My wife is a regular watcher of Christian TV programs and channels. As the time for watching the TV programs is limited, she has now prioritized one such TV show in Malayalam language that is beamed in the morning on all weekdays on Surya TV.
That one is the Blessing Today TV program of Brother Antony Damien and his wife Sister Kshama Damien.
Thousands of people go to attend the live programs that they organize at different locations. The programs routinely have bible preaching sessions, prayer sessions and miracle sessions that are told as divine interventions of Jesus Christ whom Christians regard as the Son of God.
But Blessing today is not the only such program. There are several other such programs, some of which also get sponsored in some TV channels. And such programs are not limited to Christians alone, either.
God's answer, to prayer requests in some miraculous manner, is one of the key feature of these programs. Apparently, prayers of people like Brother Damien are heard and answered by God without any doubts. People are overwhelmed by such miracles and more and more people get flocked to such gospel preaching and prayer events.
Sometimes I too watch these programs on TV. My wife knows me as a person having a different view regarding my understanding and approach towards spirituality, God and religion.
So she asked me once: Do these miracles happen in reality? Do our prayers get answered in miraculous ways as they are projecting?
My answer to that question is both an yes and a no. Yes, God's acts sometimes appear as miracles to people. But it is not God who is always responsible for the miracles. Miracles in human life happen due to many reasons. To make that clear, I have to explain things with some background information that I know now as the truth. Truth that may not be so palatable to people for various reasons!
The first universal truth about God is this: God is Almighty and God is Love.
All living beings on all worlds are children of God because God has been the source of Creative Power to every one, all the time. God is also the source of all universal and natural laws. God's power is limitless and if at all it has any limits it is by His own will.
The first universal truth about God is this: God is Almighty and God is Love.
All living beings on all worlds are children of God because God has been the source of Creative Power to every one, all the time. God is also the source of all universal and natural laws. God's power is limitless and if at all it has any limits it is by His own will.
But God is not a respecter of persons that He keeps answering to all individuals for all things requested just as a call center employee! That means, God works for some universal cause rather than giving some personal attention to some individual's personal requests. In that process, perhaps some individuals seem to benefit occasionally. But that also does not mean that God is not aware of the individuals or their problems. God knows each and every individual personally!
God is the first cause, the center of every thing and the universal father of all and his divine love and blessings are equal to all beings regardless of their religion, understanding or status. God is for one and all regardless of what people understand about Him.
That means, the God of the Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and all other such religions are one and the same. God has personality, but has no form as we humans understand. People may know God , pray and worship Him the way they understand Him with their limited knowledge.
That means, the God of the Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and all other such religions are one and the same. God has personality, but has no form as we humans understand. People may know God , pray and worship Him the way they understand Him with their limited knowledge.
No humans ever has seen God. The existence of God has been revealed to humans by various subordinate agencies of God from time to time ever since human beings got evolved on earth. It is difficult for humans and even some of the super human immortal beings to comprehend God.
Human mind therefore adopts the technique of anthropomorphism (visualizing and equating God as similar to humans with super human powers) to understand God. Though this is an innocent and simple outcome of the human limitation, it might lead to much conceptual problems and gross errors in human understanding about God. Human tendency to worship historical heroes, saints and various natural or human made objects is due to this.
Human mind therefore adopts the technique of anthropomorphism (visualizing and equating God as similar to humans with super human powers) to understand God. Though this is an innocent and simple outcome of the human limitation, it might lead to much conceptual problems and gross errors in human understanding about God. Human tendency to worship historical heroes, saints and various natural or human made objects is due to this.
There exist millions of invisible beings who all have an origin and are all normally immortals with unique personality and intelligence much higher than humans and several of those orders of beings are present on earth performing various responsibilities for and on behalf of God. From times of eternity God has also distributed many of his powers and prerogatives to many of His immediate divine associates who originated either directly or indirectly from Him . The divine beings who are directly formed from God the first source, for all practical purposes are same as God Himself because they are all perfect and think alike.
There exist billions of planets which are inhabited by human like beings in the whole of the present universe. But we have little knowledge about them due to our human limitations.
