Psychics

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Do some people have an intuitive or psychic ability? If so, is it in any way wrong if they say things about what the sense? I have a dear friend who admits that she is intuitive, that she can sense things.

A number of years ago I contracted a virus that affected my heart. I had gone to the emergency room after feeling chest pains and they sent me home. A day or two later I had lunch with my friend who, upon meeting me, clutched her heart and told me that I had to get to a hospital immediately. I spent the next week in intensive care. She later told me that she just sensed that something was wrong with my heart and that I had to get medical treatment.

My friend is not in the business of offering psychic readings. But if she sensed something she wouldn't hesitate to tell someone to take or not take certain actions.

Is it wrong for someone who is intuitive to offer such advise? For the record I don't think it is, but I wanted to hear what others might say.

To be clear, I am not speaking of people who read tarot cards or crystal balls or Ouija boards or those who consult deceased relatives or those who offer psychic readings as a business. If posters start discussing those topics I will ask the mods to close the thread.
 

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The way the new humanity in Christ functions, it illustrates that the original humanity through Adam was designed to also work as an organism. It makes sense that some people are aware of harm signals while they are still too subtle to detect for others.
.
I wonder how that person is holding up, getting sensations of other people can be kind of intense.
 
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bcbsr

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Do some people have an intuitive or psychic ability? If so, is it in any way wrong if they say things about what the sense? I have a dear friend who admits that she is intuitive, that she can sense things.

A number of years ago I contracted a virus that affected my heart. I had gone to the emergency room after feeling chest pains and they sent me home. A day or two later I had lunch with my friend who, upon meeting me, clutched her heart and told me that I had to get to a hospital immediately. I spent the next week in intensive care. She later told me that she just sensed that something was wrong with my heart and that I had to get medical treatment.

My friend is not in the business of offering psychic readings. But if she sensed something she wouldn't hesitate to tell someone to take or not take certain actions.

Is it wrong for someone who is intuitive to offer such advise? For the record I don't think it is, but I wanted to hear what others might say.

To be clear, I am not speaking of people who read tarot cards or crystal balls or Ouija boards or those who consult deceased relatives or those who offer psychic readings as a business. If posters start discussing those topics I will ask the mods to close the thread.

Deut 18:10,11 "Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead." (So much for Harry Potter!)

Is 8:19 "When men tell you to consult mediums and spiritists, who whisper and mutter, should not a people inquire of their God? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living?" (So much for Catholics and Orthodox!)

But these are not simply issues of applying "intuition". They go beyond that. Even as an engineer I use intuition to diagnose problems. Not the same as witchcraft, but if people are involved with Tarot cards and horoscopes, yes they've crossed the line into witchcraft.
 
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Dave-W

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Do some people have an intuitive or psychic ability? If so, is it in any way wrong if they say things about what the sense? I have a dear friend who admits that she is intuitive, that she can sense things.
There are no people who are "psychic."
There are, however, people who listen to spirits.

If they are listening to the Holy Spirit they are said to have the gifts of prophecy or words of knowledge and wisdom.

If they are listening to other spirits, they are operating in the realm of divination which is expressly forbidden in the bible.
 
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Dave-W

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Because the source of information is as important as the content.

Genesis 3:11a And He said, “Who told you that you were naked?

Okay, but why not assume that people who sometimes have hunches as described in the OP are just subconsciously processing tiny bits of information and getting an answer that looks amazing but is actually well within the realm of regular human cognition? You saw someone, noticed they didn't look very well, and said they should see a doctor soon. Why make claims of spirits when just humans operating under normal conditions explain it just as well?

I see an apple right now that is sitting on a table, not floating away. I don't assume that evil spirits are holding it there any more than I assume that the engineer's intuition in post #3 is a result of hearing spirits, since "a professional lifetime of experience, not all of which can be consciously tracked at all times" seems like a much better explanation.

In other words, I don't think what's described in the OP is anywhere NEAR outside normal human activities.

My great-grandmother once had a "bad feeling" about her daughter. She and her son-in-law went to check on her at her apartment and, surprise, she was dead. I see no reason to attribute this to "spirits".
 
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My great-grandmother once had a "bad feeling" about her daughter. She and her son-in-law went to check on her at her apartment and, surprise, she was dead. I see no reason to attribute this to "spirits".

I once had a similar experience. On January 1, 1976 I was 15, my grandmother was 76. I woke up that morning with a feeling that something bad had happened. When the phone rang around 10 am I knew before it was answered that my grandmother had died.

I see no reason to attribute this to evil spirits.
 
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Dave-W

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Yes some things can be attributed to observation.

But how did your g-grandmother "observe" anything about her daughter? I most certainly would attribute that to a spirit.

Why do some christians seem to always seek to disprove the supernatural? Have we become so immersed in the western scientific mindset that it has negated our biblical world view?
 
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Aryeh

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There are definitely psychics and psionics with active "power." Some are for God some arent (on purpose, or in general.)

If someone is a Hebrew or Christian, or I would suspect even Muslim, it isn't a weird thing to be intuitive - even so much you were considered psychic by some.

I suspect many of the judges, priests and prophets of God were intuitive types, while many of the kings and mighty biblical heroes were extroverts. In fact, the king-priest relationship works like an extrovert-introvert "symbiosis."

I am an INFJ, and I have definitely made it a long way on my intuition - in everything from eduction to near-death incidents. And, at times you can "feel" the positivity or negativity when around other people. I personally can't take being around a lot of people for more than half an hour. But, I definitely wouldn't say I am psychic.

And I don't think people who "own" their ability are wrong sharing if they also know it is from God. Otherwise, they endanger themselves and whoever else they "share" it with.

Some people are extremely strong intuitive types - very sensitive to surroundings. I liken these people to prophets of God. You would have to be sensitive, like an "antenna" to be spiritually accepting of what comes with being a prophet. But, that also makes you an antenna for everything else.

Intuitive types have a strong implication toward psychic ability, but it isn't like that. It is more like what it is - intuition. For example, I start feeling a sensation of coughing up water, only to realize my brother was about to drown at the same time 3000 miles away.

As someone said earlier, this is a "throwback" attribute of the human race back when Adam was created to be the proper son of God. And, if we are "going backward" to at least Noah soon, I suppose people on all spectra will begin to show more and more concentrated ability. Even so much as said in the bible where God will begin to start giving people the gift of visions and prophecy again.

You would be amazed, though, how many people are having the same dreams, for example - apocalyptic or otherwise. And, I am not too sure they are all intuitive types either...


Big typo: "I definitely WOULDN'T say I am psychic...
 
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hengesthorsa said:
...[what if]... people who sometimes have hunches as described in the OP are just subconsciously processing tiny bits of information and getting an answer that looks amazing but is actually well within the realm of regular human cognition?

I've been a Sherlock Holmes (Conan-Doyle) fan as long as I can remember. I've studied logic and I've worked (trained myself?) to observe and remember stray bits of information. My career (lawman) was centered around knowing what people didn't want to know. I was - still am - pretty good at it. I can tell people things they've done or felt they've never told anyone.

As one might expect, it does depend on time. I can usually tell someone is either lying to me or not telling me something germane very quickly. Figuring out what that lie or fact is takes longer.

However, in all this, God encourages me and no doubt assists (enables, directs ?) me. To the point I cannot tell - except in isolated instances - if I'm simply brilliant or if God has inserted the information in my head. Likely, it was God. But I don't have the 'Word From God' voice or feeling one assumes of the Old Testament prophets.

And to reinforce Aryeh, this sort of thing must be used in the furtherance of God's work and will, not for self-aggrandisement or profit.

To mitigate the bragging, this very seldom applies to my personal life. I've been had by salesmen and never, never figured out women.

To the OP's conversation, I'd say it's a bit of both; observation and processing of information empowered by God.
 
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Dave-W

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For example, I start feeling a sensation of coughing up water, only to realize my brother was about to drown at the same time 3000 miles away.
That is clearly a supernatural event and has nothing to do with intuition or observation. It was either from God or from the devil.

If it motivated you to immediately pray for your brother, I would say it was from God. Otherwise .....
 
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Aryeh

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Just for the sake of completeness, I will say there are intuitive types that can also, as per a gift of God, "sense" evil. Even so much that they claim to see paranormal, or interdimensional activity. This could be for many reasons.

And, I also made a mistake in my first post, using "intuitive," and "introvert" interchangibly. The introvert is the opposite end of the extrovert, but extroverts can be intuitive also (and, in fact there are two specific MBTI personality types with extroverted intuition.
 
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Aryeh

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That is clearly a supernatural event and has nothing to do with intuition or observation. It was either from God or from the devil.

If it motivated you to immediately pray for your brother, I would say it was from God. Otherwise .....

Well if something like this happens to me, I immediately talk to my Father about it - and ask for clarity on whether He sent it, or whether some other entity is playing games.

