a. When Bishop Joel Jeune of Haiti was a small boy he died, was dead for two days. Since his body was decomposing in the hot Haiti weather it was decided to stop waiting on his father to arrive (a Christian preacher who said that the Lord told him his son would do great things in Haiti) and they started a procession to the cemetery. His father showed up and told them to put the coffin down and he prayed for one and a half hours, and waited for another one and a half hours.They heard a sneeze, unwrapped the body and the boy was alive. 100% of the village became Christians.This boy went on to be a major force behind the weakening of Vodoo as the major "religion" of Haiti. Bishop Jeune has recently been a guest on the TBN network.
b. In 1953 in the Philippines, a 18 year old girl being held in a prison,Clarita Villanueva screamed in horror as bite marks suddenly showed up on her neck, back, legs and arms simultaneously. She descibed her attackers as monsters which she could see but were invisible to everybody else. One doctor accused her of putting on an act. Clarita gazed at the doctor with snake-like eyes and said, "you will die". The doctor died the next day without ever getting sick. She said the same thing to the chief jailer, he was dead and buried within 4 days. The doctors called upon anyone for help, the story made headlines all across the world. The American Protestant missionary Lester Sumrall showed up. Clarita saw him and screamed violently, "I hate you!". Sumrall said,"I know you hate me. I have come to cast you out." After a 3 day confrontation she relaxed, smiled, and said "He's gone". This led to a huge Christian revival in the Philippines.
c. In 1994 Emanuel Tuwagirairmana was seriously wounded during the genocide of Rwanda. His wounds grew
worse and one morning his friends, who were all hiding in a school, realized he was dead. They wrapped his body in a bed cover and by now his body was smelling and fluids were coming out of it.This situation lasted for seven days! Tuwagirairmana had a near death experience, afterwards he found himself entering his earthly body which was full of maggots. His friends could not believe their eyes when they saw Tuwagirairmana's rotten body shaking. Although most of them were very sick, they crawled and ran out of the school shouting they had seen a ghost. They returned after hearing Tuwagirairmana pleading for them to return. Tuwagirairmana is now a Christian minister.
d. In 1976 in Russia, George Rodonaia was ran over by a car twice in an assassination attempt. He was rushed to a hospital, pronounced dead, and taken to the morgue. As is the customary procedure their at the morgue in Tbilisi, Rodonaia's body was frozen for three days before the autopsy. During the autopsy Rodonaia's eye's opened, one doctor thinking this was a reflex promptly closed them, same thing again, the third time the doctor jumped backwards and screamed. Rodonaia came back to life shivering and was taken to the hospital where he remained for nine months. In 1989 Rodonaia came to America and is now an associate pastor at the First United Methodist Church in Nederland, Texas.
e. Here's another resurrection of the dead, On November 30, 2001 Pastor Daniel Ekechukwu died after a car wreck. He was taken to the morgue and left in an open air embalming room for three days. Ekechukwu's wife heard about a nearby healing service by Reinhard Bonnke and she had the body taken to the service. Ekechukwu was being prayed over by some pastors in the basement of the church where the healing service was being held. He started coming back to life. He was stiff from rigor mortis and the pastors began massaging his body. Ekechukwu suddenly jumped to his feet, he took a few steps then asked for some water. He made a full recovery and has been preaching about the judgment to come and the promise of everlasting life through the Lord Jesus Christ.
