Pride Comes Before a Fall

Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall. Proverbs 16:18.
Satan fell because of his ambition to be equal with God. He desired to enter into the divine counsels and purposes, from which he was excluded by his own inability, as a created being, to comprehend the wisdom of the Infinite One. It was this ambitious pride that led to his rebellion, and by the same means he seeks to cause the ruin of man.
Sin originated in self-seeking. Lucifer, the covering cherub, desired to be first in heaven. He sought to gain control of heavenly beings, to draw them away from their Creator, and to win their homage to himself. Therefore he misrepresented God, attributing to Him the desire for self-exaltation. With his own evil characteristics he sought to invest the loving Creator.
Had Lucifer really desired to be like the Most High, he would never have deserted his appointed place in heaven; for the spirit of the Most High is manifested in unselfish ministry. Lucifer desired God’s power, but not His character. He sought for himself the highest place, and every being who is actuated by his spirit will do the same.
Whenever pride and ambition are indulged, the life is marred; for pride, feeling no need, closes the heart against the infinite blessings of Heaven.
Pride of heart is a fearful trait of character. “Pride goeth before destruction.” This is true in the family, the church, and the nation.
God’s people should be subject one to another. They should counsel with each other, that the lack of one be supplied by the sufficiency of the other.
God hates pride, and … all the proud and all that do wickedly shall be stubble, and the day that cometh shall burn them up.
“Learn of me,” said Christ; “for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” Matthew 11:29.
The Faith I Live By p. 68
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Prayer Requests
—–I need prayer for a situation with my insurance. M
—–Please pray for Ashleigh who is hospitalized with a blood infection. Alicia
—–Please pray for a lady with Parkinson’s who is looking for an apartment as she is losing her residence. Katherin
—–Please to continue to pray for my wife that she might get strength to walk again. Jervis
—–Please pray for Chelsea’s grandma who had a brain bleed and they treated her with blood thinners thinking it was a stroke. They did surgery last night and she has only a 50% chance of survival. Esther
—–Please pray for Preston: He is scheduled at 9am tomorrow for embolization procedure. Keep him in your prayers. He is able to walk right now but has left sided weakness. Praying for complete healing! Claim God’s healing promises for this 13 year old handsome young man! Cyndi
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Dear Friends,
As I was going through some old documents on my computer (I’m nearly out of hard drive space) I came across an article I had saved on the scientific cause of those out of body experiences that we have all heard of. I hope that you will find it as interesting as I did.
“Experiment gives hint of brain’s role in out-of-body sensation
By Gareth Cook, Boston Globe Staff, 9/19/2002
A tiny part of the brain behind the right ear can cause out-of-body
experiences and could explain the many stories of near-death patients who
say they have looked down at their own bodies, a team of Swiss scientists
announced yesterday.
While treating a woman with epilepsy, the researchers discovered that every
time they applied a mild electrical current to part of the woman’s brain she
felt as if she were floating near the ceiling, looking down on her own body
like a soul freed of its earthly bonds.
The results were published in today’s issue of the journal Nature.
Because the experiment was done on only one person, the finding does not
definitively explain out-of-body experiences, scientists cautioned.
But the work represents the first time that a precise part of the brain has
been linked to the out-of-body sensation, a phenomenon that has inspired
talk of a spiritual self that can roam free of the body and, after many
accounts of patients “watching” themselves before pulling back from the
verge of death, has been seen as evidence of an afterlife. The experiment is
also the first time that out-of-body experiences have been repeatedly
flipped on and off.
“This does not mean that all out-of-body experiences are related to this
area,” said Olaf Blanke, a neurologist at Geneva University Hospital in
Switzerland and the lead author of the article. But “now they are open to a
more hard-science experimental investigation,” he said.
The Swiss work is just one example of the inroads neuroscience is now making
into topics once considered paranormal. Researchers are also studying the
biological basis of presence, the mystical sensation of being near a
powerful intelligence, and of synesthesia, in which the senses cross and
give the impression of seeing a sound or smelling a color. The research is
an indication of the increasing sophistication of the tools of modern
neuroscience.
It also represents a scientific change of attitude.
“This is one of those things that 10 or 15 years ago were considered just
another crazy phenomenon that scientists wouldn’t study,” said Christ of
Koch, a neuroscientist at the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena, Calif.
“Now we can study them and learn something about the brain.”
The part of the brain involved in the out-of-body experience is the right
angular gyrus, which sits about an inch above and behind the right ear.
That area helps assemble information from the visual system, the balance
system, and the somatosensory system, which tells the brain where the body
is. The somatosensory system is what allows people to bring their fingers
together, even when their eyes are closed.
The Nature paper suggests that a disruption at the right angular gyrus,
involved in processing the information from these different systems into a
coherent whole, creates an illusion of floating in which one’s own body
feels and looks distant.
Near-death episodes make up a very small proportion of out-of-body
experiences, according to Susan Blackmore, a British psychologist who
studied out-of-body experiences for nearly 30 years.
Blackmore has collected many stories of people having an out-of-body
experience as they were falling asleep or meditating. Such episodes can also
hit at moments of extreme stress, she said.
Blackmore herself became interested in the topic when, sitting with friends
when she was an undergraduate at Oxford University, she had an intense
out-of-body experience, including visits to France and New York City’s Fifth
Avenue.
To see whether she had really left her body, she checked the color of her
building’s roof tiles to see if it matched what she had seen as she felt
herself floating over the building. It did not.
Some epileptics have also had sudden feelings of floating or out-of-body
experiences related to their disease, said Blanke.
Scientists know little about the roots of those episodes. Wilder Penfield, a
pioneering neuroscientist, published a paper in 1955 that described the
strange effects of applying electrical currents to the
brain: sudden limb twitching, hallucinations, and, in one case, a woman who
said she felt as if she had just left her body.
But the work was very crude, said Blackmore, because the instruments
available at the time did not allow Penfield to determine the specific area
of the brain involved or to replicate the out-of-body effect.
The Swiss discovery is a case of serendipity. Doctors were planning brain
surgery to help a woman with severe epilepsy who was not responding to
medication.
Before such surgeries, doctors need to be sure which parts of the nearby
brain are involved in crucial functions and which parts can be sacrificed to
stop the seizures.
To do this, different areas of the brain are stimulated with electrodes,
hampering the activity of that area.
With electrical stimulation at one location, Blanke said, the woman
described feeling as if she were floating. When the current was increased,
she described seeing her own body from the midsection down, as if she were
on the ceiling.
“I see myself lying in bed, from above, but I only see my legs and lower
trunk,” she said, according to the paper.
The electrode was activated several times, and each time she described
leaving her body.
The 43-year-old woman, whose name was not disclosed, could prove to be a
pioneer, building a bridge between two stubborn camps: those convinced that
out-of-body experiences have a larger spiritual significance and those who
dismiss them as frauds.
The new research “holds up some hope that the ultraskeptics will see that
there is something interesting happening and the ultra-spiritualists will
see that it is something happening in the brain,” Blackmore said. “Maybe
this will close that awful gap.”
This may raise questions for some of you so for more information about the state of man in death, please visit www.truthaboutdeath.com .
Rose