Birthday Boy Stephen King on Prophecy

This, taken from The Stand, concerning whether [the prophetess] Mother Abigail was “off her block”, is posted here on Stephen King’s 62nd birthday:

“Maybe she was,” Glen said mildly. “If you read your theology, you’ll find that God often chooses to speak through the dying and the insane. It even seems to me — here’s the closet Jesuit coming out — that there are good psychological reasons for it. A madman or a person on her deathbed is a human being with a drastically changed psyche. A healthy person might be apt to filter the divine message, to alter it with his or her own personality. In other words, a healthy person might make a [crappy] prophet” (p. 1044, unabridged version).

And, while I’m at it — “outside the box” and all — I should mention that it is, coincidentally, also the birthday of H.G. Wells, who said:

“Affliction comes to us, not to make us sad but sober; not to make us sorry but wise.” *
* – Correction — see Comments, below.

“Some people bear three kinds of trouble – the ones they’ve had, the ones they have, and the ones they expect to have.”

And …

“If you fell down yesterday, stand up today.”

Birthdays noted here.

HG Wells quotes.

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