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Miracles in TWI


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Alfakat, that was d*x*e from spokane. however, she was bl*nd and became able to see. And yes, I think she was in the 7th corpse but this happened before she went was the corpse.

Ok!! * w*ll not try to be a n*ce person...ok? * w*ll not!!

[This message was edited by vickles on December 19, 2003 at 15:12.]

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I believe that any miracles and healings that may have been happening were eventually stifled by the legalism of the leadership.

In my experience I never saw anything that absolutely could not have been explained by the laws of nature, or by coincidence, or even by fantasizing or wishful thinking, HOWEVER there were plenty of times when a desired result came to pass after someone prayed. Maybe it was random chance, or even lowered expectations, maybe not. The point is that people believed that the supernatural could happen.

Little by little restrictions were put on believing. Any revelation had to agree with what leadership said, or even that only leadership would receive revelation. You wouldn't see miracles if you weren't giving significantly above the tithe, if you were in debt, if you weren't "salted". People who previously experienced signs, miracles and wonders no longer did because they were talked out of it.

This wasn't because of a sudden burst of agnosticism among wayfers, or a teaching that the supernatural wasn't available, just that it was taught that there were so many restrictions, so many hoops to go through, so many requirements, that even thinking about the supernatural became unusual.

Heck, I've seen more miracles in the last six months, by non-Christians than I did in my last six years in TWI.

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice...but in practice there is

Oakspear icon_cool.gif

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I never knew Dixie before her "healing", but had a little contact with her after.

I was very excited about her story - the way it had been relayed to me, anyway - and asked her about the great "miracle of healing" she'd experienced. She was rather lackadaisical about it and sort of gave me a brush-off. Maybe she'd told the story once too often and was getting weary of it - or maybe there was less to it than we had been told?

I do know that her eyes, though sorta blue, still weren't altogether "normal" looking, at least to me, and she wore glasses. Whatsamatter, God couldn't figure out how to heal her properly? And I noticed too,... she was still an albino. Maybe I shouldn't have?

And Alfakat, as far as God working in me, don't bet any serious money on it, pal. There's never been ANY evidence of that in my life, at all. Of course for the faithful, reality needn't intrude on a good story, eh?

geo.

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yeah, yeah, George--we all know you've got the skeptic curmudgeon bit down pat... icon_rolleyes.gif:rolleyes:--> but maybe it isn't as exoteric as you seem to think. You did last with it for a while; perhaps there is more to it than your analysis would deduce...reality might be beyond both your and my ability to adequately define. When you have definitive answers, George, maybe you will know from good stories....

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So on Waydale and at Gspot there have been

many threads on the topic of miracles and

deliverance. Its always a mixed bag it seems.

So my experiences with "miracles" and TWI:

During my Way daze

I never witnessed any healings, miracles, or

deliverances. None ,not one , never. But

lord knows that I heard many tall tales about

the blind seeing again,

limbs growing back, even some dead people being

rasied from the dead but ALL of these stories

were told of someone else- usually a friend of a

friend, with a kind of urban myth vibe.

Of course Way celebs such as VPW always

figured heavily into some of these tales -

"yea VPW cast the spirits from this guy and

he was able to walk again after 10 years of

paralysis, isn't that great ?". Well sure its

great ....but only if it REALLY happened.

I set about tracking down some of these people

who were supposedly miraculously delivered. Since these stories were abundant I started

holding people accountable by saying"So whats

the name of the person ? Where can I find him/

her ? I'd love to hear the story - it would

help my believing". So not ONCE did any body

give me anything concrete or useful to go on.

It was just evasive double-talk like "Well thats

really a private matter" or "They are no longer

standing with the ministry". Seems

to me people delivered in such a grandioise

fashion would be screaming to the world about

their deliverance.

At a HeartBeat festival I was going to ask VPW

about one of these stories of deliverance but

some local leaders forbade me to do so claiming

that "he is very busy and needs to minister to

the body". Stupid me for even mentioning it. I should have gone right up to him and said "Hey

I heard you ministered to someone and his arm

grew back. I'd like to hear about it". What the

hell would have been wrong with that ? But no.

local leaders said things like "God gets the

glory not anyone else so Doctor doesn't like

to talk about those things". Sounds to me like

the bullsh**ters were protecting the ace bullsh**ter.

In conclusion I must say that I did encounter

some pretty wild situations BEFORE my time with

TWI. And perhaps 6 months into my Way experience

a buddy of mine and myself saw something pretty

neat but this experience was based on information and teaching we had received BEFORE

we were with TWI. we even told some people at

twig about what we both saw though instead of

supporting it or being interested in it they

criticized the whole thing "You are opening

your mind to devil spirits", blah, blah,.

