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#Post#: 825--------------------------------------------------
Light and darkness
By: Helen Date: March 21, 2015, 10:31 am
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I must say I flip and flop on this, but it's good to "keep the
balance"
There is obviously a connection between Angels and the prayer of
the saints. Maybe sometimes we get complacent and forget this?
We see it when Daniel prayed to the Lord for 21 days never
receiving an answer from God until the 21st days because of a
spiritual battle that took place between one of God's angels
and a powerful demon called the Prince of Persia, until the
Archangel Michael relieved him.
"Then he [the Angel] continued, "Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since
the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and
to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I
have come in response to them. 13 But the prince of the Persian
kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the
chief princes, came to help me, because I was detained there
with the king of Persia. 14 Now I have come to explain to you
what will happen to your people in the future, for the vision
concerns a time yet to come." (Daniel 10:12-14)
We also hear of conflicts going on between Angels and Satan....
"Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the
angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to
accuse him. The LORD said to Satan, "The LORD rebuke you, Satan!
Indeed, the LORD who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is this
not a brand plucked from the fire?" (Zechariah 3:1-2)
"And especially those who indulge the flesh in its corrupt
desires and despise authority; Daring, self-willed, they do not
tremble when they revile angelic majesties whereas angels who
are greater in might and power do not bring a reviling judgment
against them before the Lord. " (2 Peter 2:10-11)
"But Michael the archangel, when he disputed with the devil and
argued about the body of Moses, did not dare pronounce against
him a railing judgment, but said, 'The Lord rebuke you!' " (Jude
9)
I believe it is good to pray both sides of the coin...the
positive side of light and freedom and against the dark side of
bondage. " We being bot ignorant of the devils devices"
" Whatsoever you bind on earth.........whatsoever you loose on
earth......"
#Post#: 826--------------------------------------------------
Re: Light and darkness
By: James Date: March 21, 2015, 5:51 pm
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I must come back to this but I am so very tired I can not at
this time see straight.
Later!
#Post#: 827--------------------------------------------------
Re: Light and darkness
By: Kerry Date: March 21, 2015, 6:03 pm
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I think people can run into spiritual trouble if they pray
"against" something. In some cases, it can invite demonic
attacks by granting demons authority in areas they didn't have
authority before.
If someone else has demonic influences, it's because for one
reason or another he's either invited them or hasn't actively
chosen angelic influences. When someone is wobbly about
choosing good, wanting to be double minded, wanting to keep the
option of being bad open, he is not accepting the angelic
influences or rejecting the demonic. That is his choice. He is
entitled to his choice by the Law of Free Will.
The rule to follow is the Golden Rule. If we do not want other
people interfering with our free will decisions over which
forces we summon into our lives, we cannot believe we have the
right to choose for others which forces they should summon. If
we pray against the demonic influences in someone's life and he
wants them, we have just broken the Golden Rule and are guilty
of breaking the Law of Free Will.
This can be dangerous. It gives the demons the right to attack
us. Angels can't protect us if we are guilty ourselves of
what we want to stop in other people.
People who pray for the demonic influences of spiritual delusion
and deception to be lifted from the eyes of other people can
fall into delusion and deception themselves; and if they
persist, they can become severely afflicted. I met a girl once
but not her mother; but from the stories I heard, I'd say her
mother was stark raving mad since she fancied herself a prayer
warrior and thought she could pray about anything and drive out
demons.
I'm quite sure there are demonic forces at work with some of the
terrorists who behead and burn people, kidnap and rape girls,
etc. I do not pray against them however. God forbid I should
do that. Let God rebuke such demons when it is their time.
What I pray for is the good. I believe most people want peace
so they can lead decent lives, so I pray for them; I ask God to
give them what they want. I may pray for peace, but I don't
pray to end war. If God decides to use war or violence to
punish them, so be it. That is not my business; but I can care
about the good people in those troubled areas and make them my
business by agreeing with them and praying for them. I once
prayed for a certain country -- for peace, mind you -- and in a
very short time, the news came in that people had attacked a
police station in a town I'd never heard of -- that spread and
the whole government came down. I can't prove it; but I
believe there were enough good people there wanting peace and
prosperity that the wicked forces could be dealt with by the
angels.
I have been attacked spiritually myself by all sorts of people
-- a few times by wiccans and sometimes by misguided Christians
who thought they needed to correct me by praying about me. In
some cases, I choose to ignore such things; but in some cases,
I may take action. If I have not tried to interfere with their
free will decisions and they are trying to interfere with mine,
that gives the right to interfere with their free will without
violating the Law of Free Will.
If I love someone enough, I will interfere with them back if
they interfered with me. Jesus did that with the Romans. They
didn't have the right to crucify him; but when they did, that
gave Jesus the right to interfere with them. So he prayed for
them for the Father to forgive them since they didn't know what
they were doing. The whole Roman Empire fell. The demonic
forces behind the Roman Empire were defeated. But note Jesus
did not ask for anything bad, did not pray against anyone, did
not pray against the demons who plotted his death.
