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I have heard it explained to me that the root of the meaning is forever until its done.  So to speak, you COULD drink a cup of water forever until it was done.

God bless,

Passionate-fool

It is a good idea to be cautious[].

I've only had one Christian oriented OBE.

I felt,what I can only call, the vastness of the universe collapse onto me and implode into less than the smallest particle I can think of.  When I reached that state all I could see was a light I cannot really describe and it was the Love of God.  As I watched, a beam of this Light pierced thru the universe and it expanded again as I watched the beam fall thru the sky and onto me.  I knew that even though I am nothingness in this universe, I mean everything to God and thats why He came down here to die for us.  And I plan on spending the first billion trillion years in heaven singing with joy and gratitude at the foot of the throne.

It was a spontaneous OBE and i've actually never really tryed to have one on purpose.  So, couldn't tell ya how they work for me.

God bless,

Passionate-fool

hehe[:I], one more thing.  Don't be ashamed to say your phrase out loud if you need too.

Passionate-fool

[GET OFF THE MEDS!!!!!!!!!]

OH!!!!!  And one other thing, IMHO  GET OFF THE MEDS!!!!!!!!!  You need all your brainpower to get thru this one.

God bless,

Passionate-fool

I also used to have severe panic attacks.  Full body convulsions  I had a fear of going insane in public.  Don't ask, I couldn't tell ya, hehe.  Anyway, after years of suffering from them I started reading into the disorder and found out quite a few things.  The most helpful thing for myself was the idea of the inner monologue and how to control it.  You must be kind to yourself when you get into the situations that make you have anxiety.  I found that if I took one sentence that I could repeat in my mind over and over again I could get thru the building panic.  I chose the phrase "this too shall pass" and said it again and again in my mind.  Doesn't matter what the phrase is so long as it means somthing to you.
 It takes practice though.  So, you must go out and feel horrible for a while until you get the knack for it.

God bless and good luck,

Passionate-fool

I have felt that need for forward motion Mustardseed.  It seems though that every foot I take forward I fall into another pit that takes me further away from where I want to go.  I know SOMETHING must change!  I just can't seem to get my finger on it and get it done.  Recently I've had lucid dreams/visions of my life as a missionary and I believe this is where the Spirit is leading me.  Unfortunatly, I suffer from chronic depression and do my best to get by.  Only God has made it bearable for me.  I smoke, I drink, I curse, and I hate it all.  But, I haven't changed yet.  It pisses me off[xx(].  hehe, sorry venting a bit I guess.  anywho, keep the discussion going [].

Thanks,

Passionate-fool

I would like to jump in here if I may.

I'm with Beth on this one.  I can't say that i've really had the gift of prophesy before, except maybe as a few times as a child which I cannot remember and only have the story my parents told me.

Both were at the age of two.  In the first one, I was playing in the kitchen while my parents made breakfast.  I suddenly yelled FIRE! and ran into the living room and pulled back the drapes.  My parents had run behind me and as I pulled the drapes back a car across the street blew up.

The second one was a dream I had during the night.  I told my parents that "the girl with the special heart went to heaven".  I described holding the girl's hand as I went up to heaven with her and at the gates I watched her walk in towards Jesus and I traveled back down to earth.  My father later that day found out that the first baboon heart transplant baby had died in the night.  He went to medical school at the hospital that was done at.

I have had other dreams and OBE's thru-out my adolescence(spelling?).  Most of them have been most unpleasant.  I would like to share my most frightening one with you as a reminder to the evil that is out there in the unseen realms.