f. From the Philippines, I think around 1953, there is the true story of Cornelio Closa who would literally disappear! Cornelio was 13 years old walking home with a friend when he saw a beautiful girl calling to him. He
walked towards her and his friend saw him disappear. After he reappeared he began acting strangely and causing
trouble at home and at school. He would get into fights and 3 or 4 larger boys were unable to hold him down. His
teacher called him up to the front of the room and he "stood there for a few moments and then simply evaporated". The teacher was terrified and resigned. Cornelio had a hideous non-human kind of laugh and would growl and snarle at his father. At home he would hide things from his parents and smash or break anything he could. His father would nail the doors and windows shut. The whole family would be in the front room and with everybody looking, Cornelio would just disappear. The other children would start coughing and vomiting because of the stench he would leave behind. He would be gone for two days or more and then suddenly reappear in the shut up house. His parents told a Methodist pastor about it and he told them to take him to the church to see Lester Sumrall (see b. above) At the church Cornelio saw the formerly beautiful girl outside the door, but now she looked ugly and horrible. The Methodist pastor took Cornelio up to Reverand Sumrall and Sumrall commanded the devil to come out of him in the name of Jesus Christ. Sumrall visited Cornelio's house the next day. He talked to the parents, they got down on their knees and accepted Christ. Cornelio also became a Christian, he was never tormented by that evil thing again. Sumrall decided never to put this story in the newspapers. Sumrall said there was so much verification of it that it was impossible for it to have been a story someone had made up. Reverand H.A. Baker traveled from the United States over to the Philippines to verify the story. He told Sumrall he contacted Cornelio, the school teacher, the parents,and the neighbors and discovered that it is absolutely true what you describe about this miracle.
g. There was a Christian Revival in Indonesia starting in 1965 to 1970, described in the book, Like A Mighty
Wind by Mel Tari. It started in a Presbyterian church as about 200 people prayed, including 18 year old Mel Tari.They heard the sound of a very strong wind like a small tornadoe in the church but saw nothing unusual. Then they heard the fire bell across the street ringing, the police saw that the church was on fire. People came from all over the village with buckets of water, but the fire was not burning the church, it was a non-consuming fire. People in the church began to confess their sins. One man, who was known to have a liquor problem, was told he had 24 hours to repent or die. The man wouldn't repent, exactly 24 hours later he dropped dead. Later on, as the revival spread, teams of people would travel around Indonesia to spread the Gospel. Many miracles occurred, such as: Walking across a river that was 30 feet deep, crocodiles coming to attack obeyed their command to leave, no harm from a powerful poison put in their food, not getting wet as they walked through heavy rain, multiplication of food when there wasn't enough to go around, children teams protected by angels which the children could see, a man dead for two days and stinking from decay prayed back to life, water turned into wine, thirty thousand people healed in six years, a bolt of fire like lightning burning idols to ashes without damaging anything else, and invisible protection from an angry mob of 400 people. Others have written about the
Indonesian Revival other than Mel Tari, including Karl Koch in his book The Revival in Indonesia.
Karl Koch gives other details about the nature of this revival. Koch writes about Pastor Gideon, who could look at you and tell you your unforgiven sins. p.160-"..the Christians will not allow Pastor Gideon to leave the pulpit until he has preached sometimes for 7 or 8 hours at a stretch. The believers in the revival area have lost all sense of time, all sense of hunger and thirst, and all sense of the value of money....class divisions have simply faded away..the only thing that remains which is of any worth is that which speaks of, or points to, or originates from Christ..In no other revival since the first century has the presence of Jesus and His direct guidance and leadership been so much in evidence. p.143- Suddenly, however, the rain stopped, and the sun began to shine brightly. At that moment the team saw Jesus in the skies standing above the sun. p.145-The team was commanded by God to go and preach the gospel in a village which was 48 traveling hours away. Setting out on foot, they arrived at the village within a space of 4 hours..the villagers described how they had heard the sound of a trumpet coming from the mountain calling them to the meeting. However, the team did not have a trumpet with them. There were altogether 50 people in the church who were ill. Everyone of them was healed."
Note: A contributer tells us that Mel Tari works with missionaries Rolland and Heidi Baker (authors of the book, Always Enough) Mel will be in Pheonix in April 2007 www.ElijahList.com A report about Mel and a trip to Indonesia in 2005 can be found at:www.irismin.org/news/29.php
h. On the November 4, 2004 television show, The 700 Club, Benny Hinn told Pat Robertson about two children in Cairo, Egypt. They were missing their mother, who had recently died. Their father (or uncle) buried them alive in their mother's tomb. When they were found alive 12 days later they told about a Man in White who came to visit them and bring them food and wake up their mother to feed them. They said the man had a hole in his hands and that he said his name was Jesus....This coincides with thousands of reports recently of Muslims having dreams in which Jesus Christ appears.(http://isaalmasih.net/ )
j. The January 2006 CBN broadcast of "Miracles II, All Things Are Possible" contains many well documented miracles. Including the story of Marlene Klepees, who was healed of Cerebral Palsy in 1980. She was a spastic quadriplegic who needed the help of others to provide for her needs. She was taken to New Life Open Bible Church in Rodchester, Minnesota. She was all scrunched up and strapped into a wheelchair. Pastor Scott Emerson and other church members prayed for her. She was soon running around the church praising the Lord and her poor vision was also healed.
