Life After Death - Mediums, Ghosts, Heaven or Nothing?

thanks for all your comments on mum's story of Margells, she said she just felt the monk wanted to be alone. She was brave to stay - I wouldn't!!! The Landmark Trust do open it to the public for the say every few years or so so I'll go then - with a cracking big crucifix or something! Not sure how that'll go down with a monk but it'll give me dutch courage at least.

spabbygirl

I believe in an afterlife though I am an active church goer and they frown on such things, I have been helping in Kelmscott Manor, country home of William Morris, l left the staff kitchen & on pulling the door behind me I looked over my shoulder and someone said in my ear 'Boo!!!" There was absolutely no-one around. Others have similar experiences there, but all nice & kind, nothing scary though it is weird cos you never know if you're alone or not.
I think some mediums are great but I guess like anyone they have good days and bad days.
I also believe in an afterlife though have no idea what it is, there is a great true story about a boy called Cameron Macaulay who remembers a past life on Barra in the outer Hebrides an American professor who studies these things came over & went there with him, he said these insights children have stop age around 5. It's in the Daily Mirror and there is a really good you tube video of the visit & he got somethings right.
My mum had an experience at a Devon holiday cottage and she was really strong minded - think Margaret Thatcher but politically opposite! To read it google weird Wiltshire Margells - the name of the cottage. Weird Wiltshire does cover a wider area, it's not a mistake. I'm assuming you can't put links here, but they come up quickly on a google search.

Thank you for the link, fascinating story of your mum and aunts experience in the cottage.

I've never seen a ghost, but have heard one, when I was a young girl still at school, our beloved dog died and I was heartbroken, I couldn't eat or sleep I wanted him back. one night when my older sister and I were in bed, (we slept in the same room) we heard a dog barking just outside the window, we got up went to the window and as we did the barking faded away in the distance. 2 or 3 minutes after we were back in bed, the barking started again and again we got up to look out the window, and again the barking faded away..that happened 3 times and we never heard it again. every dog has a different bark, and this one was ours,,,that happened almost 70 years ago and I'm glad my sister was there and heard it too. I truely belive that he came back to let us know that he was still around.

sometimes I wake through the night and there's a smell of perfume in my room,,and it's not my perfume...also smell cigarette smoke in the house and neither my husband nor I smoke,, smile

Last year I reported on GN a strange experience I had. We were in Sussex where our son and family live. We had dropped our eldest grandson off at a local football ground. As we drove back through the small town I noticed on the outskirts a small row of shops, one of which was an antiques shop and I turned to DH and said ‘I’ve just seen an antiques shop when we have time can we visit it?.

The following day I dropped my grandson off at school in the same small town. I wasn’t in a hurry so decided to park up and walk to the small row of shops I had seen the day before in order to browse round the antiques shop. When I arrived there I was shocked to find I was on a housing estate and there were no shops 😳

It really upset me as I know what I saw. I hadn’t had alcohol or drugs. I just can’t explain it.

My mother often accurately predicted things, but not me. However last September we were on holiday and I said to DH ‘I think my sister is ill, I do hope I am not starting to predict things like my mum’. 👩 A few hours later my niece text me to say my sister was ill in hospital. !

polomint

Thank you skye17 very interesting although messages from a prophet are from God and messages from a medium are from satan/ devil. How can you tell the difference from one to the other? They are both giving out messages

Thanks polomint.

I can think of a few ways off the top of my head:

- Prophets don’t try to get in touch with the dead.

- Prophets don’t prophesy for money.

- In the Bible, the messages of the prophets often urge people to stop committing particular sins and avoid the judgement of God. Jeremiah, for instance, told the people of Judah that if they kept worshipping false gods and oppressing the poor, they would be invaded and conquered by a cruel foreign power, the Babylonians. I’ve never heard of a medium telling people to turn from sin and turn to God.

- Prophets know that they risk a hostile reaction from the people they speak to. But they don’t let that stop them. They aim to please God rather than people. Jeremiah was put into an empty well. John the Baptist was beheaded for telling King Herod it was wrong for him to take his brother’s wife.

