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I really don't think he sends "signs". That's too Bible-esc. What I encounter is deep communications and signals from within. They aren't glaring or profound, but soft and almost whispering, though in no way audible.
One certainly has to be in the right state of mind and spirit to pick up on these signals. One has to cast of specific expectations, and leave an "empty plate or mirror". Then wait, without a timeline and without pushing and pulling. It's a release for matters to happen as the the higher power / God chooses, not us.
But this is all unique and personal. There's no way for one person to say how it might operate with someone else. So, instead of trying to get answers from others, find the answers yourself from within.
I don't believe you're likely to get anything resembling a convincing answer.
Most responses are likely to be what I might call "one off" responses. "I prayed for X and X happened. It was a miracle." "X appeared to me in a vision. It was from God." "I saw an angel lift my child from a burning car." Etc., etc., yada yada. These are convincing only to the people to whom they happened. There are too many mundane alternative possibilities, from pure coincidence to mental illness on the part of the experiencer and everything in between.
I've had a number of "one off" anomalous experiences that are inconsistent with the materialistic paradigm. Several had objective aspects that weren't within my control - i.e., I didn't produce them (unless my mind is capable of doing things inconsistent with the materialistic paradigm). In every case, I tried to dispassionately evaluate my own mental state and circumstances and consider possible mundane explanations. (In one recent case, I did arrive at an odd but mundane explanation.) My extensive studies have confirmed that my anomalous experiences are all of types that tens or hundreds of thousands of other sane and credible people have reported. Ergo, they are one key body of evidence that convinces me the materialistic paradigm is simply false and that consciousness survives death. However, I don't interpret any of them as a sign from God per se.
As I've stated elsewhere, the incidents where I have genuinely sensed divine intervention were complex and multi-faceted and all occurred at potentially critical junctures of my life. Even with these, however, they have a "you had to be there" quality that renders them unlikely to be convincing to anyone else. I'll give you one example that will probably just seem tedious.
When I was 42, I walked away from my teaching career to join a highly successful, world-famous ministry built around one charismatic leader. Its emphasis was on the mentally and physically disabled. My wife and I thought it was a genuine calling from God. We sold, at a very substantial loss, everything we had, bought an old van to help ferry the disabled, and moved onto the campus of this ministry. I had been recruited as the future president but we chose to spend a year at a very menial level of service so we would have credibility with the others as well as a better understanding of the ministry. I quickly realized the ministry was a fraud and was victimizing those it was supposed to be helping. After about three months, I wrote a long and gentle-but-blunt memo to the leader with my observations and suggestions. The very next day, he had two thugs evict us from the premises. I literally fought them off with a baseball bat and filed a criminal complaint.
My wife and I sat in our old van wondering what the hell had just happened. We had virtually nothing but that van. Far from a calling by God, the ministry now seemed like a descent into hell. Purely on a whim, we pointed the van at a distant town where I had once worked and were thrilled when my wife quickly found a minimum-wage job at a 7-11. I wrote a long letter back to the leader of the ministry. Yes, you ruined my life, I told him, but your day will come. There will be a reckoning for evil like yours. A few months later, I felt like an OT prophet. The memo I had written to him was taken to the board of directors by another guy in whom I had confided. To everyone's astonishment, the board ousted the leader and his entire family from the ministry they had created. Now, and for many years since the ouster, the ministry is what it always should have been and is highly respected for all the right reasons. It suddenly made sense that we really had been called by God, but not for the reasons we had thought. We had been called because I had the strength of character to expose the fraud.
"But what about me, God?" I wondered. I contacted an old boss who had become kind of a friend - the work had nothing to do with teaching - but he said he had nothing and I started cranking out applications for anything and everything. A couple of days later, he called me back - actually, the company could use my research and writing skills on a huge project. He asked what it would take for me to work as a consultant. I said, "Oh, $15 an hour?" He laughed and said, "Well, I already have approval for $125, so we'll go with that." I spent the next five months minting money. Then the project was drawing to a close. I started visiting the library and looking at Dallas-area newspapers for teaching openings. One day, I saw a possibility and called. The person doing the hiring "just happened" to be an old classmate I had barely known. "Oh, you don't even have to interview," she said. "Just come on back." I called the builder of the home we had sold and asked if they had any unsold inventory. "Yeah, we have one exactly like yours the next street over, except it has a fireplace in the corner of the living room," he said. I bought it by fax, sight unseen. I won't bore you with all the weird ways that things just happened to fall into place, but it was jaw-dropping. In less than a year from first thinking God had called us to the ministry from hell, we were fully restored with a new home, new furniture, a new car and money in the bank.