I was on a long drive taking my cousin home.  It was 4 hours there and 4 hours back.  As I was driving home by myself I began a dialogue with God/Jesus.  I had just come out of an extremely disfunctional relationship with a girl I had met at church.  We were an intensly spiritual couple and thru dissappointments with our church and each other we fell away into fighting and resentment with one another.  We succumbed to our lust.  Things went south.  way south.  I ended up in a mental institution and have tryed to committ suicide more times than I care remember.  I could not understand why it was that for an entire year I dedicated myself to bible studies everyday, hours of prayer, church events, school events and anything else I thought God would want me to do and everything still went horribly wrong.  During that 4 hours of intense debate with God I raged at Him and His Son.  I had given my life to Him and what did I get in return?  Nothing but hardship.  By the time I reached home and stopped my car I had been screaming incoherently for at least 10 minutes and I continued to scream.  For how long I don't really know.  It felt like hours.  God/Jesus died to me in that scream.  I killed Him in my life.  All my rage and hate.  I didn't just direct it at God/Jesus though.  I raged at satan as well.  I hated him just as much as I hated God/Jesus.  So, when I finally realized I wasn't screaming anymore. I got out of my car, went to the kitchen, got a knife, walked upstairs to my room, looked out the window into the night sky, Said, screw you God/Jesus, screw you satan, and carved a cross into my forhead ritualistically(spelling?) symbolizing my(grammar hehe?) becoming my own savior.  After that, about 30 seconds later, my father comes storming into the room.  He starts to pray and I started to weep.  I wept not that his prayer was meaningful, but because his prayer meant nothing to me.  I didn't even wait for the wound to heal before I went back out into public.  I just went about my normal life, utterly despondant.  

A few weeks later I was asleep in bed and I sat bolt upright full of terror.  The door to my room opened and I heard footsteps on the wood before the carpet.  Once the sound of footsteps were gone I slowly, against my will, fell back on my bed and went to sleep.  As soon as I closed my eyes though I felt my soul, spirit, astral body (whatever you wanna call it) shoot to the top of my ceiling with my back pressed against it.  I was looking down directly over my sleeping body.  I could see what had made the footsteps.  It was 3 demons and they were dancing around my bed.  I can't possibly describe them except to say they were terrible to see.  I believe one of them to be satan himself.  Because, as they were dancing around my bed and singing terrible songs my room burst into flame and a face with gray skin, white hair, and beautiful filled my vision.  He said, "I am Lucifer, and you are mine".  The voice felt like it was coming from one of the demons below me though.  I have never felt such utter fear and terror in my life.  All night I watched with unblinking eyes, and felt with exsquisite detail as the demons raped and tortured me.  The worst part of it all though is as you feel such pain that you think you must go mad, that pain is giving you exstacy like you've never known.  It is sick.  As the sun rose I was thrown back into my body.  I woke up crying like i've never cried before and hope never to again.  I got up and slashed my wrists with the very knife I had carved the cross with.  I don't know if I really wanted to die or if it was more a desire to feel "normal" pain again.  Also, I hated God/Jesus even more.

That was 5 years ago about.  My journey has been long.  My searching wide.  I have just recently allowed God/Jesus back into my life.  I have found home again.

Now, I have mostly lucid dreams or I guess I think of them more as visions.  So far, they have not been prophetic so to say but more as personal encouragement from above to help me thru my struggles.  I am incredibly eager to hear what you guys have to say about the Spirit and prophecy.  I feel the spirit often and would like to share it with people more and not just for my own help.  My church isn't very encouraging about the workings of the Spirit and so I have a ton of questions.

Thanks []!

Passionate-fool.

I'd be interested in what you have to say Mustardseed.

I always love hearing what people think of end times.

Beth,

I seem to remember you INTERPRETING the scripture earlier and expecting us to swallow that as "history" like the councils and all the rest.

We must be very careful here.

To have a merging with the Spirit of Christ is a wonderful thing if it enforces His Love, His Divinity, and our sin.  Remember, that experience was not a reward for your righteousness, but a gift that was made possible thru your admittance of guilt and faith in Christ.  He was not just sharing His pain with you, but also showing that His pain was BECAUSE of you.  We are all looking for the same thing in the end.  What's it like to be God.  That is the gift Ben.  God lets us know what it is like.  But, only thru admitting we ARE NOT God.  I know you understand this.  We must make sure though that others know this as well, lest they come charging in here saying you have some kind of Messianic complex or somthing  .

