Doug Tales 23: I Was Going to Learn Something New!

Can you learn something—anything—different from what you already know if you don’t believe anything could be different from what you already know? What if you visit a medical doctor who shows you a healing device you had never seen before? Or, you learn that Oliver Cowdery was originally told in revelation that he had the gift of using a divining rod? Or, God provides you with “training wheel” tools to prepare you for learning something everyone around you says is impossible based on their traditions?

Doug Mendenhall became acquainted with many tools for obtaining light and conquering spiritual evil. He shares his first exposure to one of them in I See…Awake! (2015) on pages 13-17:

I have found over the years that many things that are considered to be evil by mainstream Christianity or by LDS really are just misunderstood. God has given us tools to use and of course those have been taken and perverted by the Adversary, so much so that much of what was once “considered good” is now felt to be of abject evil.

For example, some years ago my aged mother had shattered her shin which required surgery to repair. Several months later the pain still remained, so we took her to my sighted daughter’s doctor. My daughter had told me that this doctor was not a regular allopathic physician who practiced only the traditions of Western Medicine. I was going to learn something new!

We arrived at her home office and told her of my mother’s accident and subsequent pain. She had my mother get up on the exam table and lay on her back. The doctor then left the room and came back with a crystal pendulum on a chain. I was surprised to see a doctor walk in with that in her hand.

“So what are you going to do with that?” I asked.

“I’m not going to do anything with it, you are,” she answered.

I didn’t know why she wanted me to do anything with it. I really had no opinion of pendulums, only what the average “Christian” might tell you, they are evil, something that witches and soothsayers used. Well, I guess that might have been my opinion, too. The doctor then asked me to hold on to the end of the chain and let the pendulum on the other end dangle over my mother’s injured shin. I was instructed to hold it very carefully over the shin and to not move my arms or hands, to keep very still and let the pendulum do the work. I smiled inside, thinking that this ought to be really good. We could soon get this over with and leave. All I can say is thank the good Lord that the doctor’s faith was intact, and God was not going to have to rely on the disbeliever who had been asked to hold the pendulum above his mother’s leg.

I really liked this doctor because she had helped our daughter many times. But this really stretched my judgmental box. I sat in a chair next to my mother and put both elbows on the edge of the examination table. I was not going to move. I grabbed the end of the chain and held it so that the pendulum was directly above my mother’s shin bone, making sure that when this did nothing for my mother, I was not going to be the one the doctor blamed. I held as still as possible; I could feel and hear my heart beating.

Suddenly the pendulum quivered and started to slowly spin in a counter clock-wise motion over her shin. It made a pretty big circle for about ten minutes. It then slowed down and stopped. It quivered again and started going clock-wise in a big circle. After a while it slowed down and stopped.

The doctor looked over and said, “It’s done now.”

I looked at my mother and asked her how she felt. “The pain is gone,” she replied. The Doctor explained that when it went counter clock-wise, it was taking out the negative energy. Then when it went clock-wise, it was putting in Christ’s healing energy. I was shocked and couldn’t respond in any way. Mom never complained about that shin again.

This was one of my first introductions to a tool, an instrument that can be used as the holder intends. It can be used properly and can be of great benefit. It can be used improperly and be a great detriment if the sender is evil and desires to cause problems. Any tool is not inherently evil; it is just a tool. These past fifteen years the Lord has introduced me to many different tools. They operate by God’s natural law.

Joseph Smith was given several tools when he secured the metal plates out of the ground. One was what he called the Urim and Thummim, and another was a tool called a seer stone. He used both to “see” other things. He used the seer stone for a while to translate the plates, which became the Book of Mormon. He’d put it in the bottom of a hat and put his face in the hat. By doing this he was shown many things. He saw into the “metaphysical” world, or we might call it the spirit realm. Others procured seer stones and Hiram Page evidently used his improperly. Once again it is just a tool. Can you tap into light with it? Absolutely. Can you tap into dark with it? Absolutely. What is your intent? Where is your heart with the Lord Jesus Christ? After a while Joseph didn’t need the tool anymore; he could just look and see. He had become a true seer and had the gift of sight. The seer stone was just “training wheels” that the Lord had him use until it wasn’t needed any more…

I had a “spiritual rebirth” when our daughter, Denise, came out of her coma and came home with spiritual sight, with her “third eye” open to the spirit world, both light and dark. Now I’ve had an ecclesiastical leader tell me that my belief that my daughter can see through the veil is satanic. I thought it was just a gift from God, like Oliver had the gift from God to use a stick to find things. I have to say that he is right only if my intent is to use the gift from God for evil purposes. If the intent is to do the Lord Jesus Christ’s work, then it is of the Lord. My rebirth has gone on for some 15 plus years now, and it keeps getting better as I learn new things and as my own spiritual gifts have opened up. The more I learn, the more I realize that I don’t know very much. What we have experienced and learned we are to share in books, and this is one of those sharing experiences.

Later I would learn about energy work and healing and how that also is based upon laws decreed from the foundations of this world. On my mission to Spain in 1976 my companion and I experienced the healing of a man who had not walked in 6 years. He jumped out of bed and started to shadow box, then ran up the street shouting that he’d been healed. We two young missionaries stood there dumbfounded, in shock. It worked. We had laid hands on him and in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ declared him to be healed, and he was. Was that a “metaphysical” experience? Some would say it was. For us it was a humbling experience showing us what faith could accomplish—one of God’s laws again.