played with my head during my time in fanaticism. When I was into the "deliverance" ministry, he even played games with our bodies. HOWEVER, what I do know is that through it all GOD WAS WITH ME.
I'm not convinced that journeying through error is a bad thing...... I tend to see our spiritual journey as spiralling - rather than linear. And as long as we are seeking truth, I have to take the Bible at it's word, that All Things work together for Good to those who Love God.
Now, when I pray - it is more in a spirit of praise and claiming God's promise that He will never ever leave me or forsake me - no matter what comes my way - rather than asking for something.
I have to admit to struggling with the petitioning aspect of prayer. I am even more uncomfortable when I hear people claiming miraculous instances of protection - when other people around them are hurt or killed. It just doesn't make sense that God randomly picks and chooses that way! I personally, think we humans are a bit too concerned about our earthly bodies. I could be wrong of course, but right now, I think that God's interest in is our hearts, minds and souls!
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Colleentinker
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Username: Colleentinker
Post Number: 4530
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 - 8:09 pm: | |
Interesting comments, Lindylou! A new "window" into prayer has been opening for me since I have heard Elizabeth Inrig tell us, in womens' Bible study, to pray Scripture for each other. She said if we don't know specific details about a person's life, we can still pray God's will for them.
It's amazing to me how many prayers Paul writes for his new Gentile brothers. Some that I pray often for people in my life include Ephesians 1:17; 3:14-19; Col. 1:9-12; 4:5, etc. We can totally be sure we are praying within God's will when we pray Scripture for people.
Good to see you again, Lindylou!
Colleen |
Susan_2
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Username: Susan_2
Post Number: 2328
Registered: 11-2002
| | Posted on Thursday, August 31, 2006 - 5:14 pm: | |
Awhile back of Pastor O'fills website I posted that the head nun at the Prayer and Praise service I go to on Monday nights likes to say that she has a 100% answer to prayer from God. I posted that on O'Fills site and the good pastor let me know very plainly that satan answers prayers. If it hasn't been taken off his site you can go over there and read it for yourselves. And, yes, I truly believe the sister does have a 100% answer to her prayers. |
Melissa
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Username: Melissa
Post Number: 1469
Registered: 7-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, August 31, 2006 - 6:29 pm: | |
Now that you say that Suan, I remember B asking me one time who if I really 'knew' who was guiding me in prayer. |
Honestwitness
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Username: Honestwitness
Post Number: 117
Registered: 7-2005
| | Posted on Friday, September 01, 2006 - 10:46 am: | |
Maybe in this life I can't KNOW for certain whether God or Satan answers my prayers. Maybe I'll never know for SURE, until I'm in heaven and can ask God face to face. But since I can't KNOW now, I refuse to give Satan any credit whatsoever for answering my prayers to God. I have two reasons for this:
1. Jesus taught that if we ask our Heavenly Father for the Holy Spirit, He won't give us anything else.
2. Jesus taught that blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is ascribing to Satan something that the Holy Spirit has done or is doing, and this is the ONLY unforgivable sin.
If I were Satan, I would make it my highest goal to get as many Christians as possible to commit the ONLY unforgivable sin.
I will continue to affirm that perfect love casts out all fear and Jesus Christ is perfect love. I will continue to insist that my prayers TO GOD are answered BY GOD.
My finite mind may not understand everything He does, but my spirit can agree with His Spirit that He is in control and does cause everything to work together for good for those who are the called according to His purpose.
The Bible tells us to magnify the Lord. I would rather magnify God for answering my prayers, even if I am mistaken about the source, than to even hint that Satan is able to answer them. Since I can't know for certain, I would rather err on the side of being deceived than on the side of blaspheming the Holy Spirit.
Honestwitness |
Grace_alone
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Username: Grace_alone
Post Number: 167
Registered: 6-2006
| | Posted on Friday, September 01, 2006 - 12:32 pm: | |
Melissa, what a horrible thing for B to say! Did he know who he was praying to? One thing I've always resented with some of my SDA relatives is the arrogance. The whole attitude that we "know" and you don't. I hope your pain from all this will pass soon, Friend.
It reminds me so much of the JW's who have come to my door. They start off with this question of "Do you know who you're praying to?" These nice JW's claimed that you should only pray to the nane "Jehovah". Funny thing is, Jehovah is a made up word, a combo of two words, YHWH and Adonai. (The renaissance Christians did this to keep from saying YHWH out loud, out of respect. Which was why it shows up in the KJV) So they insist that you have to say the "right" name, which in reality is not right. All because their prophet said so!!
