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Thread: My Journey through the Lens of Charismatic and Paranormal Experiences

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    My Journey through the Lens of Charismatic and Paranormal Experiences

    My testimony expresses sacred memories that provide me with constant motivation to praise God for His providential guidance and care. This thread will present several posts documenting the many pivotal moments of my lifelong spiritual journey with special focus on my paranormal charismatic experiences. I have recently shared much of this testimony at an interdenominational service.

    CHILDHOOD SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCES:
    (1) I was born and raised in the first Pentecostal church in Canada. I was born with congenital glaucoma in my right eye. My distraught parents were impressed by a famous faith healer named William Branham, who held healing crusades around North America. What set him apart was his clairvoyance. Before he laid hands on people, he accurately described one of their recent past experiences in awesome detail and he did the same for my parents. Mom and Dad were poor, but they spent their savings on a trip to Elgin, Illinois to bring me to a Branham crusade there. When I (age 3) finally made it onto the stage, Branham looked at my introductory note that said, "blind in the right eye," and shouted, "This boy is blind!" He then laid hands on my eyes and waved them in front of me. When I blinked, he yelled, "This little boy has been cured of blindness!" The huge crowd went wild but my parents were sick. Of course I blinked because I could see out of my good eye. This fraud devastated and disillusioned my parents. All this attention to getting me healed made me feel like they regretted my birth and ultimately created a deep desire in me to justify being born! It also sowed the seeds of a lifelong determination to discover whether miracles and divine healing were ever real and whether the Bible was trustworthy. God used those events to shape my calling in life.

    LESSON: God can sow the seeds of one's spiritual calling and life destiny at an age so young that we can barely recall the details.

    (2) By the time I was 6 I had learned to hate church. There was no children's church or Sunday school for my age and church bored me because I couldn't relate to much of the 1 1/2 hour services, especially the sermons. So I squirmed and protested in our pew and made myself a nuisance to my parents. My parents were weekly attenders, but one Sunday they stayed home for reasons I never understood. I suspect the nightmare of dealing with my hissyfits was part of the reason! I was so glad to escape church that sunny and clear July morning! God was the furthest thing from my mind. To celebrate I zoomed up and own the sidewalk to the ends of our block on my little tricycle.

    Then I noticed the big new blue Chevy with huge tailfins parked behind the Jewish shoe store. Evidently the owner had just waxed and polished it and it just glistened as it reflected the brilliant sunlight. To me it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen; so I constantly road back to it to stare in wonder. Once, when I returned, I had my first life-changing God moment. For some strange reason, my attention was directed to a patch of blue near the sun. As I gazed at it, wave after wave of liquid love surged through my being. Suddenly I became acutely aware of the presence of a God who loved me and I just basked in that love!

    I told my parents about my experience, but they didn't seem very interested. That all changed a few days later when neighbors came over to tell my parents how impressed they were that I was excitedly sharing my embryonic new faith with my playmates. I knew little about God and the Bible and I have always wondered what I was saying about God and my experience to my little playmates.

    This experience didn't make me want to sit through church, though. Now Dad sang in the choir and my parents now let me sit by myself. This was fortunate because it allowed me to I sneak out of church to buy lifesavers at the little grocery store across the street from the church. As I ate them, I browsed the comic books on the store shelves. The owner eventually got annoyed by my regular presence and shooed me out of his store. So I ate my lifesavers outside and began to meditate on the meaning of my life.

    LESSON: God can initiate a relationship with a young child in a way that escapes parental notice.

    (3) At age 11, I realized that I should be baptized to please my parents and obey the Gospel. I had to attend a few preparatory catechetical classes and I was the only child among about 11 adult male candidates. The classes appalled me because the lecturer used poorly explained jargon like justification, propitiation, and sanctification which produced excruciation in the mind of this young boy who couldn't grasp the meaning of these big words. Quoting Colossians 2:11 , the lecturer informed us that we needed to be "circumcised in spirit." That might have been helpful if I knew what physical circumcision was and if he explained this jargon.

    I would be the last of the 11 to be baptized by immersion in a large tank behind the platform before a crowd of about 1,400 people. I was petrified because I learned I was expected to share a personal testimony in front of that huge crowd and because, blush, the bottom of my baptismal robe seemed to float up, exposing my nakedness! All the men gave a formulaic personal testimony that I can recite even today. Then I nervously waded out to the pastor and he asked me, "Donny, would you like to share a word for the Lord Jesus?" I shook my head in the negative. So the pastor continued, "OK, let me ask you some faith questions." I felt publicly humiliated as the only one not to share a testimony and at that point I just wanted to get this ordeal over with to please my parents.

