Psychic abilities and mediums

[Riniel]

okay, so.. as the title says, these are questions about psychic abilities. I really hope I'm not going to be ostracised for what I'm about to post..

I have a very strong intuition, and sometimes when I meet people, I will start thinking about something that they are thinking about, not knowing they are thinking about it until I say something, then they tell me they were thinking the same thing.

I have the same connection with my sister, and parents. My sister mostly, but I've shared thoughts with my parents as well. All of us have gone to sleep, had a dream, and the next day everything that happened in the dream is coming true in real life. Since we are Christians, believing in psychics, or that the ability exists is said to be sinful, but my sister, me, and my parents have all experienced some sort of psychic ability. We don't seek it out, it just happens.

Also, when I was a kid, age 11, my sister ran away from home, and went to California. My sister was also doing drugs, and bad things. So, while she was gone, I was having visions of her, and it was happening when I would be sleeping, but I could see things happen that went on in her life. One night, I went to sleep, and I saw a vision like I was up high, looking downward. So, in this vision I was looking over a bathroom. I could see three people, and my sister. My sister was passed out, and these three people were freaking out because she was over dosing on heroin. She was living with a guy, and his parents. So, I heard his parents say, "omg get some expletive deleted by staff paramedics here!", my sisters boyfriend said no, that he can't have her go to the hospital, because she would end up being forced to go back to Oregon. So, they ran the shower, and put her in the tub, and she started gasping as the water was hitting her face.. I woke up, and I was sweating, shaking, and freaking out because I didn't know what I had just saw. I didn't know she was dying from an overdose, I was only 11, so that scene didn't make sense to me until I became a teenager. That was one of many visions I had of my sister in different situations. I didn't tell her about my visions until I was 17, and when I told her, I described what everything looked like, and the situations that took place, and she started crying, and freaking out, because it was all true. She said she never wanted me to see those things, and yet I did anyway. I don't understand why, but I did. My sister is the only person I've had visions of. I haven't had a vision in years. Although, when I'm around my sister, we read each others minds without realising it, until we say something out loud.. lol.

If psychic abilities are of Satan as other Christian claim, why would an innocent 11 year old girl have visions of real situations? I don't ask Satan for power, or to give me the connection I have with my sister, and the connection I can have with other people. I'm confused as to what to believe. When I experienced the visions, I thought they were just dreams until I told my sister many years later. I then realised I experienced an out of body experience, or I was given visions by God, for whatever reason.

I also had another very strange thing happen with my sister.. one time we were in the car, my sister was driving, and I was the passenger, and I heard her say something out loud, and I answered her. She looked at me very strangely, and I said, "what? why are you looking at me like that?", and she proceeded to tell me that she didn't say anything out loud, but she was thinking about something. I heard her thoughts out loud, as if she used her voice to say something to me.. I didn't know until she told me that she hadn't said anything out loud, because it sounded as if it were spoken out loud.. it gets even stranger.. not only did she not say anything out loud, but what she was thinking about was about a person she had never mentioned to me before, but I could of swore she told me about the person she was thinking about.. I responded to her thoughts, and also knew what she was "talking" about, even though she never actually told me about the person. She freaked out, and asked me how I knew who that person was, and I told her that she told me about them, but in reality, she never did tell me about the person.. I some how picked up on her thoughts, and knew who she was thinking about.. To this day, I still think that is one of the more bizarre things that has happened between us.

Anyway, I hope this doesn't freak anyone out. I don't want you guys to think I'm crazy, but I just want to make sense of what I've experienced, and what to believe. I know some people experience these super natural experiences, and they don't ask for them, or seek out power, or abilities from Satan. So, what does all this mean?

 

[Carolyn]

First, tell God that you don't want any dreams or thoughts that are not from Him, and ask Him to take away everything that is of Satan. Then, whenever you are given a dream or vision, pray about whatever you see taking place. For instance, ask God to deliver your sister from drugs and protect her from evil people.

We are told that when we are in the last days, young men shall see visions and old men shall dream dreams. Joel 2:28 NKJV However, you must be very careful to test the spirits in a case like this. For instance, you might say, spirit, Who is Jesus to you, and in what manner did He come? If it answers that Jesus is its Lord, and that He came in the flesh, you might be OK.

I used to know a woman who claimed to have powers like this as far as reading peoples minds. She and her parents operated as psychics. She said it was from satan but she had started attending a Church of God (non pentacostal) and wanted nothing more to do with her former life. But I noticed a few years later that she was back in business.

The thing that makes me most wary about your experience is that in the Bible God always tells people what to do with the dream or vision, or what it meant, as in Daniel or Hosea. I used to have a Baptist pastor who practiced deliverance. He believed that the real thing was out there or Satan would not bother with conterfeits. But he had encountered many people with counterfeit gifts and they were delivered. Perhaps you could find someone like that and ask for counseling about this. You would not want it to distract you from a close relationship with God or keep you out of heaven.

King Saul had cast all the witches, mediums and fortune tellers out of the land as God had commanded, but later sought out the witch (medium) of En dor. This was a great evil in God's sight. 1 Samuel 15:23 For rebellion is as the sin of withcraft--the footnote says this can also be translated divination, a form of fortune telling. This whole area that you discribed is very close to occult practices.

 

[joethemechanic]

It's Satan trying to gain your confidence

Acts 16

16 Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. 17 This girl followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.†18 She kept this up for many days. Finally Paul became so troubled that he turned around and said to the spirit, “In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!†At that moment the spirit left her.

 

[Eugene]

I really hope I'm not going to be ostracized for what I'm about to post..

Not by me. In the bible visions are possible, as is discernment.

