Obeying the Voices in Their Heads: Was Ezekiel Mentally Ill?

How would one ever know who was influencing who?

Was it the voice of God?

The Voice of Satan?

or

Mental Illness?

"Encouraging people to embrace those voices and then trying to normalize that behavior, is the most dangerous approach yet. Doctors will try anything. Well, almost anything. If you tell them this is a spiritual problem, you’ll be shot down. Voices, they reason, are just a product of physical abnormalities and we have to learn to live with them. There couldn’t possibly be any other explanation.

The answer is clear and simple, however, if you believe in God, read the Bible, and understand that there is a spirit world. 

Revelation 12 explains that Satan the devil “deceives the whole world.” The Bible says he was cast down to Earth along with the demons! This may sound strange or old-fashioned to the intellectuals of this world, but if they would work from this foundation, understanding that this world is held captive by the devil, they would be able to understand why so many people are hearing voices and why those numbers have increased since the mid-1980s. They would understand that encouraging people to entertain those voices is the most dangerous prescription they can give! It is incredibly dangerous for society to try to normalize this sort of behavior!"

Sam Livingston

"Is It Normal to Hear Voices in Your Head"

The Trumpet

July 3, 2017  

The Major Prophet Ezekiel listened to the voices in his head and obeyed them to the letter. His behaviors were bizarre. Was the stress of the times driving his psychosis?  How could we ever know any prophet or OT Patriarch such a Moses or Abraham wasn't simply mentally ill in a day and age when such behaviors were not understood but held to be a spiritual manifestation from God?  Why is Ezekiel considered a True Prophet while anyone else with the identical behaviors would be considered hearing the voice of Satan by religious zealots or mentally ill in the medical world?

Even Mary  and Jesus's brothers were troubled with Jesus behaviors and...

"When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, "He is out of his mind."
Mark 3:21 
(This Mary had never heard of the miraculous visitations by Angels and  Virgin Birth of Jesus obviously or she had a very short memory )

Back to the Major Prophet Ezekiel...

Ezekiel 4New International Version (NIV)

Siege of Jerusalem Symbolized

4 “Now, son of man, take a block of clay, put it in front of you and draw the city of Jerusalem on it. 2 Then lay siege to it: Erect siege works against it, build a ramp up to it, set up camps against it and put battering rams around it. 3 Then take an iron pan, place it as an iron wall between you and the city and turn your face toward it. It will be under siege, and you shall besiege it. This will be a sign to the people of Israel.

4 “Then lie on your left side and put the sin of the people of Israel upon yourself.[a] You are to bear their sin for the number of days you lie on your side. 5 I have assigned you the same number of days as the years of their sin. So for 390 days you will bear the sin of the people of Israel.

6 “After you have finished this, lie down again, this time on your right side, and bear the sin of the people of Judah. I have assigned you 40 days, a day for each year. 7 Turn your face toward the siege of Jerusalem and with bared arm prophesy against her. 8 I will tie you up with ropes so that you cannot turn from one side to the other until you have finished the days of your siege.

9 “Take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and spelt; put them in a storage jar and use them to make bread for yourself. You are to eat it during the 390 days you lie on your side. 10 Weigh out twenty shekels[b]of food to eat each day and eat it at set times. 11 Also measure out a sixth of a hin[c] of water and drink it at set times. 12 Eat the food as you would a loaf of barley bread; bake it in the sight of the people, using human excrement for fuel.” 13 The Lord said, “In this way the people of Israel will eat defiled food among the nations where I will drive them.”

14 Then I said, “Not so, Sovereign Lord! I have never defiled myself. From my youth until now I have never eaten anything found dead or torn by wild animals. No impure meat has ever entered my mouth.”

15 “Very well,” he said, “I will let you bake your bread over cow dung instead of human excrement.”  (The voice changes its mind)

Modern Psychiatry comments about Ezekiel's behaviors and symptoms...

http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/196/2/101

"Like any prophet, Ezekiel hears the voice of God and it is his prophetic task to relay God’s message onto the people. He hears the voice of God more often (93 times) than any other prophet, and the way God addresses him as ‘ son of man’ or ‘mortal’ is also unique. Ezekiel experiences a variety of other auditory phenomena, including command hallucinations which are not described in any other prophet, 3:3 ‘He said to me; mortal eat this scroll that I give to you and fill your stomach with it. Then I ate it; and in my mouth it was as sweet as honey.’

