I See Dead People ...

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(Spoiler alert: A movie will be discussed and details given away)

I have had a very peripheral connection to Hollywood and the film industry. While leaving out family legends that are not true, some relatives were part of Hollywood. My grandmother's cousin was Herbert Coleman, the long time associate of Alfred Hitchcock. A step-father of mine worked in Hollywood for many years at United Artists and then at MGM. He knew many of the stars of the 30s & 40s and it was fascinating to sit around and listen to the tales about the stars.

https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Knew-Hitchcock-Filmmakers-ebook/dp/B00GHVBVYU/

My own involvement was as an extra in one movie, "Paint Your Wagon." So, it was also interesting to sit around the set and watch the different actors and how a movie was produced. My interest continued in film and after nursing school I worked in the Los Angeles area and I attended film studies thru the local colleges. This was in the days when computers were little more than kits from Heathkit, so there was no digital editing of video on computers. This was using film, cutting the pieces to the right length and gluing them together. Adding sound was quite the ordeal also.

 

This film was done over fifty years ago!

Film studies also included the history of film from the very earliest motion pictures to the more recent at that time. I have had a long interest in very old films including the silent films, film noir (black film), b/w newsreels, and the development of cinematic style. This does provide a dilemma at times for someone who grew up attending the SDA church and I never went to my first movie until academy days and have been "hooked" ever since.

But sometime ago while watching some of these old newsreels, probably from the political conventions with Teddy Roosevelt and the thousands of people present, it occurred to me that ALL of those people were now dead. Thirty or forty years ago, many of the silent screen stars were dying and obituaries being written up in the papers. Yeah, there may have been a baby from the end of the silent era movies who today languishes in a nursing home somewhere, but the rest are dead. I have been a Perry Mason fan from the days when they were first run shows. Recently Barbara Hale (Della Street, Perry's secretary) passed on. Everyone else is gone. Lt. Tragg of homicide has been dead for more than fifty years.

Unfortunately, this creeping death thing is starting to even include the living. Given the time we live in and looking at the future of this world, large crowds of people are starting to look like death in the future. I look at a stadium full of people on football Sundays and inescapably the realization is "they are all going to die." Even in large crowds in churches with people singing "praise hymns", they are all going to die.

I was watching a panel of Baptist preachers talking and one of them stated that less than five percent of people in church are saved. Whoa! Math gears working and I remember that quote from EGW, "It is a solemn statement that I make to the church, that not one in twenty whose names are registered upon the church books are prepared to close their earthly history, and would be as verily without God and without hope in the world as the common sinner."--ChS 41 (1893). "Five percent" and "one in twenty" are about the same thing. Jesus left it at, "Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it." Matthew 7:14

This concerns me when I read and see what is happening in the SDA church. People are totally fighting over stupid stuff with evil agendas and know not that they are perishing. The fight inside the SDA church is little different than the political struggles going on in the world. And all the fighters will perish.

When I read Genesis and God told Adam that he would die if he ate of the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, He meant they were going to die right then. I still hold the opinion that this earth's human race became spiritually dead from that moment. The only way to be spiritually alive is when Christ abides in you. That abiding is another very long topic, so I will focus on "life" without the abiding of Jesus in one.

One of the problems with spiritual death is that the "dead person" often doesn't know it. The Pharisees of the time of Jesus were studying their Scriptures intensively while the answer to the question walked right among them. And they perceived it not. They were the walking dead.

This so much reminds me of the movie "The Sixth Sense" which came out about 1998 and starred Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osmont. Osmont was a little boy who was bothered by the people who had died and were caught in that space between living and going into the light. Bruce Willis was a psychologist who tried to help the little boy. The youtube link is one of the revealing moments in the movie. See, the psychologist was dead and he did not know it! But the little boy knew it and he was giving him a clue that he could see the dead. (Jesus used illustrations of hell and afterlife which He also knew was not true!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUYKSWQmkrg

So, you have to ask yourself, "are you alive like the little boy, or are you dead believing you are really alive?" So, that is my pressing concern, for myself and for everyone else. Especially for the fighting people doing unimaginable evil and totally clueless to their naked state. Frequently you see comments about the church falling but EGW prophesied this and stated the church would stand. But this is a very very late event in this earth's history. Do we see the thief coming in the window?

"It is possible for men to offer the Saviour outward homage, to be Christians in profession, to have a form of godliness, while the heart, whose loyalty He prizes above all else, is estranged from Him. Such ones have a name to live, but they are dead...." EGW, UL, Oct 14.

A "prophecy of doom" doesn't get much darker than this.

[rudywoofs (Pam)]

interesting!

(on a side note, my cousin's uncle was Oscar Hammerstein Jr of the Rodgers & Hammerstein duo)

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3 hours ago, The Wanderer said:

"There is always a little Light;"  (Micah 7:8) it shines through; even on the sick bed of my wife, and I dont see "death" when I look at her. I only see what Jesus sees. Thats all I want to see, and to see her sweet spirit and kind heart in the midst of it all is such a blessing. There is something called HOPE and both her and I have THE hope of the resurrection.

Elijah seemed to have felt much like I do. However, God had to remind him that He had 7000 that had never bent the knee to Baal. It is really sad when you see someone you had thought was so very spiritual and reflected Jesus and then they do something so treacherous that it just totally blows you away. Kinda like in Daniel 12 where God talks about shattering the power of the people. Still trying to figure out the extent and nature of that shattering. I think this is also known as falling on the Rock rather than being crushed by the Rock.

It is always good to see someone who has the presence of Jesus shining thru them that you can see. It is a joy that you do see once in a while. I remember a church lady who I grew up knowing and when she was very elderly and in the hospital, I went to visit her. She lay there in her hospital bed and told me how she had seen Jesus out her window in the clouds. I have seen evidence that many receive such "visions" before they pass away in various intensities and content.

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On 10/16/2018 at 10:07 PM, B/W Photodude said:

Especially for the fighting people doing unimaginable evil and totally clueless to their naked state.

23 hours ago, The Wanderer said:

I literally get physically ill from ...
God will take care of all the things we have no idea what to do with.

In a very troubling event that I was thinking of, a very fragile senior citizen become the rag doll for some very hateful people and those on the other side did not have the testicular fortitude to defend this person. This person was in my view human trafficked. Every principle player in this drama was, is, or grew up in an SDA home. I was legally unable to do anything to protect this person. I guess you are required to forgive people who even do wrong to others. Unfortunately, I do not believe I will ever be able to see any of them in any favorable way. Yeah, I keep in mind we are all sinners, etc. There is an awful lot more to this story than I can go into, and it just gets worse. I also was so sick about the whole thing that I even sought out the help of a counselor to figure out how to deal with all the moral and ethical dilemmas it created. I have been barred from seeing this person which I comply with so as not to have the person subjected to abuse from the captors. This person was one for whom I had had a very high regard for, for all of my life that I can remember.