    But after the pastor dunked me, something amazing happened as I emerged from the water. I suddenly had a vision of Jesus, smiling at me, radiating love and conveying the feeling that He found my predicament rather amusing. I sensed His empathy for my confusion over all the poorly explained catechetical jargon and my groundless fear about my nakedness being exposed by the floating bottom of my robe. And years later when I became a theology professor, I reflected that Jesus must have found it amusing that a motormouth like me would be utterly tongue-tied at my youthful baptism. My first and only vision in my life transformed an unpleasant baptismal ordeal into one of the most sacred and treasured memories of my life!

    LESSON: God can bestow His Holy Spirit during baptism on a child with a hungry heart, even though that child has a poor understanding of the theological nuances of the baptismal act.

    Much more to follow.

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  3. #2
    Senior Member Colonel's Avatar
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    Interesting testimony. Do you mind telling us which year you went to that Branham crusade ? We've recently been discussing Branham's ministry and how it developed.

  4. #3
    Colonel: I was taken to a huge Branham tent meeting of thousands in the early 1950S at age 3.

    (4) My Pentecostal pastor was well respected, but was criticized for never preaching sermons on the gifts of the Spirit, including speaking in tongues, during my 21 years of attending that church. Words of prophecy, messages in tongues, and interpretation of tongues generally occurred once a month during our Communion service after the sermon. Some of these interpretations from the Risen Lord were powerful general critiques of the spiritual condition of many congregants in a manner reminiscent of the prophetic letters to the 7 churches in Revelation 2-3. From the moment they began, these messages typically moved me to tears because of the glorious sense of Christ's presence in the sanctuary. But in most of the messages, the Risen Lord delivered general exhortations that often seemed like a pastiche of various Gospel phrases and texts. From the moment these messages began, I would typically freeze as if confronted by a cobra! My dramatically opposite reactions to these messages began when I was about 13 and continued throughout my teen years. In retrospect, I now recognize my opposite reactions as the gift of spiritual discernment in action. From the time of my baptismal vision, I was so very hungry for a fresh word from the Lord to guide my spiritual journey. So the fact that most of my instantaneous reactions were negative greatly disturbed me and after one of the infrequent interpretation of tongues that thrilled me to the core and spoke powerfully to me, I asked an elder why these messages were not recorded for later reflection on how to apply them to our lives. His response affected my attitude to garden variety Pentecostalism with devastating clarity. He replied: "Look, these messages aren't Holy Scripture. So don't take them so seriously! The messages just add a sacred tone and some inspiration to our Communion service." My reaction to his comments? "Either the source of these messages is the Risen Lord as they allege or they are of the flesh. If they are of the flesh, these messages should be banned. But if they come from the Risen Lord, they deserve to be recorded for later reflection, so that they can be obeyed."

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    Senior Member Colonel's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Berserk View Post
    Colonel: I was taken to a huge Branham tent meeting of thousands in the early 1950S at age 3.
    That's quite early. I'm not sure if that quick "healing" proclamation is representative of his early ministry. Check out this post :

    https://livingfaithforum.com/penteco...html#post97218

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    Senior Member Cardinal TT's Avatar
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    Berserk

    What you went through wasn't good at the Branham meeting but that does not make him fraudulent.
    There are plenty of ministers and healed people to verify that many did get healed at his meetings.

    Every evangelist will have the same stories where people came for healing but went home unhealed for various reasons. Would that make them all fraudulent??

    Even those who have the most powerful healing gift don't have 100% results and many go home disappointed they were not healed

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  9. #6
    Cardinal: "What you went through wasn't good at the Branham meeting but that does not make him fraudulent."

    Branham deliberately distorted his report on my blindness to create the illusion that my blinking proved I was healed. That deception is fraud by any measure to make his ministry look effective.

    Cardinal: "There are plenty of ministers and healed people to verify that many did get healed at his meeting"

    "On that day many will say to me, "Lord,...did we not perform many deeds of power in your name?" Then I will declare to them,"I never knew you; depart from me, you evildoers (Matthew 7:22-23).""
    Yes, counterfeit Christian spirituality, Mexican psychic mediums, and pagan shamanism often produce miraculous healings, but the Holy Spirit is not the source.

