It isn’t only the Catholic church that prays to saints. The Greek Orthodox church, Coptic Chistian church in Egypt, the Syrian Christian Church, Armenian church and the Ethiopian church pray to the saints. The Anglican church believes in praying with the saints which is asking for intercession and praying with the saints, which is what I believed in.
Martin Luther had prayed to the saints but then changed his mind. John Calvin who started the Calvinism movement was against praying to saints. He believed in predestination which I do NOT believe in. I don’t believe God predestines some people to go to heaven and some people to go to hell. If that is the case, how to you explain free will. God wants all His children to go to heaven, and He gives all of us that chance.
Some modern mainstream Evangelical protestant churches talk about how the Catholic Church is leading people astray. And they say that praying to the dead is a sin. The reason why they think Catholics are sinning is because King Saul consulted a witch and asked her to contact the dead to know the future. That is NOT what Catholic’s are doing.
America attacking Iran with Israel is something a lot of people in America are not happy about, including myself. I think it’s reckless. Are America and Israel going to destroy Iran like Israel has destroyed Gaza?
Trump lied when he said no new wars, prices would come down, and he would bring people together when he was campaigning for president. None of those things happened. He refuses to help Ukraine, and I am not sure why. Trump decided to attack Iran, and I still don’t know why. First, he said Iran would have a nuclear weapon in two weeks, then he said it was for regime change, and then he said it was because he wanted to bring peace to the Middle East.
From what I have heard, the US military and government is trying to make things bad in order to have Jesus come back in the ” rapture.” They are trying to bring on Armageddon. And that is exactly what Evangelical extremists want. They want the rapture to happen. They think Jesus is going to come back three times not twice. They think he will come back and take all Christian’s up to heaven for three and a half years and let all other the people (including a lot of Christian’s) suffer. I used to believe that while I was an evangelical. While growing up catholic, being a practicing Catholic in my twenties and later on in life, the priests didn’t talk about it. And Lutheran church I watch doesn’t talk about the rapture either. Jesus does not come to earth three times, only twice. First at birth, and then at the final judgement, but not in-between. That rapture wasn’t even thought up until the late 1800s by a woman in a Christian cult in Scotland who had been in an insane asylum once. Charles Darby took the idea from her and was made famous from because of it.
I know Iran has done a lot of bad things over the years, I am well aware of that. I just don’t want this war to turn into World War 3 or some never-ending war. It has had a ripple effect on neighboring countries of Iran and Iran is bombing them now and that is not good.
I just wish all the bombing would stop. People could die from hunger and thirst if this war doesn’t end. 100 million people who live near Iran are fed from the food that comes through the Strait of Hormuz. Israel bombed a desalination plant in Iran. Desalination is the process which turns salt in sea or ocean water into drinking water by taking the salt out of the water. And now trump is threatening to bomb more of those plants.
I fell down after I missed the last step when I was walking down the stairs without the light on and I didn’t have my glasses on saturday night when it was starting to get dark. I ended up landing on my hands and knees. A first my right foot hurt, so I wore my compression wrap on it, and that helped a lot. I have a big bruise on my knee, but it doesn’t hurt to walk. My Sacroiliac (S1) joint which is the joint that connects the back to the pelvis bone hurts a lot. I have bilateral arthritis in it anyway and most times it does not bother me. I experience sciatica pain on the left side of my lower body most of the time. But right now, the lowest part of my back hurts the worst and it is chronic pain.
When I am in pain, I think God is punishing me for my sins. Then I wonder if He even loves me at all. Back in 2022 when my sciatica pain was at its worst I yelled at God and called Him a liar and rejected the love God had shown me when I was in my early twenties. I think I said to God “you don’t love me.” Then I repented after that, but it’s like God put a block in my mind so now I can barely remember that love now.
Another thing happened a month or two later in 2022. I decided to pray a prayer of protection over this home. I looked up prayers for protection over a home online, and I found a bunch of them, and I prayed them out loud. As soon as I was done praying one of the prayers, I felt the presence of Jesus. His presence was so strong and I felt so peaceful, I couldn’t have worried if I tried. That feeling stayed all afternoon and most of the night. It was so wonderful. I thought, “this has got to be what heaven feels like.”
