October 18, 2023 Show with Marcia Montenegro on “The Testimony of a Former Astrologer” (Part 1)

The Program Opens With Iron Sharpens Iron Radio’s Mission and Guest Introduction

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of Founding Father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth, who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 18th day of October 2023.

And, in fact, I request a prayer for, or should I say from, my listening audience for myself today, as today is the birthday of my late wife, Julie, and to this day, I have mixed emotions. It's a bittersweet day for me, as are some other special days on the calendar, so I would appreciate you lifting me up in a special prayer for today.

But today we have on the program a first-time guest, and I'm fascinated by the subject that we are going to be addressing today. I've never addressed this subject, at least as a single topic for an entire interview.

Today we have on the program Marcia Montenegro, a former astrologer who was saved by the grace and mercy of Christ Jesus and founded CANA, which stands for Christian Answers to the New Age, and today we're going to be addressing the testimony of a former astrologer.

It's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Marcia Montenegro.

Yes, hi.

By the way, am I pronouncing your first name right? Is it Marcia? Is it Marcia? Is it Marcia?

It's Marcia. It's Marcia. Yeah.

Marcia. Well, I'll remember that.

It's okay. I don't mind Marcia.

And I'm going to give our listeners our email address right away in the event that they have questions of their own. It is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA.

Only remain anonymous if your question is regarding a personal and private matter. Let's say you have a loved one who is caught up in astrology and other occultic practices and you don't obviously want to identify who you are because the person will automatically know who you are, to whom you are referring.

We understand that reasons like that would compel you to remain anonymous. But if it's a general question, please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence. Well, Marcia, let's start the program by hearing what kind of religious atmosphere, if any, in which you were raised.

Childhood Religion, Nominal Christianity, and Early Restlessness

Well, yeah, that's a good question. I guess you could say there was a religious atmosphere, but it wasn't very definitive. My mother was raised Southern Baptist, so she believed that children should go to church.

And going to church was, you know, a pretty good thing to do. And so my sister and I had to go to church, but we lived overseas a lot. So the choices were limited.

Was your father in the military or something?

He was in the Foreign Service. He was a diplomat and he was an agnostic. So that's why the question is interesting, because you have an agnostic father and a Southern Baptist mother who really lived kind of like a nominal Christian, except for the church going.

And so the churches were, you know, like there was a French church in New Caledonia, which is a island in the South Pacific. It's still a French colony. And we went to a French, well, the main language was French.

So it was a French speaking church. And I went to a French school. And I don't really, the only thing I remember about that church is the minister stopped in the middle of a message one Sunday to reprimand me for talking.

I remember that from my days as a child in Catholic school when we would have to go across we'd have to go across the street to the church for special holy days. I am no longer Catholic. I am a Reformed Baptist ever since my salvation in the mid -1980s.

But I remember the, especially a Father White, who was an elderly priest, was one of the few that would actually reprimand children from the altar.

Oh, yeah. Well, apparently I kind of remember that because my mother was just mortified and, you know, grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the church outside to scold me. I remember standing there outside knowing she was really mad and, you know, somewhat embarrassed, although I was pretty young.

So I wasn't, I don't think I realized how loud I had been or, you know, what a terrible thing it was. So I just, you know, that's what I remember then. That's my only memory of that church. But then we went to kind of a generic army Protestant service in Berlin when we lived there, but I don't remember it very well.

So when we came to back to the Washington, D .C. area, I did get involved in a Baptist church and I went. I was pretty regular. I went every Sunday. I went to the youth group. I went Sunday nights and I'm not sure if I went Wednesday nights.

But, yeah, I think I did go Wednesday nights because that's when the youth group met. And so I was very involved. You could even say always did my Sunday school lesson. But I was not a Christian. I mean, I think if you had asked me, I would have said I was a Christian because I assumed I was.

But I actually did not understand the gospel. I did not understand why Jesus came at all. I didn't understand all these stories about Jesus. I thought they were nice stories, but I just didn't have the big picture at all.

And I didn't understand why he died on the cross. So that just kind of threw me. And I'm sure that it was preached. But for whatever reason, it didn't get through to me. And so I had friends in school who were different religions.

And by the time I was in the 10th and 11th grade, I was pretty much rejecting Christianity because my friends were so serious about their beliefs. And I started thinking, well, why should I be a Christian?

I could really just explore other religions and just choose what I want. And so that was that was my mindset at that point, which stayed with me, you know, really for a long, long, long time until I did encounter the true Jesus Christ.

But up until that point, it was a matter of exploration to me. And my friends, I was not really interested in their religions. Well, I was interested, somewhat interested, but I wanted to be able to explore, you know, all everything I wanted to explore.