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    Senior Member Colonel's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Berserk View Post
    Cardinal: "What you went through wasn't good at the Branham meeting but that does not make him fraudulent."

    Branham deliberately distorted his report on my blindness to create the illusion that my blinking proved I was healed. That deception is fraud by any measure to make his ministry look effective.
    What you are relaying is your parents' version of the story since you yourself were too young to remember it accurately. It seems laced with disappointment.

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  13. #8
    Colonel, how dare you impugn my godly Dad's integrity! And I do have vague memories of a huge uproar from the crowd as Branham forced me to blink and announced that I had just been healed of total blindness. Imagine the hurt to my dear parents who had sacrificed their savings to bring me to that moment! No, he wickedly created a hurtful illusion to brush aside the embarrassment I potentially posed to his reputation.

    (5) The major turning point in my life that I'm about to share is also by far the spiritual and emotional high point in my life. Even now, decades later, I constantly draw spiritual nourishment from the very memory of that fateful day I was "ambushed" by an experience of glossolalia at Manhattan Beach Camp in Manitoba. I was 16 at the time and felt I had lost my faith. I was determined to give it my best shot to find God real, but not to succumb to wishful thinking and emotionalism. That fateful, Tuesday, I went on a 7 mile walk towards Ninette, Manitoba, pleading with God to make Himself real to me. That evening, I did something I'd never done before. I fasted for dinner and put my dinner money in the offering plate. After the service, I stayed at the altar and prayed to be filled with the Spirit as I had previously done in vain. After almost everyone (about 1,000) left the amphitheater, my heart still felt like stone as I tarried in prayer. Then suddenly I felt a warm breeze, but it wasn't the wind from nearby Pelican Lake; it was the Holy Spirit first warming me and then possessing me. I was compelled to speak in tongues at the top of my voice. More importantly, wave after wave of liquid love surged through my being with ever increasing intensity until I feared it might kill me. My ego seemed on the verge of collapse into God's mind. Oh, the indescribable sweetness of those moments, more sacred than the birth of your first child! I can only metaphorically testify that that experience was a hundred times sweeter, more powerful, and more intimate than any of my experiences of love before or since!

    When it was over, a Lutheran pastor who had observed me, unseen, quietly came and knelt beside me. He told me he didn't believe in speaking in tongues and had only come to the camp meeting as an interested observer. But he added he could tell God was doing a special work in me and he asked me to pray for him. I didn't pray for him; I just touched him gently on the foreheand, and the moment I did so, it was as if I had electrocuted him! Overcome by the Spirit, he exploded into tongues! Another lady was sitting in the now darkened amphitheater and just staring at me. Self-conscious, I asked her why. She replied, "Don't you know? Your face is glowing in the dark!"

    When it was all over, I realized that God had said to me clearly: "Son, you long for answers to burning questions. But answers aren't good for you right now. They will make you live in your head, and I want to live in your heart. I want you to live your questions until they lead you to the center of my heart." That is the reason for my long educational pilgrimage from BA (U. of Winnipeg) to MDiv (Princeton) to doctorate in New Testament, Judaism, and Greco-Roman Backgrounds (Harvard). Interestingly, the experience made me a much better student than I had been. And like marijuana, that experience of glossolalia seems to have functioned like a gateway spiritual drug that soon led to other gripping experiences of other spiritual gifts, especially "the word of knowledge" (1 Corinthians 12:8-10).

    (6) Previously, I had not been a stellar student in school and was insecure about God's plans for my future. But shortly after the experience, I suddenly knew that I'd receive the highest GPA in Manitoba in my senior year. Decades later, my cousin, a psychiatrist, reminded me that I had shared "this word of knowledge" with him when I recounted my tongues experience. That experience evidently dramatically improved my mental capacity. When Premier Duff Roblyn publicly acknowledged that achievement at my graduation and scholarships were awarded as a result, I felt that my somewhat awkward attempts at Christian witnessing were rendered more effective and I became more confident in a calling to an academic life.

    But my next 2 experiences of "the word of knowledge" (premonitions) were as puzzling and disturbing as they were riveting. More on that in my next 2 planned posts.

