An Incredible Read

I came across this read in Quora and agree with not the original statement but the rebuttal!! Spot on!

Do spirits or ghosts ever follow people home? If so, how do they do it?

First answered...."In my opinion…I was working in the old Northwood Cemetery when I spotted a tombstone off by itself, 1864. I told it that it looked lonely all by itself, and it should come home with me, because I had a ghost in my house that I got along with.On the ride home after work, there was something cold sitting on the center console of the van, and sure enough, I had another ghost in the house.When I moved, they came with me, so I am never alone." Signed, the mad scientist.

This person has been duped. Denise

----------------------------------------------------------------

REBUTTAL BY SAM Mndza ·on Dec 18

"I'll comment on this from two prospectives, as a Native raised in the medicine ways (member of the intertribal *traditional ceremonial community) and now as a reformed Christian.My people were here before Sci-fi channel ghost hunters were regurgitating superstitions born from early 1900s literature and TV shows like the twilight zone. Most of what Americans believe about the spirit world is a combination of creative writing and movie/TV production and church tradition. There's some cultural lore sprinkled in there as well, but not much. But before that, our people had been interacting with and developed ceremonial processes to address the reality of the spirit world. Our grandfather's knew the inherent danger of this world and went through great ceremonial lengths to guard against these spirit beings that were NOT human. Unlike the American in 2022, the Miwok, Lakota, the Chumash and Apache (hi!) knew there were at least three worlds that interacted with one another. A place where the spirit-beings came from/are, a place where the human spirit went in death and Earth, with different levels within those realms. We also knew there was a Creator, or God over all the creation. Now, take my cousins for instance, the Diné (Navajo). They believed that nothing of a dead man's spirit remained on earth when going into the spirit world accept the “unnatural things" like hate, sickness or jealousy, essentially leaving a demonic energy on earth that was not that person, just a shadow of sorts. The person's personality, love, mind, very being crossed over and was not called on again, as this was a great injustice. Everything belonging to that person was burned accordingly or “offered up" for that person. The CA Miwok believe its a moral good to honor your relatives, being careful not to speak their name soon after their death out of reverence for their crossing, again it being an injustice to try to bring them back. Ceremonies, usually sweat lodge and roundhouse, are done to heal hearts, to grow in strength and to suffer/sacrifice and pray, not for the dead but for your community, the living. To purge yourself of bad medicine so you can live with integrity and be useful to your community. Now, to give an example of how the the tribal community guards against the spirit world, a qualified community elected “door man" who has been trained, who has fasted the four days and nights no food or water, who lives with integrity, usually one who has risen to the higher stages of spiritual roles, he sits at the sweat lodge “door" or the “east gate". Armed with an eagle fan or clapper sick, whatever, it's his job to not allow people or spiritual entities from entering in from the outside world which would harm ceremonial participants. I've only seen this actually take place one time in 20 years of ceremony, where my elder asked an entity who they were, and verbally denied entrance. I could hear pacing outside the sweat lodge, vaguely see the shadow moving outside and listened to my elder create a barrier with prayer, song. In a nutshell, our people never believed the dead spiritually remained with us as ghosts. Not traditionally anyways. The spirits with us, are not human, and they must be guarded against, not sought out and can have devastating consequences once in someone's life uncontrolled. Western Witchcraft and new age practices are therefore exclusively banned from all real native ceremonies and communities, no one practicing such things is welcome to attend ceremony. “Making medicine" or spells, divination, incantations or the misuse of smoke offerings are extreme offenses because they are very harmful. It's something Natives never did.Now it was easy for me, once I heard the gospel and read with my own eyes the Word, to accept the gospel message, to know the Christ, repent, be baptized and make Jesus Lord over my life but that's another story. What is the biblical position about the spiritual, where people go when they die and what happens when we interact with them. Well, it wasn't surprising to find out that the word of God, the Christian Bible, conveyed truths that shocked me initially. They we're similar, if not in alignment with what the native people believe pre-america. That people die, and they cross and pass over a fixed gulf and are sent into the presence of a holy God or sent away into a different realm, hell. Natives didn't have the Gospel, Jesus later came to make that atonement for ALL and the gospel would eventually reach people like me but God had revealed himself to us prior, creation testified of the Creator and through ceremony and living holy we had to reconcile ourselves to him, like the Jew in the old testament law. Now we have the Gospel, and each man is called to repent, believe in Christ to be saved from death and be reconciled to him. What does the Bible specifically say about the dead? They're gone. It's appointed for men to die, then the judgment. The beauty of having Christ is that even though you deserve death because you are very unclean and sinful, his blood makes you clean. His perfect obedience, his righteousness, not your righteousness, is accredited to you and therefore there is no judgment. You go into the presence of God for all eternity redeemed. Now, the soul that rejects Christ. They die here but live. Your mind, your personality, YOU live. You physically die, then the judgment. Because there's no atonement for you, you must account for your unchanged heart, your sin, your life. You stand under the law, guilty and are put out from the presence of God, your Creator for eternity. People, human spirits, do not remain lost in limbo and don't sit on dash boards or couches or eat dinner with you. No matter how romantic and charming that is in the western mind. The dead are gone.Ghosts, spirits, entities that we may interact with here on earth are one thing and one thing only. They're inhuman spirit beings the Bible refers to as elohim. They were created in the beginning, fell with Satan to earth (Satan is not in hell, he's on the earth) and have one purpose until the judgement, to wage war on the people and image bearers of God. To steal away faith and belief in God, to keep man out of a right relationship with God, to destroy your flesh and lead us away into bondage, depravity and ultimately judgment. They thrive on our sin, work for our destruction and we suffer immensely because of it. They create religions, spiritual lies, practices and things that cause man to do idolatry and defile themselves. Look around our society, there's no love, it's full of perversion of the mind, sickness of the body and violence. We're seeing our neighbors being “handed over to a reprobate mind" where because of our rebellion and sin we're having the spiritual e-brakes taken off, our consciousness is being muted and we're exchanging everything that is good for bad, sweet for sour and prayer for drunkenness/intoxication. So, I can only say this. You don't have ghosts in your home. You have a broken heart and you're trying to fill that void with demons, not ghosts. Not a poltergeist, haunting or human spirit but even worse, very real entities that want to lead you away from the God who made you and put you in bondage. You don't need them, you need God. I've changed my whole life, I can't imagine waking up one day now and not having my heart just overfilled with the love and joy of knowing Christ, the living God who chose me before the foundation of the world to be his, and who made me a new thing. I'll watch for comments if you feel like reaching out. Don't exchange the living for the dead, you don't belong with the dead. Take a breath, fill your lungs and realize a God made you and that your very breath is a blessing because it's not yours, it's the breath of God breathed into you. And live."

I love the smart ones!! Denise