I know what it says in the bible about God loving us. I know Jesus would have gone through the torture he endured and the crucifixion just for me, but there are times I doubt. I have had depression and anxiety for years and the physical pain just makes it worse. I take medications for anxiety and depression, but the antidepressant I take makes me feel emotionally numb most of the time and I rarely cry now. The last time I really cried was when I was mad at God and yelled at him and called him a liar.
Jesus gave me a gift when He let me feel his presence of peace so strong. I can remember that presence, and I need to cling to it. When He was being whipped, beaten, and crucified, His pain was a lot worse than what I am going through. But He understands our pain and I take comfort in that.
When I was eight years old, I saw a UFO. I was out in the garden after supper, with my family that early evening and it was dark outside because it was October. My sister was at some school function, but my brother and parents were there. According to my mother my brother saw it too, but for some reason we never talked about it. My parents didn’t see it because they had their backs turned to it.
I can still remember it plain as day. We were supposed to be cleaning up the garden, but I wasn’t. I was jumping on old overgrown cucumbers and having fun watching them explode under my boots. Then for some reason I looked up and saw something in the sky. I didn’t know what it was, but it wasn’t an airplane. It was a craft of some sort; it was close and low to the ground. It didn’t make any noise, and I was not scared. I had never even heard the phrase UFO at that age.
I had a strange dream that I thought God sent me about a blonde man and a choice during the summer of 1983 when I was eighteen years old. After I woke up from the dream, the top left side of my head hurt so bad, and I felt like I had been hit on the head with a hammer. The pain was awful and lasted over a month. I had never heard of head pain that lasts for a month, and I don’t get migraines either. On a different morning that summer I woke up with three large pinpricks in row and blood dried on my ankle.
In 1989 I was at a bookstore, and I saw a book about alien abduction experiences, it had a demon looking creature on the cover. I bought it and started reading after I got home. It scared me so bad I couldn’t sleep. The book was so detailed and the things that happened to the author were so awful, but I read the entire book anyway. That started my journey on a search for the truth. I didn’t know what to think about aliens. There had been programs about UFOs and movies about alien abductions on television which I had watched.
In 1998 on Easter evening, at dusk I saw another UFO this one was noisy, and it scared me. I hid in the garage while it flew over. I was so scared! My heart was beating rapidly, and I feared what might happen to me.
In 2006 I joined a UFO and alien abduction group. I was also hypnotically regressed back to the times I saw UFO’s and it didn’t help. The strange experiences didn’t stop unfortunately because I wasn’t a Christian. My immediate family members and other relatives have also seen UFO’s.
People have been pondering if aliens are real, and if they are, where do they come from. I think they are fallen angels, and the Nephilim are the disembodied ones who have died are demons. I know they are liars because of my own experience. They told me I used to be Jesus in an in-between awake and a sleep state one morning and they said if I didn’t believe it, I would get throat cancer. Extraterrestrials tell everyone that they abduct that they have been chosen. They are liars. The bible mentions the sons of God, which are fallen angels which I think are aliens. The bible also mentions the ruler of the kingdom of the air is which is satan. And satan is the author of lies. They are God’s enemies, and they are our enemies.
Gensis 6:1-4 New International Version bible
When human beings began increase in number on the earth and were born to them, the sons of God saw that daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. Then the Lord said, “my spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be one hundred twenty years old.”
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days-and also the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans and had children with them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.
Ephesians 2:1-2 New International Version bible
As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and the RULER OF THE KINGDOM OF THE AIR, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.
Revelation 12:1-17 New international Version bible
A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet and twelve stars on her on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its head. Its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so he might devour her child the moment he was born. She gave birth to a son, a male child who “will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And the child was snatched up to God and to His throne. The woman fled into the wilderness to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days.
Then a war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon and the dragon and his angels fought back. But the dragon was not strong enough and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down-that ancient serpent called the devil or satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled down to earth, and his angels with him.