As far as earth is concerned, the lower order immortal and invisible beings present, keep functioning for God. These beings while much superior to humans, are much inferior to higher order divine beings and may likely to adopt thoughts and acts that are not in alignment with the will of God, just as it happens among human beings.
Doing acts done willfully against the will of God is evil and sin, whether it is committed by humans or the immortal invisible beings. Sin and evil cause the individual to depart from God's grace which ultimately causes a permanent curtailment of life and personality for both humans and the invisible immortals. For humans it may happen too earlier. For the immortals, it may happen after a long time.
Unfortunately, earth is one such planet among the billions where a large number of immortals who are assigned to function for God have willfully decided to act against the will of God and spoil His universe plans. But there are also a minor group of immortals who are still working according to the universal plans of God present on earth. The willful disobedience of the majority of immortals under the command of one of their senior members actually caused earth to become a world cut off from the direct universal circuits of God. This has been the situation for almost two million years now and in reality earth is a quarantined world.
The quarantine effect caused humans the ability to see the immortal beings present around them. It has also caused the humans to limit their capacities with regard to knowledge, memory and life span. It also curtailed their ability to know about other worlds and systems of universe administration directly. It also caused careless humans to commit errors, sins and evil just as their invisible supervisors who are present around them.
The rebellious invisible personalities present on earth know about their ultimate fate. They know that some time later they all would lose their graceful, immortal status for ever. But they are determined to doom the humans too along with them. As they are doomed by moving away from God, they want the humans of earth too to share their fate.
Human beings of earth for the past thousands of years are living in a hostile situation and environment as they are living in a world where the God-appointed service providers have become rebellious and gone against God. There is a background to how all these happened. I am not going to that now. The laws of God are universal. Those who willfully go against the will of God and his universal laws perish sooner or later, whether they belong to the order of the immortals or the humans.
But God is ever compassionate and loving. He knows the situation of earth. He had installed alternate arrangements to provide enough guidance to the humans that they escape the perils at some point of time.
One of the arrangement is a unique power of God that is vested directly with all human beings. It is a fragment of God Himself which resides as an invisible personality within each and every human being. That is the god or divine power within humans. This unique divine power is very feeble in all normal beings but is capable of transacting independently with the individual and the invisible immortals beings present outside. The presence of this God fraction functioning within the hardware of human brain is capable of certain communications with God too. Ordinarily, human beings are not conscious of the presence of this god power in them. But this is the power that gives guidance to humans regarding the Godly attributes of love, beauty, good, compassion and the consciousness about God Himself.
For those rare human beings who have transcended their human egos and mind levels might become conducive agents that they would be in a position to learn the interactions of the divine power that resides in them more clearly than others. Such individuals might possess some such mind powers to foresee and foretell events that might be viewed as some super human ability. Such persons are valuable to God and therefore they might even have a few invisible servants of God around them to act as invisible protectors. The self mind of such individuals would be in a position to discern some interaction that take place between the god-power that resides within them and the external invisible servants of God.
For those rare human beings who have transcended their human egos and mind levels might become conducive agents that they would be in a position to learn the interactions of the divine power that resides in them more clearly than others. Such individuals might possess some such mind powers to foresee and foretell events that might be viewed as some super human ability. Such persons are valuable to God and therefore they might even have a few invisible servants of God around them to act as invisible protectors. The self mind of such individuals would be in a position to discern some interaction that take place between the god-power that resides within them and the external invisible servants of God.
A person who lives synchronized with the God power within becomes a candidate for advancement of life and immortality even after material death.
In all normal worlds, the lower order immortal beings are visible (at least some orders) to the human like beings of those worlds and the former give assistance to the evolving humans of those worlds to develop to higher levels of progress by giving them necessary guidance and knowledge from time to time. They help the humans of the living planets to live a material life peacefully and fruitfully in accordance with the plans of God.
But on earth, the majority of these human supervisors joined hands to form an independent world that is not according to the universal laws and became cut off from the direct communication links of the rest of the universe. These rebels are now determined that the majority humans too are doomed like them. They now adopt all techniques possible to make humans deviate from God and perish.