b. Most neurologists insist memories are located in the brain, based on tests of brain damage, amnesia and Altzheimer's (But we think they are wrong, since they can't prove where memories are located in the brain). If memories of things seen and heard in this physical world are only in the physical brain, how will the Christian Resurrection work? One method might be that God will go back in time to the day you died and Transform that brain including all the memories. If there was any brain damage when you died, no problem, God can go back further and get what you need. Then God could transform your body, put the transformed brain in it,then stick your soul and spirit back in it. And with at least eleven dimensions to work in, God could do this instantaneously to billions of people at the same time. You will need an Almighty God to do this for you.
a. Excerpts from The Wonder of Being Human by Sir John Eccles and Daniel N. Robinson: p.141 "We postulate that there is another memory. It is in World 2, not in the brain...In the first place it functions in the attempt to recall a memory. This must be an active selection process exerted on cortical modules. In the second place it has a recognition role, judging the correctness of the retrieved memory, as experienced consciously, e.g. of a name or a number. p.176 ..Memory is also shown located in World 2. Perhaps this is a more general memory related to our self-identity, our emotional life, our personal life, and our ideals as enshrined in the values--in fact the whole identity of the programmer. All this should be sufficient for self-identity".
b. The Eastern Orthodox Christian Church as explained in the book, The Soul After Death by Fr. Seraphim Rose
teaches: Before the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden, man's body was a superior- more refined body and Adam
and Eve could see and communicate with angels. At the Fall, God made changes to the physical body which put up a barrier, which stopped this ability to see angels. Which was a good thing because now man was not protected in The Garden of Eden, and would of been at the mercy of the Fallen Angels, which now reside in the
air of our current planet Earth (but in a different kind of space that begins here and extends into a new dimension). At real actual death, good angels firmly grasp the "subtle body" and conduct it away, and the dead are tested by demons, and eventually the dead reside in either an area of Heaven or Hell awaiting the Resurrection of the Dead and The Last Judgement. Concerning near death experiences: Relatives appearing, peaceful and pleasant feelings are part of the natural experience of death, a sign to the dying person that they are entering a new realm. "Beings of light" are not good angels and may be part of The Latter Days Temptations. Authentic near death experiences produce awe and fear of God, and repentence. Those who take drugs or use other methods to leave their bodies and most nde's only experience the realm of fallen angels. Good angels only pass through this realm on special business ordered by God. Some practical advise: Don't die with unrepented sin or unforgiveness.(Seraphim Rose)
p.60-"..When any kind of vision presents itself, do not become frightened,...manfully ask it first of all: 'Who are you, and where do you come from?' p.61- If the saints have not always recognized demons who appeared to them in the form of saints and Christ Himself, how is it possible for us to think of ourselves that we will recognize them without mistake?...during such apparitions one should guard oneself with the sign of the Cross, close one's
eyes, and in resolute awareness of one's unworthiness and unfitness for seeing holy spirits, to entreat God that He might protect us from all nets and deceptions which are cunningly set out for men by the spirits of malice...By no means accept it if you see anything sensuously or with the mind, inside or outside of you, whether it be an image of Christ or an angel or some saint, or if a light should be fancied or depicted by the imagination in the mind. For by nature it is characteristic of the mind itself to indulge in fantasies, and it easily forms the images it desires...
