Tag Archives: spirit

Christianity, faith

From the Darkness

I needed some time to contemplate my life and faith. I was raised with protestant parents, saved in a protestant church but became Roman Catholic in the last year of the 20th century. Since then, there have been times when I have stepped from the church to get air so to speak. But this was different.

Catholics, and maybe protestants as well, have a period known as the dark night of the soul. My definition and tradition, this is where one thinks God has stepped from your life and you seek Him in earnestness. The fall of 2021 was mine.

I had gotten back into my faith fully in the last couple of years after issues that affected me and ended the family unit I had known for 20 years. At that time, the stress had caused my health to falter and my spirit to cry out. For the first time since being a Catholic, I hit my knees, wept, and prayed. It led me into my Catholic Christian faith unlike before.

But for some reason, this fall had played havoc within my mind and spirit and I needed to refresh, think, and clear the cobwebs. So, while not leaving my faith, I stepped away from the building that had become my church home. I had only planned on it being about a month. What it led to was something I had not really expected.

What it led me to, instead of free wheeling life and secular enjoyment, was deeper. It led me to deeper scriptural study. Instead of just one translation, I started using multiple including translations like the King James, New American, and New International. But it also included the Stone edition Tanach and the Douay-Rheims. In the mix of these, I started finding new influence and messages that hit my spirit and mind. It called me to self examination. This then led to a deeper prayer life. And to deeper study.

For all of this time, I had attended a Methodist church with a couple of my children and found that, like the Catholic faith, believed not in only a bread and juice remembrance of the last supper of Christ and His apostles, but in the beautiful truth of the words of Christ himself when He spoke “This is My body…and this is My blood”.

This self imposed sabbatical and longing search went beyond the month I had expected and lasted until the 3rd week of Dec this year. A former priest had passed and I went to his viewing, out of the respect that I had for him. As I stepped into the first parish I ever attended, and my Catholic home for most of my time in the faith, the noise and chaos faded away. There is that sanctuary, among the scent of the decades of incense and visuals of the life of Christ and the saints, that small still voice came. Not like a voice or whisper, but something more distant yet comforting. Only 2 words, “you’re home”.

This, the 4th Sunday of Advent, I returned to the little parish I had stepped out of months ago. As I sat there, taking in the visuals of Advent and the liturgical music and homily, I found myself with an inner peace that I had not had in awhile. Like someone who had left home and traveled the world, only to return to the place he was raised, I had indeed come home. That type of peace can only truly be found in a home.

During my 50 plus years I have been protestant and Catholic, Christian and pagan. During my walks outside of the faith of Christ, the pagan pantheons never answered, spoke, or given me any divine inspiration. And of my 25 years as a Christian, first as a protestant Christian and now as Roman Catholic Christian, this is the first encounter with that small still voice.

While the pagan pantheons are once again raising their heads, and yes infighting between Christians and the Pope himself having and promoting heretical ideas, have I seen for myself that one light and hope in this world of darkness. An old country tradition is to leave a candle lit in a window to guide home those that wander off from the homestead. Mine was the only light brighter than a million suns. When others have dimmed and gone out, this light will shine for an eternity.

The revelation of the Apocalypse witness and recorded by St. John on Patmos said that the Light of God will be so bright in Heaven and the new Jerusalem that there will be no need of a physical sun. That is the light that leads me, that calls me, and the comforts me.

What I thought was to be only a few weeks brought me back at a perfect time for a new beginning. What a better place and time to start a new and refreshed path than at a little cave hewn out as a place of birth for beginning of our Salvation. To behold the One that created the whole of everything and yet started His human life the way we all do.

May God the Father always guide you, bring you unto Himself through Christ the Lord, endow you with the Holy Spirit in wisdom and guidance, and comfort you on your journey through this temporary landscape of life.

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Christianity, faith, Uncategorized

Ghosts, Spirits, and Demons, OH MY!