Even the rabbis thought it was strange that Ezekiel actually ate the scroll and they explained it by saying he was ingesting the wisdom of the Torah (law). Other examples of command hallucinations which are carried out are the shaving of Ezekiel’s head (5:1) which would have gone against priestly prohibitions to shave. He is also commanded to dig a hole in a wall in his escape from the city of Jerusalem during the siege, 12:1 ‘ The word of the Lord came to me... 12:5 Dig a hole through the wall in their sight and carry the baggage through it... 12:7 I did just as I was commanded brought out my baggage by day as baggage for exile and in the evening I dug through the hole with my own hands.’ Note that the phrase ‘ in my sight’ denotes that others must have observed this. Ezekiel also hears people gossiping about him by the walls, 33:30 ‘As for you mortal your people who talk about you by the walls and at the doors of the house say to one another each to a neighbour “Come and hear what the word is that comes from the Lord”.’ Ezekiel hears the conversations God was having with others, 9:5’To others he said within my hearing “pass through the city and kill, your eyes shall not spare”.’ Sometimes this voice can be loud, 9:1 ‘Then he cried within my hearing with a loud voice saying “draw near your executioners of the city”.’ Like many individuals with schizophrenia, Ezekiel does his best not to listen to these malign voices, 8:18 ‘and though they cry within my hearing with a loud voice, I will not listen to them.’ In his visions he also sometimes hears voices, as for example in the ‘Chariot Vision’, 12:5 ‘And there came a voice from above the dome of their heads’. Also in these visions, as well as voices Ezekiel hears non-verbal auditory phenomena, 1:33 ‘each of the creatures had two wings covering its body. When I heard the sound of the wings like the sound of mighty waters like the thunder of the almighty, a sound of tumult like the sound of an army’. No other prophet hears command hallucinations, conversations with third parties about himself, hears voices in their visions, or has non-verbal auditory experiences. All these auditory phenomena are said to be characteristic of schizophrenia.

• © 2010 Royal College of Psychiatrists

What if?????

PCG Asks: Is It Normal to Hear Voices in Your Head?

Of all of the Churches of God out there, one would never expect Gerald Flurry's group to be asking this question:  "Is It Normal to Hear Voices in Your Head?"  

PCG'S Sam Livingston writes about this very important topic.

People who hear voices in their head are more common than you’d think. The largest survey ever conducted on the subject found that between 10 to 15 percent of Americans have had some sort of audible or visual hallucination. That’s according to a 1991 survey aimed at discovering how widespread these sorts of experiences are outside the mental health clinics. Over 25 years later, this subject is grabbing a lot of attention. And the big question isn’t how to stop the voices, but how to manage them. 

Is there a Church of God splinter group leader out there that do not hear voices in their heads?  That is how every single one of them got started!  They heard a voice in the heads that told them to set out and start a new group.  They heard a voice that told them they had insider knowledge about how God was going to finish the work.  They heard a voice that gave them new revelations.  The problem with COG leaders and false prophets is that not a single one of them ever asked how to stop those voices, instead, they let their minds rampage unhindered.

Livingston proceeds on with this:

The Hearing Voices Movement is a growing network of support groups designed to help people who hear voices. “The groups encourage an approach in which, with the help of a facilitator or counselor, hearers listen to, speak back to, and negotiate with the message they hear in hopes of learning to cope,” Frankel wrote. The New York Times reported that these types of groups “have tripled in numbers over the past several years, to more than 80 groups in 21 states.”

It was around the mid-to-late-1980s that the Hearing Voices Movement began to gain momentum. In the Netherlands, a woman named Patsy Hage began hearing voices. She sought the help of a psychiatrist named Marius Romme. The two of them are credited for revolutionizing the way society handles “hearers.” They stopped diagnosing people who admitted to hearing voices and started a global network that encouraged people to talk to and entertain those voices. 

