Meanwhile there was all sorts of things going on that were either spiritual or unexplained. I would look at the clock and find numbers like 2:22 and 12:12. This was going on at a far greater rate than chance, so I decided to run an experiment. I set four
different clocks around the house to four different times and recorded every time I looked at the clock. One in ten of what I got were such numbers, when by chance it would be one in sixty.

Layo's astrological readings were very precise and described exactly the character of people with whom she interacted and of whom she knew little or nothing. Dorothy was able to say very precise things that she had no way of knowing. At one point Layo
and I were under an impression that we were under psychic attack from some people on the Internet. One of them told her, “Your crystal will not protect you,” even though he had no knowledge that she had a crystal.

We saw a gypsy named Cindy. Cindy was able to tell the character of people with whom we were dealing simply by looking at their names as Layo wrote them. She was able to tell me that I was corresponding with a man from California who was a male
chauvinist. She was able to tell me on one day that I had been in a fight with my father the previous evening. She was able to tell where I was going without me either telling her or wearing identifying clothes. She believed in Jesus Christ and in the
wrongdoing of Satan, but she also believed in karma and past lives. She said that she had had visions and dreams since childhood.

After Layo and a number of others showed to me the validity of astrology and related pursuits, I wanted to prove it to other people. This got me attacked quite a lot. There were people who thought that I was nuts, and there were others who thought that I
was evil. I simply wanted to convince others of the validity of what I had been shown. I found out that there have been any number of people who sought to do the same thing. The problem was that the academia practiced a dishonest gimmick of stating that �
��an extraordinary claim requires an extraordinary level of proof,” and this lead it to throw away much valid research. Now I see nothing at all extraordinary about something that the bulk of humanity believes in. Far more extraordinary is the claim
that only people with no spirituality are sane or rational, and that the rest of humanity is crazy or stupid. Some of these people equate spirituality with narcissism. I can think of no more narcissistic stance than theirs.

On the Internet, the “skeptics” were running around being unbelievably vicious. They told a 15-year-old girl that she was mentally defective. There was an astrologer named Edmond Wollmann on whom they fixated and whom they were attacking in a very
bad way. When I started writing my analysis, they trained their guns on me. The result was over a decade of unbelievably nastiness, including slanders, forgeries, harassment and even messing with my former boss.

In these people's viciousness and intolerance I found a reflection of similar viciousness and intolerance by the Soviet Communists who had influenced me when I was a child. Of course tolerance itself is a concept that can be confused. It is valid to have
tolerance for other people, including people who are nothing like oneself. It is not valid at all to have tolerance for lies. With cultures, the issue becomes more complex. Most cultures have some things right with them and some things wrong with them.
They are not equal in that; some have more of one and some have more of the other. I see no reason at all to tolerate a culture that thinks it right to throw sulfuric acid into the face of a child, and I do not see why feminists would either. However
neither is it rightful to seek a monoculture that destroys other ways of life and all the wisdom that are in them while prevailing upon people within them to be the same person living the same life.

With the existence of spiritual powers making itself unescapable to me, I could no longer maintain the worldview that I had had. Meanwhile I remained hostile to Christianity, aggressively so. So what happens to a spiritual person who challenges
Christianity but that Christians would correctly challenge him right back?

At that time I was completely resistant to Christianity. At some points I saw it as the root of all wrong. However I ended up changing my mind on that subject – completely. The existence of such phenomena challenges the idea that we are only evolving
matter. More importantly, in validating spiritual experiences it validates the existence of the greatest and wisest spiritual power in the Universe – God – and the greatest spiritual teacher that ever lived – Jesus. It took a long time to convince
me of this; but I now believe it. If Jesus can make a believer of someone like me, then He can make a believer of anyone.

Now there are many people who think that Christianity is for the stupid; but there is nothing stupid at all about Paul or Augustine. Or they believe that Christians are bigots; yet we are seeing many atheists and many people from other religions convert
to Christianity when they had not been raised in the faith. Some say that it is fanatical; but fanaticism can happen under any ideology. And of course there is the claim that Christians are brainwashed. This once again can happen under any ideology. They
understand how something is transmitted; they do not understand how or why it started. Why – and how – did a religion that was started by some disaffected radicals in a conquered country outlast the great Roman Empire, which had advanced learning on
many subjects? Clearly we are seeing something here that is not stupidity or bigotry or brainwashing. There are all of the preceding in any paths, both ones successful and ones unsuccessful. Yet Christianity is the most powerful religion in the world
today.

They say that beaten paths are for beaten people. Why are paths beaten? Because they work. And in any beaten path, there is the room for both original thought and improvement on that of others. Someone initiates; others extend. There is a need for both
innovation and improvement on other people's ideas. That is why paths become beaten. They are laid by many people traveling them, and because of that they extend very far.

And then of course we see such claims as that religion is something that the rulers use to control the population, or that it is “opium for the masses.” Both Communism and what some Marxists in America call “ideology of mass consumption” can be
used in the exact same way. Christianity was not started by government attempting to control the population. It was started by people with no political or economic power. It ended up converting both the rulers and the ruled alike. So when Marx saw an
order based on exploitation, he thought that Christianity was a part of the problem. Certainly it got used that way; but once again that is not how and why it started. What we are seeing here is what I wrote before – a confusion between a value and the
misuses of the value. Just about everything that has appeal to people can be used for wrong. That does not make it wrong in itself.

And then of course there is the talk of the cruelties of the Inquisition. There were many much vaster atrocities than Inquisition, and Stalin would make the Grand Inquisitor look like an angel.

So Jerry Falwell was saying that the Antichrist was a Jewish person of foreign ancestry in his 20s living in America. That of course fits me. If there is such a person as the Antichrist, I would advise him to come to Christ. That way he is not doing his
part to bring about a scenario that would to him and many others be undesirable. God did change His mind when He wanted to kill off the Jews at the supplication of Moses. If we are good enough, He may think twice about the Revelations scenario. At the
same time we must do everything in our power to solve the world's problems. As Augustine said, “Pray as if everything depended on God, work as if everything depended on you.”

More at https://sites.google.com/site/ilyashambatbiography

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