2bizE wrote: ↑Wed Nov 13, 2019 10:22 pm
I’ve heard many stories over the years where dead people visit the temple goer in a dream or vision and ask them to do their temple work or thank them. What stories have you heard? Is this type of communication with the dead necromancing?
Necromancing is when the living take the initiative to contact the dead. Not the reverse.
Necro=dead
Romancing=courting or pursuing
Well, I've heard of people having "impressions" that someone was thanking them for doing their temple work.
And then there's that story of the U.S. Founding Fathers asking, was it Joseph F. Smith? Why he hadn't done their temple work. I'm of the opinion that Mormons in particular are highly susceptible to suggestion and imagination. It's very close to hypnosis.
I would consider dreams or "visions" to be kind of subjective to the receiver. But if someone actually or truly began communicating directly with a spirit and that spirit with them, I would say that was necromancy.
The problem there, is whether the necromancer is communicating with someone who has actually passed on or has conjured a deceitful spirit who is just jerking his chain. I think the latter. (Yeah, that's right. I do believe in spirits but I think their influence on us is overrated by Mormons in particular.)
I think the dead may come at certain critical times but it is
not at the invitation of the living.
For example, a day before my grandfather passed away from cancer, he was in the hospital, loaded on morphine for pain control and barely even conscious. His son, who was basically doing a bedside vigil, related that to his amazement my grandfather woke up and sat up in bed and turned to the window and said, "Well Bob, what are you doing here? (Bob was his brother who had died about 15 years earlier).
My uncle said grandfather looked as if he was listening to someone for a few minutes and then he said, "Well, if it's as nice as you say it is, I guess I'll come." And then he laid back down and was unconscious again. He died the next day.
But the magician Houdini spent bucket loads of money on "Spiritualists" trying to make contact with his deceased mother to no avail. He found them all to be frauds.
When I was a TBM attending my brother's temple wedding, things were progressing normally until the temple sealer made the statement that there were people in attendance who had passed on.
I immediately "knew" that my dead grandmother was there and could have even told you where she was standing in the room. Years later, as I thought this particular incident over it occurred to me that I had had no impression whatsoever about my grandmother until the temple sealer made his declaration/suggestion. You can draw your own conclusions. How many times do temple workers tell members that the people they're doing work for are watching and waiting?
So if any individual from any religion tells me they've had some sort of spiritual experience or connection, I just think, "Good for you".
