Life in the Afternoon - much more than a story of
soaring - and reflections of that on my life.
by P.K.Odendaal. 1 January 2012.
Part 11 - Divine healing revisited - and please don't feed the animals.
I believe in divine healing, despite my earlier unpleasant
experiences in this regard, and God knew that too - so I had to start from
scratch again a few decades later.
One evening during the closing service of one of our yearly conferences, I was suffering from severe back pain, which just did not want to go away. At the end of the service God said that anybody who had an ailment should come forward so that the pastors could lay hands on them and pray for them, and I thought, this was my chance.
Not wanting to be prayed for by just anyone, I timed the
moment very accurately, and as the President of the Church came down from the
platform, I intentionally found myself first in line to be prayed for by him.
He asked me what the problem was, whereupon I told him of
this severe pain in my back. He did not pray for me as I expected, but just
said : You got angry with somebody - just go and confess and all shall be
right.
Embarrassing!
I did not get angry with him but took a brother and went to
confess, and that pain never vexed me again. Aha - I am making progress. I have
touched on the manifestations of the spirit in the body and the flesh, and a
back pain is a symptom of getting angry at somebody.
The second lesson happened a few years later.
Also during the last service of our yearly conference, which
usually included a healing ministry, we were invited to go forward so they
could pray for us. I was not sick, but I had this terrible spiritual ailment of
blame, dejection and despondence, and I was for sure not going forward to be
prayed for. The previous embarrassment was still fresh in my mind.
So I said to God, I am not going out, but if He wanted me to
go out he should take me there. It was only a few seconds after that, when I
suddenly noticed that my feet were turned toward the aisle - I had turned
through ninety degrees - not by my own volition. I got a such a big shock that
I turned back immediately, facing the pulpit again. I then said 'God it must be
you - and if it is you, you can do it again'. Within seconds I was facing the
aisle again. In shock I repeated my turning back maneuver and faced the pulpit
again. I then again said 'God, sorry, but if this is you, you can do it three
times, and I would know that it is definitely you'. And then it happened for
the third time. This time I did not even notice who prayed for me, because I
knew God was healing me, which He did.
And so it happened one day shortly thereafter that my wife
asked me to join her on a hospital visit to an aged friend of their family. He
was very ill and did not stop bleeding, having a sickness called 'plates',
whatever it might mean. I did not know the details of this sickness, but God
knew, and it was sure that he might not make it back to his home any time soon,
if ever.
We visited him and after the normal visiting hour, my wife
and I walked out. As I walked out God said to me : Pray for him. The TV's in
his ward, which he shared with a few other people, were blaring with Sunday
sport, our nation's god. I said God, I cannot pray in these circumstances, but
I will give it a go. I returned to his bed and asked him whether I could pray
for him, whereupon he approved. It was a simple prayer, but I was serious as I
liked him, and I had compassion with him. The next morning he was dismissed
from hospital with no symptoms at all.
Okay God, I get it. You heal, but I must be there to hear
you and say your words.
A few years later he was admitted to the same hospital with
another serious ailment and this time it was sure that he would not make it. We
visited again, and this time the family were gathered around his bed - almost
as some people do for the last rites. His family however still remembered the
previous incident and asked me to pray for him. We all took hands together and
I made a simple prayer. The next morning he was dismissed from the hospital
without any symptoms, and he lived for many years after that, where after he
died at the age of eighty years of natural causes.
These two incidents brought me back to my vivid remembrance
of my previous futile attempts. I see myself and a friend
a few decades earlier laying hands on and praying for an elderly person
who had the worst form of arthritis that I had ever seen. He could not walk or
use his hands, as they were all severely bent, crumpled and malformed. That
evening there was no healing, however hard we tried and however strong our
faith and his faith were. At the end we gave it up as a failed attempt.
Great was my surprise a few days later when I learned that
this person had cheated almost all of the townsfolk out of millions by fraud
and conniving. I would never again, by my own volition, pray for someone who
had not first confessed their sins and mended their ways. Sickness is mostly, as
I have said, a manifestation of the iniquities of our spirit into our bodies.
However when God says I pray - I do it regardless.
Please don't feed the
animals.
When we go to a game park we see this sign, and we sometimes
realize that it is for the good of the animals that we should not feed them. If
we feed them, they loose their ability and skill of looking for their own prey
or food. It is tantamount to killing them softly.