That comes with experience, an understanding of the intuitive phenomena, or a combination of both.

That example was a hypothetical, sort of stream of consciousness example, but similar things have happened to me.

So, I agree with you. I still think it is intuition, but this is what I meant when I said some people are very strong intuitives - even to the level of prophet of God. The "intuition" is better seen as a "tuning."

You can tune to God, or some other entities (including your own ego.) Some people may come pre-tuned to God to a certain degree. Other people can get there, maybe, by prayer and fasting.

It's all the same.

I think "intuition" and "psychic ability" ars more or less worldly names for the phenomena Hebrews and Christians call "blessings from God." A prophet of God is categorically and literally the definition of what the world would call a psychic - specifically someone with precognition.
 
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archer75

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Yes some things can be attributed to observation.

But how did your g-grandmother "observe" anything about her daughter? I most certainly would attribute that to a spirit.

Why do some christians seem to always seek to disprove the supernatural? Have we become so immersed in the western scientific mindset that it has negated our biblical world view?

I have no idea how she "observed" this, but here is a guess that seems reasonable to me. At their last meeting, she observed (consciously or not) tiny changes in my great-aunt's manner, voice quality, complexion, and mood (super-subtle 'medical' signs that her body was not doing well). Perhaps also something else like a missed or shortened regular phone call, on its own nothing big, but with the micro-changes noted above, it started to add up. These things "cooked" in her mind until they burst into consciousness with the sense that "there is something wrong, I need to get over there".

If we allow, as I think is reasonable, that these things happen when the person of concern has NOT died, but is depressed or just a little sick or afraid, and the relative or friend says "hey, are you okay? I just had the strangest feeling", and the person of concern says "oh, yeah, I'm okay" and then everybody forgets about it, then I think the instances where someone has in fact died are easier to explain as the apparent "standout" instances (because it seems like a bigger deal when someone has died), when in all those situations -- detecting an underlying physical problem without really understanding it -- the same thing is going on.

This explanation makes sense to me and does not at all feel like a stretch. People solve mathematical or personal problems in dreams or in dream-like states all the time. I understand that you or someone else may prefer an understanding that involves spirits, and I can't say that that is absolutely wrong. This is the "easier" explanation to me.

I don't deny the possibility of communication by spirits, though.

Your question about why some Christians try to deny the supernatural is reasonable, and I can see why you brought it up in response to my post. We profess belief / faith in events that are clearly not explicable by "everyday, well-understood" causes, and then (some of us) want to dismiss all other things that seem out of the ordinary.

So, I don't know, but a couple things may be in play:

-as you noted, the (unfortunate, in my view) extreme version of the western scientific mindset prevents a lot of people from looking beyond it. This same mindset is extremely useful for technical manipulation and understanding of the physical world, and it is "supreme" (in a worldly sense) in that sphere. Sadly, many people apply it where it has little or no value.

-a lot of people seem inclined to let their minds go to seed with notions of "amazing" phenomena that are (in my opinion) just ridiculous and silly. Nothing but silliness and extremely lax thinking needs to be invoked to explain horoscopes. Put some stuff down on paper, make it lean in both directions ("You are happy, but sometimes sad"), stick a birthdate on it and a lot of people will think it applies to them. I have to assume spirits could do a better job that that. And then Christians (and others) just lump everything in with these completely silly things and dismiss it all as hogwash.

It is amazing to me how little idea one has of what's going on when one doesn't know the "system". A lectionary is a jumble of nonsense if you don't know the basic concepts that there are texts broken up into smaller chunks for reference and that the rising and the setting of the sun is tracked on a thing called a calendar and so on. Basic ideas to us, yes, but not to all humans who ever lived. And this knowledge could easily be lost in a generation if things changed quickly. People who haven't read a lot of cartoons don't understand them. They can't feel the "motion" between the panels or "hear" the dialogue. It's just some juxtaposed pictures. The whole meat of it is lost on them.

So I can read cartoons and text. No problem. Some people can't. They lack the skill sets. But what skill sets am I lacking? A lot, most likely.

In any case, my interpretation of the event described by the OP was that this "intuitive" person sensed that something was wrong and felt it strongly enough to say it. I see no need to invoke the notion of spirits (or direct communication from God apart from that all things ultimately have their being in God) to explain this.

But I don't think that spirits must absolutely be excluded from consideration for all time.
 