Thank you skye17 that makes more sense now. You live and learn in life

Many years ago when I was a slip of a girl I worked in one of the old Yorkshire Asylums. It had long since become an NHS hospital but the Victorian buildings remained in use until the 1990s when it closed for good.
Very strange things happened there, that all my scientific education since, and 50+ years of experience still haven't explained.
My mum is dead and had no faith at all but sometimes I feel her close by and I can almost smell Calechè by Hermes but it could be wishful thinking because I miss her.
I grew up on stories in the family about my Irish granny's family having the second sight too.
So maybe I am not an impartial witness.

When ny DD was about 2 we were driving home and passing beside a disused railway line. DD excitedly pointed towards the old railway and said "look at the train!"

I have often wondered about that.

No idea what becomes to us after death but as I don't worry about where I was before birth, I don't worry about afterwards either.

If seeing your dead loved ones now brings comfort. That's lovely.

I do think some people are much more sensitive to whatever there may be, than others.

My mother swore blind that she saw my father (dead for several years) when she was in a very distressed state after an accident where her car was written off. She said he came across the room and sat beside her.

She was always a hyper-sensitive type anyway (TBH it could make her difficult to live with) but I know personally of 2 cases where she was telepathic over very long distances and knew exact details - at the time, not being ‘wise after the event’ of a family member’s distress.

Her ability could never have been proved under lab conditions, since it only ever happened (AFAIK) when someone close was in some sort of extreme distress.

I don't think it is a "self thing"

Are ministers of religion supposed to educate their flocks, or not?

Caleo

Are ministers of religion supposed to educate their flocks, or not?

Why do you ask, Caleo?

Every Christian has a responsibility to read the Bible for him- or herself and do their own thinking in order to understand and apply it. It does say, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your mind’, as well as with all your heart, soul and strength (Mark 12.30).

In some churches people meet in small groups during the week to study the Bible, and discuss what the passage means and how to apply it in their lives. I do this. We use Bible commentaries, videos and study booklets to help us.

The minister has a responsibility to faithfully preach on the Bible, helping their congregation understand what it means and how to apply it, but they can’t do everything.

Skye, thanks for your reply.

It would be unrealistic to expect most churchgoers to be theologians, and it is realistic to expect ministers of religion to be theologians, who also guide their flock as to how to interpret The Bible . Interpreting The Bible is no easy task.

I myself regard The Bible as literature. As such , it's immensely complicated.
The problem for well intentioned ministers of religion is to teach the congregation to the level of the least informed and also the best informed person persons present.

I respect the life and work of Jesus of Nazareth and same as most modern people I don't believe in miracles , so I would not be fit to understand The Bible unless I had previously had the appropriate general schooling.

Caleo

Skye, thanks for your reply.

It would be unrealistic to expect most churchgoers to be theologians, and it is realistic to expect ministers of religion to be theologians, who also guide their flock as to how to interpret The Bible . Interpreting The Bible is no easy task.

I myself regard The Bible as literature. As such , it's immensely complicated.
The problem for well intentioned ministers of religion is to teach the congregation to the level of the least informed and also the best informed person persons present.

I respect the life and work of Jesus of Nazareth and same as most modern people I don't believe in miracles , so I would not be fit to understand The Bible unless I had previously had the appropriate general schooling.

You regard the Bible as literature, Caleo: I regard it as inspired by God. As such, its basic message – how to get right with God – is quite easy to understand.

You say you wouldn’t be fit to understand the Bible without the appropriate general schooling. I think you might be surprised if you tried. Quite a few people think they do have a reasonable understanding without a theology degree. (Incidentally, plenty of Church of England ministers do not have theology degrees either.)

It’s good to hear that you respect the life and work of Jesus. But then what do you make of his claim to be God? As C S Lewis points out, there are three possible responses to this claim:

1. Lunatic - he believed he was God and was mad
2. Liar - he didn’t believe he was God and was lying
3. Lord - he was and is God

From the records we have of Jesus’ life, in the Bible and outside it, there is no reason to think he was mad. There is reason, though, to think that he lived an exceptionally good life, so that a wild lie would be quite out of character. He is referred to as God in two of the New Testament letters (1 Peter and Titus), written probably by AD 65, showing that this claim was accepted early on and did not grow up as a legend later. This was only about 30 years after his death.