Not persuasive to anyone else, I realize, but this is one of at least four such experiences at genuinely critical junctures of my life where it truly seemed to me that a protective divine hand was involved. What occurred was a sequence of events just too unlikely to chalk up to luck. Some even involved anomalous aspects. These complex sequences of events are my "signs from God."
Why do others not experience such things, why are others not blessed as I seem to have been? I have no idea, nor do I really care. You are, it seems to me, a lost soul. I doubt you would recognize a sign from God if it bit you on the ass. Neither I nor anyone else really has anything to offer you. What you will discover - or not, as the case may be - is within yourself and between you and the universe. You aren't sincerely looking for "signs" here, and you and everyone else knows it.
Thanks for sharing. I'm always interested to hear people stories.
I'm starting this thread to ask people what experiences they have had that they would consider a manifestation of God. Curious, because I've had some experiences I could describe as manifestations of God. Especially when I was younger and a believer, I would associate certain experiences and/or feelings as a result of God's presence. Then later in life, as I became an atheist, I no longer experienced anything I could conclude was such a manifestation or sign from God. Not for a good many decades now. Not even when I was more "inviting" of such a thing. I'll let this thread be yet another request to see if maybe I get a sign. We'll see. I'll let you know. While meanwhile, what signs have you received? Past or present? Thanks!
What would be interesting would be if you had a similar thread directed at atheists.
I have lots of personal stories that I'm sure if I were a believer could very well be taken as evidence for god. Some good stories and some really terrible stories. I've shared them before I think many years ago.
I completely understand why some people interpret their experiences as evidence of god.
Sometimes it seems like the evidence is just too much of a coincidence, and I get that.
Other atheists have unexplained incidences in their lives, same as theists. I know this from personal experience of the atheists around me that have had similar experiences to mine.
I might share my stories again if I'm feeling brave enough. I've seen people ripped apart on here when they share personal stuff, so I'll have to think about it. They are very personal and heartfelt to me and stuff I havent talked about for a long time.
Anyway apart from the personal experiences there is also just the incredible stuff that happens in nature everyday. I started a thread about this once. Things that are very hard to explain away and make you think twice.
I really should be a theist. I often think I get more out of my view on life than some theists do. But I'm not. And that's just the way it is.
I've had a few experiences in life, but I chalk most of them up to natural intuition at play. I don't necessarily count that as "a sign from God", because we were raised that paying attention to intuition or psychics or anything that didn't come from the Bible was WRONG. Only much later, when a therapist said, "you know, some of your "stuff" (meaning OCD intrusive thoughts) might be a result of not paying attention to your natural intuition due to your religious upbringing" did I begin to allow myself to explore and exercise my intuitive abilities further.
I did have a strange but pleasant moment a few years ago that I mentioned on here before.
There is a patch of woods at the end of the park across the street from where I live. I was out walking one afternoon, and as I passed the woods, the afternoon sun was just filtering so beautifully through the trees that I had to stop. I entered the edge of the woods and just stood there, enjoying the moment, and I "heard" a voice in my head that said "Step forward". It was different than my own thought, though not an audible voice, but the words were very clear in my brain. I stepped forward, and when I did, I could see this beautiful mini meadow full of purple flowers that was not visible to me until I took the step. It felt like a gift, but from whom, I would not be able to say. There might have been a time when I would have said God, though.
I've also experienced what appears to be a couple of messages from <drumroll> "the other side", in particular since March when my fiance died. I wrote about them on the Pagan forum, where I knew such discussions would be better received without idiotic remarks about demons and whatnot.
I'd be interested to read these MQ. I'll go on the hunt on the Pagan forum and see if I can find what you wrote.
I'm starting this thread to ask people what experiences they have had that they would consider a manifestation of God. Curious, because I've had some experiences I could describe as manifestations of God. Especially when I was younger and a believer, I would associate certain experiences and/or feelings as a result of God's presence. Then later in life, as I became an atheist, I no longer experienced anything I could conclude was such a manifestation or sign from God. Not for a good many decades now. Not even when I was more "inviting" of such a thing. I'll let this thread be yet another request to see if maybe I get a sign. We'll see. I'll let you know. While meanwhile, what signs have you received? Past or present? Thanks!
It is interesting. Kind of coming from a similar background as yourself I remember things that I would think were from God... I know consider just "good fortune" or "random luck" or simply an opportunity that opens up.
Works just as good.
And meanwhile when bad things happen I don't have to worry about "God testing me" or "the Devil pulling a Job on me" or anything like that.
I also think "survivor's guilt" plays a part in my case. I can't really feel all that good about supposed blessings from God when other people have really bad stuff happen to them.