Soulfire,

I will attempt to address your response as soon as I can.  I take a lot of time to write anything intelligible .  So i'll get back to ya.

Dearest Tab,

quote:omgwtf Blavatsky reincarnated

Apparently you feel it appropriate to call upon God and to use profanity in the same sentence.  I also noted how you attempt to present yourself as superior by removal of DjM's individuality.  Thus, taking away his uniqueness, making him "less" of a creature of God.

quote:Originally posted by Passionate-fool

A bunch of jesus stuff

True.  Though, it somehow misses the point.

quote:omg allanon reincarnated.. again... with worse grammar.

Again, we have the use of God's name in vain and a ripping away of my personal uniqueness.  With the added bonus of belittlement.

quote:Theosophists seem to be the more arrogant of their kind

I actually had to think for a good couple of hours to remember what theosophist meant.  I'm not quite sure I fall under your label on this one my friend.  As for arrogance?  I believe my post spoke for itself.

quote:whether it's justified arrogance or not I couldn't say.

I really liked this one.  You actually BELIEVE in arrogance that is justifiable.

quote:I can say that because I'm a wanna be myself

At least we can end on an encouraging note.  I am glad you realize that you aren't an all knowing entity.  I would ask though that you keep your "wanna be" status to yourself since you have no idea what I do "wanna be".

I love you.
God loves you more.
May the peace that passeth understanding find you.

Passionate-fool.

Dear Heavenly Father, I humbly bow before Your Love shown thru Your gift of Christ's blood.  I thank You and praise You for rescueing me from my slavery.  I praise You for giving me the whisper in the dark proclaiming Your Glory and The Promise of living for eternity in the fullness of Your embrace.  I want nothing more than to know You and to let You show yourself thru me.  I pray that the words that have been written by these hands in the Spirit of Love will have power to proclaim Your goodness.  As always Lord, not my will be done, but Yours.

Amen.

   As I see it, by the Light that God has chosen to show me and I was able to see, this whole conversation has constantly been taken down tangents that are relevant to the topic, but miss the main "meat" of the point.  Was Jesus really the Son of God and did He die for our sins, thus making Him our Savior?   I believe the answer to these questions is YES!  With that said, I guess I must try to explain.  As is natural, and perfectly acceptable to my mind, people share the bible with others to show the story of Salvation.  To say to a friend who is in need of comfort "Here's what the bible says!".  This method is a wonderful and ultimately the only way to truely share the Good News of the Gospel of Christ.  But how to share the story of Salvation to people who passionately, vehemently, and, yes, even violently reject the Book of Truth, The Gospel of Christ?  I can't.  So I must come full circle again.  I can't bring to you any shred of the taste, touch, smell, hear, and see evidence that won't be out of hand rejected as conjecture and subjective to this, that, and the other thing.  So I am going to try and appeal to your emotional logic.  