Over the last few decades, ghost hunting has been a huge event worldwide. Shows like Ghost Hunters have elevated it to the point groups around the country have formed. I will admit, I like going out from time to time when something feels off. However, despite what is thought, is not actually the case.

I will not say that entities do not exist. They do and there has been quite a bit of evidence scientifically. The issue is not whether or not there are entities, the issue is what is actually being found. Whether the evidence is caught on video, in an EVP, a ghost box, through a Ouija board/witch board, or even through the medium you visited in New Orleans, it is not your dear granny, the lady that died mysteriously, or Johnny Cash. What you are capturing is demonic.

The Bible gives clear instruction on the dead in many places. And in revealing the scriptures, it will also bring to view the idea that death does not immediately mean Heaven  or Hell for the recently departed. And as you know, most preachers when giving the funeral services, more than not he will say that Mr. So and So is now in heaven. You never hear they went to hell, no matter how evil the person was. Nor do they go to a place of limbo (Purgatory for Catholics) to be cleansed of any remaining sin that was not bad enough to go to Hell. And Hell itself will be dealt with in another article.

The writers of the Old Testament tells us that the dead have no knowledge, memory, or ability. For there is no mention of You in death; In Sheol who will give You thanks? (Psalms 6:5). Will Your wonders be made known in the darkness? And Your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? (Psalms 88:12). Will You perform wonders for the dead? Will the departed spirits rise and praise You? Selah. Will Your loving kindness be declared in the grave, Your faithfulness in Abaddon? (Psalms 88:10-11). The dead do not praise the Lord, Nor do any who go down into silence; (Psalms 115:17).

In other Old Testament books we find more writings of the dead. For the living know they will die; but the dead do not know anything, nor have they any longer a reward, for their memory is forgotten (Eccl 9:5). Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might; for there is no activity or planning or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol where you are going (Eccl 9:10). 

Other scriptures in the Old Testament speak of death as sleep. But as for you, go your way to the end; then you will enter into rest and rise again for your allotted portion at the end of the age (Daniel 12:13). And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt (Daniel 12:2).

The bible makes it clear that a person dies, that is it it until the resurrection of the dead. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return (Genesis 3:19).Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a dew of light, and the earth will give birth to the dead (Isaiah 26:19). And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt (Daniel 12:2).For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first (1st Thess 4:16).

Then I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to whom the authority to judge was committed. Also I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God, and those who had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection! Over such the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thousand years (Rev 20:4-6).

Now, there are two terms, Sheol (Hebrew) from the Old Testament and Hades (Greek) from the New Testament. Both of these terms simply mean the grave. So all that die are headed to Sheol/Hades. It is that 6×6 hole in the ground.

The Bible is clear that the dead are just that, DEAD, until the resurrection. Now, you hear this verse often, Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it (Eccl 12:7). Most think that when term spirit is used in this verse, that is the person’s essence (being) going to Heaven. This can’t be the way the term means because it does not differentiate saved and non-saved. That would mean that all go to Heaven, and we know by Scripture that only those who believe in Christ and follow His commandments are saved and go to Heaven. The spirit spoke of here is strictly the breathe of life, Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being (Genesis 2:7).

Since ghosts and haunts are not those that have passed, what are they? They are demons, or more correctly, Lucifer (Satan) and the third of the angels that followed him. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places (6:12). Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world. But may the God of all grace, who called us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you (1 Peter 5:8-10). Therefore rejoice, O heavens, and you who dwell in them! Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and the sea! For the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, because he knows that he has a short time (Rev 12:12).And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him (Rev 12:9).

So the next time you hear that disembodied voice that sounds like a loved one, a friend, someone you don’t know from the past, or Michael Jackson remember that the dead are dead until resurrection and that they know nothing because their is no type of life within or from them, pray to the Lord for aid and send the entity from you pleading the blood of Christ. Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you (James 4:7).

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