How to deal with eerie mystical experiences that contradict objective reality

Faith & Science Conversation
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Here’s what I mean. I dealt with a person, a friend of a long time who claimed that God was speaking to her and wanted to help me with religious instruction and how to live my life (I am autistic). Now the strange thing about her is that she had supernatural knowledge of things about me and things going on in my life, but what she was preaching was objectively not true. It was pretty much just standard evangelical fundamentalist anti-intellectual stuff, like I shouldn’t use scholarship, science or anything like that to interpret the Bible but only use the Bible itself, that the earth is only 6,000 years old, and that you could have science or the Bible but you couldn’t have both, and other things that were manifestly not true such as her saying that the Bible banned divorce and remarriage in all cases when the gospels clearly make an exception for adultery (this conflicts with another type of person like this who hears from God but with a much better track record).

Ultimately she called me Satan and basically said that God told her to shrug me off like Jesus did the Pharisees, and she basically disowned me and my “Satanic science stuff.” Now the Bible says to test the spirits to see if they come from God and the best way to test them is by objective reality, and she failed that test so i’m not that terrified being about 98% sure she’s not hearing from God. But what do all of you make of this? Someone displaying miraculous abilities that damns the whole field of science and Biblical scholarship and believes you’ll go to hell if you don’t hold the views of the least plausable fundamentalists? Do you think its demonic?

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  • What I make of “this” is that if anybody is under the influence of Satan, it’s “your friend of a long time”, not you. Count yourself blessed that she’s putting distance between you and her. Avoid her as often and long as you’re able to.
  • If she comes around again, tell her that an online acquaintance, that is me, who believes in the life, crucifixion, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus of Nazareth, says she should leave you alone until she has given up her silly nonsense.
  • Also, if you have a printer and paper, I think you should download every post that I posted in my Why young earth creationism and flat earth theory are false thread and tell her that God told me to tell you to give her a copy, and to repent, and stop her nonsense.
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Do I think it’s demonic? No.
Do I think it’s God? No.
Do I even think it’s supernatural? No.
I think it’s just their own paranoia and thoughts.

What are they doing that’s “miraculous?”

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I understand that is quite disconcerting, but are you absolutely sure she can’t have this knowledge through “natural” means? Like you maybe mentioned things long time ago and forgot, or another friend accidentally told her etc. You would be surprised what can be found out about others if a person really tries

I accept the possibility that it could be. It certainly isn’t from God.

You can add my name to that as well :wink:

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Yes. And I think this kind of blatant deception is quite capable of raising up an anti-Christ – under a twisted version of Christianity based on habitual deception in service to a so called god which looks far more like the god of this world than like Jesus. Why? Power. People want to make their religion powerful. So they will seek to get people to accept their dictates ignoring anything to the contrary – reality and morality both.

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The interesting thing is that her position on science is refuted by the Bible.

According to Paul’s letter to the Romans (1:20):

“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. (Rom 1:20 NIV).”

Here is a straightforward endorsement of Natural Theology, which requires science as its principal investigator.

Her view on divorce not only stands in contradiction of Matthew 5:32, but also of 1 Corinthians 7:15. Obviously neither of these two examples gives an exhaustive list of exceptions, as one does not include the other. So, there may be other exceptions. The clear indication is that divorce cannot be considered for trivial reasons, as some rabbis of the time had argued.

As for her “supernatural” knowledge, I would have the same cynical view as others have suggested. It is interesting that in the ancient Law of Moses, prophets who foretold of events that did not come to pass were supposed to be stoned - not that I would suggest that response. But it does serve to put the wind up those who are faking it.

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Yes, we should test the spirits. In addition, we should not believe everything we are told, even if the person telling is a believer and has spriritual gifts.

I have sometimes stumbled to a misunderstanding that if a person, as a Christian believer, has received the Holy Spirit, that person only tells the truth. That is not true. Salvation is tied to faith, not to knowledge. Being filled with the Holy Spirit and being used by God are gifts that are not tied to knowledge.

I have sometimes pictured the inner world of a person as a mosaic - just a helpful mental image, not something to be held as a doctrine. When the Holy Spirit starts to work with the person, some parts of the old mosaic are replaced with something better, both spiritual ‘pieces’ and better knowledge about the will of God. As the work continues, more and more pieces are replaced but all the time, there are also pieces of the old mosaic that gives a misleading picture of the reality. Therefore, someone used by God may tell you truthful messages from God but at the same time, believe and say something that is not true.

The ancient people described in the biblical scriptures assumed that there was a firmament above a flat Earth, that stars were lights attached to the firmament, that the heavens of God were physically located above the firmament, and many similar kind of beliefs that were completely rational according to the ancient cosmology. Today, we have more knowledge and know that the ancient cosmology was not a truthful description of the reality. Yet, many of those persons were used by God. We rely even today to the messages of God told by these persons that had a false understanding about the physical reality.