Humans have their own will and personality which are also provided by the universal laws of God. Since human will is originally intended as free and independent, God or any of his agencies will not tamper with that free will of humans at any time. The god power that lives in humans only gives feeble advice to humans who are willing to listen those. Humans who are too self conscious and egoistic are therefore likely to miss the guidance of the God power that is within them.
It may also be remembered that there are also a group of the invisible immortals present on earth who still work for the universe administration of God. They are the ones who did not go against God to join with their fellows who rebelled.
So, there exist a larger group of invisible personalities who are rebellious to God now on earth. There is also a smaller group of invisible personalities who are working for the universe administration of earth and working hard to restore earth back to the universe system.
God is capable of restoring order quickly without resorting to a longer duration plan. But God, for His wisdom would not do that. Perhaps, God would not like to break his own universal laws for restoration of order in a planet like earth! God could also destroy all rebels in a moment. But He is handicapped and limited by His own love and compassion to his creatures.
Now coming to the question of miracles that I mentioned in the beginning of this article. Why and how miracles happen in the lives of human beings?
As I have mentioned, our earth has been in existence cut off from the universal communication lines for thousands of years because the majority of immortal beings responsible for maintaining earth under the universal administration of God wanted to be independent of their own. Thus they caused a few worlds to fall in to an erroneous administration functioning not according to the will of God.
They wanted the humans to be manipulated the way they liked in their independent worlds. They wanted the humans to regard them as gods and worship them instead of the universal law that stipulated all living beings to worship only the Universal Father God.
But a smaller group among them realized the error and did not agree to follow the majority. They remained to be loyal to God's will as they all used to be earlier.
The larger group wanted humans to deviate from God, while the smaller group tried to guide humans to live according to the will of God. The rebellion caused both groups on earth becoming invisible to humans as the power system that enabled them to be visible to the eyes of humans got adversely affected.
Human generations that came later lived on earth under confusion. They have been under the whims of a larger group of invisible and super human beings who tried all tricks to confuse humans about God and make them not to understand the truths. While the smaller group has been trying to help humans to alleviate their difficulties that happened due to the rebellion.
The larger group mixed some truths with more untruths cleverly so that differentiating truth from untruth becomes difficult for humans.
Human difficulties and problems such as diseases, genetic disorders, poverty, racial conflicts, religious conflicts, political conflicts, apparent triumph of evil over good, etc began to rise on earth, all due to the acts of the larger group and also due to the people who fall easy prey to the clever ways of this group. Earth problems also got enhanced due to people who have a liking and inclination to shift to evil willfully.
Even good people who are too willing to follow the directions of the god-power that is within them began to face problems of human life due to the acts of evil men and the unseen evil forces that are present on earth.
The unseen agencies of God, however have been tirelessly working to reduce the problems of mankind by various techniques including some true revelations regarding God and some insights in to the root causes of human problems.
If humans do not use their intelligence and wisdom, they become gullible preys to the clever tricks played by the invisible super mortals and deviate from realizing God's will. They are likely to find falsehoods and half truths as truths. Under such circumstances, it becomes too difficult for humans to discern truth from untruths.
God or more correctly the agencies of God ( the divine beings and the several orders of invisible immortal servants of God) come to the help of praying humans when they are indeed in such helplessness. At times they create such circumstances in such a way that other humans are of help to them. But when it is very very essential, they may also use their divine powers to help humans that might appear to humans as miracles.
They may also act in some miraculous manner if such miracles are going to initiate a thought process in some humans that eventually prepare them to become good people who are willing to discard evil and follow good.
But unfortunately, the disloyal super humans may also use this as an opportunity to sway people away from God by using some miracles which cause men and women to be greedy for money and power. They often find success.
With this much background I would like the readers to read this article too: Miracles-do they happen?
I am not sure how much you could understand.
I am also not sure whether the message I wanted to convey made any impact in your mind!
If yes, please feel encouraged to ask me your doubts using the comments facility.
As I have mentioned, our earth has been in existence cut off from the universal communication lines for thousands of years because the majority of immortal beings responsible for maintaining earth under the universal administration of God wanted to be independent of their own. Thus they caused a few worlds to fall in to an erroneous administration functioning not according to the will of God.