We are no different from them - it is the way of nature. So
why do we want God to rain food and money and wealth and deliverance from the
daily care upon us without any effort from our side? Do we want Him to kill us
softly? Yet, this is precise the content of our daily prayers - God give me
this, God give me that. God has not called us to take - he has called us to
give - to be servants of Him and of each other.
Pro 30:15 The horse leach hath two daughters, crying,
Give, give. There are three things that are never satisfied, yea, four things
say not, It is enough:
We will never (think we) have enough.
I am reminded of a humorous tale I heard one day.
The brother came upon a poor man of doubtful character (whom
he knew had stolen the chicken), and asked him where he got that chicken from
which he was so happily munching away on. The man replied that he prayed to God
for it, whereupon the brother said that it did not work for him, because God
has never given him a chicken. So the man asked the brother how he prayed,
whereupon the brother said : God, please give me a chicken. The man thereupon said
- that is your problem. The scripture says that you ask wrongly as in Jas 4:3
Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, You must just do
as I do - I just pray : God, please show me a chicken.
I wish more people would ask God to show then something
through His Holy Spirit, than to wait for it to fall from heaven like manna. It
can happen, but it is not the everyday way in which God operates.
This tale cuts into the heart of the problem. Although God
can do it, it is not normal for God to let manna and quails fall from heaven.
He sent Adam and Eve out of Paradise to earn their living and fend for
themselves : Gen 3:19
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the
ground.
God does not want to undermine and inhibit our ability to
feed ourselves. God does not want to feed the animals.
This is also true in the spirit. God just do not come to us
with witty banter anytime of day while we are in a jolly mood. We need to seek
Him in order to find Him. We cannot not seek Him whilst we are busy with things
that does not concern Him.
We get cross with God, because we have a need and a want and
a desire, how fleshly that may be, that he does not satisfy it. Meanwhile, it
is us who are too lazy to fend for ourselves. I agree, ultimately it is God who
nurtures us, but not the way we think.
And that explains my long futile quest for getting some special
favour from God.
In days and decades past, I have told God that it was so
easy for Him to let me win a lotto or a tender by giving me the right code or the
right tender price, but he never did. What I did not realize then, was what
ramifications it would have had, if God has done just that. In the first place
he would be feeding the animals, and in the second place He would have been
partisan to me, which he is not, and in the third place, He would be unrighteous
by doing a disservice to someone else for whom those blessings were meant. Can
you imagine what the devil would have done with such an occurrence? Talk of
freedom of the media, of self expression and of leaking a juicy story - the
devil would have had a field day, such as he tried with Job.
I can think of some of these ramification myself. I might be
a farmer being ripped apart by a serious drought, and just next door to me
there could be a brother praying that it does not rain on his child's party.
There are things that we are just not supposed to get or to have or that cannot
be.
These days I mostly praise God for those of my prayers which
He did not answer. It would have been chaos, had He answered most of them.
That is not to say that I may not have dreams and fantasies.
Dream on - what you dream will one day become a reality. God called things
which did not exist as if they existed : Rom 4:17 ... even God, who quickeneth the dead, and
calleth those things which be not as though they were. That is faith! We may
manifest in the flesh a thing we believe in the spirit - that is called the
manifestation in the Holy Spirit. We call things which do not exist, as if they
do.
Who and what is God.
I do not pretend to know, but I close this last part of this
story with a perspective on the nature of God and on His involvement in His
creation.
The conventional wisdom is that He is not involved and does
not care.
It is the notion by the atheists
that God does not exist.
It is the notion that God stands
separate from his creation.
It is the notion that God is not
involved in the day to day running of His business.
It is the notion that God does not
care about us.
It is the notion that God wants to put us all in Hell.
And of course, all these notions are false, but how does one
look at it to make some rational evaluation of a God which just cannot appear
in three dimensions, having infinite dimensions Himself.
There is no way a three dimensional human can see an
infinitely dimensioned God. A human can only see that part of Him which
manifests itself in three dimensions like Jesus Christ. Yes, Christ was God,
when he was on earth, but only that part of God which could be observed by mankind.
Scripture says : Col 2:9 For in him
dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.
I have written
on observation in the different dimensions in this blog :
http://pkodendaal.blogspot.com/2010/12/whats-in-dream.html
I only need to ask you one question to let you realize the
futility of such an exercise and the question is : Who made God? Snookered ...
totally. If you think that God was made, even if he made Himself, at a specific
time, then you would need to explain how that could be done when time did not
exist when He made himself. But knowing the futility of that, we can still form
some practical and basic idea of God by thinking of Him in three dimensional
terms, because there is enough of Him present in this three dimensional space
that we can think about.
