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Aviemore outreach with Ian McCormack
A Glimpse of Eternity
Speyside Full Gospel Church is organising an evangelistic event with Ian McCormack.
Tuesday, 7 July 2009
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7.30pm
in
Peregrine Suite
Macdonald Aviemore Highland Resort
Aviemore
 Ian McCormack was night diving off the island of Mauritius when he was stung multiple times by Box Jellyfish, which are among the most venomous creatures in the world. His testimony relates how he clung to life while getting to hospital, was declared clinically dead soon afterwards, and how during this time he had an encounter with God, which radically changed the direction of his life.
“A Glimpse of Eternity” is the incredible true story of one man’s encounter with death and the realms beyond it. While diving off the coast of Mauritius, Ian McCormack later died in hospital and was dead for 15-20 minutes.
During this time he experienced both hell and heaven and came back to tell the story!
Dying was his doorway to true life and his story is transforming lives around the world as it touches on some of the deepest questions we all eventually ask.
Please pray that the Lord will show you someone whom you could invite to hear of one man's life-changing experience.
All are most welcome to this meeting. The admission is FREE
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Christians Together, 02/07/2009
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Alec (Guest) |
03/07/2009 08:41 |
I detect a smell of charismatic BS in this story
Death is a process not an event - you can have clinical death, legal death and brain death - all slightly different definitions
He was stung by jellyfish and "came back from the dead"
Fine. Lets say, for argument, that his head had been severed by a ships propellor. Or he had beem blown apart by a torpedo in a war zone.
Do you think he would have "come back from the dead " then?
This is all a bit like so called "faith healing". Whnever any ambiguity is removed in a given situation, it simply does not work. The old rather cliched examples given are "why doesnt God heal amputees or those with Downs Syndrome"
These are arguments often used by atheists. This whole area is extremely dangerous ground and those involved run the risk of making Christianity look ridiculous.
And yes, I do know about Lazarus and Jairus' daughter. These happened in the apostolic era, before the canon of scripoture was complete. We live in post-apostolic times.
Never heard of cessationism?
Heres a challenge: all you so called "faith healers" and resurrectionists out there. Just head off to Iraq or Afghanistan, and next time there is a car bombing or IED or even unwanted collateral damage, try uttering your charismatic mumbo jumbo over the fried and blackened body parts. See if you can "raise them from the dead"
You already know the answer
This whole business has more than a hint of Todd Bentley about it. When God works in healing, then its through the hands of doctors, not snake oil salesmen
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Andrea Mac |
03/07/2009 09:21 |
Alec,
Todd Bentley is a different kettle of fish altogether and I never had any interest in what he claimed.
Have you actually read the entire story of what happened to Ian? He was physically dead and being prepared for the mortuary - and that was in a proper hospital with lots of doctors and nurses who, I'm sure, had plenty experience of seeing people die.
Do you then disbelieve all the people who have been diagnosed with a tumour, visible on scans or x-rays, who were then told it had disappeared without any medical intervention?
I'm not saying that every story which people tell is genuine or doesn't have another explanation but I do believe that there are still miraculous instances of healing.
I don't need to head out to Iraq. My own brother died there from an IED and I would never have even thought of praying for his healing. I was just relieved and comforted to get his body back still in one piece. It is not always appropriate to pray for a person's healing. God is in charge of who lives and who dies and I respect that, however, I really do believe that he does sometimes bring people back from impossible situations and Ian McCormack's was perhaps one such example.
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Michael (Guest) |
03/07/2009 14:09 |
Alec asked: 'Never heard of cessationism?'
Indeed I have. It is the name given to a thoroughly discredited doctrine which - in a world where Christians can no longer be coralled within cessationist/geographic/denominational boundaries - has been and increasingly is being demonstrated to be falacious.
Cessationism is a psuedo-doctrine invented to disguise and explain the lack of Holy Spirit power in much of what we call 'the church'.
Cessationism teachings might just about get away with it in areas where the church is lifeless, but go to these part of the world where the church is growing robustly and try teaching it there.
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Editor |
07/07/2009 14:48 |
The contact for the Ian McCormack talk is Dave Philip who is the paster at Speyside Full Gospel Church in Newtonmore. His telephone number is 01540 670177.
