So can we safely assume that Wayne has finally turned tail and run, or is he simply incapable of posting a reply that won't get moderated?
O ye of little faith.
Not necessarily. He does work away from home so can';t always be available and, besides, he posted last Friday and may well have been busy with church over the weekend.
Give him time
Thanks Wheels. I just got done reading all of your responses and maybe I can do what I can to answer them in this one. Here Goes.
To JeffPT,
Forgive me but you like others here are shooting at me with a machine gun, basically telling me that I'm a liar as you said and I quote:
I've known too many liars for Jesus,
Let me ask you something... if you believe in Proverbs 3:5,6, what experience could possibly lead you to think it's NOT true? Is there anything? What could happen to make you think that you shouldn't trust the lord with all your heart?
That is actually a good question. Some Christians have lived really miserable lives. All of the heroes of Christianity have endured unbelievable hardship and devestation. In a way, people of faith are made to endure incomprehensible paradoxes, and it typically drives them closer to God. Who knows that I might suffer such a plight in my lifetime, but if I do, I can have the assurance that the same spirit that inspired the psalmist to say "though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil." is the same one that is with me. A grand drama is being played out here on earth to test us. You must know the story of Job. If the spirit of God could keep Job in all his trials, that same Spirit can keep me. Without that spirit, I'm certain to be crushed.
If you superimpose this statement on everything that happens to you, then what could possibly make you think otherwise? Believing that you should trust God no matter what is a perfect barrier to using your own logic. Even the worst possible tragedies can be explained away by saying 'trust God, trust God, trust God' over and over again.
If a supernatural being that created you gives you a promise, he has the ability to keep it. I need to use my logic to adjust to every worldly thing, but still I must submit to a god that transends it all. It's like give unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and to God that which is God's. It's tricky, I know, and I'm doing my best to navigate it all.
What evidence do you have of a 'Holy Spirit'?
I'm going to simply say that by design, a spirit is something god created to be able to communicate to believers and to shut you out. The spirit is a spirit for the purpose of defying your need for proof. I'm guessing about His reasons for a spirit, but you may as well stop asking me to prove something to someone from whom God has hidden the proof.
You could however just try to imagine yourself in my place in my stories. I often ask what others might have done differently than I if the things that happened to me happened to them. I'm not so arrogant as to think that I interpreted every incident perfectly, in fact, as history proves, I mostly didn't know initially what it means, but God was faithful in time to make the meanings more clear. The meanings behind three consecutive earthquakes may yet to be revealed..., but what I do know about it is that people are full of Joy, and others are full of terror. Lucky me.
Brain...washed. All religions do it. You're so deep in it now you can't even see the top of the hole anymore.
Youare absolutely right to be sceptical for that very reason. Satan is an excellent and highly accomplished impostor. I pray diligently that I not be carried off on some fools errand. Satan is smarter than I and I know it. But he is not more powerful that God. The scripture says, greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world.(Satan)
I'd like to answer each bullet Jeff has sprayed at me but after a while, it is a bit futile to talk to someone that needs so much to insult. It isn't just Jeff, there are a few other angry people that are taking their frustrations out on me and can't control their need to demean. I feel sorry for you Jeff.
Now, How about that earthquake story. I sense from some responses that I'm being treated like I'm not lying and I really appreciate that.
..... this is what God had to do to make it all happen.
Hilarious, Wayne. Three people died in that earthquake. A regular laugh riot. Your god knew it was a comin', and sent you a premonition that you didn't recognise until after the event, so that you could go "wee-hoo! Ain't I special!".
It is weird I know.
Three people died in that earthquake. Should I be laughing?
Maybe I wouldn't laugh if I was you. There is a profound and dire message here for those who reject God.
If everything in your paragraph above is true, Wayne, then you have told a story of a god who has all the means and opportunity necessary to save those people.....and didn't. It used its colossal power and knowledge to give you a funky little story to tell to make people go "ooooh".
It's weird isn't it. What would you do if you were me, not tell anybody about it?
Three people died in that earthquake. Should I be impressed?
I don't know but I sure was.
Keep laughing, Wayne, while you think about how you and yur god between you could have saved those three lives - but didn't.
I know earthquakes are serious. I know people die. It hurts when we lose loved ones, but God obviously has a different view of life and death and has provided for believers an escape for the sting of death. Believers can suffer, pain, and the loss of loved ones like anybody else. I am reporting accurately as I can what has happened to me. It is weird that in my vision someone was laughing and that it turned out to be me, and the lady I was talking to, but Christian's are known to have a peace that passes understanding and so, as strange as the circumstances were, I was visited with the absolute opposite of fear and terror, I was visited with joy unspeakable and full of glory.
This is heavy stuff. I'm not laughing at you responding like you are to it because for an unbeliever it probably should elicit terror. I think, between you and I, we are approaching the point of it all.
Gotta wonder if Noah & Co. were also getting a good chuckle at all of the men, women, children and infants drowning all around them.
My laughter was in context to the words that came from my mouth, and the power of the God who inspired me to speak it as I did. That Spirit did not trouble me with the thoughts of dying people, and if He had I would have mourned. As it was in my Dark Knight Premonition I was being blessed with the joy of God's presence and even called the story an example of his sense of humor because he was making me laugh.
But just think about this. If it is a god that promises blessings to the obedient and cursings to the disobedient, why wouldn't he do things in exactly the way hes doing it with me. He didn't torture me with a vision of a theater being strafed with a semi automatic rifle and a gas bomb when I was just taking my daughter out to a movie, he waited until twenty three years later, and now my daughter is twenty nine . When I realised the connection to my old story, I was shocked and stunned, but I began to understand that he is omniscient, and had chosen me to write about it so you could have an opportunity to believe that He's there and he means business..
Did you know that people who believe without seeing are more blessed that ones that have seen? John 20:29 says:
Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.
They're with God[1] now, Anfauglir. Their deaths aren't a tragedy to Wayne, so why wouldn't he find it joyous, or at least trivial, that they died?
Thanks for your comment. Death was not on my mind at the time of the laughing, but I'm sure my thoughts pondered in the following days how awesome the whole event was. Within a weeks time of that event i told the story to a member of the church I joined while we sat in his house. When i told him about the screaming and the laughter, he pointed to a picture on his wall. I found a grainy representation of it to past in here. In the great and terrible day of the lord there will be both joy and anguish. Joy for those who have hope in Jesus Christ and anguish for those who have rejected him.
Here is the kicker. I joined the church, and was baptised on the 17th of October, seventeen days after the earthquake. You may remember that I said that three consecutive earthquakes had significance to me? Without telling you a whole new story here, one element of one of the other earthquakes was that it occurred on October 17th, Loma Prieta. The fact that it coincides with the anniversary of my baptism is NOT the most remarkable part of the story I haven't told you, but for fun, I'll mention just that part here. Oh, just one more thing. Missionaries I was assigned to drive to their appointments Sunday after the October 17th earthquake that I'm not telling you the story of... lived on San Andreas Street in Fountain Valley. Now, remember, this is only trivia of the real story.
It's past my bedtime. If there are any Christian's listening in, ones that know of a publisher that would like to help me consolidate my stories, there could be some kind of a finder's fee if anything came of it all. Feel free to PM me.