God Works Through Epilepsy? –La Fort Fractures

Ellen White, prophetess and co-founder of the Seventh Day Adventist church had a large stone thrown at her when she was nine. Knocked immediately unconscious, regained consciousness for a few minutes, then slipped into coma for three weeks. From descriptions and lasting deformity appears she had a La Fort, or basilar skull fracture and permanent frontal lobe brain damage. Epilepsy is a term that had not been invented yet, but descriptions of her visions are like many seizures I have witnessed in the field. Eyes pegged upwards and trembling, falling, postictal phase, then waking up to gibberish prophesy an extension of her devoted Christian life. Modern medicine can calculate severity of injury based on duration of insult. Not so in early 19th century. HERE is an interesting read about her head injury and descriptions of her visions. After her death visions no longer blessed the church, nor with anyone since. (Since the next head injury) The rebuttal—God works in mysterious ways. Post traumatic epilepsy is a crucial link to revelation, as well as congenital epilepsy.

Advertisement

Author: jimoeba

Alternatives to big box religions and dogmas

36 thoughts on “God Works Through Epilepsy? –La Fort Fractures”

    1. Ellen White had the same telltale signs as Moses and Ezekiel and most others. Same as the old testi prophets. JZ sent me a similar link during a Moses post. This is good link. Thanks.

      Liked by 4 people

      Reply

  3. Temporal Lobe Epilepsy does give spiritual visions. The key is to figure out what is the TLE and what is not. Testing is required for a true spiritual vision. Christianity lost the ability to discern when it turned its back on divination and the other methods. Not every vision comes from a God. Some are just body functions.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    2. NoN,

      In the Jewish Encyclopedia Saul of Tarsus’ epilepsy is covered at length. What is the Jewish Encyclopedia some may ask? From their Home page:

      This online version contains the unedited contents of the original encyclopedia. Since the original work was completed almost 100 years ago, it does not cover a significant portion of modern Jewish History (e.g., the creation of Israel, the Holocaust, etc.). However, it does contain an incredible amount of information that is remarkably relevant today.

      Then specifically on his (unanimous acceptance in the Rabbinical circles) epilepsy it states:

      There is throughout Paul’s writings an irrational or pathological element which could not but repel the disciples of the Rabbis. Possibly his pessimistic mood was the result of his physical condition; for he suffered from an illness which affected both body and mind. He speaks of it as “a thorn in the flesh,” and as a heavy stroke by “a messenger of Satan” (II Cor. xii. 7), which often caused him to realize his utter helplessness, and made him an object of pity and horror (Gal. iv. 13). It was, as Krenkel (“Beiträge zur Aufhellung der Geschichte und Briefe des Apostels Paulus,” 1890, pp. 47-125) has convincingly shown, epilepsy, called by the Greeks “the holy disease,” which frequently put him into a state of ecstasy, a frame of mind that may have greatly impressed some of his Gentile hearers, but could not but frighten away and estrange from him the Jew, whose God is above all the God of reason (comp. II Cor. v. 13; x. 10; xi. 1, 16; xii. 6). The conception of a new faith, half pagan and half Jewish, such as Paul preached, and susceptibility to its influences, were altogether foreign to the nature of Jewish life and thought. For Judaism, religion is the hallowing of this life by the fulfilment of its manifold duties (see Judaism): Paul shrank from life as the domain of Satan and all his hosts of evil; he longed for redemption by the deadening of all desires for life, and strove for another world which he sawin his ecstatic visions.