Leigh Anne |
Jorgfe
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Username: Jorgfe
Post Number: 258
Registered: 11-2005
| | Posted on Friday, September 01, 2006 - 5:20 pm: | |
We don't actually pray directly to God. The Holy Spirit intercedes on our behalf.
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. Romans 8:26 (NIV)
Gilbert Jorgensen |
Melissa
Registered user
Username: Melissa
Post Number: 1471
Registered: 7-2003
| | Posted on Friday, September 01, 2006 - 9:06 pm: | |
Yes, Leigh Anne, it was horrible. It was funny to me to think that Satan would wake me up in the middle of the night to study Exodus and Deuteronomy together, pointing out how texts matched and made sense when taken as a whole.... Isn't that something Satan would want to do? Ha! I'm convinced he never even heard me explain what the Spirit had taught me about what I read in those scriptures because he was so convinced it was Satan who had been the one guiding me. I should have caught on then.
That arrogance thing....I think that is the universal SDA characteristic. I've met people from all walks of life and when I find out they know an SDA, the one universal thing I hear is the arrogance. Do they recognize it in themselves? |
Grace_alone
Registered user
Username: Grace_alone
Post Number: 171
Registered: 6-2006
| | Posted on Friday, September 01, 2006 - 11:21 pm: | |
Honestwitness, I like what you said about not giving Satan credit for answering your prayers. He's NOT the "scapegoat" and he doesn't intercede (er uh, intercept?) for us either!!!
Good point, Gilbert! Why didn't you come in to this thread earlier?!
Melissa, I can't tell you how many times I've cried (and on occasion, still do) over someone in the family either pointing their finger at me, or shaking their heads at me when I share my faith. I shouldn't let it bother me, but it still hurts. And you're right - I really can't find any scripture that says Satan is "guiding" you in prayer!
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Mwh
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Username: Mwh
Post Number: 160
Registered: 4-2006
| | Posted on Saturday, September 02, 2006 - 5:50 am: | |
Colleen, great idea about praying scripture, I'm sure that I will mark down any kind of prayer in the bible for further praying
God is awesome!!! |
Helovesme2
Registered user
Username: Helovesme2
Post Number: 629
Registered: 8-2004
| | Posted on Saturday, September 02, 2006 - 6:04 am: | |
That arrogance thing . . . I'm finding that, while it's definitely a strong SDA characteristic, it's also a plain old human characteristic. Even when we finally make it to humility, we often then become proud of our humility!
So far as SDAs recognising it in themselves goes, I think most of them don't. Many, I think, interpret thier feelings of arrogance to simply be their prerogative - because as the 'people of the truth' (or the remnant, or the 'little flock', or whatever) they are of course the 'apple of God's eye' and have a right to feel special.
They do know that God loves the rest of the world too, but believe that if 'the world' hates them (or tries to convence them of their errors, which is often interpreted as the same thing) the world must be rejecting God. Yes, this is arrogance, but all to often honestly deceived arrogance - didn't their prophet teach them that they are 'the chosen'? Didn't they learn from childhood (or from the lovely fellow SDA who shared with them in adulthood) that Satan is going about as a roaring lion to 'make war with the remnant of her seed'? And don't they have the 'inside story' (the Sunday law, the imminent persecution of the 'Sabbathkeepers', etc) on just HOW the devil is going to do it?
These beliefs are singularly effective in keeping people blinded to those who would help them. They are even strong enough to make many SDAs attribute the very work of the Holy Spirit to the devil when it brings to their minds problems with SDA theology and practice.
It no longer amazes me that so many SDAs are closed to the truth. What is amazing to me is the ones who at last become free in the truth!!
Then again, it's an amazing miracle whenever any human is awakened to new life in Christ, whether as an SDA, as a former SDA, as a Catholic, as a Protestant, as a Pagan, a Muslim, a Jew, a follower of another Religion, or as one who has to that point not even known that such a being as God exists!
It was my prayer as an SDA, and continues to be my prayer today that God will reveal Himself to me, and to every person in which the tiniest shred of a longing for Truth and Reality exists. God is well able to do this (and where did that longing come from if not from Him anyway), and, I believe, loves doing it. It does seem that He waits though till we are willing to lay down our arrogance and actually listen to Him!
And then, in the stillness . . . .
Blessings,
Mary |
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