I wish to offer you a rational limited explanation which
will increase your understanding and perspective of Him.
That understanding comes from the notion that God and Creation
is one - a very insightful, but not necessary true or correct reflection of His
nature, but one that gives us a lot of perspective and insight. It could even
be true for all we know, and we use the following argument to partly
substantiate that : If God made Himself, then he is part of His creation, and
there will be no other creation than the one God created, because His created
creation of Himself, created the rest of creation, and that is probably what
scripture means in these words :
Pro 8:23 I was set up from everlasting, from the
beginning, or ever the earth was. v:24
When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no
fountains abounding with water. v:25
Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth:
Jesus, being called the Everlasting Father in Isaiah, and
thus God himself, could really have created himself.
The other side of the argument is that God always was, and
that He created the creation separate from Himself. If that is so, how does He
separate Him from His creation, being manifestly present in it. How would I
know that this part of creation is what God created, and that part is God
himself. Both instances are possible, but it is more of the same argument, as
it cannot be distinguished from each other.
If we accept either of these possibilities, which the
atheists will not allow us to do - and keeping themselves out if it without
positing another viable possibility - then we may say that the debate between
creationism and evolutionism is a futile debate - both sides are wrong, and
both sides are very arrogant, ignorant,
intransigent and impudent about it. A pastor once said that the evolutionists
may be right, but their explanation of creation is so complicated and far
fetched that it is much easier to believe the Bible's story - it makes more
sense!
If God is His creation - if He and His Creation are one -
how can either of these futile hypothesis even exist, because Christ and God
is everything and in all :
Col 3:11 Where there is neither Greek nor Jew,
circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ
is all, and in all.
1Co 15:28 And when all things shall be subdued unto
him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things
under him, that God may be all in all.
In fact we are told in :
1Co 12:12 For as the body is one, and hath many
members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so
also is Christ. v:13 For by one Spirit
are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we
be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. v:14 For the body is not one member, but many.
v:15 If the foot shall say, Because I am
not the hand, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? v:16 And if the ear shall say, Because I am not
the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? v:17 If the whole body were an eye, where were the
hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? v:18 But now hath God set the members every one of
them in the body, as it hath pleased him. v:19
And if they were all one member, where were the body? v:20 But now are they many members, yet but one
body. v:21 And the eye cannot say unto
the hand, I have no need of thee: nor again the head to the feet, I have no
need of you. v:22 Nay, much more those
members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary: v:23 And those members of the body, which we think
to be less honourable, upon these we bestow more abundant honour; and our
uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness. v:24 For our comely parts have no need: but God
hath tempered the body together, having given more abundant honour to that part
which lacked: v:25 That there should be
no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for
another. v:26 And whether one member
suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the
members rejoice with it. v:27 Now ye are
the body of Christ, and members in particular.
I know God is intimately involved with His creation, and
with every soul on earth - and with me. But, there are spiritual and physical
boundaries which shrouds Him from most of us, or shall I say, protects His
holiness from being desecrated by man and Satan - and saves us from
annihilation, should His righteousness have its way. And this is the big
mistake scientists make, by not acknowledging the existence of a spiritual
domain. Their limited knowledge of the world stops at the speed of light - what
happens after that is too vague and unreal for them, But there is another world
out there - the meta-physical one - which is every bit as real as ours, maybe
even more real, because the presence of God in that world, having more than
three dimensions, is even more manifest than it is in our world. You only need
to listen to the testimonies of people who had near death and after death
experiences to realize that.
We need to realize that God cannot reveal Himself in a
tangible way in our world, other than to let Moses see His behind. Firstly
because he is invisible, being a spirit - and secondly, if He does, we will not
have the liberty to choose to be friends of Him, we will just have to be his
friends, lest He puts us in Hell, thereby depriving us of the biggest gift he
has given us - the gift of free will - because then He would be a reality for
us and not an invisible guest and friend.
But there is an even better explanation for this reluctance
of God to appear in person in our physical world, as mentioned in a previous
paragraph regarding the physical and meta-physical worlds. The two worlds are
one of physical presence and one of spiritual presence. A spirit cannot appear
in our physical world as a spirit, and must take on the form of a physical
being, be it animal or human. Similarly we cannot appear in the meta-physical
world with our worldly bodies. Whether it is a rule of the game or a physical
law, I am not sure - it could even be both.