If I am not sure I love someone enough that I can pray for them
with complete love, I let it alone. If I "feel superior" to
people, I seldom pray for them since I am afraid my attitude may
be pride at work and maybe I'd be praying like the hypocrite, "I
thank thee, God, that I am not like this man."
Things are not always the way they seem. I have seen some
"bad" people as being better than me, meaning that I expect them
to be ahead of me in the kingdom some day. Judging from
appearances alone, I could fear superior -- some of these people
can look like great sinners, can act and be great sinners -- but
I don't feel superior over that. There are some gifted and
powerful people that make me, "If they harnessed all that for
the good, what magnificent saints they would be."
There are two verses which at first glance seem to be teaching
different things. The Bible itself seems to "flip and flop" on
it (to use Helen's phrase).
Matthew 5:39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but
whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the
other also.
James 4:7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil,
and he will flee from you.
My take on Matthew 5 is that Jesus is talking about the evil
that others do. There is no point in getting upset and feeling
we must "fight back." That's how people get sucked into things
and then they can become as bad as the evil they're resisting.
I think James 4 is saying the best way to "resist temptation" is
to submit to the good. The best way to defeat the Devil is to
submit to God. This has to do with our temptations as
individuals. We are entitled by the Law of Free Will to choose
the good and not the evil. This verse is not saying we have
the right to resist the Devil in other people's lives.
It may be worth noting that at times Jesus made people say they
wanted to be made whole. He got their permission. I think he
asked this if they were being double minded. In other cases, he
didn't ask; and sometimes he didn't ask when parents or loved
ones asked for something. If there are ties of love between
people, they have the right to interfere with each other's free
will to the extent they love. Thus Jesus had the right to heal
the servant of the centurion when the centurion asked.
#Post#: 828--------------------------------------------------
Re: Light and darkness
By: James Date: March 23, 2015, 10:12 am
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This has wandered away from angels and by asking this question
Kerry it might even wander some more.
In the spirit of discussion Kerry I would like to ask how does
Jesus and the two men in the tombs fit in with the violation of
free will, since they did not ask to be free and the demons in
them made the point that there was a set time for their torment.
I see this as saying "there is a right time for us to leave and
that time is not now".
Then we have Paul and the girl who followed them bringing her
masters much gain by sooth saying, Paul did not get her
permission to call out the demon.
From what you say Kerry if you were asked to pray for a friend
of a friend in hospital with cancer (which I see as a spirit)
you would not pray against the cancer in case the patient did
not want you to even though the friend wanted you to because he
loved the sufferer, or felt it was the God-love thing to do?
#Post#: 831--------------------------------------------------
Re: Light and darkness
By: Kerry Date: March 23, 2015, 2:20 pm
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[quote author=James link=topic=73.msg828#msg828 date=1427123541]
This has wandered away from angels and by asking this question
Kerry it might even wander some more.
In the spirit of discussion Kerry I would like to ask how does
Jesus and the two men in the tombs fit in with the violation of
free will, since they did not ask to be free and the demons in
them made the point that there was a set time for their torment.
I see this as saying "there is a right time for us to leave and
that time is not now".[/quote]
Those people with demons interfered with Jesus first, giving him
the right to interfere back. He had done nothing and said
nothing to them, yet they accused him of something -- asking if
he had come to "torment them before their time." They were
also interfering with the rights of other people, and that gave
Jesus the right to interfere with them. Some readers may
believe what they said but I don't. I don't think Jesus wanted
to torment anyone, including the demons. As for their "time,"
I also doubt they knew much about that. According to Matthew,
it was their idea to go into the pigs, and Jesus merely let them
do what they asked for, saying, "Go" to them. Jesus was not
"opposing" them in any way?
The demonic suffers from its own set of delusions, one is
paranoia or fear. They see the Divine as hating them,
therefore they experience the Divine that way.
Psalm 18:26 With the pure thou wilt shew thyself pure; and with
the froward thou wilt shew thyself froward.
Jesus was merely walking along in the Spirit of Love, but they
suspected him of hate.
1 John 4:18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth
out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made
perfect in love.
Have you ever done something wrong to someone and you thought he
didn't know about it? Most of us have especially in our youth.
If he didn't know and still liked you and spoke kindly to you,
do you remember how "hot" that made you feel just being around
him? If someone loves us when we know we did something bad to
him, it makes us feel hot and ashamed; and we want to get away.
We then have a choice: We can run away, or we can confess
what we did to him and hope he still likes us. What's
interesting about that is that when guilty people run away, they
often try to defend themselves by lying about the other person.
They're looking for a way of making their consciences feel
better -- but it doesn't work -- it never does -- but they
believe if they can find a reason for what they did by saying
"but he did this or that to me first", it will make them feel
better.