What would be interesting would be if you had a similar thread directed at atheists.
I have lots of personal stories that I'm sure if I were a believer could very well be taken as evidence for god. Some good stories and some really terrible stories. I've shared them before I think many years ago.
I completely understand why some people interpret their experiences as evidence of god.
Sometimes it seems like the evidence is just too much of a coincidence, and I get that.
Other atheists have unexplained incidences in their lives, same as theists. I know this from personal experience of the atheists around me that have had similar experiences to mine.
I might share my stories again if I'm feeling brave enough. I've seen people ripped apart on here when they share personal stuff, so I'll have to think about it. They are very personal and heartfelt to me and stuff I havent talked about for a long time.
Anyway apart from the personal experiences there is also just the incredible stuff that happens in nature everyday. I started a thread about this once. Things that are very hard to explain away and make you think twice.
I really should be a theist. I often think I get more out of my view on life than some theists do. But I'm not. And that's just the way it is.
The unexplained incidents are typically viewed in the context of whatever belief system the experiencer already holds. I've seen both sides of the spectrum numerous times: the credulous believer for whom every found penny in the street is a sign from God (or her dead child, as the case may be) and the hardboiled debunker who explains away jaw-dropping incidents for which I can see no conceivable mundane explanation as nothing special. There is both a very strong will to believe and an equally strong will not to believe - not on the part of everyone, of course, but on the part of many if not most.
My weird sequences of events, with the exception of one, occurred after I was already a believer. If I were not already a believer, I'm not sure any of them would have had me screeching "THAT'S IT - THERE IS A GOD!!!" On the other hand, in all cases these were genuinely critical junctures where my life had a realistic possibility of taking a turn for the drastically worse. In all instances, my rescue struck me as not only exceedingly unlikely, not what I would've expected to happen if I'd been completely in control, but quite personal, as though a guiding and protective intelligence were steering things despite my best efforts to screw them up. Even if I were not a Christian, I would be convinced that the ultimate ontological reality is "personal" (whatever that may mean at the level of UOR).
My own explanation for these events is that I paid my dues in the hideous childhood I suffered through and am being protected and rewarded for surviving and emerging from it as intact as I did. I have no other explanation for why I have been blessed to the extent I have for the past six decades. In almost every way, it's been quite unbelievable - not just to me, but to many others as well. This explanation could certainly be me trying to make sense of the patterns of my life as humans are prone to do - but the patterns themselves are very real, do have some anomalous aspects and defy mundane explanation by me, and do seem imbued with this guiding and protective intelligence from outside myself.
Thanks for sharing. I'm always interested to hear people stories.
Me too. I have a few of my own, but mine aren't about God, they are more specific, a sign from my mother, a sign from my father.
For instance, many years ago, I was having a really hard time living in another city working and having to commute on weekends 5 hours one way to go back home, and I had been there a year. My contract was ending and I was being offered a permanent position with Boeing, which was a career goal of mine and would have been the peak at that time. I struggled for weeks about it because I was unhappy being away from my husband, who owned a business in another state and couldn't leave more than a few days at a time.
I finally decided that I needed to be happy more than I needed the money. The next day was the last day of the contract and people had started clearing out their desks. When I got to my desk there was a box that I thought was put there for my things. I finished up the last of the work to be delivered, and opened the box to start emptying drawers. In the box were several CDs. I pulled them out in a stack and set them down and the top one was the Riverdance soundtrack. My mother's favorite. I set it aside and saw the next one. Dixie Chicks. Another of my mother's favorites. Then Sarah McLachlan, Phantom of the Opera, TLC, New Kids on the Block. All my mother's favorites. I ask around if the box belonged to anybody and nobody claimed it. How eclectic a group of CDs could this be for someone else to like these exact same artists and buy the CD (this was back before streaming).
I am convinced that it was a sign from my mother that I made the right decision. I listened to all those CDs on my way back home that weekend with all my things in the back of the truck, and it made me feel quite soothed and calm.
The same sort of thing recently happened when I was considering leaving my company of 10 years for a company I'd wanted to work with for many years. The position was right up my alley, perfect for me really, I would be working from home with a little travel, and my husband could go with me, and the only thing holding me back was the medical insurance situation. This year their company had changed coverage from Group to Individual "to bring costs down". They tried very hard to convince me by having their HR people call me and go over every one of my doctors, confirming that the coverage they offered for my state would accept those doctors. They'd been going back and forth with me for weeks, and we had gotten to a negotiation that I was about ready to accept, and I planned on doing so on Monday.