Satan is using the entire ufo/new age spirituality movement to lead people astray. What the new age spirituality is teaching about extraterrestrials/aliens is wrong, and not just about ET’s. Everything about it is wrong and it’s a door to evil spirits. We are NOT God. We cannot manifest things any more than a rock can. You cannot heal yourself, and you are not God. It’s a crock of crap. (pardon my language) It is not the truth. The best way to fight demons is with prayer and the name of Jesus Christ. I know this from experience and the E.T.s don’t bother me anymore.
One night I prayed and asked God for protection, then I laid down for a little while. I heard the following bible verse in my spirit: “Jesus is my strength and my shield.” After I heard that I immediately got up and went to my computer to look up the verse. The verse is Psalm 28:7, and it said, “The Lord is my strength and my shield.” The only thing that was different was God’s title. But Jesus was God on earth, He is God incarnate and He is God resurrected from the dead.
What other god sacrificed himself for people because he wants to be with them in heaven? What other god changed the world so much? What other god is continually healing and providing? What other god is constantly is creating? What other god loves you and only wants the best for you? What god gives you peace? What god calls you, his child? What other god rose from the dead after being dead for three days? I have studied a lot of different religions, and I can’t ever remember reading about any other god but God of the Christians. Not Hinduism, not Buddhism, not Islam, not Greek mythology not Egyptian mythology, or native American spirituality. None but Christianity.
The rapture theory was thought up by Charles Darby in the 1800s in England. Darby took an obscure verse from Paul and blew it up into something it isn’t. No other apostles mention it and only Paul does. The gospels and the rest of the bible don’t mention it. It is not mentioned in the book of Daniel or the book of Revelation. The theory of the rapture was not taught for almost 2000 years. The early church didn’t believe in it. The Catholic didn’t teach it and neither did the Lutheran Church. I feel sorry for all the people believing in this lie because they will be let down and then what will happen to their faith? Jesus will come back, but it will be to judge the people of earth, not to come and rescue people secretly in the middle of the night.
Jesus said people would go through trials and tribulations and that is happening now to more than just Christians. It is happening everywhere and all you have to do is turn on the news to see it. There is so much hate in this world, and I have experienced my own anger when I see all the injustice in the world. I have asked God to take my anger away and he does and then I hear about another injustice and then I get angry all over again. It’s just going to continue to get worse until Jesus comes back to judge the earth.
One of my evangelical friends who lives in a different state had an MRI in August to see if she would be a candidate for back surgery. She has terrible pain in her back and chronic sciatica, along with fibromyalgia. I feel so bad for her because she suffers so much.
After the MRI, the doctor called her and said the MRI showed something. One of the ducts on her pancreas was enlarged so he told her he could not do surgery on her S1 Joint. She was upset. Then she saw her regular doctor who told her she needed to get a CAT scan and to make an appointment with a specialist right away.
She went in for her CAT scan, and that showed multiple very small tumors on her liver and a 14mm tumor on the outer wall of her bladder. When she went in to see the specialist, he said the tumors on her liver were harmless, but he wanted to do surgery right away on her bladder and do a biopsy to test for cancer. She was scared it might be cancer.
The Monday before her surgery on Wednesday I fasted and prayed for her to be healed of her tumor. I had fasted during lent by giving up meat, but I had never done a serious fast for an answer to prayer. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it was going to be at first. I think the key to fasting is eating protein for each small meal. I didn’t eat any meat or fish. I had a chik’n veggie burger for breakfast for my big meal, for lunch I had raw almonds and almond milk, then for supper I had pretzels and almond milk which was a big mistake. I think there might be 1 gram of protein in pretzels which isn’t enough to stay with you. By the end of the night, I was extremely tired and felt kind of weak, so I went to bed early.
I prayed the week before her surgery and the week of her surgery. I asked Jesus and the Father to heal my friend and make the tumor disappear.
My friend didn’t tell many people about her tumor because she didn’t want to talk about it. She told one person from her church a couple days before her surgery, and they put her on the prayer chain. To my knowledge, I am the only one that fasted. Her husband who is a retired pastor did even fast.
Her surgery on Wednesday was at noon, and I knew they were going use some type of anesthesia for her outpatient surgery. I texted her about 4pm to ask if she was awake and if she was in a lot of pain and I didn’t hear anything back, so I assumed she was sleeping. Then around 5pm she called me and said she had texted me, but I never got the text. She told me the surgeon couldn’t find anything. The tumor had disappeared! It was a miracle!