The conscience can drive people crazy. Some people are so bent
on looking for excuses for their own behavior, they'll start
believing what they say. Sometimes they lose their minds so
much, they'll say, "I did this to him because he did that to
me" and tell you something that the other person did to them
after they did whatever it is that is making them feel guilty.
In the case of these demons, perhaps we can think the demons
were so sure God hated them and would punish them in the future
that that justified their being wicked now. That's a little
crazy. That's like a child saying, "My parents hate me and are
going to punish me in the future so I am going to be bad now."
The demons also may have wanted to be removed from this
world. Entering the bodies of the pigs was a bad idea.
Unclean animals can deal with such things. That is the purpose
they serve in this world. They clean up the environment by
taking the unclean things on themselves and then dealing with
them. They act like garbage collectors.
I know many people have a different take on it; but I see the
demons wanting to enter the pigs so they could be drowned just
as the demonic in Pharaoh craved death "in the sea." It is
"better" for some things to be "cast into the sea" so they are
drowned and taken out of this world. Thus Jesus said it was
"better" for the man who was about to offend against innocent
children if he would have a millstone put around his neck and be
thrown into the sea. Yes, better for the children -- but
better for him too. There is something about "evil" that wants
to be removed. If we hate it or pray against it, we can't
remove it.
[quote]Then we have Paul and the girl who followed them bringing
her masters much gain by sooth saying, Paul did not get her
permission to call out the demon.[/quote]Paul didn't figure out
what was going on there for a while. When he did figure it out,
then he took action. The girl was bothering him. She was
interfering with him, thus giving him the right to interfere
with her.
The girl and the soothsaying spirit were both being kept in
bondage by her owners. I call such beings "elementals." They
are more neutral rather than good or bad. The person who can
communicate with such a fortune-telling spirit can be tempted to
sin however; and then the person and the "elemental" are both in
trouble. My opinion is that the soothsaying spirit wanted Paul
to interfere. Thus it told the girl who Paul was, and she
followed him and was telling the truth!
Compare that to how the demons started the conversation with
Jesus. They started it.
[quote]From what you say Kerry if you were asked to pray for a
friend of a friend in hospital with cancer (which I see as a
spirit) you would not pray against the cancer in case the
patient did not want you to even though the friend wanted you to
because he loved the sufferer, or felt it was the God-love thing
to do?[/quote]
The spiritual forces that cause sickness are different from the
kind we typically call demons. The forces that cause sickness
are similar to the ones that cause uncleanness. They've been
around for thousands possibly millions of years and often get
passed down from parents to children. They can be passed on by
sexual contact.
Would I pray for a friend of a friend with cancer? Not
specifically that he would be healed. Without knowing the
specifics, I could be praying amiss. Some people want to be
sick. Oh yes, they may say they don't, but they do. I would
pray that God's Will be done. I might pray for healing if it is
possible and if it's right, but I leave that judgment in the
hands of God. It's a complicated thing, James.
I had a friend who met a Wiccan who discovered he could heal
people. I didn't meet the man, but I believe the story. He
thought it great fun to go around healing people. Then he came
down diabetes himself after he healed a woman of diabetes. It
seems pretty clear to me he erred in healing her. No matter
what he did, he couldn't get rid of it in himself.
The Wiccans go by the rule, "Do what thou wilt but harm ye
none." They are supposed to anyway. What this man did wrong
was acting without knowing what was right. If that woman
wanted her case of diabetes, he stole it from her. My guess is
he interfered with her free will and paid for it. Odds are she
would deny wanting the diabetes had you asked -- thus a "lie"
was involved -- and he also stole her "lie" from her.
I don't make the assumption that healing is always the best
thing for me to pray for. Maybe I would like to see everyone
healed of everything, but I'm not omniscient and I don't
believe that's for me to decide.
There is another pitfall that goes with going around thinking we
can pray down anything and everything. If we fail and do not
know why, we will begin to believe the Satanic is more powerful
than the Divine. We tend to want to worship what we consider
the most powerful thing. If we see the Satanic as so powerful
that our prayers aren't working, we may be tempted to fall into
Satanism ourselves; and that is tricky business since we may not
know what we're doing. We may devise a false Christ in our
minds, thinking it's the real Jesus, when it's not. When a
person is thoroughly convinced he is talking to Jesus when in
fact he's talking to a demon, I'd say in general the case is
getting close to hopeless. That person is usually afraid of
his demon and would be terrified to test the spirits. He would
be afraid of being damned if he doubted if it was really Jesus.
Thus he is trapped.
The basic error may be falling into believing we can always know
what is best. Unless we're omniscient, I doubt we can know
that. Unless the Spirit informs us what is going on and what
it is right to pray for, there are dangers in praying if we're
praying against people. God gave us free will. Satan hates
the liberty God gave us. If we are opposing the free will of
others, we are doing Satan's work.
#Post#: 832--------------------------------------------------
Re: Light and darkness
By: James Date: March 23, 2015, 4:16 pm
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Thanks Kerry, that was most interesting and enlightening. I
shall now read it again.
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