MalcolmDow.com

Malcolm and Diana Dow of Beth Tephillah Ministry Centre and Roaring Mouse Counselling will be presenting a seminar on Dealing with Dissociation: Becoming the Dear Departed. It is on Saturday 5th June 2010, 10am to 4pm, at Chestnut Hill Conference Lodge, St James Avenue, Kallista, Victoria (Melways 75 K2).

Come and spend a day in the lovely Dandenong Range around a warm fire and Rob and Cathy Ellis’  lovely food, while you begin to learn how you CAN minister effectively to dissociation through childhood trauma, using the understanding and techniques developed by Anazao Counselling.

More information can be obtained from the Healing Prayer Ministries Network website Events Page, where a brochure and registration form can be downloaded.

In comments on previous posts Stuart Onans raised some concerns, saying people involved in prayer ministry are spiritists. I quote one of these comments in reply to my asking for his idea of what a spiritist is:

You must know the meaning spiritist: contacting demonic spirits.
The Holy spirit you contact is not the Holy Spirit of God. You have been fooled by unsound doctrine. 20th century methods who broke away to get more Holy Spirit and formed the pentecostal movement are a bunch of subjective Heretics. The tongues and prophecy in the early church were attributed to the apostles who planted those churches. The ordinary gifts stopped when the apostles died. However, the extraordinary gift of healing continued. This is Calvin and this is Biblical. I pray that God may destroy the Pentecostal movement within my lifetime.

Regards
Stuart

More recently Stuart sent me this email:

Hi Malcolm, 
 
I have a question. 
 
Are you a spiritist or a Christian?
Because the prayer activities you engage in at with prayer ministry groups 
is subjective and spiritist by nature. 

How about that! 

Cheers
Stuart

Hi Stuart,

 Thank you for your concern about our welfare, and the welfare of those you probably think we are leading astray. I appreciate you taking the time to correct what you see as our errors. The points you raise are certainly important ones, and we always wanting to learn more about how to live as true believers in an increasingly godless age.

 You write:

   >Are you a spiritist or a Christian?
  > Because the prayer activities you engage in at with prayer ministry groups
  > is subjective and spiritist by nature.

I will attempt to answer your question. I am indeed a Christian, as I understand the term; and in no way a spiritist, as I understand the term. However, because there are so many different views on just what constitutes a Christian today, and a great deal of misunderstanding and misinformation, I don’t think this conveys very much. The word ‘Christian’ has become a debased label – it means whatever each user intends by it, and something else to each listener. Because of this I prefer to call myself a follower of Jesus, which is what I believe the early church also did before the Romans bestowed the label on them as a term of abuse. They proudly accepted and adopted this epithet, and I would do the same, except that in their case each knew what the other meant, which is no longer true today. You will need to tell me what you mean by ‘Christian’ if you desire a more useful answer.

 However, I will give you are short version of my understanding of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. The Lord Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God, come in the flesh, born of the virgin Mary. He renounced the privileges of Godhood and became a human, lived a life pleasing to Father God, in total obedience, and committed no sin. He worked wonders on earth, as a man filled with the Holy Spirit, who came upon him at his baptism by John. He was falsely accused of blasphemy when he truthfully declared who he really was, was tried without attempting to defend himself, and executed by the Roman authorites at the instigation of the Jewish leaders. However, they did not take his life – he willingly gave it for us, to pay the price for our sin. As the Second Adam he descended to hell where he preached about who he is, and took back the keys of authority handed over to Satan by Adam. God vindicated him on the third day by raising him from the dead. The resurrected Jesus met with his disciples, both men and women, breathed on them, and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” He then commissioned them to do the same things he had been doing, and to teach subsequent disciples (followers) to do the same. He ascended to his Father, who gave him all authority in heaven and earth. Jesus asked the Father to send the Holy Spirit to live within all who would accept what he did for them and commit their lives to him. This Holy Spirit is the very presence of God, and the Spirit of Jesus, by which we are able to do the same things Jesus did while he was on earth in the flesh. The Holy Spirit is the source of our eternal life, which begins now, not when we die. To be a follower of Jesus (or Christian) is to live as Jesus lived, in obedience to the Father, and to do his work by the power of the Holy Spirit. This is possible because of the gifts the Spirit provides. The Holy Spirit is also regenerating those he lives within, giving them a new nature that is able to resist sin, and is no longer subject to Satan’s rule. A follower of Jesus once again has the spiritual authority that Adam had before the Fall, and has the ability to know the presence of God, to hear and see with spiritual ears and eyes in a way they did not have before, and the power to obey what they hear and do what they see the Father doing, like Jesus did on earth.

