Welcome to Watcher Forum |
|
| SUPERNATURAL WORLDVIEW -- PART 1 When I Met The Haunted Highwayman . . . | |
| | Author | Message |
---|
Guest Guest
| Subject: SUPERNATURAL WORLDVIEW -- PART 1 When I Met The Haunted Highwayman . . . Sun Mar 30, 2014 9:07 am | |
| SUPERNATURAL WORLDVIEW -- PART 1 When I Met The Haunted Highwayman . . .
This sounds like a mystical experience of the spiritual warfare variety. Enveloped in power, Karen heard a male voice commanding angels to protect Christine and Nick. However, then something happened and Nick dropped off the radar. Did Nick lose his grip on this world for a brief time? The extrasensory mechanism assuring her that Nick was alive no longer detected his life force. Karen believes that Nick actually died at this time—and there is some startling confirmation of that from Nick himself after his rescue. The great miracle of this case is three-year-old Nick’s unlikely survival. The serpentine highway winds its way through the Sierra Nevada Mountains from Sacramento to Lake Tahoe. Because there were no skid marks, the police hypothesize that Christine fell asleep just prior to reaching the corner known as Bullion Bend. Running off the road with no guard rails, the car plunged forty feet down an embankment, making it invisible to passing motorists. Of course, no one really knows what happened. However, if a third party ran her off the road, or even if an animal ran onto the highway, one would expect to find skid marks. I was able to locate, contact, and interview Nick, who will be... |
| | | Guest Guest
| Subject: SUPERNATURAL WORLDVIEW - Part 2 Skepticism vs. Supernatural Worldview Thu Apr 03, 2014 7:40 am | |
| SUPERNATURAL WORLDVIEW - Part 2 Skepticism vs. Supernatural Worldview
Of course, modern sophisticates recoil at the suggestion of supernatural intervention in the world. Accordingly, the supernatural has been demoted to superstition in the academy, but, even so, most people claim some sort of transcendent spirituality. The definitive question comes down to oneness—as in monism—or, as New Testament scholar Peter Jones explains it, twoness entailing “the Creator of nature, namely God, is a completely different being, whose will determines the nature and function of all created things.” This investigation (The Supernatural Worldview) is unabashedly written from the perspective of Christian theism in that the triune God of the Bible transcends all because He created all things. Exception is taken with former NASA astronaut-turned-Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) founder, Edgar Mitchell, who contends, “There are no unnatural or supernatural phenomena, only very large gaps in our knowledge of what is natural.” He believes that “all is one” within nature. And yet, where the Institute is going will take us into the very bowels of supernaturalism and end times prophetic themes... |
| | | Guest Guest
| Subject: SUPERNATURAL WORLDVIEW - PART 3 The Coming Paranormal Paradigm Shift Sun Apr 06, 2014 7:49 am | |
| SUPERNATURAL WORLDVIEW - PART 3 The Coming Paranormal Paradigm Shift
The notion that destroyed Alexander’s naturalism is that the mind is not contained in the brain. He experienced an otherworldly reality while his brain was clinically dead. Naturalistic science proposes that the mind is a product or epiphenomenon of the brain. In this view, consciousness is merely the result of chemical reactions and electrical impulses from neurons. According to naturalism, human beings are biological robots determined by physical law. This book explores several lines of evidence that contradict mind/brain uniformity. These include: 1) the evidence for extrasensory perception, also called psi—a controversial area for Christian apologetics (more on psi in chapter 6); 2) the near-death experience, which implies that consciousness survives bodily death; and 3) the evidence for spirits and apparitions, whether of human or nonhuman origin. Included are interviews with respected academics engaged in deliverance ministry as well as Christians who have investigated paranormal phenomena like ghosts […] In order to gain a working knowledge… I clandestinely enrolled as a student at the Rhine Education Center, the teaching arm of the Rhine Research Center in Durham, North Carolina (what remains of the famous Duke Parapsychology Lab founded by J. B. and Louisa Rhine). It is an understatement to say what I learned was, well, revolutionary. |
| | | Guest Guest
| | | | Guest Guest
| | | | Guest Guest
| Subject: SUPERNATURAL WORLDVIEW - PART 6 Giants, Demons, & The Excluded Middle Thu Apr 17, 2014 6:38 am | |
| SUPERNATURAL WORLDVIEW - PART 6 Giants, Demons, & The Excluded Middle