I didn't want to be limited. So one of my friends was a Mormon. One was a Baha 'i. One was she just called herself a free thinker. I think she was probably agnostic. And the other one was a was a Quaker.

And I was very.

Wow, quite a mix.

Yeah, I know. It's quite an eclectic mix, isn't it? Baha 'i, Mormonism, free thinker and Quaker.

It's like there's a joke in there somewhere. There's a joke that involves a bar in that somehow.

Yeah, the Mormon and the Baha 'i went into the bar. So the Baha 'i girl wanted me to go to a meeting at the house where they met. And I did. I did. You know, she kept asking me and I was kind of curious.

So I did decide to go. And my father I did not have my driver's license yet. So my father had the task of taking me there. But it was to an area, you know, a neighborhood that he wasn't familiar with.

And my father was famous for being terrible at directions. And so we drove around and around and around for a long time. And finally, my father gave up. And of course, you didn't have cell phones in those days back in the dark ages.

And and so my father gave up. And he said, you know, I'm just you know, I'm not going to keep doing this all night. So we went home. So I never got to the Baha 'i meeting, but I was interested in the Quakers.

And I actually went to Quaker meeting a few Quaker meetings with that friend. And her name was Laura. I remember that. And then my freshman year of college, I I went to Quaker meetings. And later, when I was getting into the new age, I went to Quaker meetings.

So for a while there, I was seriously exploring Quakerism. I read books on the history of Quakerism. It didn't seem very Christian to me. It was kind of like related to Christianity, but not really Christian.

And it was so different from the Baptist church that, you know, I had been involved in. And I think that's another reason I liked it. So I. That's where I was when I went to college. And then in college, I got interested in Eastern religions.

I did a project on Gandhi. So I had to read a book he wrote called. Well, no, he didn't write it. This was written by Tolstoy, but it was a huge influence on Gandhi. The kingdom of God is within you. And that was a big influence on Gandhi.

I was influenced by Gandhi's pacifism. Of course, that pacifism came from the Quakers, too. And I was very interested in Eastern religions and Hinduism in particular at that point. And I have to also put in here because I left it out because they're like two tracks here.

So that was one track. The other track was my interest in the supernatural and the paranormal, which actually started back in high school. So I actually had had a dream when I was 11 years old that got me interested.

I didn't do anything about it. I just had this interest. But in high school. I read a little bit about things like powers of the mind, you know, like psychic powers. Right. Or seeing dead people straight, you know, strange on you.

To me, they were usually classified as strange, unusual or bizarre. So I was reading that kind of material and very intrigued by the idea of psychics and palm readers. And I was also very, very interested in astrology.

I had a strong interest in astrology, probably starting around age 13. And I even got my father to take me to hear Jean Dixon, who at the time was very famous columnist. She had horoscope columns in all the major newspapers of the country.

I mean, of course, a lot of people now, especially under age 40 or so, would not know who she is. But at one point, her name was a household name. Pretty much everybody in the country. I remember Dixon.

Yeah. So I actually got to hear her speak at the at the Washington Press Club. And I was so excited about that. So I had that going on, too. So I had this interest in astrology and the paranormal. And then I started getting this interest in Eastern religions.

And those were kind of like twin tracks that I was on in terms of spirituality. And so in college, I had a few more paranormal experiences. And these experiences verified to me that there was a spiritual realm out there that you could learn about, that you could investigate.

And that's what really fascinated me.

Dreams, Paranormal Experiences, and a Growing Fascination With the Supernatural

Why don't you describe some of those experiences?

OK, well, my my experience when I was 11, the one that really captivated me, I guess, or started me on that path was a dream I had. Where I was in a house looking for a little boy that I a boy I actually had known when I was really young, like age five, five, around five years old.

And I was looking for him in the house. Now, I had not seen him or talked to him since I was five years old. We had moved. That's when we moved to New Caledonia, the French colony in the South Pacific.

And I had not, you know, I completely lost touch with him, of course, and hadn't even really thought about him. But in this dream, I was looking for him and it was very urgent that I find him. And I kept calling his name.

And I finally got to this closet and I opened the closet door. And if the closet was packed with all these little children, you know, all young children, probably around the age, you know, five, which is the last time I saw him.

And they all kind of giggled and ran out. And I said, is Gary here? Is Gary in here? And they just ignored me and I didn't see Gary. And I woke up and I was very I was troubled that I hadn't found Gary.

And I thought, well, that's kind of a strange dream. Why did I dream about him? You know, I don't ever think about him. You know, that's somebody I played with when I was a kid, you know, because now I'm 11 and I'm thinking of myself as pretty grown up, you know, because I'm almost a teenager.

So. So then a couple of months later, I'm in the car with my mother and she says to me out of the blue, she says, do you remember little Gary Gates? And I said, yeah. And she said, you know, you used to play with him when we lived in, you know, Arlington, Virginia.

And I said, I remember I said, yeah, I do remember him. And she said, well, I got news from so and so. And he died. He died of leukemia. And I then when she said that, I remember my dream or I had remembered it when she first asked me if I remembered him.

And I remembered the dream. And I said, when did when did he die? And she said, well, I'm not sure, but I think it was a couple of months ago. That was about the time I had the dream. Now, of course, I don't know exactly when he died and I don't know exactly when I had the dream.

But I thought at the time. I thought, wow, I I dreamed about looking for him and I couldn't find him because he was dead. So I felt I had received this information in some kind of psychic, you know, supernatural fashion.

And I don't think I use the word psychic. I was only 11. But, you know, my thinking was that this was something beyond the normal, beyond the natural. And I didn't really know what to make of it. I did not tell my mother about the dream because I wasn't sure what her reaction would be.

And I didn't tell anybody about it. So I just lived with that dream. You know, the memory of that dream experience for several years now in college. In college, I had a few experiences. I had an out of body experience while I was awake.

I actually thought I had died. And I didn't tell anybody about that either, because it was so alarming and so bizarre. That I saw my body on the bed and I was on the ceiling. And that's why I thought I had died.

And I just I could not. And it was during the daytime. And like I said, I wasn't asleep. I was just lying there resting between classes. Well, I didn't tell anyone about that. Now, the other thing that happened in college that I remember, I was with some friends and we had gone out to eat at a fast food place.

And we were driving back to the campus. And I was driving because I was the only one of our group that had a car. So I was always the driver. Oh, sorry. Let me. I'm going to silence my phone. So because it'll distract me if it does that again.

So all of a sudden. I was trying to shortcut. So instead of getting on the main road, I was taking the side road that was really kind of a narrow, almost a dirt road. There were hardly I don't think there were hardly any lights on it, street lights or anything.

I just thought I would try it out. And I remember as I was driving, I saw in my mind, I just thought I had this picture of a dog and hitting a dog. And this thought came to me how awful it would be if I hit a dog with my car.

So I said out loud to my friends, wouldn't it be awful if I hit hit a dog? And, you know, my friends were kind of like, well, yeah, that would be awful, Marsha. I'm kind of like, what do you know? They were kind of wondering, like, why are you talking about that?

But it was just such a strong impression on me. And about I don't know how much later, maybe 30 seconds or less. Three or four dogs ran in front of the car. When I had that that thought of hitting a dog, I slowed down.

I slowed my car down. And about 30 seconds or less later, three or four dogs ran in front of my car. And then my friends were like, oh, wow, you know, you just said you were afraid of hitting a dog. And then these dogs ran in front of the car.

And I said, I know if I've been going faster, I might have hit them. But I slowed down so that, you know, I don't think any of us tried to analyze it or I don't really remember if we discussed it or not.

They definitely thought it was strange. They thought it was kind of cool, though. You know, they thought that was kind of a cool thing. I mean, there was lots going on in the country at that time. So there was a lot of influx of Eastern religions.

The Vietnam War was going on. There was there was a lot of unrest and chaos in the culture. So, you know, I've had people say, well, didn't your friends really think that was strange? Were they freaked out?

And I'm like, so many freaky things were going on in the in the culture that I don't think I think it was hard to freak people out at that point. It really was. I mean, people were doing, you know, psychedelic drugs and stuff.

So which I did not do, by the way. So those were things that happened. Now, I now going back as a Christian, I have explanations for those things, because sometimes when I tell those stories, people will ask me.

I mean, Christians will ask me, well, what do you think really happened? I think in the case of Gary, I think that I think he had already died when I had that dream. I do believe that I had spirit guides when I was an astrologer, which I can get into later.

And most people in the occult and new age have spirit guides. They believe the spirit guides are benevolent, but the spirit guides are actually fallen angels. And I think that somehow that information was given to me and it was supernatural.

Yeah. And I think it was done to get me interested in the area of the supernatural.

Coincidences, Possible Spiritual Impressions, and a Cessationist Perspective

Let me let me just go out there and maybe you can give me your your opinion on it. I have had as a Christian. On a number of occasions, I'm saying I guess, but I don't think I'd be far off to say at least 10 times.

I have had very similar kind of things happen as a Christian. And I'd like, for instance, just to give you an example. Having a dream about a childhood friend as an adult in my 50s. Having a dream about a childhood friend that I haven't spoken with in decades.

And then the next day I get a call from them or having a dream about a specific Hollywood celebrity. And then the next day when I wake up, that person is in the news or having died and things like that.