 Now some questions for you:

 1. You use the word subjective as if it is a bad thing. Why?

 2. You use the word ’spiritist’. What do you mean by it? If, as you say, it simply means one who contacts demonic spirits, then Jesus is guilty as well as the early church apostles and disciples, and the church fathers that followed them. Surely the reason for talking to demons must have a bearing on this!

 3. Which particular activities are you refering to as spiritist?

 4. In what way are those activities spiritist?

 5. You say, “your subjective procedures for contacting God are not scriptural.” If you would like to thoroughly read our teaching on this in the website www.listening2god.com you will see that our ’subjective procedures’, as you put it, are scriptural. If you rule out the possibility of God using the subjective as well as the objective a number of difficulties arise. First, you are limiting God and telling him what he may and may not do. This puts you in the place of God. You are also casting doubt on the wisdom of God creating in humans the ability to be subjective as well as objective. Without the possibility of subjectivity there would only be logic – no love, beauty, joy, faith, and so on. After all, faith is the evidence of things NOT seen!

 To me, the test of the objectivity of something is not whether it is strictly logical, or physically concrete (that is Greek thinking, not Christian) , but whether it produces the results it is supposed to produce. In the case of being a Christian, surely the test is whether you are able to do what Jesus commanded his followers to do. And what did he command them to do? To preach the gospel, to heal the sick, cast out demons, to raise the dead. In fact, he said we would do GREATER works than he did! In what way they are to be greater is not clear, but we are certainly seeing wonderful healings, having people come into the Kingdom, and even hearing reports of people being raised from the dead. But this would not happen if we relied on our own understanding without constantly listening to God’s voice, and using his spiritual gifts. We tried it that way for decades, with very little lasting fruit. If you are interested, I was brought up in a reformed, fundamentalist, protestant church. They were VERY zealous for the Lord, but to little effect. They were excellent at arguing their doctrinal positions, and had an explanation for everything, but it brought death to my spirit, not the life I experience more and more since leaving that church and seeking the reality of Jesus in other circles. Far from throwing my intellect out the window, I discovered that the Holy Spirit is now able to teach me and show me things that my heart has long desired but could never see before. And it is very intellectually satisfying. Do you expect me now to go back to what I had as a child? That’s not a very attractive proposition. Once having tasted …!

 A Christian lives in the same reality as a non-Christian, but that reality is enormously greater than the physical world. It is a spiritual reality that encompasses earth and heaven, humans, angels and demons, and God (although he is not contained by it). The difference is that the Christian can be aware of what is around, and live accordingly. Too many ‘Christians’ live in a diminished, impoverished subset of what is actually there for them to possess. When we learn to engage with all of reality, with the authority and fearlessness that being an eternal, spiritual being makes possible, life takes on a new, truer meaning. One of my favourite Bible passages is the one in 2 Kings 6 where Elisha and his servant are surrounded by an enemy army. Elisha asks the Lord to open his fearful servant’s eyes, and he sees that the hills surrounding them are filled with horses and chariots of fire. He then asks the Lord to blind the eyes of the enemy and singlehandedly leads them into a trap. This is the sort of spiritual vision and authority available to the follower of Jesus today, but so few desire it. They appear to be afraid of it. They would rather remain blind and themselves be led into a trap by the enemy of their souls.

6. In your posts to the group you use the word ‘Reformed’ as if this makes everything you say correct. Would you like to justify this position for me please? For example: Which particular type of ‘Reformed’ are you? Was Jesus ‘Reformed’? Were Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter or Paul ‘Reformed’ the way you are? Or do you have to follow Calvin to be ‘Reformed’? Or Luther? (Neither were very nice men, and both had some very strange ideas, even though they were both mightily used of God). Perhaps you prefer Zwingli? (One has to wonder about the ‘Christianity’ of all of these ‘Reformers’ given their murderous treatment of fellow believers such as the Anabaptists). Are you Calvinist? Hyper-Calvinist? Dispensational? Pre-mil, post-mil, a-mil … I could go on and on.