      Here’s the link if interested…

      http://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/13232-saul-of-tarsus#anchor2

      Liked by 5 people

      Reply

  5. Jim, this is great work! It needs to be more widely known in ALL pockets and corners of Christendom whether Faith-followers like it or not. They can NEVER escape their deep (and grossly distorted!) Jewish Sectarian origins. Never! 🙂

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  7. I was a SDA for a few years , mostly to get out of my abusive dysfunctional home ( a local wealthy farmer family who was SDA offered to pay for me to go to their church boarding school but the price was I had to convert ) What I found interesting was when I would point out something E.G. White got wrong, something that was proven by our current science to be wrong, I was attacked. Not the wrong info, me. I either did not understand, I was reading it wrong, I was not praying to god enough, what ever. They simply dismissed anything that disagreed with her visions, or adopted new revelations from the church leaders as to what something meant. It was an interesting time in my life, but I wouldn’t trade reality for it. These days I doubt I could even drink enough to get back into that mindset. Interesting thing, most of the kids raised in the church families did not really believe it anymore than I did. These kids gave heathens a run for their money. Hugs

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

    1. I have quite a few SDA friends. Once they decide to believe it all there’s no stopping them from believing complete bs. God really cares what day you worship? rrright…

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply

  8. My question is: Who cares?
    No, I am not unfeeling, but how a religion came to be a religion–or even a sect of a religion–is between its adherents and their own beliefs. It only matters if one is set upon destroying said sect. Who are we to try to destroy what someone else believes? It isn’t going to matter in the long run. Whether you believe death ends everything, or like me, life is a progression of incarnations from here to infinity, things like this don’t change anything. Either they end with death–no harm, no foul, or they are minor blips on the journey forward–they will be corrected in future incarnations.
    Yeah, I know I’m weird, but that’s okay. I’m allowed. If death ends me, so I was wrong. I won’t be around to sweat it. But if I happen to be even partway right, then I have used this life wisely, and I have helped move life forward a step or two. No one will worship me as a prophet or whatever, that is beyond my purpose, if I have one.
    One of my purposes, as I see them, is to help living beings care more about each other, and stop hating one another. No matter what reality is, if it is anything at all, if more people accept those different from them as living beings, and help them along peacefully without hatred, I have done a kindness. And that is good enough for me. The more living beings that co-exist peacefully, the better off the world is.
    ‘Nuff said.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. The only issue I see and try to create awareness is because it is the piety of the individual faiths that set us divided. When groupthink ends the intensity of belief ends and people become human outside of the group/mob mentality.

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply

      1. But imagine a group of alcoholics, or smokers, or any vefsion of addicts, numbering in the millions or billions, suddenly having to go cold turkey. The human race might not survive, although there are worse things that could happen.
        World peace, universal peace, those are the end goals. Destroying religions in one fell swoop would not bd condusive to duch a goal. IMO.

        Liked by 2 people

        Reply

    2. Rawgod, I disagree with you. It matters because those faiths try to end my rights and my happiness, possibly because of wrong information. Same with the Mormon’s and their flawed understanding of their own history. They don’t get told what a con man Joseph Smith was, that he was in and out of jail. They don’t get told what a degenerate Brigham Young was. I have talked to these people after they got out of the church and they were stunned at the myth they were told and bought. But they use these myths to interfere with my life and deny me my equal civil rights, so yes it makes a heck of a difference. Hugs

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply

      1. You can believe as you like, Scottie, same as the people who believe their religious teachings. I have my opinions, you have yours. Because someone tries to take away my rights does not mean I have to hate them. I know they can’t do it. They can try all they want. The worst they can do is kill me. No matter what, they cannot stop me. Peace.

        Liked by 2 people

        Reply

  11. Thank you so much for posting. The more people talk about and explore the way epilepsy works, the more awareness and positivity we can bring to those suffering form this illness.

    Please check out my new blog. I used to be known as EpilepsyBlogger, but I have decided to make a spin off called “That One Girl,” speaking from an interesting perspective about a girl recovering from brain surgery.

    I would appreciate any comments or likes, so I can get an idea of the writing and how it affects others struggling from any illnesses or epilepsy itself.

    https://thatonegirlmandy.wordpress.com/2018/08/29/the-neighbor-and-her-dog/

    God bless!
Mandy K.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: