Angels All Around Us: A Sightseeing Guide to the Invisible World - Softcover

DeStefano, Anthony

 
9780385522229: Angels All Around Us: A Sightseeing Guide to the Invisible World
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0385522223 ISBN 13: 9780385522229
Verlag: PRH Christian Publishing, 2012

Inhaltsangabe

In Angels All Around Us (previously titled The Invisible World in hardcover), the international bestselling author of A Travel Guide to Heaven and Ten Prayers God Always Says Yes To explains the awesome and mysterious reality of the spiritual dimension that surrounds and permeates our very existence. All aspects of the spiritual realm are discussed, including the existence of angels and demons, the whereabouts of loved ones who have passed, the gift of grace, heaven, hell, and even the presence and activity of God in our lives.

Completely consistent with traditional Christian teaching, Angels All Around Us will help readers embrace a certitude that makes it easier to act according to their moral beliefs, give them a greater sense of the richness of life, and show them that no amount of suffering-physical, mental, or emotional-will ever be able to destroy the profound sense of inner peace that they can experience on a daily basis.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Anthony DeStefano is the bestselling author of over twenty-five Christian books for adults and children. His nonfiction adult books have been published in eighteen different countries and twelve different languages. A native New Yorker, Anthony attended Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, where his English teacher, Frank McCourt, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Angela’s Ashes, sparked his interest in becoming a children’s book author. In fact, Anthony wrote his first picture book, Little Star, as an assignment for one of McCourt’s writing classes. Three decades later it was finally published and became a bestseller. Anthony is an avid pilot and successful businessman. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, Jordan.

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chapter 1

 

The Haunt Detector

Everybody has one. The Reverend Frank Pavone used to call it the Haunt Detector. What is it?

Very simply, it's the little alarm that goes off in our heads whenever we detect that something mysterious or supernatural has occurred. Science fiction and horror writers have referred to it by other names-the sixth sense, the shining. But for some reason, I've always liked "haunt detector" best.

We actually have all kinds of "detecting" mechanisms built into our nervous systems. They don't have fancy scientifi c names, but they exist nonetheless. For instance, we all have "lie detectors." When someone who's not very slick tries to scam us, we're usually able to tell just from their body language and their voice. We all have "love detectors." We can just feel it in our bones when someone has deep feelings of attachment for us- or when they don't. We all have "right and wrong" detectors- better known as consciences. When we do something not quite right, we know it because we feel an unmistakable pang of guilt. And, of course, we all have "sex detectors," which let us know pretty quickly when we're physically attracted to another per­son.

Well, we all have "haunt detectors," too. And they let us know whenever something especially eerie or out of the ordinary is happening around us. You know the kind of thing. You could be sitting around relaxing one day at home, and for no special rea­son you start thinking about someone. Maybe you  haven't thought about this particular person in years. Then the phone rings; you pick it up, and, amazingly, it's that person! Many of us have experienced this phenomenon. What is it?

I'll never forget something that happened to my mother many years ago. It was the middle of the night and she was sleeping soundly. Suddenly she woke up and bolted upright in bed. She had heard the sound of her own mother's voice calling out to her in a thick Italian accent: "Laura, Laura, help me." My mother was startled and her heart was racing; she had clearly heard her name spoken. But it couldn't be her mother calling; she lived on the other side of Brooklyn, and it was so late. My mother thought that perhaps it was just a bad dream so she went back to sleep. But the next morning she received a phone call from the hospital. Her mother had gotten up to go to the bathroom during the night and had fallen. She was in the hospital with a broken hip. For hours she had been on the fl oor, moaning for help. How in the world did my mother hear her? Was it just a coincidence?