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  15. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Berserk View Post
    Colonel, how dare you impugn my godly Dad's integrity! And I do have vague memories of a huge uproar from the crowd as Branham forced me to blink and announced that I had just been healed of total blindness. Imagine the hurt to my dear parents who had sacrificed their savings to bring me to that moment! No, he wickedly created a hurtful illusion to brush aside the embarrassment I potentially posed to his reputation.

    (5) The major turning point in my life that I'm about to share is also by far the spiritual and emotional high point in my life. Even now, decades later, I constantly draw spiritual nourishment from the very memory of that fateful day I was "ambushed" by an experience of glossolalia at Manhattan Beach Camp in Manitoba. I was 16 at the time and felt I had lost my faith. I was determined to give it my best shot to find God real, but not to succumb to wishful thinking and emotionalism. That fateful, Tuesday, I went on a 7 mile walk towards Ninette, Manitoba, pleading with God to make Himself real to me. That evening, I did something I'd never done before. I fasted for dinner and put my dinner money in the offering plate. After the service, I stayed at the altar and prayed to be filled with the Spirit as I had previously done in vain. After almost everyone (about 1,000) left the amphitheater, my heart still felt like stone as I tarried in prayer. Then suddenly I felt a warm breeze, but it wasn't the wind from nearby Pelican Lake; it was the Holy Spirit first warming me and then possessing me. I was compelled to speak in tongues at the top of my voice. More importantly, wave after wave of liquid love surged through my being with ever increasing intensity until I feared it might kill me. My ego seemed on the verge of collapse into God's mind. Oh, the indescribable sweetness of those moments, more sacred than the birth of your first child! I can only metaphorically testify that that experience was a hundred times sweeter, more powerful, and more intimate than any of my experiences of love before or since!

    When it was over, a Lutheran pastor who had observed me, unseen, quietly came and knelt beside me. He told me he didn't believe in speaking in tongues and had only come to the camp meeting as an interested observer. But he added he could tell God was doing a special work in me and he asked me to pray for him. I didn't pray for him; I just touched him gently on the foreheand, and the moment I did so, it was as if I had electrocuted him! Overcome by the Spirit, he exploded into tongues! Another lady was sitting in the now darkened amphitheater and just staring at me. Self-conscious, I asked her why. She replied, "Don't you know? Your face is glowing in the dark!"

    When it was all over, I realized that God had said to me clearly: "Son, you long for answers to burning questions. But answers aren't good for you right now. They will make you live in your head, and I want to live in your heart. I want you to live your questions until they lead you to the center of my heart." That is the reason for my long educational pilgrimage from BA (U. of Winnipeg) to MDiv (Princeton) to doctorate in New Testament, Judaism, and Greco-Roman Backgrounds (Harvard). Interestingly, the experience made me a much better student than I had been. And like marijuana, that experience of glossolalia seems to have functioned like a gateway spiritual drug that soon led to other gripping experiences of other spiritual gifts, especially "the word of knowledge" (1 Corinthians 12:8-10).

    (6) Previously, I had not been a stellar student in school and was insecure about God's plans for my future. But shortly after the experience, I suddenly knew that I'd receive the highest GPA in Manitoba in my senior year. Decades later, my cousin, a psychiatrist, reminded me that I had shared "this word of knowledge" with him when I recounted my tongues experience. That experience evidently dramatically improved my mental capacity. When Premier Duff Roblyn publicly acknowledged that achievement at my graduation and scholarships were awarded as a result, I felt that my somewhat awkward attempts at Christian witnessing were rendered more effective and I became more confident in a calling to an academic life.

    But my next 2 experiences of "the word of knowledge" (premonitions) were as puzzling and disturbing as they were riveting. More on that in my next 2 planned posts.
    I greatly enjoyed your testimony of being Baptized in the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues.

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    Senior Member Colonel's Avatar
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    I'm not a Branham fan and a scenario where he quickly announces a healing because there hasn't been that many yet in the meeting and the crowd demands it, seems possible. What we all do not know is what was going on in Branham's mind when he was doing what he was doing.

    I'm certain that he was used to the fact that not everyone was healed, someone not being healed wouldn't have made a dent in his reputation. Compared to stories I've heard from a more recent healing ministry I don't think he had ushers that kept too many people with visible handicaps from reaching the stage - probably to keep things looking good.

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