p.104-the "heaven" and "hell" seen by persons in these experiences are only parts (or appearances) of the aerial realm of spirits and have nothing to do with the true heaven and hell of Christian doctrine..Persons in the "out-of- body" state are not free to "wander" into the true heaven and hell...If some Christians at death see almost immediately a heavenly city with pearly gates and angels, it is only an indication that what is seen in the aerial realm depends to some extent on one's own past experiences and expectations, even as dying Hindus see their own Hindu temples and "gods". p.114-These out-of-body experiences tell us almost nothing of what happens to the soul after death, except that it does survive and is conscious.p.116- ..the peace and pleasantness of the out-of-body experience may be considered real and not a deception. Deception enters in, however, the instant one begins to interpret these natural feelings as something "spiritual"-as though this peace were the true peace of reconciliation
with God, and the pleasantness were the true spiritual pleasure of heaven...even the crudest unbelievers have the same experience of pleasantness when they die. p.117-It is also "natural" for the soul apart from the body to have a heightened awareness of reality and to exercise what is now called "extra-sensory perception"...p.119- a true knowledge of the aerial realm of spirits and its manifestations cannot be acquired by experience alone...the experiences of this realm are often produced by demons with the ultimate intent of deceiving and destroying men's souls, ..The reality of this invisible realm cannot be known for what it actually is unless this be revealed by a source outside and above it...p.134-From these accounts we may already see three characteristics of the true Christian experience of heaven: It is an ascent; the soul is conducted by angels; it is greeted by and joins the company of the inhabitants of heaven..p.136-the brightness of the light of heaven; the invisible presence of the Lord; and a tangible sensing of Divine grace, in the form of an indescribable fragrance...the multitudes of people encountered in heaven are (in addition to the angels who conduct souls) the souls of martyrs and holy men..p.180-
But when it leaves the body, the soul finds itself among other spirits, good and evil. Usually it inclines toward those which are more akin to it in spirit, and if while in the body it was under the influence of certain ones, it will remain in dependence upon them when it leaves the body, however unpleasant they may turn out to be upon encountering them..p.183-the contemporary after-death experinces..is but the beginning of the soul's initial period of bodiless wandering to the places of its earthly attachments; but none of these people has been dead long enough even to meet the angels who are to accompany them." (Seraphim Rose)
c. Excerpt from Billy Graham's book Angels, God's Secret Messengers: "At the moment of death the spirit departs from the body and moves through the atmosphere. But the Scripture teaches us that the devil lurks there.
He is 'the prince of the power of the air' (Eph.2:2). If the eyes of our understanding were opened, one would probably see the air filled with demons, the enemies of Christ. If satan could hinder the angel of Daniel for three weeks on his mission to earth, we can imagine the opposition a Christian may encounter at death...The moment of death is satan's final opportunity to attack the true believer; but God has sent His angels to guard us at that time."
d. Luke 11:24- "When the unclean spirit goes out of a man, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and not finding any, it says, 'I will return to my house from which I came."
I think I'll (B.D.) speculate alittle bit. So demons look for a "house" they like. We know demons do not occupy space in our physical space-time. How then, do they get in us? Through our spirit, yes, but how about something more comprehensible like our minds. Our minds exist in the spirit world. So demons go
travelling around the spirit world and come across a place that has something they just love, scenes of hate and lust, so they decide to stay, only this place is someone's mind. And some of their buddies are already there. Like the street in front of your house, your mind is not secure from intrusion. Proverbs 25:28
In a near death experience, pre-existing relationships with demons and guardian angels really kick-in and show up. Your mind notices resuscitation attempts are starting to succeed so your mind had better hurry up and end this nde. Just as demons and angels can share your thoughts, you can share some of theirs.
So in death, you've lost 4 dimensions. Luke 20:35-36 "But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: Neither can they die anymore: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection. After the resurrection, true believers will have the bodies and powers equal to that of angels.
e. UPDATE: I used to think (B.D.) that after death we didn't have real bodies, that it was a sort of dream-world, awaiting the Resurrection on the Last Day, when we would receive bodies. Then I thought that we would have spiritual bodies and have a conscious existence between death and the resurrection. But now, 10-22-2007, I believe that after death we will be unconscious until the resurrection. You can pick out certain Bible verses to support any of these positions, but when I step back and try to look at the big picture of all Bible verses pertaining to death, life after death, and the resurrection; then this view of being unconscious is the one I am most comfortable with. One thing to keep in mind is that if you are unconscious after death, then your next conscious experience after death will be the resurrection, no passage of time would be experienced in the death state, no good or bad experiences in the death state, nothing---you're dead. I'll keep some of the material in favor of a conscious after death state (like the above Seraphim Rose material) on this website, but I no longer support it.