They wanted the humans to be manipulated the way they liked in their independent worlds. They wanted the humans to regard them as gods and worship them instead of the universal law that stipulated all living beings to worship only the Universal Father God.
But a smaller group among them realized the error and did not agree to follow the majority. They remained to be loyal to God's will as they all used to be earlier.
The larger group wanted humans to deviate from God, while the smaller group tried to guide humans to live according to the will of God. The rebellion caused both groups on earth becoming invisible to humans as the power system that enabled them to be visible to the eyes of humans got adversely affected.
Human generations that came later lived on earth under confusion. They have been under the whims of a larger group of invisible and super human beings who tried all tricks to confuse humans about God and make them not to understand the truths. While the smaller group has been trying to help humans to alleviate their difficulties that happened due to the rebellion.
The larger group mixed some truths with more untruths cleverly so that differentiating truth from untruth becomes difficult for humans.
Human difficulties and problems such as diseases, genetic disorders, poverty, racial conflicts, religious conflicts, political conflicts, apparent triumph of evil over good, etc began to rise on earth, all due to the acts of the larger group and also due to the people who fall easy prey to the clever ways of this group. Earth problems also got enhanced due to people who have a liking and inclination to shift to evil willfully.
Even good people who are too willing to follow the directions of the god-power that is within them began to face problems of human life due to the acts of evil men and the unseen evil forces that are present on earth.
The unseen agencies of God, however have been tirelessly working to reduce the problems of mankind by various techniques including some true revelations regarding God and some insights in to the root causes of human problems.
If humans do not use their intelligence and wisdom, they become gullible preys to the clever tricks played by the invisible super mortals and deviate from realizing God's will. They are likely to find falsehoods and half truths as truths. Under such circumstances, it becomes too difficult for humans to discern truth from untruths.
God or more correctly the agencies of God ( the divine beings and the several orders of invisible immortal servants of God) come to the help of praying humans when they are indeed in such helplessness. At times they create such circumstances in such a way that other humans are of help to them. But when it is very very essential, they may also use their divine powers to help humans that might appear to humans as miracles.
They may also act in some miraculous manner if such miracles are going to initiate a thought process in some humans that eventually prepare them to become good people who are willing to discard evil and follow good.
But unfortunately, the disloyal super humans may also use this as an opportunity to sway people away from God by using some miracles which cause men and women to be greedy for money and power. They often find success.
With this much background I would like the readers to read this article too: Miracles-do they happen?
I am not sure how much you could understand.
I am also not sure whether the message I wanted to convey made any impact in your mind!
If yes, please feel encouraged to ask me your doubts using the comments facility.
You wrote, "But God is not a respecter of persons that He keep answering to all individuals for all things requested" ... "God works for some universal cause rather than giving some personal attention to some individual's personal requests." I think that you so exactly "hit the nail on the head" with that statement. So often, we Christians, (other religious people probably also), think of God as our "errand boy" who should jump every time we make a demand.
ReplyDeleteYou also wrote, "The willful disobedience of the majority of immortals under the command of one of their senior members actually caused earth to become a world cut off from the direct universal circuits of God. ... in reality earth is a quarantined world." C.S Lewis, a Christian writer, wrote a series of fiction books by which he explained Christian theology. One of those books is called, "Out of the Silent Planet". What he wrote in that book closely coincides with your statement.
Thanks for your post.
Thank you,Ike. I feel happy that you could understand what I wrote.
DeleteYou must never think that your English is not understandable. In fact, it is very readable and it makes a lot of sense.
DeleteMr. Rajan, We are all not God's children. God Almighty created us in His image (Genesis 1:27 ), but all humans regardless of their background can become a child of God if he/she receives Him ( John 1 : 12-13 ). So only those who receive Him become children of the one true God.
ReplyDeleteAre there miracles? Sure, but not in the way many say. If miracles happen all the time, it's not a miracle, it's a normal thing. So miracles are very rare. The greatest miracle is the conversion of a human heart, when he/she repents of his/her sin and receives the free offer of forgiveness from Jesus.
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Blessings!!