 There are many other varieties of ‘Christianity’ – Arminian, Lutheran, Anabaptist, Baptists of every doctrinal perspective you care to name, Presbyterians, Methodists, Congregationalists, Uniting Churches of many kinds, Churches of Christ, Anglicans, Anglo-Catholic, Pentecostal, Charismatic, non-Charismatic, Coptic, Orthodox, Episcopal, Roman Catholic, Emerging, Modern, Premodern, Postmodern, Ancient, Contemporary, Fundamentalist, Liberal, Reformed, Messianic, etc. Then there are the many mixtures of these. I even heard the other day of a group of Calvinistic Methodists!!! And there are many groups that call themselves ‘Christian’ but explicitly do not follow Christ as Messiah, such as Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Spiritualists (not Christian but certainly spiritist), and Christian Scientists (neither Christian nor scientists) – what does this say about the meaning of ‘Christian’? You see, the trouble with allowing only objectivity is that EVERYTHING then must be defined and labeled. Then the labels are thrown around as if knowing a thing’s name exempts the user from having to be able to explain what they understand it to be.

 7. You say, “The Holy spirit you contact is not that of God’s.” Who is it then? Do you know this because you heard it from God?  Is it knowledge formed from your own experience of how God still speaks to people today? Or is it a deduction from your theology about how God has changed and no longer does what he once commonly did? It would be wise for you to also consider the ramifications of your being wrong. You will then be declaring that something that is of the Holy Spirit is of some other spirit. This is a risky position to be in. How did the early church decide it was the Holy Spirit speaking in Acts 13:2 which resulted in Barnabas and Saul being sent off on the missionary journey?

 8. You say, ”You must stop your tongues and word’s of knowledge.” Why? You have said this before and when others contradicted you you ignored them. Would you like to tell me why you think this way? After all, Paul very clearly teaches that tongues is a gift of God and that he wished more people used them more. He said he himself used tongues more than any of them. Peter used words of knowledge - the story of Ananias and Sapphira being a prime example. Was he wrong to do so? After all, God certainly vindicated him in the resulting events.

Because your charges against us have been made in a public forum, it would be more appropriate to continue the discussion there. So I will put this post up on the blog and Google group and we can discuss it with others in the comments.

Regards

Mal

While trying to think about what I might write about in this blog, I discovered it can be quite hard to prioritise one’s passions. I should talk about my faith, because my walk as a follower of Jesus Christ is most important to me, around which everything else revolves and has meaning. However, I then risk devaluing other things, such as family, work, education, aspirations and hobbies. All of these things are important parts of who Malcolm Dow is.

The solution is obvious. I’ll write about them all, and more, as each seems significant at the time.  So, what are some of the main themes you will find here?

As I have already mentioned, I am a Christian, but it will soon become evident that I do not like the term “Christian” very much, for many of the same reasons I dislike the phrase “going to church”. Not that I discount the value of the Church. On the contrary, it is extremely important to me (after all, my wife and I are pastors!) but the words I have mentioned no longer convey the meanings to the world that they once did. I prefer to describe myself as a follower of Jesus. I don’t “go to church” – this has always been a nonsense phrase. Church is something I am a part of, not a place or building or organisation one can attend but an organism. More of these ideas later.

Another theme I will write about is my passion for effective use of the World Wide Web. Many years ago, when I learned how to build websites, I sought a less expensive way of having a number of sites. The result was the establishing of a small business through which I provide low cost web hosting and design. When I discovered blogging as an efective way of producing easily maintained sites which can more easily attract viewers, I began to generate some income using Google AdSense. This enables me to presently host 50 websites which pay for themselves, enabling me to provide sites for churches and community groups. This was the motivation for the business name Roaring-Mouse.com, derived from Leonard Wibberley’s book The mouse that roared. The idea is power for the little guy, as anyone who has read the book or seen the film by Peter Sellers will realise. The online publishing and web hosting section of Roaring Mouse is Roaring Mouse Publishing. This also focuses on optimising websites for the purpose for which they are intended.

A glance at the range of blogs I own (and there are too many of them, which makes it hard to keep them up to date) will indicate the breadth of my interests, both religious, philosophical, and technical.