Isn't that what Gerald Flurry, Dave Pack, and Bob Thiel currently do?  They all talk to and entertain the voices in their heads.  How else could these three guys come up with the absolute crazy stuff that they do?  It certainly is NOT from God! 

Livingston continues on asking "who is controlling who?"  Is Bob Thiel controlling the voices in his head, or are the voices controlling him?  What about Dave Pack?  Are his voices controlling him?

Psychiatrists will admit they don’t know much about the science behind voices. For the intellectual community, it’s hard to decipher the physical cause of what appears to be a spiritual problem. Some think it has to do with the way the brain interprets its own thoughts. The list of theories could go on, but frankly, no one in the scientific community has an idea that can be backed by evidence; they’re wandering through this trying anything they think will work.

Encouraging people to embrace the voices in their heads is a new approach and it is quickly becoming the accepted course of action for “hearers.” Corlett and Powers want to help people control the voices in their heads, but what they’re really doing is telling people to submit to those voices—this is incredibly dangerous.

You will have guessed by now who Livingston claims the voices are from:

Encouraging people to embrace those voices and then trying to normalize that behavior, is the most dangerous approach yet. Doctors will try anything. Well, almost anything. If you tell them this is a spiritual problem, you’ll be shot down. Voices, they reason, are just a product of physical abnormalities and we have to learn to live with them. There couldn’t possibly be any other explanation.

The answer is clear and simple, however, if you believe in God, read the Bible, and understand that there is a spirit world. 

Revelation 12 explains that Satan the devil “deceives the whole world.” The Bible says he was cast down to Earth along with the demons! This may sound strange or old-fashioned to the intellectuals of this world, but if they would work from this foundation, understanding that this world is held captive by the devil, they would be able to understand why so many people are hearing voices and why those numbers have increased since the mid-1980s. They would understand that encouraging people to entertain those voices is the most dangerous prescription they can give! It is incredibly dangerous for society to try to normalize this sort of behavior! 

So there you have it!  Demons are controlling Bob Thiel, Dave Pack, and Gerald Flurry!  Livingston says so! We all knew that was coming, though all three of these guys claim their god is telling them what to do and say.  It never could be that their minds have short-circuited and need some serious medication.

Livingston then goes on to tell us what we should be doing when we see these guys and hear them.  

Livingston uses Paul's words:

The Apostle Paul wrote in Ephesians 5:11, “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.” In the Revised Standard Version it says, “but instead expose them.” This is exactly the opposite of what doctors are advising people to do.

Anyone with half a mind can see the fruits of darkness in the improperly named "continuing" Church of God, Philadelphia Church of God and the Restored Church of God.  Things just are not right in these groups. 

According to Livingston, as these end times rapidly wind down, Satan and his crew are normalizing the voices in people's heads.  Apparently, this is now various COG leaders justify their irrational behavior.  Of course, there is a remedy for this.  Read The Mystery of the Ages and you will never hear voices again!  Oh, and Gerald Flurry can help you stop those voices too!

Society, under the sway of Satan the devil, wants to normalize behavior that directly contradicts what God teaches in the Holy Bible. Undoubtedly, the media and the so-called educated of this world will label this as a progressive stance—but just keep watching, because the more people embrace this sort of behavior the crazier this world is going to get. The academics of the world are just as confused about how to solve the problem as the people going to them looking for answers. But it doesn’t have to be a mystery. You can understand why this is happening. You can understand who is involved and how they’re involved. And you can even know when these problems began to intensify. Chapter 2 of Mr. Armstrong’s book Mystery of the Ages and Trumpet editor-in-chief Gerald Flurry’s booklet America Under Attack will help you straighten out the confusing mess you see in the world today.

If the psychiatrists of the world set about examining all of the present day COG leaders they could publish hundreds of volumes on the craziness that fills the minds of these deluded guys.  While our craziest leaders today might be Thiel, Weinland, Pack, and Flurry, this does not let off the leaders of other COG groups.  While they are a little more benign, they are just as deadly in the end.

Why Do They Still Join?