 

[Grazer]

If there is a spiritual realm (which as a Christian I believe there is one) then it will be filled with angels and demons (not completely theologically correct I know but you get the point) Now, its entirely possible what you saw of your sister was happening as you saw it and God was trying to show you. It could also be from the devil trying to say "hey look what you can do, why do you need God?" As Carolyn has put, ask God about it

As for mediums generally, its possible they do have a connection to the spiritual but I suspect most have no idea what they're dealing with. I guess my advice is just be careful.

Sent from my HTC Desire S using Tapatalk 2

 

[Riniel]

Because of my sisters choices in life, it scared me so bad, j never wanted to do drugs, or do bad things. I've been saved, and I've accepted Jesus as my saviour. I talk to God all the time. I don't experience these things all the time, it just happens once in a while.

I did have another experience that I didn't mention here, but I had a dream back in 2007, and in my dream, I was at my grandmothers house out in the countryside. Me, my parents, and my grandmother were standing outside, and suddenly we saw horrible things starting to happen. Within a blink of the eye my dream turned to the world being on fire, so much that the sky was red, and there were people coming after us trying to steal our food, and some even wanted to kill us to eat us.. People were cannibalising each other, and people were raping each other, violating others.. People had sores, and lesions all over their bodies.. In my dream me, my parents, and grandmother ran inside her house, and we were safe. No one was able to get in the house, and we sat at the window and just watched all these horrible things happening. There was a shield over the house, and suddenly I woke up, but I woke up in my dream. I had a dream, within another dream. When I woke up in my dream, I went to the kitchen and told my parents and grandmother what happened in my dream, and my mum, and grandmother were laughing about my dream, telling me it was just a nightmare, but my father looked at me very seriously and said, "read Isaiah chapter one..", then I said, "why? what does it mean?", and my dad in the dream said, "just read Isaiah chapter one.", and that was it.. I woke up immediately after that dream, and I didn't know for sure if Isaiah was even a book in the bible, because a year before this dream I was going through a phase where I was doing whatever I wanted, and that dream brought me closer to God. I had become a Christian again not even a year before my dream occurred, and I was still learning the bible.. so, I had to look at my bible list of books to see if Isaiah was even a book in the bible.. Once I read it though, I was scared.. to this day, I still don't know why God sent me that dream, and what I'm supposed to do with it, or what it means. I've asked many people if they could help me decipher my dream, and I've gotten a lot of different answers, to the point that it confused me even more..

I don't ask Satan for power, or help.. in fact I ask God every day to protect me from evil, and to wash me with the holy spirit.. since I started asking God to cleanse me, and to keep Satan away from my thoughts, I haven't really experienced any visions, dreams, or the like.. sometimes I'll still be thinking about the same thing as someone else I know, but I think in many ways family members especially think a lot alike. Most of the time I'm doing something with whoever I'm with when we think about the same thing, and it's usually relevant to the activity we are doing.. I don't profess to be psychic in any way, and I don't usually tell people about some of my experiences, because being a Christian, I feel that sometimes these things are not appropriate to discuss with other people. In a forum format like this though, I'm more asking about what other people think, and asking for advice, but this isn't a topic that comes up very often in my day to day life when I'm associating with other people. I'm more ashamed of it than anything.

 

[providence]

"read Isaiah chapter one.."

I won't answer that directly, but I think the book of Isaiah may be helpful to everyone in supporting a basic truth in Jesus's message: It shows that the God who formed us punishes sin unto death, but God loves the prodigal son, and sinners can humble themselves before God to experience redemption, cleansing, and communion with Him. Isaiah 1:18-20 reflects that in brief.

The following is my summary of Isaiah following a recent read of it. I do this to support the above point and stimulate some interest. It's undoubtedly inadequate since I haven't studied this difficult book that well, but that won't discourage me since others should correct me where it's lacking or errant. Isaiah concerns itself with Israel, which was once faithful, more or less, in some previous generations, but it and surrounding nations later were set on rebelling against God (Isaiah 1:21). God devastated these nations for their sin: first punishing Israel/Judah by the hand of these other nations, and then punishing these other nations for their arrogance while doing that (Isaiah 10:12), so that all man is humbled and God alone is exalted (Isaiah 2). He is the potter and we are only the clay (Isaiah 45:9). Yet, as in the days of Noah, God has compassion, using the imagery even of a husband (which we also see in the NT), and provides a restoration for Israel (Isaiah 54), with images of the Messiah (Isaiah 53), and this expands to other nations (Isaiah 56). This is a simplification since we still see sin and its consequences throughout the book (Isaiah 66:24). For some more context, Isaiah lived in a tumultuous time preceding the Jewish diaspora: the Assyrian conquest prior to the 70 year captivity under the Babylonians and later restoration under "Cyrus" (who lived well after Isaiah but was mentioned in the book: Isaiah 44:28). King Hezekiah, the last king of Judah mentioned in Isaiah's lifetime (Isaiah 1:1), was remarkably well spoken of personally (2 Kings 18:5), but despite his righteousness, God still allowed his kingdom to be threatened with massive destruction by King Sennacherib of Assyria (Assyria had already permanently destroyed the northern 10 tribes of Israel). God prevented that under his own extraordinary power because of Hezekiah's prayer (maybe like Moses' intersession to God in Exodus 32), but this seemed only to delay the inevitable, maybe like Hezekiah's death, and the judgement of Babylonia captivity would still follow because of the peoples' sin remained extensive, as seen in Hezekiah's very sinful son.

A few other points on Isaiah 1: skin diseases (e.g. leprosy) are common in the Bible as a manifestation of sin. We see some of that in Isaiah. The first king mentioned in Isaiah 1:1 got leprosy upon rebelling against God (2 Chronicles 26:21). Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19 is part of the imagery mentioned in Isaiah.

I heard this before about Augustine, but I don't know how much weight to give it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo#Christian_conversion