I started worshipping satan the summer I was seventeen. It didn’t last long though and I started in July. The things that led up to it happened when I was 16 years old and were out of my control and I now believe I was a victim of witchcraft. I didn’t understand what was going on, and I thought God hated me, was going to damn me to hell, and I didn’t have any other choice. It was during that time I started seeing visions.
That June before I started worshipping satan, my sister and I used the ouiji board my grandma had and she gave it to my mom. My sister and I used the board once. We started asking questions and got gibberish for answers. I became interested in the occult and witchcraft after we used it. I started reading books about the subject but the more I read about witchcraft, I knew it wasn’t the truth. Witches don’t believe in God or satan. They believe in a variety of different goddesses and gods: Idols. I didn’t believe it because I knew that God and satan were both real. I knew that the God of the bible was the real God and that there weren’t any others. I thought God hated me and I was damned to hell, and I had no choice in the matter. I thought I should just worship the enemy because I was going to hell anyway. Yes, I was listening to the enemies lies and I was deceived.
Even though I was raised catholic I didn’t understand the religion, the rituals, or why I had to memorize prayers when I went to catechism class. Because no one explained things about God and prayer I never prayed or talked to God. Throughout childhood, and my teens I lived as an atheist. I never paid any attention to God. My parents did not talk about God.
I started having a lot of anxiety then and I also started seeing visions then. The first one was of an unborn baby in the womb that looked almost full term. I saw that one while I was sitting in my friend’s car while she went into Planned Parenthood to get birth control. I knew nothing about partial birth abortions at that time in my life. The next one I saw was of me and a man. That vision had to do with the biblical meaning of marriage. Then I saw the next vision in September. I saw the exact same vision on each full moon of every month for three months in a row. I would wake up in the middle of the night in extreme pain. The pain would get so bad I could not lie in bed anymore so I would get up and go downstairs to get something to drink and by the time I got downstairs I felt like I was going to pass out then I would break out in a cold sweat and then I would faint but not before seeing a vision.
I didn’t know what the vision was supposed to mean, but I saw the same exact one every time. The vision started with me seeing all black, then I would see a dot of gold light that would move in a clockwise circle until it was a perfect circle of gold light like a halo. After the circle was complete, I would faint. Now I think it has to do with three hours, specifically the third hour when Jesus died after he was crucified.
Soon I started dreading full-moon, I didn’t want to wake up in pain again, but I didn’t know what to do either because I didn’t even think of praying or that God would help me. In November I saw a personal ad in the newspaper. There was a personal ad from a man who said he was spiritual and looking for a spiritual woman and there was a number written under his personal ad. The number was a blind box number the newspaper used so people could respond by sending letters to the newspaper, then the letter was forwarded to him. He called after about two weeks, and we talked for a short period of time. I don’t remember our whole conversation now, but I know I had told him I worshipped the devil. I told him about the visions and the pain that happened on the full moon. In the want ads of that day’s newspaper there a notice about praying certain catholic prayers. I asked him if he thought I should pray them and he didn’t think it would be a bad idea.
About a week later I got a letter in the mail from Jonathan, the man in the personal ad I had sent a letter to. He wrote I was on the wrong path, and worshipping satan was just a negative self-fulfilling prophecy.
I prayed on the night of the full moon in December. I stumbled through the prayers and didn’t think God would even hear me. In the morning when I woke up, I realized I didn’t wake up in pain the middle of the night. God had heard my prayer and answered it! It changed my life! After that night, I started praying those prayers every day for protection from evil and I never left the house without praying for protection. I would read bible verses in my grandma’s old daily mass bible every morning when I woke up. I also started talking to God all the time.
I wonder if Jonathan was an angel on earth. I don’t mean heavenly angel but a human doing God’s will because he was at the right place at the right time. After that happened to me, I started asking God to help me be in the right place at the right time.
I know God can use anyone to make a difference in someone’s life. Maybe someday you will be someone’s angel on earth.
MKR Prodigal Daughter-Christian Perspectives from a Prodigal 