Mental health and the Fall

[Ian]

I`ve chewed things over further Steve. I may never "put this one to bed" completely, but it would help to think that Wil did not forfeit his salvation through pulling the trigger in that forest. No Christian should have to go through what he went through on this Earth and still not "make it". My hope for him is that Jesus will honour/acknowledge him before the Father because he honoured/acknowledged Jesus before men, or at least tried to - on many occasions, sometimes to his own detriment. His very anti-Christian father dismissed him as a "second rate B-movie preacher", a tag which Wil, with his typical self-deprecation, was inclined to agree with.

He may well have been "oppressed" (or worse?) and apparently claimed to hear voices, though how much I don`t know. He did have violent urges, though certainly never acted them out on anyone else since becoming a Christian and probably not before. He was meek and mild. Maybe those urges were what got the better of him in the end, and he turned them on himself rather than someone else.

[Priestly1]

Greetings Dear Friend,
I too was a "Back Slidden Saint" or as I call it, A Prodigal Son. I have returned to our Father's Estate and work as a son with a slave's heart.
I have had friends and family struggling with Mental illness also. One committed suicide out of severe depression over her father's death from cancer, she was a Junior in High School. We had both lost our parent to cancer the very same month! I was horrified by her death.........and felt guilty for a long time because I could not see the signs she was giving. I still have a wound over her to this very hour.

Our Brains are just our spirit's PC with which we interface with our mortal physical vehicle we call our body...or as Christ and His Apostles called our mortal Habitation, Tent or House. Just as our bodies can be subject to physical disabilities and disease, so too can our brain. Organic brain disease is the source of what psychology calls mental illness...the psyche (soul) is the union of body and spirit, which when united creates our human personality and soulish mind.......as Paul states. This soulish mind can become affected by disease as you have discovered.

God has permitted this world and all it's creatures to be subject to the laws of a fallen nature....all of nature. Nature cries out for it's rebirth, and so do our spirits. Sadly Medicine is only able to do so much for human afflictions in our brain/body systems. It has been a great discovery and tool to aid mankind, but still no match for divine resurrection and raptural transformation. God gives grace to those who suffer, and sadly when sufering becomes too much many who feel isolated choose to end the suffering by their own hands as it were. This is sad indeed, but I do not judge them as they belong to God.

Scripture is full of cases of Neurological illness (Epilepsy, Palsy and Insanity)as well as demonization...and it clearly distinguishes the two by clear Greek termonology well understood by first century Jewish and Graeco-Roman Medicine. Christ healed all those brought to him who were afflicted by such illnesses and demnonically imposed conditions. I cannot find one shred of Scriptural Texts or Perspectives or Cases of Saints demonized and then released by excorcism. This notion of Christian demonization is a modern American sourced notion which did not exist in Christianity before 1907. Once in the Hand of God, in His Kingdom of Light and inhabited by His Holy Presence no other spirit can dwell therein save your own.

I wonder why God does not immediately heal all those who return to Him as their Father in Christ....but that is promised only at our Resurrection when all is restored from mortal to immortal. That is our Hope at Christ's return. Until then we are left with the Promise and sealed by his holy Spirit as a down payment, and then we work with Him in Faith walking with Him on our journey of working out our Faith in fear and trepidation. God is good and His Mercy endures forever...so too it defends and protects even those children who fall into dispare and who remove themselves from this earthly place of struggle and fallen natures. There are no Scriptures to support the damnation of saints who fall into this catagory....Sampson comitted suicide in order to atone for his sin and to destroy his people's oppressors. Yet Sampson is hailed as a saint and a foreshadow of Christ! On the otherhand, Saul, who had walkwed away from God also killed himself and has been seen as a sinner, a foreshadow of Judas Iscariot. Early Christians hailed those who blatantlly attacked the AntiChrist Empire of Pagan Rome...even running to their own deaths with Christ on their last breaths...not tide up martyrs, but radical zealous Martyrs who not only accepted death, but courted it and ran to it...just Like bishop Ignatios of Antioch did...but even more so, they did not wait to be discovered...they made open protests and challenges to Imperial Rome! Are they suicides? They forced their own deaths at the hands of unbelievers. Well God is the judge of His Servants...not I or anyone else, as Paul states. They all sought immediate release from this life of sin and death and immediate glory in Christ's presence in Paradise.

I know God knows the hearts and minds of all His children and judges their actions according to their Faith and their frail humanity....He is Just and Merciful...moreso than we ourselves. God is Love, Life and Perfection....and He alone knows our inner most being....They are in His Care My friend...whether here or in His place of rest until the Resurrection.

You are not back slidden if you recognize your status before God and seek reconciliation...it is already done...just turn around and suddenly you too will see our Father smiling with tears awaiting your acceptance provided by Christ our Elder Brother and Lord. He has been right behind you always, just awaiting your disgust at eating with the pigs...His arms are open to embrace you...just turn around and see. I did and He welcomed me back from the swine pen.

In Christ.

Rt. Rev. +Kenneth Huffman..

[Ian]

Thank you for your reply Kenneth, a reply from a man who has been where I am now, perhaps not in the same or even similar circumstances, but there is a lot to be taken from your post.

On a more mundane note, and please excuse my European ignorance on this, but what happened in 1907 in America?

[steve]

I'm an American, and I don't know either!

[kaufmannphillips]

Steve wrote:

Someone who stayed at my house once told me I teach in my sleep.

Is there a way these lectures can be recorded and posted on the website?

One of my former professors recently confessed on Facebook that he had fallen asleep in one of his own lectures! A student asked him a question and he woke up. So I guess he had it the other way 'round...

(In his defense, he has had some health challenges that might have contributed to his dozing off.)

[steve]

I did the same thing once, at my school in Santa Cruz, in 1976. I literally fell asleep while reading out loud from 1 Chronicles! I was awkened by the students' laughter. I can't claim any health problems in my own defense—just too many hours teaching, and too few sleeping.