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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!
Well, I had my disappearing man on the elevator experience which I've mentioned a few times on the forum. It was many years ago when I was in my early 20's. My brother and I were visiting our mother in the hospital. We were walking toward the elevator and watched a man get on just a moment before we did. We went to the next floor and got off. I asked my brother if we hadn't seen a man get on just before us and he said that he thought we did. The man that we saw get on just a brief moment before us was not there. He had vanished. There was no way off that elevator except for the door we had all used to get on. It's an unexplained mystery and I sometimes wonder if it was an angel. Or else Scotty beamed Capt. Kirk up to the Enterprise.
Well, I had my disappearing man on the elevator experience which I've mentioned a few times on the forum. It was many years ago when I was in my early 20's. My brother and I were visiting our mother in the hospital. We were walking toward the elevator and watched a man get on just a moment before we did. We went to the next floor and got off. I asked my brother if we hadn't seen a man get on just before us and he said that he thought we did. The man that we saw get on just a brief moment before us was not there. He had vanished. There was no way off that elevator except for the door we had all used to get on. It's an unexplained mystery and I sometimes wonder if it was an angel. Or else Scotty beamed Capt. Kirk up to the Enterprise.
I notice you explain your brother "thought we did," as if to suggest some question in his mind? Is your brother also today a believer he saw a man disappear? You didn't notice this other man disappear while you were on the elevator with him?
Either way, it is a lot harder for me to believe you and your brother were paying close enough attention and this "disappearing man" actually disappeared as compared to suspecting something else actually happened, but if you are convinced this man actually disappeared, then I can understand how you would consider this a supernatural occurrence. I have yet to experience such a thing, and while I can appreciate others who claim they have, I'm not inclined to believe them until or unless I have experienced the same thing.
Too many of these sorts of claims have been debunked one way or another upon closer examination or scrutiny, but no matter. I am mostly curious to know whether the sorts of experiences I HAVE had might be considered signs from God by other people. Like I did when I used to believe in God.
He's given us his Word. He's given us his church. Why do we need more? Why do you believe anyone deserves special revelation? `
I've read many a word passed down through the ages that not everyone including you believes was given to them. Or to be believed. There are many churches different people belong to. For all variety of different reasons. Of all different faiths. Most of which you have not adopted as for you.
Why do I need more? To clear up some of these differences and disparities just for starters...
Why do I deserve special revelation? As it seems so many other people claim to have received or deserved all kinds of revelations, why not me I wonder? Special or otherwise? Why nothing of the sort given so many other claims by other people? Why not?
What would be wrong with adding just one more believer? Like back when I used to be, because I thought those signs were actually signs from God. Why not?
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.
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 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.
Don't believe a word of it. It's just you proclaiming that you're special.
IMHO, a miracle is that which you cannot do yourself or for yourself. Which may explain why miracle workers cannot "heal" themselves. They can only be a conduit for the benefit of another. In other words, we are the hands and feet of God. When we're inspired to do random acts of kindness, we're a miracle to others.
That's a good sign.
I notice you explain your brother "thought we did," as if to suggest some question in his mind? Is your brother also today a believer he saw a man disappear? You didn't notice this other man disappear while you were on the elevator with him?
Either way, it is a lot harder for me to believe you and your brother were paying close enough attention and this "disappearing man" actually disappeared as compared to suspecting something else actually happened, but if you are convinced this man actually disappeared, then I can understand how you would consider this a supernatural occurrence. I have yet to experience such a thing, and while I can appreciate others who claim they have, I'm not inclined to believe them until or unless I have experienced the same thing.
Too many of these sorts of claims have been debunked one way or another upon closer examination or scrutiny, but no matter. I am mostly curious to know whether the sorts of experiences I HAVE had might be considered signs from God by other people. Like I did when I used to believe in God.
My brother and I both saw a man get on the elevator. We both experienced the fact that there was no one on the elevator besides us. So when I asked him if we hadn't seen a man get on the elevator and yet the man wasn't there, his reply was only natural. He didn't doubt that we had seen a man get on the elevator, it was just his way of expressing that he did see the man get on. He later told the event to others in our family. We didn't see the man disappear, we simply saw that he wasn't there when we got on.
Your reaction to my story is only natural and I have said before that my experience is meaningful only to myself, and my brother, because I can't prove that it happened. But it did happen just as I described. You asked for experiences and that is mine. I do not expect you to believe it. I merely state that it did. And it cannot be debunked, only not believed by those who can't accept that it could happen.
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.
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