I love books and reading. I’ve confessed elsewhere to being a full time student since the age of five (1955), and I have no intention of ceasing to explore and learn new things in a wide range of fields. In my early days I was more of an analyst, but in more recent years I have found the joy of taking all of those bits and pieces of knowledge and synthesising something new out of them. This has been especially true in the prayer counselling and training my wife Diana and I carry out through Williamstown Baptist Church and Beth Tephillah Ministry Centre and Roaring Mouse Counselling. As we try to bring healing to people Jesus teaches us new and more effective ways that bring more peace in a shorter time. It’s exciting, and as Dr. Charles Kraft says, “You can get addicted to the smiles on people’s faces”. You can read more about this in some of my other websites: Prayer Counselling, Listening to God, Intimacy with God and the Healing Prayer Ministries Network.

Then there is the more philosophical side of this, seen in A Reasonable Mystic, Mal’s Meanderings, Controversial Christian, Dark Night of the Soul, Godly Science, and Speak in Tongues. Or, if you just love books, as I do, there is A Book About.

Another of my lifelong passions is amateur radio and electronics, and I have a few websites and blogs under construction about these. I’ve held an amateur radio licence, with the callsign VK3ZDD since the early 1970s, and now hold VK3HL. I designed my first minicomputer long before the PC became a household appliance, and taught propgramming and computer technology at university for many years. Even now i still prefer to build my websites using real code, not the bloated website generating packages common today. One of my blogs, The Blog Works, is intended to help people master blog design and construction and use blogs effectively. The radio and electronics is covered by VK Web, Ham Search, Free Electron, and the Antenna Blog which is being rebuilt at present. The business side of this will use Roaring Mouse Electronics.

There are numerous other fields of interest and related websites which I will write about as they arise. Enjoy!

This Saturday Di and I are running our first day seminar on ministry to people with dissociation. By dissociation we do not just mean Dissociative identity Disorder (DID, or what used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder – MPD). Nor do we mean specifically victims of Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA), which seems to be a bit of a focus of some Christian counsellors workingin this area.

Rather, we have learned from our training with Anazao Counselling, and from subsequent experience ministering to others, that almost everybody dissociates to some degree. Not just daydreaming or zoning out, which are actually not varieties of dissociation, but protecting themselves from many difficult childhood experiences by creating alternate parts in their minds.

While preparing the lessons and resource sheets for Saturday’s seminar we have been going over case notes about sessions with people we have counselled in this way, and I am once again amazed at what Jesus will do with you when you are willing to get out of your comfort zone and ngage with something new and familiar.

Even more inspiring are the testimonies from people who have received ministry. It takes great courage to open up your very inner being and expose your deepest secrets to someone you might not know well. It might be even harder with people you do know well! This is especially true in the case of dissociation. You may not even know those secrets yourself until a dissociative part gains confidence in that Jesus will protect you and allows you to have the memory and feelings of some event about which you have little or no knowledge.

When I have obtained permission I will share some of these testimonies, but I just want to say now that there are some people around who were once in despair and who are nor rejoicing in their new found freedom and love for Jesus.

The Transformation of the Inner Man is one of the most important prayer ministry books you could ever read. A reader from Ihio said: “John and Paula Sandford are to be applauded for their dedication to God and His principals. They have shown great wisdom in their approach to the many issues we face in the busy days of modern living. Having put many of their suggestions to the test, I can state that John and Paula are not only Biblically sound; they are practical as well. Their teaching is setting people free throughout the world.”

I agree. This and their following book Healing the Wounded Spirit are the core of any prayer ministry library. Healing the Wounded Spirit is for everyone who suffers from hurts–past or present. God can help you to discern a wounded spirit in yourself and others, and, best of all, He will show you how to receive His healing power in your life.

The good news is that the material from these classic books is being updated in a new series called The Transformation Series. The first two of the four books in this new series have been published.

The first is Transforming the Inner Man: God’s Powerful Principles for Inner Healing and Lasting Life Change (Transformation).

The second is God’s Power to Change: Healing the Wounded Spirit. I highly recommend them to anyone in the healing or counselling ministry.

Because of our involvement in the teaching and practice of prayer ministry or prayer counselling, we recieve questions from many people.

For example, prospective clients want to know what prayer ministry is, why we use it, and how it differs from counselling or other forms of ministry. In particular we are often asked whether we are a ‘deliverance ministry’.