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Aryeh

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I have no idea how she "observed" this, but here is a guess that seems reasonable to me. At their last meeting, she observed (consciously or not) tiny changes in my great-aunt's manner, voice quality, complexion, and mood (super-subtle 'medical' signs that her body was not doing well). Perhaps also something else like a missed or shortened regular phone call, on its own nothing big, but with the micro-changes noted above, it started to add up. These things "cooked" in her mind until they burst into consciousness with the sense that "there is something wrong, I need to get over there".

If we allow, as I think is reasonable, that these things happen when the person of concern has NOT died, but is depressed or just a little sick or afraid, and the relative or friend says "hey, are you okay? I just had the strangest feeling", and the person of concern says "oh, yeah, I'm okay" and then everybody forgets about it, then I think the instances where someone has in fact died are easier to explain as the apparent "standout" instances (because it seems like a bigger deal when someone has died), when in all those situations -- detecting an underlying physical problem without really understanding it -- the same thing is going on.

This explanation makes sense to me and does not at all feel like a stretch. People solve mathematical or personal problems in dreams or in dream-like states all the time. I understand that you or someone else may prefer an understanding that involves spirits, and I can't say that that is absolutely wrong. This is the "easier" explanation to me.

I don't deny the possibility of communication by spirits, though.

Your question about why some Christians try to deny the supernatural is reasonable, and I can see why you brought it up in response to my post. We profess belief / faith in events that are clearly not explicable by "everyday, well-understood" causes, and then (some of us) want to dismiss all other things that seem out of the ordinary.

So, I don't know, but a couple things may be in play:

-as you noted, the (unfortunate, in my view) extreme version of the western scientific mindset prevents a lot of people from looking beyond it. This same mindset is extremely useful for technical manipulation and understanding of the physical world, and it is "supreme" (in a worldly sense) in that sphere. Sadly, many people apply it where it has little or no value.

-a lot of people seem inclined to let their minds go to seed with notions of "amazing" phenomena that are (in my opinion) just ridiculous and silly. Nothing but silliness and extremely lax thinking needs to be invoked to explain horoscopes. Put some stuff down on paper, make it lean in both directions ("You are happy, but sometimes sad"), stick a birthdate on it and a lot of people will think it applies to them. I have to assume spirits could do a better job that that. And then Christians (and others) just lump everything in with these completely silly things and dismiss it all as hogwash.

It is amazing to me how little idea one has of what's going on when one doesn't know the "system". A lectionary is a jumble of nonsense if you don't know the basic concepts that there are texts broken up into smaller chunks for reference and that the rising and the setting of the sun is tracked on a thing called a calendar and so on. Basic ideas to us, yes, but not to all humans who ever lived. And this knowledge could easily be lost in a generation if things changed quickly. People who haven't read a lot of cartoons don't understand them. They can't feel the "motion" between the panels or "hear" the dialogue. It's just some juxtaposed pictures. The whole meat of it is lost on them.

So I can read cartoons and text. No problem. Some people can't. They lack the skill sets. But what skill sets am I lacking? A lot, most likely.

In any case, my interpretation of the event described by the OP was that this "intuitive" person sensed that something was wrong and felt it strongly enough to say it. I see no need to invoke the notion of spirits (or direct communication from God apart from that all things ultimately have their being in God) to explain this.

But I don't think that spirits must absolutely be excluded from consideration for all time.

The thing is we have been dumbed down, and we have believed there is a difference between science and the supernatural. When in fact, they are two sides of the same coin.

For us, the supernatural is just a euphemism for, "I can't explain it."

Just like you gave a way the brain could pick up on subtleties and make a connection, this could be seen as supernatural to someone who can't explain the phenomenon.

But, it isn't supernatural, or a miracle to us. Or, is it (supposed to be)?

Because, I guarantee anyone would say that coming back to life is supernatural - specifically coming back to life as your full self (not just the reanimation of a vessel.) For thousands of years the most "powerful" witches and occultists, as well as scientists have tried to find a way to immortality.

One Man did it.

Now, there could be a simple explaination for it - to Christ, Michael, Raphael, and some other angels. But, to us it is way high on the miracle/supernatural list. Even when some of us experience it, I think it would still be unexplained to us in its fullness.

So, essentially everything is a miracle independent of an available explanation.
 
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Believers cAn use the spiritual gift of discerning of spirits. We as believers can also prophesy.

However many people that claim psychic ability are misguided and I find they are using whatver extra sense wrongly and almost always predict doom and gloom and either profit from it or dont give glory to God.
 
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