So I used to hear local people talking about

things like "I was really sick with a 104 degree fever but I had to be there for the PFAL

class so my WOW brother prayed for me and three

days later I was totally well!". I often wondered if they were they for real ? did they really think that was a miracle ? Perhaps it

was simple desperation to actually experience

a mircale that people lowered their threshold

for what actually constitutes a mircale.

[This message was edited by diazbro on December 20, 2003 at 16:05.]

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A couple of years after taking PFAL, I was driving my car over to see my grandmother. It was cold out and there was a lot of "black ice" on the road. I turned a corner and was going a little to fast so I hit my brakes and started to slide.

Ahead, on my side of the road, was a man in front of his car shoveling snow because his car had slid off the road. As I hit my brakes I started to slide toward his car. He was standing in front of his car and I was approaching the back of his car.

I was so close to hitting his car that I closed my eyes and braced for the collision. I yelled "God help me." Eyes closed, I waited for the collision and my car running into the back of the car that would then be pushed into the man in front of it.

No collision came......when I opened my eyes I was stopped way up on the OTHER side of the road next to a snow bank.

As I write this today my skin is tingling. I know God caused something to happen to keep me from crashing into that car and man.

[This message was edited by Paradiseden on December 20, 2003 at 16:53.]

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Alfakat,

Re: "perhaps there is more to it than your analysis would deduce"

No, actually I'm pretty sure that there was a whole lot LESS to it. Talk is cheap, and that's about all I'd ever gotten outa WayWorld - or church, for that matter.

Speaking in tongues made me think they were on to something, but when I realized what a scam that was, well the party was over...

geo.

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God forgive me, but I've wondered, who was the poor chump I read about in one of those old "Heart" rags who ended up with a pencil getting shoved into his ear amidst the hugging and love-bombing following the close of a fellowship?

I'm sorry , but my room mates and I laughed when we read that, with the late Gary Smith prophetically uttering, "You know, they're really getting bad..."

Hope your ear is feeling better.

Danny

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Driving from Newport, R.I., over the Newport bridge towards a small island (Island town of Jamestown) in the middle of Narragansett bay, that connects to the south side of the bay I ran into stopped traffic 1.5 miles before the bridge that took you to Narragansett, the south side of the bay.

I got a feeling that something was wrong and got tired of sitting in stopped traffic. A still voice said: "Get in the opposite lane and drive the 1.5 miles to the bridge". Feeling a little funny, I just did it. As I drove by the massive line of cars, people yelled and hollered at me, but I continued on to the front of the line and parked my car. There was a police officer there who had blocked the entrance to the bridge; and I could see that at the other end of the bridge was blocked from traffic also.

The R.I. cop asked me what the hell I was up to and I just said: "I'm a pastor, can I be of some help"? He said: "There is a guy that climbed up on the bridge and is trying to commit suicide. He has climbed up about 15 feet higher that the road pavement and is threatenig to jump."

For some reason, the cop let me stay where I was and I walked about 20 toward the bride, away from anybody that could hear me. I just looked at the spot where the guy was, about 300 ft. away and commanded, in the name of Jesus Christ that the mans mind be still and that he immediately climb down the bridge structure and give himself up. I just spoke it outloud and at the very second I said "in the name of Jesus Christ", a loud voice on the police radio of the cop, inback of me, hollered: "He's coming down".

The police officer heard the news and in about 1 minute, after they had got the man into an ambulance and drove off, he unblocked the bridge; and I now became the first in line to drive over the bridge to go home.

I heard later that people in that line (of cars, on both sides of the bridge) had been waiting up to two hours for this incident to come to a conclusion

The power of God or just nice timing.......?

YBYA it was a miracle.

[This message was edited by Lightside on December 21, 2003 at 17:33.]

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Sadly, my experiences were like Diazbro's. That people cringed when I asked for more information made me even more leery. Having said that, there were several cases where I did witness what I would consider miracles. Only one was connected with TWI. Not exactly the book of Acts is it?

It sounds like we did get a least a few who felt they were part of miracle. For that, I'm thankful.

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Far be it for me to say whether someone's experience was or wasn't a miracle.

The reference to the book of Acts as a standard for miracles has been brought up a few times. Maybe the question can include, why don't we see those big time miracles that you see in the bible?

Assuming that the averted car crash, the potential suicide climbing down just in time to get someone through traffic, and the apparent healings are genuine miracles, why do all the miracles that happen nowadays seem to be the type that require the participant to say "I just know it was God".

It was pretty plain that Lazarus and Dorcas were dead, and just as plain that they weren't after Jesus and Peter got God involved. Jesus and Peter walked on the water, people who really were blind were able to see. Fire came down from heaven and wacked all those Baal worshippin' priests and prophets.

Why don't we see miracles of that caliber any more?

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice...but in practice there is

Oakspear icon_cool.gif

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Oaks, you sound like you're quoting those records like, well, records. icon_smile.gif:)--> A "believer" would say they happened just like that. An "unbeliever" would say they're lies, stories, myths, mistakes or embellishments.

Frankly, I do think things like that happen today.

I once read in a book I wish I still had, I think it was titled something about Surviving. It was a collection of incredible accounts that had happened to people, "miracles", but not a religious book. It had to do with survival in extreme situations.

One account was of a guy who was lost at sea, believe it was a plane crashing in the water. He floated around in the water for awhile, trying to tread water. He eventually made it to land, miles away.

He said that as he was trying to stay afloat, a huge sea turtle popped up out of the water near him and floated there for awhile. He was going to sink and drown so out of desparation he swam over to the turtle and shuffled up on the back of it trying to hold on. Suddenly the turtle took off and he just held on. The turtle swam to within land and before it beached, it turned around, the guy let go and he swam to shore. He swore that's what happened. I don't remember if it said he prayed or not.

Another story in that book was about a kid in the midwest somewhere who fell through the ice on a lake and was submerged in freezing water for 11 minutes. Basically, he drowned and was dead when they pulled him up finally. He revived.

These kinds of stories aren't exactly fire from heaven. Or are they? "Weird" things happen all the time, somewhere. Some of them have religious insinuations, some don't.

On the other hand, when I think of things like Jesus walking on water, it's obviously an impossible thing that no one could do. Or is it? If He did it, apparently it can be done, it's just a matter of how it was done, what the cause was. Turtles saving drowning men? Coincidence? Or...? what...?

baby's calling me home,

she keeps on callin' me home....

(boz scaggs)

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The books of Acts may or may not be a good standard for the frequency of miracles. It is only 28 chapters and covers decades. Needless to say, only some of the high(and low)lights of the new Christian church are in there. My guess is that not every day was chock full of miracles. Just like every day of Jesus' life may not have included teaching thousands of people. They had to do laundry sometime.

Now the amazing nature of them, I'll leave that to the reader. I'm with Oak though. My goal with this thread was to see IF we're seeing them. Not a lot of evidence so far that there are many going on and I'm just in the wrong place.

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The thing I always notice about "miracle" stories, is that they're always in the past tense.

People LOVE to talk about the time they prayed for so-and-so's headache or cold and then it IMMEDIATELY went away! What they're not so eager to do is DEMONSTRATE that healing ability in the here and now. Repeatability would go a long ways towards convincing me of the supernatural. Unfortunately, I can't think of anybody who can do repeat performances of miracles. The best they seem to be able to do is tell you "about the time..."

Certainly a big part of the draw of WayWorld - especially to the young and inexperienced (which we were) - was the promise of miraculous benefits abounding. All we had to do was have a need, BELIEVE, and voila!, instant deliverance!

Problem is, it never happened that way. The Cosmic Vending Machine of God seems to be one tempermental piece of equipment. Every now and then it seems to work for someone, somewhere, but never for you in particular. Somehow there's always something you didn't do quite right. You need to "build your believing", the "temperature of believing" in the surrounding community isn't hot enough, or some goddam thing. And then, of course, there's always the possibility that you haven't been "abundantly sharing" enough.

Gawd, what a crock. We were lied to people. There's no Santa Claus, there's no all-loving man with a long white beard floating around in space waiting on our every need, and the laws of physics are not overridden for our convenience.

Gravity, aging, disease, and utimately death are all things we have to learn to deal with. Praying, believing, or waving a magic wand has never shown itself to be an effectual way of handling any of it - to me, anyway. I guess YMMV, but I don't think so...

geo.

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George:

I know what I have done. I was there. I remember it and I know it was of God.

When I first heard that it was possible to work miracles in healing, I decided that was what I wanted to do and I went for it. I studied all about it from every place I could and I gained a lot of knowledge. But Father taught me four times as much in the actual doing of them.

quote:
The Cosmic Vending Machine of God seems to be one tempermental piece of equipment. Every now and then it seems to work for someone, somewhere, but never for you in particular

I wish I could change the rules for you George, but I can't.

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