Which Christian sects..
| Morigale |
Which Christian sects..
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Joined: Oct 30, 2003
Location: San Antonio, Texas, USA
Posts: 13
Posted on:
Oct 3, 2010 – 20 10 |
Which Christian sects have the belief that ghosts do not exist, and that therefore any spirit attempting to contact someone is a demon in disguise?
I’ve seen this belief referenced several times, but never any specific details. (It’s usually along the lines of ‘My parents belong to a church that believes…’)
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| EelKat | |
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Joined: Oct 9, 2006
Location: Old Orchard Beach & Biddeford, Maine, USA
Posts: 31
Posted on:
Oct 5, 2010 – 11 21 |
As far as Christian Denominations go, if you’re looking for one that would absolutely hold a firm belief that a ghost is evil, you would choose the “Seventh Day Adventist” church. They believe that the Bible is the word of God and contains no error. They base all their beliefs only on scripture and refuse to use tradition as a basis for any Christian belief.
As such, they hold to the scriptures in the Old Testament which strictly teach that the dead are unaware of anything that happens after they die. They believe that when Jesus described a dead person as sleeping, he meant that the person was unaware of anything.
Thus, Seventh Day Adventist’s believe that when someone dies they go into a dreamless sleep until Jesus returns to resurrect the dead, and it it then at that time that they will regain consciousness. Basically, it will seem like one second has passed since they died and they opened their eyes to see Jesus coming.
The evil are believed to be resurrected after the millennium with Christ and are shortly destroyed for all eternity.
In short, a Seventh Day Adventist would never believe in a ghost, because it is believed that a ghost is actually a fallen angel trying to deceive humans, and since fallen angels are with us almost since birth, they know not only all our spoken secrets, but those of our dead loved ones since they were with them as well.
Hope that helps.
-Matt
My grandmother was SDA and this is EXACTLY what she used to say all the time!
Halloween was a big holiday for her because she loved children (had 12 of her own) and handing out candy and dressing up and decorating her house. But she would NEVER allow any of her children or grandchildren dress up as ghosts, zombies, vampires, etc….nothing that was undead. Her reason was because her church taught that undead were evil spirits and not really people whom had died, because as mentioned above the dead are in the ground sleeping until the second coming of the Christ.
I always remember her putting a lot of big emphasis on this too, and would not allow any of us to watch movies with haunted houses or ghosts and such in them either. It was a really big thing for her, the whole avoiding ghosts on any level.
SDAs are also super strict vegans for the same reason, they believe it is a sin to eat the body of anything that died, because the soul and the body of all dead, animals included, will be awoken from sleep and the souls reunited with their original physical bodies when Christ calls out their name…they point out that no one is forgotten because he even knows the name of every sparrow.
I’m a Mormon. It’s hard to pinpoint our exact belief on this, and any other Mormons in this forum are more than welcome to argue what I say, but we tend to believe that ghosts and demons are only given as much power as God allows them to have. Ergo, there are no “ghosts,” but people who have passed on can help us — in other words, help do God’s work from the other side. Satan and his angels are given the ability to temp us, and if we allow them into our lives, they have more and more power over us. Ergo, a demon can’t make something move or float down the hallway, unless you’ve welcomed evil in your life, I guess (though I’m sure they have better things to do). I’ve hear Mormons discuss the possibility of evil residing in a place, like if something truly horrible happened there, but this isn’t doctrine. Other people of my faith have varying degrees of belief in ghosts off of this base, and I never argue with them. This is similar to what I have been told as well.
I’m a 3rd generation LDS (Mormon) and have been a member myself for 35 years.
Ghosts are not talked about much, there is no big emphasis on it or anything, but once in a while the question will come up in class and I was always told that the Church’s official stance on the matter was that there is no such thing as ghosts because ghosts are really demons sent by Satan, pretending to be a loved one returned from the dead in order to deceive the person and lead them off “the straight and narrow path” (Mormon term for the road to Heaven/God/Celestial Kingdom) by tempting them with occult arts and witchcraft.
They (the teachers in my Ward) also say that sometimes, though very rarely, a dead person will return from the grave to comfort a person if they are especially grieved over the death and are unable to move on, but that in these rare cases the dead person returns in a “translated body” (a corporal physical body, not a enthric or spiritual body) and that to find out if it really is your loved one returned or not, you are to ask to shake their hand. If they have a solid flesh and blood body it is your loved one returned in the form of an angel with a message for you from The Heavenly Father, but if they refuse to shake your hand or do not have a physical flesh and blood body than it is a demon sent by Satan and you are not to speak to it. They say it is so rare for a dead human to return to this world, however that it has not happened since Moroni and John the Baptist visited Joesph Smith back in the 1830′s and that all ghost, angel, dead relative sightings since than are all demons in disguise.