Just imagine what chaos would have been on earth if the
Satan was free to come here and pretend to be God. We would all believe him,
because as a spirit he would be able to impress us big time with his special
powers.
And this is the reason why God had to appear to us as Jesus
Christ - completely human. And that is the reason why Satan appeared to Adam
and Eve in the Garden of Eden as a snake - he could not find a human body, as
Adam and Eve were the only human bodies on earth at that stage. And that is the
reason why Lucifer will appear as Anti-Christ in the human body of the Pope in
the Great tribulation - because the Pope is the most likely candidate for such
a role, having been anti-Christ himself for millennia. The word anti-Christ come
from the Greek 'anti' meaning 'in the place of' Christ, and that the Pope has
pretended to be for two millennia as the Vicar of Christ, complete with his
infallibility.
In the next extract Raymond Smullyan asks the question of
God : I mean, why don't you appear to our very senses
and simply tell us that we are wrong?
If he had insight into the spiritual world, like many human
have, he would have been able to answer that question himself.
In the following extract from the Mind's I, Raymond Smullyan
argues the case for the nature of God, from a logical point of view, much more
convincingly than I ever can.
Mortal : Tell me,
since we mortals seem to have such erroneous views about your real nature, why
don't you enlighten us? Why don't you guide us the right way?
God : What
makes you think I'm not?
Mortal : I mean,
why don't you appear to our very senses and simply tell us that we are wrong?
God : Are you
really so naïve as to believe that I am a sort of being which can appear to your
senses. It would be more correct to say that I am your senses.
Mortal ; You are
my senses?
God : Not
quite, I am more than that. But it comes closer to the truth than the idea that
I am perceivable by the senses. I am not an object; like you, I am a subject,
and a subject can perceive, but cannot be perceived. You can no more see me
than your own thoughts. You can see an apple, but the event of your seeing an
apple is itself not seeable. And I am far more than the seeing of an apple than
the apple itself.
Mortal : If I
can't see you, how do I know you exist?
God : Good
question! How in fact do you know that I exist?
Mortal : Well, I
am talking to you, am I not?
God : How do
you know you are talking to me? Suppose you told a psychiatrists,
"Yesterday I talked to God." What do you think he would say?
Mortal :That
might depend on the psychiatrist. Since most of them are atheistic, I guess
most would tell me I had simply been talking to myself.
God : And they
would be right!
Mortal : What?
You mean you don't exist?
God : You have
the strangest faculty of drawing false conclusions! Just because you are
talking to yourself, it follows that I don't exist?
....
Mortal : Allright,
I'll grant your point! But what I really want o know is do you exist?
God : What a
strange question!
Mortal : Why? Men
have been asking if for countless millennia.
God : I know
that! The question itself is not strange; what I mean is that it is a most
strange question to ask me!
Mortal : Why?
God : Because I
am the very one whose existence you doubt! ... how can you possibly expect to
obtain reliable information from a being about his very existence when you
expect the non-existence of the very same being?
Mortal : So you
won't tell me whether or not you exist?
God : I am not
being willful! I merely wish to point out that no answer I could give you could
possibly satisfy you.
...
Mortal ; Well, if
you can't tell me whether or not you exist, then who possibly can?
God : That is
something which no one can tell you. It is something which only you can find
out for yourself.
Mortal : How do I
go about finding this out for myself?
God : That
also no one can tell you. This is another thing you will have to find out for
yourself.
....
Mortal : Why did
you say your expression was misleading?
God : What I
said was misleading in two respects. First of all it is inaccurate to speak of
my role in the scheme of things. I am
the scheme of things. Secondly, it is equally misleading to speak of my
aiding the process of sentient beings attaining enlightenment. I am the
process. The ancients (Taoists) were quite close when they said of me that I do
no do things, yet through me all things get done. I am not the cause of the Cosmic
process. I am the Cosmic process itself.
....
We find the
proof of this in the words of the Master himself :
Joh 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the
truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
No, this is not a metaphor. If it was, Jesus would have said
: I am truth. What He says here is that I am my creation, because surely truth
was a creation of God, and if not - part of God himself, which says the same
thing.
I leave you with these profound thoughts, and hope you
enjoyed this excursion into things profound and profane. God bless you.
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