LoL! This is great : ) I'm glad Superduperman survived, LoL!
Yeah, I came in relatively late, and all Hell was breaking loose within a year of my joining. That's when they changed to having separate boards for denominational threads. I thought that was actually a good idea at the time, but they have since become SO strict that I honestly can't post there any more. I can and do a little, but I will get banned in short order if I become regularly active, so I rarely post now.
That fell under the same rules format. No anti-Catholic stuff on the Catholic forum; no anti-EO stuff on the EO forum; no anti-dream stuff on the Dream forum. I welcomed debate over actual interpretation, but most of the discussion (which continues to this day) was only over the validity of modern dream interpretation itself.
No, no. No word of knowledge. No divination either, LoL, so relax. But you do have to break the habit of using more than one ID here as well, because it's a violation they take seriously. But glad to hear it was more of a playful thing.
I consider what He reveals to me through the Spirit regarding the word to be superior as well. Only I also honor Joel 2:28 as in the earliest stages of being fulfilled (with decades yet to go); in its infancy yet, if you will. For me, while the word is primary, the Spirit speaks more specifically to things going on at present. Our biggest disagreement is over the "prophets to the nations" question. I consider it too lofty of a "title," because to me its not a big deal; simply people being used of God to prophesy to world affairs. But I have also seen dream interpretation be extremely effective in guiding people's personal lives, and protecting them from spiritual harm and spiritual downfall. So I have seen too much value in it experientially to discard it as not being of use to the end-time church.
LoL. This has me laughing again the way it starts... sounds like the lead off to a punch line (though I am taking you seriously. Dreams are often like that).
LoL!! Well, I'll pray about it, how's that? An interpreter kinda needs the cooperation of the one who received the dream, because the Spirit often leads me to dig for more details. But I'm not gonna bother you with it unless the Lord leads me.
Good to see you on the forum. We most certainly agree when it comes to the gifts, and you have a good head for scholarship, so maybe we can get into discussing that stuff some in the future, and avoid the stuff we still disagree on.
God bless,
- H
Thanks for your positive comments. Actually I don't use multiple IDs on this forum. Superduperman was someone who existed at a period of time when humour was badly needed on CF to offset some of the nastiness that was developing at the time. I think the conflict was the opposition with WOF at the time. Incidentally, I have viewed one or two good WOF preachers on Youtube, and the basic principle is sound and Biblical; but as with every good principle, there are the extremists who go further than what the Bible allows. I think the WOF movement has been corrupted by the likes of Kenny Copeland and people like him. I viewed Norval Hayes, one of the originals, and he enjoyed his ministry, but I stopped short at his method of repeated confession, such as "Jesus has healed me" that he instructs sick people to say. The downside of it is that uninformed people could stay away from the doctor and stop taking their medication as a result. Two or three years ago there was a well-known court case where a child died because the parents refused medical help for a preventable illness because they were confessing "Jesus has healed [the child]".
Curry Blake is good, because he advises that only the person who prescribed the medication should advise the patient to cease taking it. He relates the story of the diabetic who was healed by the power of God, and became sicker, because of the effects of the insulin the patient was still taking. When the doctor advised the patient to stop using the insulin the patient became totally well. Blake says that although a person is taking medication, the Lord can and will heal in spite of the medication and the results themselves will show that the medication is no longer needed.
Although I generally have doubts about dream interpretation, there is clear Biblical evidence that people can receive dreams and be warned by them. As I have said before, when I have a dream about someone I know, it is a signal for me to pray for them that their faith does not fail and that God would meet the particular need in them that prompted my dream about them. This is total faith, because we don't know the circumstances of the person involved other than our dream involving them.
Also, people do have visions, and they are clear and unmistakable. There are testimonies of people having visions of Jesus which totally changed their lives for the Lord. Also, there are those who have testified to having strong impressions, such as not boarding a particular flight, and then finding out later that the flight crashed with no survivors. That is an example of the Word of Wisdom operating.
Dave Roberson who wrote Walk in Power, Walk in the Spirit, testified that after an extended period of praying in tongues, he went to pray for someone who had injured his arm, and had a vision of an xray picture of the man's arm showing the exact location and nature of the injury. Words of Knowledge can come through impressions, absolute realisation, or a vision. Jesus may have had a vision when He saw Nathaniel under the fig tree, before another disciple brought him to Him. What Peter, James and John saw on the Mount of Transfiguration could have been a vision, or an actual transformation of Jesus and the visit by Moses and Elijah. Visions can be very real.
What I doubt are the dreams and visions that are not clear cut and real and which require interpretation. Joseph's dreams concerning the safety of the infant Jesus were clear warnings which he could immediately obey, without waiting around wondering how the interpret them. Also I doubt visions of Jesus where He is depicted as a white European with straight long hair, because that was not what He actually was. When I had a vision of who I believed was Jesus, (which turned me upside down and inside out and changed my life forever), it was a glimpse of a figure in shining white, and the effect of it was that I went down on my face. Paul was confronted by a bright shining light on the road to Damascus. I believe it was the person of Jesus in all His ascended glory which blinded Paul and put him on his face and totally transformed him.
I believe in angelic visitations, as happened to Paul at times. The Scripture speaks about entertaining angels unawares. I wonder sometimes that chance meetings of people that we see only once, but what they say changes something in us, are angels, but we didn't know they were angels. I guess this is why we should always respect and be kind to strangers.