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Alistair Matheson (Guest) |
12/07/2009 14:51 |
I trust the folks over in Speyside had a blessed time on Tuesday night. He was also in Portree on Wednesday 8th where he related his life-changing experience in a way that deeply and positively affected a number of those present - knowing some of these people personally, I can testify to that myself. He spoke at length, as he tends to when sharing his story (over 2 hours) and a recording of Wednesday night's testimony in Portree can be accessed on http://www.skyebiblechurch.net/Sermons.html
Michael -
Re- cessationism. A number of years ago I was in the West Indies and met a Chrisian Brethren preaching elder. He told me of some of his experiences exercising spiritual authority in 'power encounters' with occult phenomena (e.g. rebuking evil spirits in Jesus' name) - very prevalent in their culture and the church has to frequently respond to it. I asked him, "But I thought your denomination was cessationist?" to which he replied, "No, just the BRITISH version (and not all of that), as I learned when I was there!"
As you say, cessationism is pretty much absent in parts of the world where the church is growing robustly :) As Ian McCormack himself remarked on Wednesday night, "I only tend to get hard-hearted, cynical responses from religious people, rather than the unchurched. If I died in front of some people and was raised before their eyes, they still wouldn't believe."
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Alec (Guest) |
12/07/2009 20:02 |
Quote:
" If I died in front of some people and was raised before their eyes, they still wouldn't believe."
They might if his death was unambiguous. eg: head completely severed, burned to an unrecognisable crisp, or dissolved in acid till only bones remained.
If he came back to life and was completely whole and unblemished after that, then, yes, that would be evidence of a miracle healing
Show me unequivocal, undeniable, irrefutable documented evidence of that, and I might want to listen to him. Applies to people like Heidi Baker and Reinhardt Bonnke as well.
Call me when the video tapes are ready...
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Andrea Mac |
12/07/2009 23:36 |
Alec,
Are you suggesting then that the medical profession can't ever be sure that someone is dead unless they are in a state described above? That's quite a startling presumption and would cast a very serious question over the frequent possibility of people being buried alive.
My brother was none of the things you describe but his wife could be absolutely certain that he was dead when she viewed him in his coffin. Had God chosen to bring him back to life, there would have been no dubiety about it being miraculous.
You seem to be limiting God's power and telling Him what He can and can't do. But then, I don't suppose many others believed Jesus had really been dead either, so nothing has changed.
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alistair (Guest) |
13/07/2009 12:18 |
Hi Alec,
McCormack did not feel the need to qualify a death as 'unambiguous' any more than Jesus did in Luke 16:30-31 ("... They will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead"), but he was echoing exactly the same point: that with some people, it's not that they CAN'T believe so much as WON'T believe. Unbelief is every bit as much a state of heart and will as it is of mind and reason.
John Parker, Andrea Mac and Michael -
Well said. Were any of you at the evening in Aviemore? Andrea, I'm very sorry to learn of your brother in Iraq. Thankfully, you have come through your loss unembittered and with your faith strong.
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Andrea Mac |
13/07/2009 13:33 |
Thank-you Alistair,
Yes, God brought my entire family through this ordeal and I cannot describe the incredible comfort He poured out on us all to enable us to survive it.
I can't prove either to others that that comfort was there but I know in my heart it was and every member of my family say the same. When I look at the poor mother of one of the other men who died along with my brother, and see her having never moved on from that awful day and still trapped in her pain, I know what made the difference in our case.
I don't understand either why God allows certain things to happen in our lives, and I don't understand why He sometimes heals and sometimes doesn't, but I accept that it is because of the limits of my human understanding and the fact that I live in a damaged world. However, the knowledge that it is only temporary is in itself a comfort and it will all be made clear one day.
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alistair (Guest) |
13/07/2009 14:21 |
Hebrews 11:35-37 speaks of two kinds of faith in the same breath: faith that sees the dead raised and faith that triumphs through death. Each one is just as powerful.
Only today, I read a wonderful ongoing story of hope out of bereavement, written by my good friend Alex Gilles concerning his dear son Paul, a very special young boy whom my wife and I watched grow from a toddler until he died tragically in 1994 ... http://www.victorychristiancentre.co.uk/images/Paul%20Gillies%20Bible%20College%20Story.pdf
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