Edit:
One Proverb that has given me comfort in some difficult situations is Proverb 26:2:
“Like a fluttering sparrow or a darting swallow, an undeserved curse does not come to rest.”

Whatever bad someone says to you, even if that person would curse you, it does not have an effect if you are not guilty for what you are accused of.
If God has forgiven you and is with you, who can force God to leave you?

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An interesting article that is related. Click on the individual country names to see what the writers say about it from that country.

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Assuming you are on the up-and-up - always a question with pseudonymous posters - there is a real possibility this is demonically inspired. But that may be less than it seems. According to Scripture, their major tool is deception, and often that appears quite banal to the observer.

I have written on this in the past. I didn’t call out young-earthers, but certainly had them in mind:

The Pharisees were hyper-religious, scrupulously moral, sanctimonious, and highly concerned with appearances. Far from denying the word of God, they were famous for their rigid, hyper-literal interpretations of God’s word, strict conformity to the Mosaic law, and ostentatious displays of religiosity, with tragic indifference to the virtues of grace, love, kindness, and humility. Jesus called them the children of Satan. There is no shortage of such persons in Christian history, or in the Christian present.

This certainly doesn’t get liberals (social, theological) off the hook. As C. S. Lewis cogently observed:

He (the devil) always sends errors into the world in pairs–pairs of opposites…He relies on your extra dislike of one to draw you gradually into the opposite one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors.

The “secret knowledge” you describe would be highly suspicious for a demonic source. That is one of the hallmarks of possession according to Catholic dogma, with too many eyewitnesses across time and cultures to dismiss. But I would emphasize that actual possession is quite rare by all accounts.

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She lives on the other side of the continent in California (I live in South Carolina), and our friendship has mainly been through the internet and text messages. The only way she could know details of my life like this is if she hacked my phone, which she didn’t. No, she couldn’t know these things via natural means, the only way is if the spirit speaking to her was in the room with me when the things in question happened, which is plausible because I think spirits can cover greater distances than us in not a lot of time. She’s either hearing from God (unlikely) or she’s hearing from some other lying spirit.

The thing is that she has no conception that she can be wrong about these things. She keeps claiming that she only repeats the Bible to me and I reject it not knowing that she’s just repeating a standard evangelical fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible to me and is surprised when I tell her it’s wrong. She has no concept that she follows a specific tradition of Christianity invented yesterday and says she just strictly sticks to the Bible using nothing else. Talking to her is frustrating because she doesn’t know the history of the faith she proclaims, the place of her beliefs in that history, nor does she know anything about the scholarship she’s criticizing, and she’s happy to not know because she seems to view this ignorance as a mark of piety. “Just give me the Bible in English and Ukrainian with no context and I know everything I need to know and if you reject that you’re rejecting the Bible and are going to hell with the Lutherans,” is her general attitude.

The supernatural stuff is spooky but she can’t actually expect me to accept this as the truth can she? (What am I saying, of course she does, she has no concept that anything exists in Christianity outside of her narrow cult.) She’s wrong, provably wrong, end of story. She’s probably being deceived by a demon.

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I am reminded of the old TV show, The Mentalist. People thought it is mind reading, but he was just a good observer and knew people well. But it makes me wonder, what sort of things did she know about you that you can share. You don’t have to tell us about the extra donut you ate in the car bringing the kids breakfast this morning on the donut run.

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LOL! I better warn my brothers.

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So, an example is, over the course of a day or two I had very bad days and had certain outbursts of anger against people close to me, and was stewing in rage on those days. At one point during this I talked to her on the phone and out of nowhere she shared this story from her life about a woman who claimed to be Christian but acted very unloving against her relative. I explained that I agreed with her and was angry and having trouble loving people lately. And she said, yes, it looked like God wanted her to share this story for a reason.

On her divorce and remarriage thing when I pointed out where in scripture that it made an exception for divorce she got really angry and actually insulted me during the conversation and left. And later on I was talking to her about it just saying I saw the Bible verse and followed it, and we talked back and forth and she said to study this one Bible verse that confirmed her position, and told me it wouldn’t work because my heart was hardened. Well, I went to the verse and was for a short time convinced (sue me, I was not an expert on divorce and remarriage in the Bible at that time), but then I studied more and came to doubt her again. The point was though that my heart was not hardened and I called her out on speaking falsely. I didn’t tell her that I was going back and forth weighing the options on this doctrine, but she then told me that my heart was still hardened because I was going back and forth and was undecided about it. She didn’t know that because I didn’t tell her.

