\u201cLuther tells how on Good Friday he was meditating on the wounds of Christ when suddenly a vision of the Savior appeared on the wall. He said: \u2018I thought maybe it was a celestial vision. However, it occurred to me that our Lord Christ appeared on earth in a much more humble and meaner fashion than that and that I have in the words of the sacrament all I need or want. Therefore I spoke to the vision thus: Be gone, insolent devil. Whereupon it vanished, clearly showing from where it came.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy should such an experience be dangerous or even of the devil? Think about it for a minute. What would one\u2019s proclamation be if one were to credit such a vision? One would immediately be wrapped up in how it occurred. Everybody would want to know:\u00a0\u2018How did you do it, Martin? How did it come about? What does one have to do? What does it inspire?\u2019 And so on and so forth.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd one\u2019s proclamation would become drastically different \u2013 centered on the self and its spiritual experiences. And then one would be under accusations like:\u00a0\u2018What if it doesn\u2019t work?\u2019 That\u2019s why I think Luther could say such things are of the devil.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe never doubted that there were spiritual forces about. The trouble was that there were lots of them and of different kinds.”<\/p>\n
Note: For the full Luther quote Forde discusses here, go to Major Theological Issues<\/em><\/strong><\/a> on this website, then to Spirituality <\/em><\/strong>and click on \u25cf Inner Experience is Ambiguous<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cLuther tells how on Good Friday he was meditating on the wounds of Christ when suddenly a vision of the Savior appeared on the wall. He said: \u2018I thought maybe it was a celestial vision. However, it occurred to me that our Lord Christ appeared on earth in a much more humble and meaner fashion […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1412"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1414,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1412\/revisions\/1414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}