Saturday morning I woke up with some kind of infection in my finger. I had yanked a hangnail of all things and it had turned yellow and I couldn't even touch it, it was so painful. I normally would just put triple antibiotic on it with a Bandaid and muddle on, but for some reason I got dressed and went to the corner MedStop. When I walked in, there was a big sign that said "We do not accept That Insurance". Well I already had insurance, so I got seen and had to have it lanced and got an antibiotics script for a staph infection. I was there awhile, and the NP who had treated me was very friendly and I asked her about why they don't accept That Insurance. She said they didn't pay. I told her why I was asking and she sat down and basically gave me a testimony on her troubles with That Insurance, as she was covered by them, and none of her doctors accepted it, in fact she had to drive over an hour away to another town to get seen and she was afraid they would stop accepting them too. I called my doctors and dentists and a cousin who is a nurse, and is married to an NP, and they all said absolutely not, they don't pay and have practically been blacklisted.
I am convinced this was my dad intervening before I did something terrible. We have a team of doctors we love, and losing them would be devastating.
Why would this be any different than my mother's sign? Because my mother always made me learn the lessons without any advice, but my dad always saved me from doing something horribly wrong.
Dangit I would start crying at work
I have other similar stories but you get the idea.
Why do you believe them? Why do you believe anyone reading this thread has received special revelation? Especially when it contradicts what God has already said?
You chose an apt name, BaptistFundie, but your posts are as unhelpful as any atheist's.
The Bible and the Resurrection are definitive for Christian believers and no one else. There is no way to pretend they are the kinds of signs LearnMe is talking about or should be sufficient for him. The Bible is not self-authenticating as "God's word," and the Resurrection accounts are muddled, hotly debated and scarcely compelling to a non-believer. I accept the Bible because I'm a Christian; it isn't why I'm a Christian. All you're really saying is that someone like LearnMe is somehow at fault for not seeing the Bible the same way you do, which just begs the question LearnMe is asking. When the Bible says there will be no further signs, it's not unreasonable to ask "Well, why not - and why should I care what the Bible says anyway?"
What can you say to a Hindu or Muslim who cites the Rigveda or Koran as having the same authority you claim for the Bible and who insists LearnMe should be satisfied with one of these scriptures? There's nothing you can say except that you believe the Bible and not the Rigveda or Koran. This really isn't responsive to what LearnMe is saying - it just the fundamentalist mantra, regardless of whether the fundamentalist is a Baptist, Hindu or Muslim.
The reality is, God doesn't give unequivocal signs. He gives hints and clues, sufficient for those with ears to hear and eyes to see. LearnMe is not going to get any response beyond "This is what seemed to me like a sign from God." LearnMe and others will filter this supposed "sign" through what they already believe and go their merry way: Yes, I agree it was an angel! No, you're delusional! Maybe something odd happened, but it wasn't an angel! You're making up the whole thing! Whatever!
That's why I say LearnMe isn't sincere. There's nothing anyone is going to say that he isn't going to filter through his Ten Truths of Scientism and declare inadequate. He knew this going in. The thread is just mental masturbation.
For the reasons I have set forth above, God doesn't give unequivocal signs because to do so would be coercive - it would override human free will and eviscerate God's entire plan of creation as Christians understand it. (Or perhaps God doesn't give unequivocal signs because there is no God at all, or there is a God very different from what Christians understand Him to be - which is why each individual must decide for himself or herself.)
Me too. I have a few of my own, but mine aren't about God, they are more specific, a sign from my mother, a sign from my father.
For instance, many years ago, I was having a really hard time living in another city working and having to commute on weekends 5 hours one way to go back home, and I had been there a year. My contract was ending and I was being offered a permanent position with Boeing, which was a career goal of mine and would have been the peak at that time. I struggled for weeks about it because I was unhappy being away from my husband, who owned a business in another state and couldn't leave more than a few days at a time.
I finally decided that I needed to be happy more than I needed the money. The next day was the last day of the contract and people had started clearing out their desks. When I got to my desk there was a box that I thought was put there for my things. I finished up the last of the work to be delivered, and opened the box to start emptying drawers. In the box were several CDs. I pulled them out in a stack and set them down and the top one was the Riverdance soundtrack. My mother's favorite. I set it aside and saw the next one. Dixie Chicks. Another of my mother's favorites. Then Sarah McLachlan, Phantom of the Opera, TLC, New Kids on the Block. All my mother's favorites. I ask around if the box belonged to anybody and nobody claimed it. How eclectic a group of CDs could this be for someone else to like these exact same artists and buy the CD (this was back before streaming).
