[hiddenpanda]

Originally Posted by Dwight Schrute

my faith has to be built on something more than signs and wonders

I completely agree here. I don't go running around looking for these things, generally I'd like to avoid it rather than have them happen. But -

Originally Posted by TheProdigalModern

The Russians have a word for the desire to experience "spiritual" things, prelest.

This is very interesting, the "spiritual lust" concept. I did go through a phase where I was constantly felt like I needed to see these things. The dark figure that disappeared the moment you prayed, I've had numerous similar experiences.

In terms of things being good/bad/real or not:
I've had visions of angels when I was on a missionary trip in a very rural part of Lesotho once. These I know were of God, there's a lot of witchcraft happening in that area and those angels were sent to protect us. At other times, I've been very aware of things being demonic and evil. Other than the fire and the blue girl, everything has been very clearly good or evil.

ITO the fire: Two of us saw the it, heard it and felt it's heat. The flames were about 5 meters. That was real, but I've been weary of trying to attach meaning and interpretations to it.
The blue girl: I woke up 5 minutes after falling asleep, very aware that something was in my room. I saw it, and it "she" melted away the moment I started praying. Looked like a very normal girl in her late teens wearing very normal clothing. I didn't get a clear good or evil vibe from this, it was more like that slightly violated feeling you get when you find out someone's been sneaking into your room and watching you sleep.

My approach when seeing these things are basically just to pray that, if it's important and from God I would receive clarity on what it was and why I saw it, otherwise I pray that God would invalidate whatever it was trying to do.

I try to avoid making a fuss about it, since my faith is in God and not any other powers or principalities, and I know God is much more powerful than any of these things, but I don't agree with how church leaders usually just change the topic when I ask them about it.

[RipVanWinkle]

Originally Posted by Thrash

I went to go school with a guy who scared the crap out of me. He believed he was possessed.
He went on a roadtrip with one of my good friends and all of a sudden snapped in the passenger seat, started tearing at his clothes and screaming then got real quiet. They stopped at a gas station and he bolted from the door and ran into some woods. He came back layer and was extremely quiet.

Oh, and later my friend found a list of people he wanted to kill, and he was on it. He turned it into the school and the guy was kicked out.

He may have just had severe mental problems, but he claimed that he did rituals and invited a demon into him or something like that

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Were you with Tim when this happened? If not the exact same thing happened to him probably with this same guy on a different occasion

[Thrash]

Originally Posted by RipVanWinkle

Were you with Tim when this happened? If not the exact same thing happened to him probably with this same guy on a different occasion

Thankfully I wasn't! Tim told me about it one year at church camp. Before all that went down I did have some weird occurences with the guy, though. Always had a creepy feeling from him. Especially when he made me sit in his truck and he confessed his desire to kill his father and told me he did witchcraft...

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[Bushman]

My dad's house is haunted.
I'm the worlds biggest skeptic, and I dont believe in ghosts, the bible doesn't support that they exists, IMO.
"Absent from the body, present with the Lord"
But lots of my family members have heard "Black Beard", as my Dad calls it, and he has said he hears him all the time. Heavy footsteps pacing up and down the hallway, when he is the only one there. Even sees his cat freaking out when he hears it sometimes.
Last week I heard what sounded like a chain being dragged across the ceiling. Woke me up from a dead sleep. My wife heard it too. It was loud. Nobody was up. Dad was asleep.
My Dad has made friends with Black Beard, it doesn't bother him.
Freaked me out a little.

[JaKe_719]

I was at work training on the de-ice truck when I saw the sky light up as if there was lightning. I told everyone it's thundering outside, ha, everyone looked at me like I was crazy. Then I saw it again and this time someone else saw it too. It was weird because it definitely wasn't lightning, it was a flash but from a focused area and honestly when I saw it I thought...rapture? It almost looked like a flash and the image of a man but from a really far distance. Someone else saw it too and had no idea what it was...seemed like he was freaked out a little.