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To: Rockingham

Most people are uncomfortable with NDEs beacuse they are supernatural, and our souls are scarred with how to live in the world by soulish means.

Many from a Christian culture are similarly scarred, but the very meaning of Christianity is premised upon supernatural events and a way of thinking through faith in what He has provided us, which is very spiritual (quite supernatural).

So the trick is to discern the spirits.

BTW, modern psychiatry is premised by theories posed by original theorists who also followed Theosophy, which was from Madame Blavatsky a known Satanist. When discussing the spiritual realm, lots of modern psychiatry will attempt to throw false principles into the mix. Case in point is the ‘science’ of sleep paralysis.


52 posted on 10/10/2017 4:53:33 AM PDT by Cvengr ( Adversity in life & death is inevitable; Stress is optional through faith in Christ.)
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To: Cvengr
For the early Christian church, the pagan view of the supernatural was problematic in that pagans accessed it routinely through divination, oracles, mystery cults, and ritual substance intoxication. Christians looked instead to Christian prayer and supplication, the Mass and Sacraments and other services, and to Christian miracles. Drunken pagan temple orgies were out, replaced by Christian fidelity, sobriety, and the routines of work and family life.

In concept at least, for faithful Christians, the supernatural was nevertheless pervasive in the form of the struggle between good and evil, with good personified by Christ and the Trinity, along with angels, saints, and the Church and clergy as Christ's representatives on earth. I am reminded of Millet's painting "The Angelus" and its depiction of a farm couple pausing in their work in a field to recite the traditional three times daily devotion to Mary's acceptance of the Incarnation.

Yet even as Millet painted The Angelus in the middle of the 11th Century, the traditional Christian view of the supernatural was under assault. In the modern era, mainline Christians -- Protestants especially -- came to scorn the supernatural and saw traditional Christianity and Catholicism especially as beset by superstition. Scientific explanations were sought and accepted for natural mysteries. NDEs were mostly ignored as a trivial matter awaiting an eventual explanation by science.

Yet, as you suggest, the supernatural cannot be dismissed and keeps intruding on human experience. Many of the children and grandchildren of the secularized and material minded Christians of the 1950s explored the supernatural through New Age philosophies and practices -- but then recognized or collided with its sinister aspects. They found their way to evangelical Christianity or at least a renewed appreciation of traditional faith.

The long disfavored Catholic rite of exorcism experienced a wave of new demand as a result of New Age spiritualism. And even the modernist Pope Francis is a major advocate of exorcism and has expanded its availability and use. There are also numerous Evangelical and freelance exorcists these days.

As for NDEs and the like, there are now accounts by medical personnel of unusual events they have experienced tending to dying patients. In some instances, patients even pass on messages for medical personnel. Alas, I know of only one instance in which a lottery winner described having been told in a dream the winning combination of numbers by her recently deceased father.

168 posted on 10/10/2017 11:15:11 AM PDT by Rockingham
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