Other questions relate to specific practices. Some accuse us of using New Age techniques, or claim that prayer ministry is not needed because it was “all done at the Cross”.

Yet others are interested enough to want to know how they too might become trained and get involved in prayer ministry.

To help out we have produced some Frequently Asked Questions pages over at the Prayer Ministries Network website. This is a prelude to a more extensive prayer counselling website we are building, which we will post details about when it is complete.

Why not hop over to the PMN site now and have a look?

Many people have questions about prayer ministry, from basic ones about what it is, to queries about what practices should and should not be a part of prayer ministry, through to questions about where to find ministry and how to be trained to carry it out.

To help answer these questions we have set up FAQ pages on the website.

If you have questions not answered in the FAQ pages then email us and we will try to answer them. We are presently developing a more extensive set of questions with more complete answers on another prayer counselling resources website, and will post the details here when it is ready.

The seminar on dissociation to be run by Beth Tephillah Ministries in November is fully booked out. We are sorry that so many have missed out, but are compiling a waiting list for a repeat seminar early next year. Contact Beth Tephillah Ministry Centre if you are interested.

September’s Generational Iniquity seminar was packed out, and the comments of those who participated were very positive. We are having a follow-up afternoon on Saturday 13th October for those who attended the seminar and need help with their genogram.

We are preparing a new seminar series for 2008, with many new topics. Information will be posted as it becomes available.

Welcome to a new ministry centre – New Horizons Ministry Centre, hosted by the Uniting Church in Colac. Details are available on the HPMN Centres page.

Thanks to Rob Sterner-Lind for the following details:

Last year Colac Uniting Church had a vision for a prayer ministry centre that would develop into a centre providing many other ministry functions. Late last year they were able to purchase a beautiful 10 acre property situated on the edge of town. God’s hand was obviously on the purchase as approvals went through in what can only be described as a miraculously short time frame.

They now have a team of ten people some of whom have trained at Ellel, some at Restoration, some at Sonrise with all of the team undergoing in-house training in healing prayer ministry since early this year.

New Horizons’ doors have recently opened to ‘real’ clients and there is an air of excitement as we see clients’ lives being changed through the power of the Holy Spirit (not to mention the changes we have seen in team members over the past six months).

New Horizons is headed up by Rev. Kevin and Anne Cranwell.

A full day, in more senses than one, with 41 people at Beth Tephillah today for our Generational Healing seminar. Our publicity says “places are limited”, so the 5 who left it to this morning were fortunate that 4 who had booked were late cancellations.

It was cosy, but the buzz developing through the day indicated the good atmosphere we enjoyed together. Lots of interesting comments and questions as we explored our part in bringing healing to the unresolved sin issues in our family history. The use of genograms as a tool to identify patterns through the generations was new to some, and for some, just looking at their family tree brought understanding of issues they face, and why their life has not gone well.

In preparing the teaching, I was again struck by the immensity of God’s grace that the blessings of obedience to His ways is to a thousand generations of those who love Him, while the consequence of disobedience is generally limited to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Him. (Exodus 20:4). Also, as the Sandfords put it so well, “Wherever men will let Jesus Christ reap the dire effects of the law through forgiveness and atonement on the cross, God can prevent tragedy. (God) has set Himself to obey His own laws. So whenever men will not repent, and by that fail to give Him access, men must reap, generation to generation, whatever is sown, however unfair that may be to the unborn and however much our loving God doesn’t want that to happen.” (John and Paula Sandford, Transforming the Inner Man: God’s Powerful Principles for Inner Healing and Lasting Life Change, p. 188-189).

So we see that the atoning death of Christ is always effective for personal sin, and when applied to corporate sin, is equally effective to bring healing to generational lines. How wonderful is the blood of Jesus to deal with all sin and bring us into all the freedom of the children of God.

Hearing some of the family inheritances that people have, makes me very grateful for my own heritage, and full of admiration for those, who in spite of the generational iniquity have, by their commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ, brought blessing to their family line.

As Mal concluded today, “If done well, dealing with generational iniquity not only brings a great amount of healing to the person receiving ministry, but also to their children, and often also sideways to other members of their family.” We trust that for the families represented at Beth Tephillah today, this will prove true.

By the way, we’ve changed the date of the 4th seminar, on dissociation, to 24th November. Places are being booked much earlier for this than for our other seminars, so we expect another “full” day in November.