I'll review the impressive NDE of Dr. Richard E. Eby who fell off a balcony in 1972. He later wrote three books: Caught Up Into Paradise, Tell Them That I'm Coming, and Didn't You Read MY Book? From the introduction of D.Y.R.M.B-"I gasped! Suddenly in a new body in a place with new life, I was ecstaticly joyful: no pain, no tears, no sorrow, no memory. Nothing but incomprehensible peace and infilling love. All was perfection. I stood awestuck in a new weightless body, translucent and floating. Total love enveloped and perfused me! What peace!" ....Dr. Eby writes that Jesus Christ personally escorted him around Paradise, answering all of Eby's questions. Chapter 15-"I have more to tell you, My son.You will not complete your commission for Me before I return for you and My Body of Believers. I am coming that soon". Sorry to tell you, but Dr. Eby died in December of 2002. This means that Dr. Eby's experience was an halucination.
So how do these NDE's happen? I'll quote neuropsychologist Dr. Rhawn Joseph from his website "brainmind.com"..."The hippocampus, therefore, can create a cognitive map of an individuals environment and their movements and the movements of others within it. Presumably it is via the hippocampus that an individual can visualize themselves as if looking at their body from afar, and can remember and thus see themselves engaged in certain actions, as if one were an outside witness...As noted, however, many patients who are diagnosed as "clinically dead" and then return to "life" report that after leaving their body they enter a dark tunnel and are then enveloped in a soothing radiant light. The same is reported in the Egyptian and Tibetan Books of the Dead. Presumably, in that the hippocampus, amygdala, and inferior temporal lobe receive direct and indirect visual input and contain neurons sensitive to the fovea and upper visual fields, hyperactivation of this region also induces the sensation of seeing radiant light. The massive release of opiates (due to physical trama leading to "death") would account for the immediate loss of fear and the experience of tranquillity and joy. Continued activation of these brain regions would also account for the hallucinations of seeing dead relatives, that are commonly reported by those who have "died", as well as the life review, in which one's past life flashes before their eyes. At death, the amygdala and hippocampus would begin to remember, and memories that were emotional and personal, and all accompanying emotions, such as guilt, would be experienced as part of death. That is, not just the memory, but the awful feeling of the memory would be reexperienced. These structures, therefore, account for the feeling of floating above the body, the life review, and the judgment imposed on the self by their guilty or guilt-free conscience....Indeed, these exact same feelings and experiences can be induced by electrically stimulating the inferior temporal lobe and amygdala-hippocampal complex....the hippocampus and amygdala may be the first areas of the brain to be effected by approaching death, as well as one of the last regions of the brain to actually die."
In other words, a near death experience is impossible without a living amygdala-hippocampus. Which means not one person who has had a NDE was actually dead.
titled The Distinctive Human Self: "Mind and language are more than physical entities. Distinctively human language enables man to bridge the gulf between mind and matter. Human language reflects a preternatural, spiritual component in humans that does not exist in other creatures....Self-consciousness is "knowing that one knows." It is a most fundamental characteristic of the human species that has recently been discounted in chimpanzees found not to have an awareness of their own thoughts....A colleague of Sir John Eccles, Henry Margenau, believes the constituents of synaptic transmission are small enough to be governed by probabilistic quantum laws. Mental events, such as intentions and planned thinking, initiate the exocytosis of presynaptic vesicles with release of their transmitter molecules by changing the probability of their emission from the presynaptic vesicular grid. The event does not violate the conservation laws of physics because the extremely small size of the portion of the grid effected in the transmission allows it to be within the range of quantum mechanics and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. It is now documented that transmission of synaptic vesicles is governed by changes in probabilities. Therefore mental intention selects by choice for vesicular exocytosis across synaptic clefts by changing probabilities of transmission resulting in neural transmission to and within World 1 stuctures.(Popper places the brain in World 1, "self" in World 2, knowledge/language/civilization in World 3) The mind-brain interface, or bridge is crossed; the materialist objection is addressed!...Jeffrey M. Schwartz acknowleges studies that have shown that the mind can affect the body, but he has recently presented exiting data that shows that the mind can affect the brain..In his Four Steps to remodel dysfuntional neuronal synaptic connections (neuronal plasticity) in the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder..That a mental process alters circuits..offers dramatic examples of how the ways someone thinks about thoughts can effect plastic changes in the brain.. Schwartz acknowledges that quantum theory allows for mind, or conscious experience, to interact with the physical brain..Henry Stapp believes that it is quantum physics that allows mental effort to influence the course of cerebral processes."
