The pastor who died in 1992 did not accurately predict from his own analysis of things the fact my sister would get leukemia (2005), that I would get Diabetes (also 2005) and that I would start playing hockey again as one consequence (2008) , that one of his sons would have a health breakdown (and he named the son) (circa 1996), that I would be doing a cleaning job for a short time, not like it much, and hear about a ghost (2006), that there would be a conspiracy against me at my then job or that I would make a silly mistake (1995), or that I would become Catholic (1996/7).
Get real. How many people do you think would analyse things based on personal experience and then say "I think you'll be doing a cleaning job for a short time, not like it much, and hear about a ghost" when the event didn't even take place for another 14 years after he died?
Understandable, no need to get frustrated. I don't doubt at all that he was getting revelation from God in those examples you cited. I personally know priests who knew stuff about others which they weren't supposed to be knowing, and even made correct predictions about their personal future broadly speaking, though not as specific or direct or numerous as your pastor did, so yeah, I believe this stuff is real.
I was just asking whether the pastor,
IN ADDITION to prophecies from God, also sometimes put forward his own personal opinions on things, and
if so, how those two were distinguished in the way he spoke. I assume that,
when he was directly prophesying, he didn't just use the phrase "I think that...." by itelf; he most likely did this in personal conversations with you in his office whenever you asked him for important advice, or about your direction in life, especially in relation to God's will. Those aspects by themelves are
excellent context that clearly shows he meant it in a directly prophetic way, not just as a personal opinion, especially after you've seen his predictions come true multiple times.
So if he DID sometimes give his merely personal opinions that were NOT intended as actual prophecy, it looks like he'd do so in a way that's obvious he is NOT doing this - say what politican would win local elections that were a few days away in casual banter that has no religious context or anything to do with God.
I don't know if he did or not. If he did, I don't remember it. He did say he thought the Russians would revert to the Orthodox faith, and that's happened. Mind you the wall had come down a year or two before he made the prediction. He also stated that he thought that the UK would revert to Catholicism (hasn't happened yet, but the Anglican church has been steadily losing ground).
Interestingly enough, this seems to be only partially true of Russia. Abortion rates are still extremely high in the country, and church-attendace rates are very low currently compared to many other countries - but right after freedom of religion came back, the Russian Church rebuilt many churches and religious life quickly became larger than it was under Soviet rule. But
I don't think that's a problem for his prediction since no explicit scale of conversion is stated, and the portion of Russia that's basically been religious underground coming into the open air would be sufficient to validate this prediction. So even though the comeback to Orthodoxy is small on the whole, things like the fact Russia at least attempts to use Orthodoxy for propaganda purposes nowadays (even though most aren't really all that into their native faith) is sufficient to fulfill it.
He didn't predict 9/11 either. God was only going to tell him as much as He thought was necessary, not give a running list of all the future events that were going to take place for the next fifty years.
Point taken, agreed.
God was telling him - full stop. You can't analyse those sorts of things using your own thoughts. And according to a book I've got by a Catholic exorcist, the devil can't see the future either, so he could not have told him. Mind you, the devil can put two and two together pretty well.
Recently though I've wondered how the devil can even think straight, since he is confined to Hell, with all its burning torments. One of those mysteries I suppose.
About that, while it's certainly true angelic beings (including demons) can't see directly into the future since they aren't eternal as God is, some church fathers did believe God revealed some basic facts about the future to them
before they rebelled against Him about what would happen in human history - not necessarily specific details, but perhaps big events like major wars or political changes over centuries in continents - and that they sometimes misuse this knowledge to pretend to know the future in general, or to impress those that unfortunately deal in the occult. I've even read some who hold that the future may in a limited sense be visible even though it's not tangibly there yet, at least in the sense that patterns already exist that point to certain outcomes, though with more distance in time the less detail there is.......which to me basically sounds like a more fancy description of weather-forecasting, but with extra knowledge and perhaps natural final causality.
Agreed though that one can tell whether a prophecy is from God or not - with regards not only to detail, but also some other things such as fruits coming from it, etc.
Also, it's not known whether fallen angels literally suffer physical fire - as immaterial beings with no bodies, it's unlikely their punishment in Hell consists in this. Many theologians would say it's a spiritual penalty, like frustration or sorrow - Scripture at the very least indicates Hell is shame as well. I personally hold the imagery of fire is symbolical of shame and other things, and that makes more sense for demons as well, due to them being bodiless. Given sufficient hatred of humans, however, it's very possible they are sufficiently irrationally obsessed with harming us that their suffering only intensifies their hatred of those who don't suffer and desire to harm them as well.