I am convinced that it was a sign from my mother that I made the right decision. I listened to all those CDs on my way back home that weekend with all my things in the back of the truck, and it made me feel quite soothed and calm.
The same sort of thing recently happened when I was considering leaving my company of 10 years for a company I'd wanted to work with for many years. The position was right up my alley, perfect for me really, I would be working from home with a little travel, and my husband could go with me, and the only thing holding me back was the medical insurance situation. This year their company had changed coverage from Group to Individual "to bring costs down". They tried very hard to convince me by having their HR people call me and go over every one of my doctors, confirming that the coverage they offered for my state would accept those doctors. They'd been going back and forth with me for weeks, and we had gotten to a negotiation that I was about ready to accept, and I planned on doing so on Monday.
Saturday morning I woke up with some kind of infection in my finger. I had yanked a hangnail of all things and it had turned yellow and I couldn't even touch it, it was so painful. I normally would just put triple antibiotic on it with a Bandaid and muddle on, but for some reason I got dressed and went to the corner MedStop. When I walked in, there was a big sign that said "We do not accept That Insurance". Well I already had insurance, so I got seen and had to have it lanced and got an antibiotics script for a staph infection. I was there awhile, and the NP who had treated me was very friendly and I asked her about why they don't accept That Insurance. She said they didn't pay. I told her why I was asking and she sat down and basically gave me a testimony on her troubles with That Insurance, as she was covered by them, and none of her doctors accepted it, in fact she had to drive over an hour away to another town to get seen and she was afraid they would stop accepting them too. I called my doctors and dentists and a cousin who is a nurse, and is married to an NP, and they all said absolutely not, they don't pay and have practically been blacklisted.
I am convinced this was my dad intervening before I did something terrible. We have a team of doctors we love, and losing them would be devastating.
Why would this be any different than my mother's sign? Because my mother always made me learn the lessons without any advice, but my dad always saved me from doing something horribly wrong.
Dangit I would start crying at work
I have other similar stories but you get the idea.
Your accounts remind me of one involving my current wife (my first died of breast cancer). She had joined me from Eastern Europe only a year previously and spoke little English. One morning, she said she had a really bad sore throat. I was leaving for work, 40 miles down the highway. I first said "It might be strep. If it's still bad tomorrow we'll go see the doctor." I got out to my car and a compelling inner voice said "NOT TOMORROW - NOW!!!" I went back inside and said "Get in the car, we're going to the doctor now." For no reason that's clear to me, I forgot all about work and drove as fast as I could the 40 miles to my longtime family practioner. We waited about ten minutes and his kindly assistant said "Just a few minutes more and he'll be with you." To my own astonishment, I said "No, get back in the car NOW." When the assistant urged us to wait, I said "NO!!!" I drove 90 mph back to the ER of the rural hospital in our home town.
From past experience, I would've expected a cursory examination and a handful of antibiotics. As it "just happened," we lucked into a visiting ER doctor from Michigan whom I half-way believe was an angel in disguise. He said "It's probably strep, but I'm seeing something and want to get a second opinion." He got a second opinion via computer, came back into the room and said "I hope you have insurance, pal, because she's leaving here on a helicopter. If this goes south, she'll be dead in 20 minutes and this hospital can't handle it."
It turned out to be a very rare condiition for which she spent four days in the ICU. This was one week before my retirement, and it "just happened" that the balance of my soon-disappearing Health Savings Account was the same as my portion of the helicopter bill ($7,000+) almost to the dollar. The hospital bill was over $60,000.
What was the inner voice and why did I take her sore throat so seriously for no apparent reason? Why wouldn't I wait for the GP who had been my doctor for 15 years (but who clearly couldn't have handled the situation)? Why were we blessed with an ER angel instead of the typical visiting rural ER practitioner? I have no explanation other than the guiding and protecting intelligence I've described above. It still gives me chills when I think about it. (This isn't one of the complex incidents I was talking about - your post just brought it to mind.)
Seen God once at a prayer meeting a few years ago, as I was there and the bright pure white flash went off and then another and these flashes were like a camera flash, but I looked and No one had a camera and these flashes continued for 4 or 5 minutes and then stop, and I noticed that I was the only one who seen these flashes of God as no one was interested like they did not see anything................ Told a friend the next day, and they said the Spirit of God was moving ........ Still God's Spirit does talk to here a lot of times, but faith is a most, as God does have a lead which victory has come countless times here ....... And God does have many Words for prayer that He gave here which His spirit will bring answers every time, but He does pass when I am asleep as faith is limited........ God is there and if you want to hear from God it is best to repent of sin and repent again and again and God will visit you for victory
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