a. Others are now getting on the Quantum Brain bandwagon. Including the eminent mathmetician Roger Penrose.
(Roger Penrose was mentioned in conclusion one above). Stuart Hameroff-"When we are anesthetized, our consciousness is erased by anesthetic gas molecules, which bind within a variety of neural proteins in regions where London Forces act. The anesthetics bind weakly but impair the normally ocurring Quantum London Forces.
When the anesthetic gas molecules float away and normal London Forces resume, patients awake fully from their
anesthesia. Roger Penrose has teamed up with Stuart Hameroff exploring possible quantum effects in microtubules
"Are there any scientific data that might allow us to arrive at a verdict on the claim that OBE (out of body experience) vision is valid? There is in fact a good deal of relevant evidence availiable and there have been a number of studies of out of body experience vision that meet the standards of rigorous control required by exact science.
There are two ways of broadly viewing the results of these studies. First of all, we have the summary of Karlis Osis, Director of Research at the American Society for Psychical Research (A.S.P.R.). This society, in an effort to produce evidence for survival of death, undertook an extensive investigation of out of body experience perception. [13] In the course of this study, approximately 100 subjects, all of whom believed they were proficient in inducing OBEs and possessed paranormal perceptual abilities during these OBEs, were tested under controlled conditions. While confined to one room at the A.S.P.R., the subjects induced OBEs and "visited" a distant target room, attemping afterwards to describe in detail what they had "seen" while there. A comparison of their reports with the actual contents of the target room revealed, in all but a few cases, absolutely no indication of any correspondence whatsoever. In other words, in the great majority of these cases, there was no evidence supporting accurate out of body experience perception, nor for the validity of the subjects' convictions that they had actually left their bodies. Moreover, these subjects were described by Osis as being "the creme of the claiments" of OBE. I believe the results of this study strongly supports the "OBE as misinterpreted lucid dream" interpretation offered above.
As for OBE vision, in the words of Dr. Osis, "the bulk of the cases seem to be a mirage." At best, OBE vision seems a highly variable and unreliable mode of perception "ranging from fairly good (i.e., clearly distinguishing some objects) to complete failure (i.e., producing very foggy or totally incorrect images)." Moreover, Osis added, "of those individuals in our studies who have shown some signs of OOB perceptual power, we did not find a single one who could see things clearly every time he felt he was out of body."
The great majority of alleged cases of OBE vision apparently show no greater degree of perceptual ability (in regard to the external world) than we would expect from ordinary dreams. This might by itself suggest that the nature of OBEs would require no additional explanation than that already discussed.
But the existence of even occasional exceptions of apparently accurate OBE perception is a fact that still needs to be explained. The traditional explanation holds that OBE vision is a form of direct perception by means of the senses of a non-physical body. There is an alternative explanation that is philosophically sound, economical, and (most importantly) in agreement with observation. It does not in the first place assume a condition of unvarying accuracy during OBE or lucid dream vision. Instead, it suggests that like all other mental imagery, this form of perception may be relatively more accurate at some times than others. Mental experiences can be ordered on a spectrum ranging from little or no relation to external reality (e.g., "hallucinations") at one end, to near perfect correspondence with actuality (e.g., "perception") on the other end. Moreover, there can be any degree of relationship in between, and it is somewhere in the middle ground that dreams and OBEs generally reside.
What I am proposing is that the select minority of accurate OBE reports are simply cases of dream telepathy. To some people, this may seem like explaining the mysterious in terms of the more mysterious. Dream telepathy is a fact only barely established and in no way satisfactorily understood or explained. A question for future research is whether lucid dreamers and OBErs are more conductive to telepathy than ordinary dreamers."
