The Painful Truth-Herbert W. Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God
Understanding the psychology of religious seduction and spiritual abuse.
Lomaâs dream:
âSuddenly there appeared an awesome sight in the sky above. It was a dazzling spectacle â the sky filled with a gigantic solid mass of brilliant stars, shaped like a huge banner. The stars began to quiver and separate….
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Loma’s dream:
“Suddenly there appeared an awesome sight in the sky above. It was a dazzling spectacle — the sky filled with a gigantic solid mass of brilliant stars, shaped like a huge banner. The stars began to quiver and separate, finally vanishing. She called my attention to the vanishing stars, when another huge grouping of flashing stars appeared, then quivering, separating, and vanishing like the first…. great white birds flew directly toward us. As they descended nearer, she perceived that they were angels….it dawned on me that Christ was coming, and I was so happy I was just crying for joy. Then suddenly I thought of Herbert and was rather worried. At that time, we had been going quite regularly to motion-picture theatres.“
From RT.
While the 46-year-old patient (who was Jewish, but reportedly not particularly religious) was hooked up to brain-monitoring equipment to undergo tests to help treat the neurological disease, he claims to have communicated with God.
â[W]e had the rare opportunity to record a delusional religious conversion in real time in a patient with right temporal lobe epilepsy,â doctors Shahar Arzy and Roey Schurr wrote in a study published in the neurological journal Epilepsy and Behavior.
âIn this patient, a messianic revelation experience occurred several hours after a complex partial seizure of temporal origin,â the researchers explain.Arzy and Schurr believe the surge in activity in the patientâs frontal lobe, while he felt he was communicating with a deity, could indicate a form of âpsychotic episode that can occur after epileptic seizuresâ, Discovery Magazine notes.
âThe brain generator underlying this activity was localized to the left prefrontal cortex. This suggests that religious conversion in PIP [postictal psychosis] is related to control mechanisms in the prefrontal lobe-related processes rather than medial temporal lobe-related processes,â the study says.
During the epileptic episode, the authors say the patient suddenly froze in bed, later claiming he felt God approaching him, and began chanting prayers and saying that God had sent him.
The patient has since claimed he doesnât know what the future holds for him in terms of his faith, but believes God will show him the way.
A correlation between epilepsy and visionary experiences has long been suspected, however this marks the first time the phenomenon was captured in the moment by brain monitoring equipment.
The Israeli scientists may have found an alternative explanation to St. Paulâs spiritual ârevelationâ which supposedly spurred his allegiance to Jesus.
According to the Bibleâs New Testament, Saul – the man who would become St. Paul – didnât know or follow Jesus before the latterâs crucifixion. Instead, it says, he persecuted the followers of Jesus.
Then, as Saul was making his way from Jerusalem to Damascus (to seek out and arrest followers of Jesus, no less) he was struck blind by a light from above and was addressed by a divine voice, resulting in his conversion to one of Jesusâ followers and missionaries.