This supernatural-saturated critique coming from an elite social scientist like James Hunter is to be commended. His argument suggests that the evangelical church, in its quest for political power, has played right into a cosmic bait and switch. Adding to the problem of demythologization is that many otherwise conservative pastors are taught that Satan was so completely defeated at the cross (Colossians 2:15) that they do not have to concern themselves with him. While his defeat was secured for the future, it is not yet fully realized, and, for now, we are still at war. Consider than when God gave Israel the Promised Land they still had to fight the occupying Nephilim and Canaanite hordes. Our situation is similar. Years after the cross, Peter wrote that our adversary, the devil, “prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:, and Paul called him “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience” ... |
| | | Guest Guest
| Subject: SUPERNATURAL WORLDVIEW - PART 7 The World Needs A Supernatural Church Sun Apr 20, 2014 7:54 pm | |
| SUPERNATURAL WORLDVIEW - PART 7 The World Needs A Supernatural Church
While lying in the metal-railed bed, everything seemed white, clean; a bleachy aroma prevailed. Surely she would be up again soon. It came again—like a cannon shot. The pain in her chest exploded her up and out of her body. Really out—she was out of her body. Looking down, she saw the panicked staff rush to her bedside amidst the clamor of squawking alarms. Everything was realer than real…hyper-real, high-definition, holographic, multidimensional immersion. She was floating. As the staff was screaming and equipment was buzzing and beeping, she felt a blissful peace. She rose through the ceiling, through the roof, and looked down on the hospital. Floating, she thought, “Now that is odd.” On a window ledge, she saw a single, tattered, blue tennis shoe sitting on its frayed lace. She wondered, “How did it get way up here on the third floor?” It had a hole in the pinky toe. All of sudden, she shot back into her body and felt an icy hot pain as she looked up and saw the doctor holding the defibrillator paddles. |
| | | Guest Guest
| Subject: SUPERNATURAL WORLDVIEW -- PART 8 What Lies Beyond? Is Heaven Really Real Thu Apr 24, 2014 7:29 am | |
| SUPERNATURAL WORLDVIEW -- PART 8 What Lies Beyond? Is Heaven Really Real
Playing in theaters currently is the hit film “Heaven is For Real”, which has sparked conversations about near-death experiences (NDEs). The film is based on the NDE of 4-year-old Colton Burpo who momentarily died during an emergency appendicitis surgery, but returned to tell of his visit to heaven, of meeting Jesus, a miscarried older sister, and of his great-grandfather. The expression “near-death experience” denotes an assortment of personal experiences associated with brief intervals of clinical death or impending death, hence the term “near-death experience.” There are a multitude of documented cases, occurring in clinical environments, involving full cardiac arrest and flat EEG brainwave activity. Astonishingly, people describe vivid, conscious experiences when, under the normal standards of neuroscience, they should not be conscious. Of course, this presents a huge problem for naturalism and mind/brain identity. Accordingly, the NDE has enormous... |
| | | Guest Guest
| | | | Guest Guest
| Subject: SUPERNATURAL WORLDVIEW - PART 10 Precognition, Theology, & The End Times Thu May 01, 2014 8:03 am | |
| SUPERNATURAL WORLDVIEW - PART 10 Precognition, Theology, & The End Times
Do human beings have the power to “feel” the future? Is there an unknown way that events in the future influence events in the present? History is full of examples of fulfilled prophecies and predictions, but they seldom win ardent skeptics to a Supernatural Worldview. They usually assert that the prophecy was written after the event or through some form of cheating. To be convincing, it is essential that the prediction precedes the fulfillment. Next, there needs to be a degree of specificity to the prediction that connects it to its fulfillment. It needs to be the sort of thing that is not likely to be guessed by chance […] This research goes a long way toward demonstrating that Watchman Nee was correct to believe that everyone has a little bit of what is popularly called psychic power—perhaps a remnant of mankind’s pre-Fall status. It also has some very interesting implications for how we understand time, and specifically that which involves our future. What that means will be very, very important in the days ahead because as Watchman Nee said, “Satan is behind all these parapsychic researches. He is trying his best to use the latent energy of the soul to accomplish his goal. For this reason, all who develop their soul power cannot avoid being contacted by the evil spirit.” |
| | | Guest Guest
| | | | Guest Guest
| Subject: SUPERNATURAL WORLDVIEW - PART 12 The Ghostly Encounters Of Theologians? Thu May 08, 2014 7:00 am | |
| SUPERNATURAL WORLDVIEW - PART 12 The Ghostly Encounters Of Theologians?
Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963), popularly known as C. S. Lewis, was an academic, novelist, poet, medievalist, literary critic, theologian, and Christian apologist... and he believed in "Godly Ghosts." Holding teaching positions at Oxford and Cambridge, Lewis is best known for his fictional writings: The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Space Trilogy, and for his nonfiction Christian apologetics, such as Mere Christianity, Miracles, and The Problem of Pain. He was single for most of his life—that is, other than his brief marriage to Joy Davidman Gresham, an American writer of Jewish ancestry who converted from atheism to Christianity. Very soon after they married, she was diagnosed with terminal bone cancer. The couple enjoyed a brief romantic respite in Greece during a remission, but Joy died a few years later, in 1960. Devastated, Lewis dealt with his grief through writing. Lewis worked through his heartache and honored his wife in A Grief Observed. Many Christians were shocked that he believed his deceased wife visited him as a disincarnate intelligence or pure mind—for all intents and purposes, a ghost. Lewis referred to her as “H” for Helen… |
| | | Guest Guest
| Subject: SUPERNATURAL WORLDVIEW - PART 13 Jesus And Disciples Believed In Ghosts? Sun May 11, 2014 7:12 am | |
| SUPERNATURAL WORLDVIEW - PART 13 Jesus And Disciples Believed In Ghosts?
In 1 Samuel 28, the Hebrew translated “medium” uses two words, balat ’ob. It strictly renders “owner of a spirit of the dead.” So what exactly is an ’ob? Is it a nonhuman spirit associated with the realm of the dead, or is it the spirit of a dead human? Scholars are divided, but the latter is favored. It seems to serve a dual purpose for underworld spirits as well as for deceased humans. Jewish scholar Jacob Bazak’s survey of the rabbinic and talmudic literature supports translating it as “ghost.”[ii] If the consensus understanding of ’ob, “spirit of the dead” is correct, then the Hebrew text implies that humans can have a spirit of the dead associated with them. I realize that, for many Christians, this is controversial, but the original language text strongly implies it. It also implies that a great deal of evangelical writings about the afterlife and demonology are drastically oversimplified and in some cases wholly inconsistent with the original texts. |
| | | Guest Guest
| Subject: SUPERNATURAL WORLDVIEW -- PART 14 Ghosts, Demons, Spirits Of Dead Nephilim Thu May 15, 2014 7:18 am | |
| SUPERNATURAL WORLDVIEW -- PART 14 Ghosts, Demons, Spirits Of Dead Nephilim
One of my schools is the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, now known as BIOLA University, where I earned a certification in Christian apologetics. A few years back, the BIOLA magazine ran a very interesting article called “Exorcizing Our Demons.” I was surprised to read that Dr. Daniel B. Wallace (1974, BIOLA)—one of the top New Testament scholars, Greek textbook authors, and professors at Dallas Theological Seminary—was asked to perform a house blessing/exorcism that became overtly supernatural. A wealthy Christian homeowner had reported poltergeist phenomena that began when his elderly father moved in, and he asked Wallace to bless the house. As Wallace and a colleague prayed through the rooms, objects began to move with no apparent cause. The BIOLA article reads: “It was small objects, like magnets on the refrigerator flying clear across the room. It was really remarkable,” said Wallace, who once doubted that demonic activity occurs today. He’s now writing a book arguing that many evangelicals have become unbiblically antisupernatural. Wallace no longer doubts the Supernatural Worldview, and this impressed me, because it’s not often that a big name like Wallace (from a cessationist seminary like Dallas) will openly speak about such activity. I wrote Dr. Wallace, and he personally confirmed... |
| | | Sponsored content
| Subject: Re: SUPERNATURAL WORLDVIEW -- PART 1 When I Met The Haunted Highwayman . . . | |
| |
| | | | SUPERNATURAL WORLDVIEW -- PART 1 When I Met The Haunted Highwayman . . . | |
|
Similar topics | |
|
| Permissions in this forum: | You cannot reply to topics in this forum
| |
| |
| |
|