[Cal]

Originally Posted by Nell

It also doesn't mean that Satan and his minions aren't somewhere doing high-fives either. Does it?

My point was we can talk about Satan too little or too much. He's happy either way.

I think the best is to be convinced by prayer, by the Word of God and the enlightening of the Holy Spirit. My hope is that people reading this thread would take all these things to the Lord and be convinced in their own minds.

Yes, but they won't know what to be convinced of if "all these things" are not put into words that make sense to people.

We can have an intellectual discussion and ultimately, there is little to win or lose either way. However, these topics, on this forum, to this group of people who may have been the victims of spiritual abuse and may have not been able to acknowledge the possibility, I think is another matter altogether.

I'm not sure what you mean by this statement.

I'm not out here on this forum because I want to convince anyone of anything, though to the reader it may not seem that way. Sometimes I wonder myself why I do this...spend so much time here ... . I was not convinced of any of these truths because someone beat me over the head with them and I finally got the point and now I agree.

Eventually a belief has to put into words, otherwise how do you even know what you believe, and how can you communicate it?

It troubles me that people are suspicious of intellect, because intellect is a gift from God. He gave us brains so we would use them. Certainly it can be misused. But so can religious fervor, subjective "leadings," and even faith and prayer. Why intellect is always the red-headed step-child of the bunch, I'm not sure. But I think the bias is an error. And we all know who the source of those are.

There have been few topics on this or the other forum that have met with this much resistance. I have to ask myself "why?" I believe I know. I can't convince anyone of anything, but I can present what I've seen and encourage others to take it to the Lord to see what He would say.

Which "topic" are you talking about precisely? I'm not being coy, but this thread has been all over the place and I'd like to know specifically what you are talking about.