Granted this is what has been taught in class at my local Ward (congregation), and I have never actually seen it written in any of the publications put out by the Church so I don’t know where the teachers found this information. It seems to be more member speculation rather than actual Church doctrine.
Now, me, personally, I do not believe ghosts are demons. I believe they are the souls of the dead whom for whatever reason either do not realize they are dead yet or are so traumatized by their death, that they are unable to move on to the Spirit World. Uhm…having had a couple of ghost encounters in the house I grew up in, is what caused me to come to this conclusion.
Of course than there is Etiole (see http://www.squidoo.com/amphibious-aliens for info on who/what Etiole is if you don’t already know about him and me and all the weird and often widely publicized things that have happened to be because of him) My particular Ward’s Bishopric has told me that Etiole is not real because he is a demon and I must stay away from him.
Logic says that if Etiole is not real, than therefor he does not exist outside of my imagination. And yet logic also says that if Etiole is a demon I should avoid, than therefore he is in fact real and is not my imagination. One cancels out the other and therefor both can not be true, and yet for the past 31 years Church Leaders in my Ward are adement that Etiole is both not real AND also a demon. Go figure.
There have been members who have said “I do not believe in demons, did you know she has a demon living in her car?” All in one breath. Others have said: “Demons are not real, she needs an excorsism to cast her demons out.” Uhm-huh. You know, I really fail to see the logic of them saying one thing and than contradicting themselves in the exact same sentence. Either you believe in demons or you don’t, it can’t be both ways. In any case, most Mormons I know are hard core believers in the fact that Satan is every where in every thing and has demons jumping out at you every second of every day. They talk a lot about demons and Satan, and rarely does a conversation get by when Satan is not mentioned, though they rarely ever mention God or Jesus (several actually refuse to say Jesus’ name and get mad at me when I do, saying: “His name is sacred we don’t say it outside of prayer.”)
I was in culture shock actually, when at the age of 30 I encountered non-Mormons for the first time and was stunned to hear them talk about stuff without worrying whither or not Satan was after them. I mean, non-Mormons actually eat breakfast without praying that Satan did not poison it, and they buy cloths without avoiding brand-names put out by “companies run by Satan”. I really had a hard time adjusting to the non-Mormon culture and it’s lack of spending every second of the day terrified that Satan and his demons are trying to persecute you in some way. I used to think non-Mormons were really strange for NOT obsessing over Satan and demons, but as I’ve gotten out among the non-Mormon community more and more, I’m starting to realize that it’s my fellow Mormons who are strange because really, there isn’t any one outside the Church that ever mentions Satan or demons at all and they think you are weird if you use either word at all.
Now I don’t know if all Mormon congregations are like that or if it’s just a local thing, but the 3 Wards (congregation buildings) which I have attended (all 3 of which are situated in a highly superstitious region of New England) are very fear based, very paranoid, and live in absolute terror to even speak to a non-Mormon for fear that all non-Mormons are really demons in disguise.
Like I said, ghosts are not mentioned much, but demons on the other hand – everything is demons. You get sick, a demon did it; you fall down and break your arm, a demon pushed you; your house burns down, it was a demon that started the fire; another car rear ends you, the drive had a demon in them to make them do it, you get food poisoning, it was because a demon tampered with your food and you forgot to prayer over it before eating it.
But again, this does not appear to come out of any actual Church published doctrine that is CURRENTLY in use. I’ve looked and it’s just not there, so why local members are all scatter brained demon obsessed I don’t know. It could be just a local thing.
There was however one book, published by the Mormon Church:
Teachings of The Book of Mormon: A Course of Study for the Melchizedeck Priesthood Quorums of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
by William E Berret
published in 1962
here are a few of the chapter titles:
Evil in the World
The Place of the Devil in the Matter of Evil The Devil a Person The Devil and Illness The Devil Organizes His Forces The Church and War War In an Evil On Preparation for War War When Sanctioned The Individual and War Even the Wicked to be Resurrected False Traditions Passed On Iniquitous Nations to be Destroyed This book is 241 pages long and there is not a single page in it that does not contain one or more of the following words:
wicked, evil, devil, satan, demons
The was the priesthood manual used to teach the priests from 1962 through 1978 when it’s use was discontinued after one preist went on a killing spree and cut the heads off of several non-Mormons because they had demons living in them or so he said the Church had taught him.
So, yeah, if the members are old enough and have been in the Church long enough to have been using this book in class, they are living in total fear of demons every where and in every thing, because basically that’s what this book taught, but the members today, younger ones and new converts who are not being taught this book, seem to not spend their days in fear of demons.
So, uhm, you might want to try to find a copy of this book, noting that it is very rare and hard to find because after the “temple murders” of 1978, the book was banned and most copied destroyed. I’ve been in the Church long enough to still have my copy of it and remember when it was being used in class every Sunday.
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