So far, as far as I can see, the more serious thinkers on this topic agree that the bible does hold some "spiritual truth".  Yet, they reject that it has THE spiritual Truth.  Reasons mostly including: passed down from generation to generation.  written and re-written.  Translated and re-translated.  Tampered with by the church and the list goes on.  The arguements seem reasonable.  They are reasonable, IF your assumption is that evil has the power of corrupting a perfect message.  But, if your assumption is that God is Almighty and all Loving, then you must believe He would make sure that whatever message He wants to convey to us as humans would be beyond mans ability to touch.  This is not to say that some things in the bible have not been touched.  The whole of the bible has been altered from its original format.  It had to be for us to even read it today.  So, this text we call the bible has been passed down, written and re-written so the people of whatever day and age they are in can get what they can from it.  Just like Homer's Illiad or Ovid's erotic poems.  Both of these manuscripts have had the same thing done to them as the bible has.  Yet, when we read Homer's Illiad (in an alteration of its original form) we see great depth and imagination along with a few moral points here and there.  We take it for whatever story it conveys.  To put it more succinctly, even though it has had all manners of changes and potential errors made to it we still understand the message it conveys.  The difference here though is that no one expects us to take these other ancient texts as statement of fact.  Why, I ask, does no one expect us to take these stories as literal.  I would put forth as an explanation that as we read the texts and absorb the stories we subconciously test the ideas involved to see if they mesh with our sense of reality.  Of course, in all most all cases they do not.  So, now we have A common thought of what reality is not.  Yet, how do we really know for sure that Homer's Illiad wasn't written intended to be read as fact.  Or when Ovid relates the interactions of men and women to how they relate with the interactions of the gods between themselves.  Of course we have ways to get a "good idea" whether it was intended to be taken literally or not.  But, in the end we have no way of really knowing because we weren't there.  These same principles can hold true for the bible as well.  They hold true for the koran.  They hold true for every historical text.  We must take everything, when we get to the core, on faith.  Just because the sun rose today doesn't mean it will tomorrow, but we're pretty darned sure it will.  Thats all that gets prooved by science.  So, what is it you have faith in?  What do we believe will solve "The Problem".  I believe most of us here do believe that there is something terribly wrong with ourselves and the world we live in.

   So, how does any of that have to do with the bible being God's holy word.  Because it says it is, and I have faith that God is Almighty and all Loving.  Yes, your faith in what you believe is as good as my faith in my beliefs.  So, lets take a look at the root difference between a Christian and anyone else.  This difference is control.  Who's in control? Are you in control?  Or, is God.  Is your faith in your own ability to be good?  Yes it is a very nice thing to be a "good person".  I even wishfully admire people who have acquired the fine art of discipline and adherence to the laws of right and wrong.  God knows i'm a miserable example.  But, in the end, to who goes the credit?  Ourselves.  Faith in ourselves. That is what every other belief system offers.  Its not wrong for wanting to be good.  It is just wrong to think that you are the source of "goodness".  Let us not think,the statement "God is good" to mean that God is a "good person", as though we could define Him in such limited and earthly terms.  But, He is actual goodness.  The very essence of whatever goodness is!  So, when attempting to "BE" good you are actually attempting to usurp God's place.  The original sin.  Lucifer wanted to BE God.  Adam and Eve ate of the fruit because they were tricked by Lucifer into believeing that if they did eat they could be as God.  They exercised their free will by putting their faith in themselves.  You, are not good.  Only God is good, and goodness can only be gotten from Him.  For those of you who believe we are God, I would have to say that this cannot be and there is a line of logic to come to that conclusion as well which I will not include here for purpose of length.

   This is the difference between Christians and all others.  They admit to the fact that we as humans have put our faith in ourselves.  We are in control.  They realize that we are botching it up miserably, as can be seen everywhere you look.  The rape of the land, oceans, forest, men, women, and children!  So, with their free will they choose to believe God's holy word that we cannot BE good.  We submit our will back to God, we give up control, by accepting Jesus Christ as our Savior.  And, like children who admire our older sibling we do our best to mimmic Christ.  We want to be like Christ, but realize we will never be Him.  So,we "watch" Him, thru reading the bible, prayer, and community with other believers.  We do our best to take note of His actions and to do our best to immitate Him.  Most importantly of all though, we "die" with Him.  We no longer want choice between good and evil.  We no longer want control.  We only want to know God.  Nothing else matters.  All else is dust and ashes.  But, we are still in control and that is our struggle.  Our pride, is as great as your pride.  That is why we Christians fail as badly as everyone else.  

   We are the enemy my friends.  All of us.  In rebel territory, under the rule of a hate-ful prince.  God's army presses in all about our borders.  He is rallying His creations to His banner.  He is coming to finally free us.  That is why Narrow Path and exogen and other people such as myself come here to "preach".  We feel that call.  We must try, in our imperfect ways, to show you "the Way, the Truth, and the Life".  So you can feel that call! I beg you, abandon yourself to the Love of Christ with me!

Let us worship the Lord, for He is good!

Your brother in Christ,

Passionate-Fool.