Then there are stories that are totally unexplainable. I read a newspaper account a few years ago about a four-year-old girl in upstate New York who had been diagnosed with a brain tumor. The  whole community had been praying fervently for her. All the churches in the neighborhood-Lutheran, Evangelical, Catholic-were all united in prayer that a miracle would take place. The little girl had been through so much: she'd had more than twenty MRIs, and it was decided that the only remaining course of action was brain surgery. She wasn't even expected to make it through the operation, but it was the only chance she had. The day of the surgery her head was shaved, her blood was taken, she was hooked up to all kinds of machines, and the team of doctors scrubbed and put on their surgical gowns. One fi nal MRI had to be done to determine the exact location of the tumor. Just before the child was wheeled into the testing room, a sweet, pretty young nurse came in and took her hand. She told the little girl not to worry because she was "all better," that God had "cured" her and that she would be going home soon. The little girl later said that the nurse was so nice to her and so "beautiful" that she felt all warm and peaceful inside.

When the MRI was taken, the lab technicians gasped in disbelief. No matter how hard they searched, they couldn't lo­cate the tumor. They took more tests, but the results  were the same. The tumor was gone. No surgery was performed that day-or any day-because there was nothing to operate on. The little girl was completely healed. What happened? And who was the mysterious woman who came in and told the girl she was cured? None of the other nurses could identify her and no one ever saw her again. Was she an angel, as some in the little girl's family believed? No one knows for sure. But every­one, from the doctors to the lab technicians to the parents to the people in the community, was aware that something incredible had taken place. Everyone's haunt detectors went off at once.

Of course, not all mysterious experiences are as strange as this. A person's haunt detector can begin registering at any time. You can be listening to a powerful piece of music or watching a spectacular sunset; reading a particularly moving piece of literature or worshipping at church. You can be em­bracing the person you love most in the world or sitting in your home, cozy and warm by the fire. Or you can just be walking down the street thinking about all the things in your life that have brought you to where you are. You can be doing any of these things, and out of nowhere a tingle will suddenly run up your spine, telling you that something more is going on than meets the eye. Something that transcends understanding.

What is it? No one really knows. But it invariably triggers a feeling deep in your soul-a feeling of desire, of yearning, of hope; hope that there is something special about life; that there is some hidden meaning and purpose to all the suffering we have to go through; that there is something beyond science, be­yond the senses-something totally invisible yet totally real. In Latin, the experience is called mysterium tremendum et fascinans. And our haunt detectors can sense it.

Of course, we have to be careful when trying to discern the meaning of such feelings and phenomena. Spiritual people are sometimes too quick to attribute the cause of strange occur­rences to God; they're too hasty in coming to the conclusion that just because something seems unexplainable it must have a divine or supernatural origin. That simply isn't the case. Many amazing things that happen in this world aren't "miraculous" at all. It's a fact, for example, that human beings have all kinds of natural abilities that are untapped; abilities that are only now being identified and studied by science. We've all heard about mothers and fathers who display superhuman strength when trying to rescue their children from harm.  We've all seen ex­amples of people with severe learning disabilities who are able to sit down at a piano without any formal training and play the most complicated pieces of classical music. The human brain is an incredible organ and has many powers that still aren't fully understood. Because of this, it's extremely difficult for us to tell what's natural, what's supernatural, what's legitimately from God, what's from the devil, and what's just plain old human imagination. Practically everything that happens in life is sub­ject to misinterpretation. That's why it's so dangerous to become fixated on the supernatural. Too often it leads to superstition or belief in the occult or false spirituality or even-in extreme cases-insanity.

We just can't afford to make blind assumptions. We have to seek the expert guidance of doctors, psychologists, scientists, theologians, and church leaders. But neither can we dismiss all these remarkable experiences as mere fantasy. And that's what many people do today. Not only do they reject what's fanciful and frivolous-they reject everything. They throw the baby out with the bathwater. They claim that there is no reality other than the reality of the...

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Verlag
PRH Christian Publishing
Erscheinungsdatum
2012
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0385522223
ISBN 13 
9780385522229
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
224
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
gpsr@libri.de
gpsr@libri.de

Friedensallee 273
Hamburg
22763
Deutschland

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