Then there was the time we were arguing and she was being very insulting to my region of the country, the South, and she didn’t know that her version of Christianity basically comes from here, and she denied it saying the Bible Belt was evil, and talking all kinds of trash about it. And I responded by telling her she was a Southern evangelical and she immediately goes, “how is your Bible reading going?” When I ignored her she kept going on about my Bible reading. I had missed my Bible reading yesterday.

Things like that and other things. Maybe she is really just very good at guessing things but she says that God puts thoughts in her head and that’s how she knows these things.

However, one time I asked her about quantum physics as a test to see what she would say about it, specificially if consciousness causes collapse. She didn’t understand quantum physics very well, or what I was asking, and had a very sketchy answer… let me see if I can find it…

Okay, her text says this.

Wow. Quantum science sucks and is beyond boring. So having you explain didn’t help much. But all I can tell you is this. God tells me yes there are souls. And physical isn’t required as an observer for anything to exist just so long as there is at least one soul/consciousness in existence. Physical exists by the unphysical only so never alone. But unphysical is energy, power, and consciousness in itself. It also cannot collapse or need anything to be. It can expand or decrease but never cease… on it’s own Sorry can’t do a yes or no answer. Don’t get your question or your explaination even. So I hope what I can tell you is enough.

Now I’m pretty sure that is not what is meant by collapse in quantum physics. Collapse means the collapse of the wave function upon measurement, not things ceasing, (this came up because I asked if the Spirit world acts like the physical world with something akin to the wave function collapse upon measurement, a hypothesis of mine that I won’t go into) if that is indeed what she meant. I’m not a scientist or that literate in it beyond the basics so i’d like a more scientifically literate person to review this statement.

There was also another spooky incedent where she was talking about how God put thoughts in her head, and as I responded a very strong thought popped into my head that said “I WILL KILL YOU!” When I told her about it, she told me it was Satan and that he couldn’t kill me because God had not given him permission, and he was just trying to scare me.

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Right. I just facepalm and go, “What did the poor Lutherans ever do to you?”

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So, sounds like nothing specific. I would be careful not to read too much into her comments, if it were me.

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We do not always know what is the source of “secret knowledge”. As @jpm wrote, mentalists can read much from what people say and do. Even unstable persons may have information given by God, or someone may get information from demonic spirits. I would be careful in judging people based on secret knowledge, real or apparent. Also, my understanding is that the Holy Spirit and demons cannot live in the same person. Evil spirits can trouble and mislead even believers but that attempt comes as an attack from outside, not from within the person.

God loves mentally fragile and troubled people. When they become children of God, that does not usually take away the mental problems immediately. Healing from the mental issues and wounds may take a long time. The same applies to mental defenses that make the person reject anything that somehow threatens their fragile worldview, including the false beliefs that have become an important part of the worldview. With these people, it is usual that the new positive behaviour is mixed with extreme, even delusional reactions and beliefs. I would not condemn these people as being somehow driven by demons. They are just people who need to grow in faith and in some cases, are in need of healing or psychiatric help because of mental issues.

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That’s the option I would land on, that this friend did get some knowledge from God and was supposed to help, but totally screwed up how to help and is otherwise confused.

It regularly frustrates me that people fail to see this and to grasp that having accurate information was not required for authoritative writing, that authority came from the source, not the intermediary (writer).

I would add that no one who is in Christ deserves any curse, since He became cursed for us – any curse directed at one in Christ has to get past Jesus first.

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Based on what you have shared, there isn’t anything that stands out to me that couldn’t be explained as coincidence or perhaps her learning it from you telling her at one point but forgetting. Although I would caution against jumping to a demonic explanation too quickly, I think at a certain point what matters more is that power is being used and not where the power is coming from. In some ways the powers of the mind to convince you of anything under the influence of a persuasive person can be just as psychologically dangerous as an actual demonic presence. I am not saying this was the case with you, just that it doesn’t have to be a literal supernatural influence for it to be something dangerous and to stay away from.

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I have often suspected that possession is not something Satan has use for but is rather a symptom of his ‘kingdom’: that many of his supposed minions are little more obedient to him than he to Yahweh, and they don’t really care whether what they do benefits Satan or not.

She got that much right! Satan may be lord of the dead but he has to wait until you get there – which for Christians no longer even applies.

I met someone who insisted Lutherans were all damned because she’d visited a Lutheran church and they used incense. She insisted that only pagans used incense thus Lutherans were actually all pagans.

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I like the comparison that the Christian has a castle and Baptism is the moat around it, so Satan is locked out . . . but that doesn’t mean he can’t set up a catapult just beyond the moat!

I walked out of a church one day when the new pastor declared that mental illness showed a lack of faith. He was specifically referring to PTSD and depression.

I said that and referenced Paul and his “thorn in the flesh”; the response was, “So you think you’re an apostle?”

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