The remaining alternative is that his claim was true.

If someone doesn’t believe his claim, do they really respect him?

same as most modern people I don't believe in miracles

On miracles, let me recommend Dr Craig Keener’s two-volume scholarly study, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts, containing excellent evidence for the occurrence of miracles both in the past and the present.
www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0801039525?ref_=cm_sw_r_mwn_dp_Y5Z2P9A07HKPDXY60R34&language=en-GB&tag=gransnetforum-21

Or if anyone would like an easier read, there is Lee Strobel’s book The Case for Miracles (4.7 stars on Amazon).
amzn.eu/d/cZjIWC5

Lee Strobel was an award-winning journalist so his style is quite pacy. (He converted from atheism to Christianity after spending years examining the evidence.)

Sorry, that should say 2 Peter not 1 Peter. Wish there was an edit button.

I've never seen a ghost and think I would be very frightened if I did. I do talk to my mother, who died many years ago but don't know if she can hear me or not. Sometimes, if someone in the family has problems or is ill, I ask her if she can help. Things usually work out OK anyway. Recently, I asked if she could help my sister, who was very ill in hospital, and strangely, I kept thinking 'Her time has come' over and over in my head. This is not what usually happens as I don't usually think of anything at all. My sister died in ICU.
Also strangely about 2 weeks before my sister went in hospital my DGC age 9 suddenly started crying and saying they didn't want to die at bedtime. Not a topic that had been discussed with them or mentioned at all. It took their mum a long time to settle them that night - again very unusual.
I have an open mind on the afterlife and ghosts but not totally convinced yet.

Madeinyorkshire so sorry to hear about your DD, hope you & your family are OK xx

As a child I would have that Deja-vu a lot. When my dad died, my mum had been in a care home for about a year. We never thought my dad would pass before her, but he did. When I went to visit my mum to tell her her H had died, a few of the staff told me that my dad, whom they all knew well as he visited every day, had been tapping on my mum's window!

Last May I unfortunately found my neighbour dead at the bottom of his stairs, I was so upset about it. Next day I was sitting in my armchair looking out into the garden, when a large like tear drop bright light, about the size of my hand, suddenly appeared on the floor by my chair. I looked around to see if it was a reflection from something, but no, never seen it before or since. It stayed about 1-2 minutes, I was transfixed. It suddenly went as quick as it had arrived, just sort of shot off. Around 5mins later there was a knock on the door, a florist with a big, beautiful bouquet of flowers in her hand. I said, 'they can't be for me', she said 'yes they are'. The card said from my neighbours D, thanking me for all I'd done. I said I didn't want to accept them as I hadn't saved my neighbour, he was dead! But I did accept the flowers, texting the D that she shouldn't have.

Did Jesus of Nazareth claim to be God, or was the Holy Trinity a later theological idea which was man -made?
At no point did Jesus of Nazareth want people to be mystified Indeed his parables are rational and make no mention of woo woo stuff, but on the contrary tell important moral truths from the point of view of simple country folk.

The Church is justified in condemning belief in ghosts and things, because they are a silly diversion from real life problems which Jesus actually dealt with and lost his life for doing so.

Here is a heartwarming story. A man I know related that his own father had been seriously ill in hospital at the time the man's wife was expecting their first child. When visiting the father's bedside the sick man asked his son to take a large bunch of white roses to his daughter-in-law upon the child's birth should he be unable to do so himself. The son promised. The father died. The child was born but with serious complications. It was such a harrowing time for the son that he forgot his promise to the father. On the terrace of this family there is a rose bush. Its flowers are red. But that month of May they all flowered white and the son remembered his forgotten vow to his father. Their gardener declared it was impossible for a rose shrub to change colour like that. The year after, the flowers were again white.

Sorry - the year after the flowers were again RED.

Caleo

Did Jesus of Nazareth claim to be God, or was the Holy Trinity a later theological idea which was man -made?
At no point did Jesus of Nazareth want people to be mystified Indeed his parables are rational and make no mention of woo woo stuff, but on the contrary tell important moral truths from the point of view of simple country folk.