"Thank God we are not going to be angels, we are going to be something tenfold better. By the Redemption of Jesus Christ there is a time coming when our bodies will be in the image of God. The "body of our humiliation" is to be "conformed to the body of His glory", and our body will bear the image of God as our spirit does....
Soul is the holder of spirit and body together..The soul has no existence until the spirit and body come together..The Bible reveals that every part of man's physical life is closely connected with sin or salvation..our eyes record to the brain what they look at, but our disposition makes our eyes look at what it wants them to look at..
The use of the Bible term "heart" is best understood by simply saying "me". The heart is not merely the seat of the affections, it is the center of everything. The true center of all vital activities of body and soul and spirit..center of physical life, memory, damnation, salvation, God's working, the devil's working, the center from which every-
thing works which moulds the human mechanism.
Memory resides not in the brain, but in the heart. Memory is a spiritual thing and exists in the heart; the brain recalls more or less clearly what the heart remembers.."Son, remember"..Recalling depends upon the state of our physical brain...Thinking takes place in the heart..The expression of thinking is referred to the brain and the lips because through these organs thinking becomes articulate..
The Bible reveals that our body is the medium through which we develope our spiritual life.. the body was looked upon as a hindrance and annoyance..The Bible entirely disproves this view, it tells us that our body is "the temple of the Holy Ghost"...
We can only discern the spiritual world by the Spirit of God, not by our own spirit...
Spirit and personality are synonymous, but as long as a man is in the body his personality is obscured. Immed-
iately he dies his spirit is no more obscured, it is absolutely awake; no limitations now, man is face to face with everything else that is of spirit..."
From The Servant As His Lord by Oswald Chambers
p.52-"The need to be a Christian is not simply that Jesus Christ's salvation may work in our conscious life, but that the unconscious realm of our personality may be protected from supernatural powers of which we know nothing..
We are much more than we are conscious of. p.54-Below the threshold of consciousness is the subconscious part of our personality which is full of mystery. There are forces in this realm which may interfere with us and we cannot control them, it is with this realm that the Spirit of God deals."
From The Moral Foundations of Life by Oswald Chambers
A habit forms a pathway in the material stuff of the brain. Flowing water hollows out for itself a channel...and after having ceased to flow for a time, it will resume again the path traced out before. The brain and body are pure mechanisms. They are machines we use to express our personality. We are meant to use our brains to express our thought in words, and to behave accordingly to the way we have thought. The brain does not deal with pure thought. No thought is ours until it can be expressed in words. It is only through our bodies that we develope. We cannot express a character without a body....Character is the sum total of a man's actions in different situations.
b. So in summary (B.D.): Thoughts and memories are spiritual. The brain converts thought and memory into physical consciousness. The brain doesn't know or understand anything, your spirit does that. Drugs that are used to treat mental illness probably shut down access to certain existing material pathways in the brain, making it hard for old personality disorders to re-emerge, and harder for for psychotic affections to return and form new pathways.
c. Here's some more info on how memory works. Consider the work of Wilder Penfield back in 1951, in which tests were done on the brain during brain surgery. An electrical probe was stuck into the brain at different locations and was stimulated using current from a square wave generator, usually at 60 cycles per second, 0.5 to 5.0 volts This was done while the patient was wide awake (the brain doesn't feel pain). From Penfield's book, The Mystery of the Mind p.21-"They were electrical activations of the sequential record of consciousness, a record that had been laid down during the patient's earlier experience. The patient "re-lived" all that he had been aware of in that earlier period of time as in a moving-picture "flashback"...For example, when a mother told me she was suddenly aware, as my electrode touched the cortex, of being in her kitchen listening to the voice of her little boy who was playing outside in the yard. She was aware of the neighborhood noises, such as passing cars, that might mean danger to him.. could hear instruments playing a melody. I restimulated the same point 30 times trying to mislead her..Each time I re-stimulated, she heard the melody again. It began at the same place and went on from chorus to verse...In other cases, different "flashbacks" might be produced from successive stimulations of the same point."