The Church is justified in condemning belief in ghosts and things, because they are a silly diversion from real life problems which Jesus actually dealt with and lost his life for doing so.

Did Jesus of Nazareth claim to be God, or was the Holy Trinity a later theological idea which was man-made?

Bible passages where Jesus claims to be God:

For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.
- John 5.18

Jesus answered, ‘... I and the Father are one.’

Again his Jewish opponents picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus said to them, ‘I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?’

‘We are not stoning you for any good work,’ they replied, ‘but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God.’
- John 10.30-33

Jesus answered: ‘Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.'
- John 14.9

In the parable of the tenants (Mark 12.1-11, also in Matthew and Luke), Jesus speaks of himself as being in a unique relationship with God the Father as his son, unlike the other prophets. In this parable,

- the vineyard represents Israel
- the vineyard owner represents God the Father
- the vineyard tenants represent the Jewish religious leaders (to whom Jesus was speaking at the time)
- the owner’s servants represent the prophets
- the owner’s son represents Jesus.

Jesus also made indirect claims to be God, for example:

- by saying he had the authority to forgive sins, which the Jews considered to belong only to God (Matthew 9.6)
- by calling himself the Son of Man, a divine figure prophesied in Daniel 7.13–14 (e g in Matthew 25.31)
- and by saying that he will sit as judge when he comes in his glory (Matthew 25.31–46).

As I wrote above, Jesus is called God in two separate New Testament letters (2 Peter and Titus), written probably 30–35 years after he died. This is like 1989 to the 1990s to us. There was not time for a 'later theological idea' to have grown up by then. Eye-witnesses to the life of Jesus were still alive and could have contradicted the idea as unrealistic, if they had wanted to.

Caleo

Did Jesus of Nazareth claim to be God, or was the Holy Trinity a later theological idea which was man -made?
At no point did Jesus of Nazareth want people to be mystified Indeed his parables are rational and make no mention of woo woo stuff, but on the contrary tell important moral truths from the point of view of simple country folk.

The Church is justified in condemning belief in ghosts and things, because they are a silly diversion from real life problems which Jesus actually dealt with and lost his life for doing so.

his parables are rational and make no mention of woo woo stuff, but on the contrary tell important moral truths from the point of view of simple country folk.

Jesus affirmed the existence of life after death in a parable. In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16.19–31), Jesus says:

‘…the beggar [Lazarus] died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, “Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire. But Abraham replied, “… between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot”.’

Jesus also gave many warnings about the existence of hell (e g Matthew 18.9).

Jesus’ parables often surprised and baffled the people who heard them, so that his disciples would come to him afterwards and ask him to explain them. E g Matthew 13.36, Mark 4.34. They tended to shake up people’s ideas and make them think.

Caleo

Did Jesus of Nazareth claim to be God, or was the Holy Trinity a later theological idea which was man -made?
At no point did Jesus of Nazareth want people to be mystified Indeed his parables are rational and make no mention of woo woo stuff, but on the contrary tell important moral truths from the point of view of simple country folk.

The Church is justified in condemning belief in ghosts and things, because they are a silly diversion from real life problems which Jesus actually dealt with and lost his life for doing so.

The Church is justified in condemning belief in ghosts and things

I don’t think the Church of England condemns belief in ghosts as such. In decades of weekly churchgoing I have never come across this or read of it.

Seeking to contact the dead, or engaging in other occult activities, is certainly worned against. That’s not to say that people don’t have strange experiences, including when they aren’t seeking them. Some Christians think these are all caused by evil spirits; others think some are caused by evil spirits and some (possibly) by the spirits of the dead.

The churches certainly don’t condemn belief in evil spirits (demons). The existence of these is clearly taught in Scripture. Jesus said, ‘I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven’ (Luke 10.18).

This was just after his disciples told him, ‘Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.’ He said in reply, ‘I have given you authority over all the power of the enemy [Satan].’ (Luke 10.17-19.)

Incidentally, this also shows that Jesus thought of himself as more than an ordinary teacher or prophet. How could a mere mortal give them power over evil spiritual beings?