I have had those kinds of things happen to me. And what do you make of that? Since I was a Christian, I was not involved in any kind of a cultic behavior or or did. Nor did I have a mindset towards that.

So and I'm not not to insult too many of my charismatic friends, but I'm not a charismatic. I'm a reformed Baptist and a cessationist when it comes to the sign gifts and so on. So what would you guess those things may have been?

You can't ever rule out coincidence. Now, even in my case of the dream about Gary, you one could say it was coincidence. The reason I don't think it was is because that helped draw me to the supernatural and eventually into what I got involved in.

I don't know. I don't know how to explain these things. Unless when Christians have them, unless they're having a lot of it. And then I think something might be going on in their life that they're actually feeding their mind on something that's not that's not Christian.

And that may be causing that. But just having occasional things, I think, can usually be explained either by coincidence or if it's something maybe the Lord wants you to know. I mean, depending on what it is, you know what I what I have, a lot of people tell me is, well, I had this dream about, you know, this plane crashing.

And then the next day there was news of a plane crash. Well, that's a coincidence because, you know, I tell them that's not a dream for telling anything unless you knew the flight number. You knew where the plane was flying and how many people were on the plane.

Now, if you had a dream that gave you all that information, that would be a dream telling the future. You know, like, you know, I had a dream one time about a boat sinking and I watch this boat sink. And the next day there was this news about this ferry packed with people somewhere, I think, off like in near Scandinavia, one of the Scandinavian countries that had sunk.

But my dream was just it was coincidence because a boat sinking is there only so many things you can dream about. And and, you know, a boat sinking is not specific enough. If I had dreamed the name of the boat, how many people how many passengers were on the ship or how many of them drowned or something very specific that that would then it would be harder to explain as coincidence.

But I just wrote my dream off as coincidence. And I think that's all.

The First Break and Announcement of the Next Stage of the Interview

OK, we're going to go to our first commercial break. And when we come back, I want you to obviously bring us to the point where some of these experiences, as you already mentioned, led you into a further, deeper investigation, exploration and practice of astrology to the point where you actually became an astrologer.

And we'll hear about that when we come back. If anybody has if anybody has a question for Marsha on anything involving astrology in the occult, our email address is Chris Arnzen at Gmail dot com. C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at Gmail dot com.

As always, give us your first name, at least your city and state and your country of residence and only remain anonymous. If your question involves a personal and private matter, don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages.

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Okay, yes.

Okay, and I hear you now. Thank you.

Okay, yeah. Yeah, he did mute me. Sorry about that. Yeah, I was talking to my son.

Continuing Toward Astrology, Tibetan Buddhism, and New Age Practice

Okay. Now, let's pick up where you left off. Well, let me first mention our email address again. If anybody listening wants to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N, gmail .com.

Give this first name at least, city and state and country of residence. Now, bring us to the point where these experiences that you were having, that you believed at the time anyway, were supernatural and leading you into a deeper interest in astrology and the paranormal and all things connected with the occult.

Tell us about what was the thing that clinched the deal that made you say, I am going to become an astrologer. And how did you go about doing that?

Okay, sure. Yes, I continued on that path kind of, you know, investigating areas like that. There was a girl in college who claimed she could see auras. And I talked to her a lot. When I got out of college, I have to say this because it was part of my journey.

One more thing that happened while I was in college is that when I was at my grandmother's home on a break, one morning, what I thought was a dead person appeared to me and said what day he had died.

Just when you were wide awake?

Yeah, yeah. And I was very impressed. You know, I felt special. I thought, wow, you know, this is really great. I mean, I was very excited about it. Here again, I did not tell my grandmother about it.

My grandmother was a very staunch Southern Baptist and I knew that she would have definitely not liked me telling that experience to her. And so and I didn't want to upset her. So I definitely did not tell her.

And that got my interest in communication with the dead, which actually was an area that I first investigated or I investigated the most after I got out of college. So I was reading a lot of books on that books by people like Hans Holzer, who was who was kind of famous at the time.

He wrote a lot of books about these places that were supposedly haunted. And he would go in there and have encounters with these spirits that were haunting the places and he would get them to leave that kind of thing.

So long before the movie Ghostbusters came out. And I was reading a lot of his material and I was reading other material. This went on for a few years. The same time I'm reading books on Hinduism and I'm reading things like that.

And all of that kind of converged finally to this point where I decided I wanted to do serious study. I wanted to actually take a structured course and learn some of this stuff. You know, I just kind of random things, you know, reading random things or talking to random people wasn't enough for me anymore.

So I started, you know, besides my reading, I decided to take classes. Now, one of the classes I took, the first one was called Inner Light Consciousness. And actually this I didn't go out and look for this.

I found out about this class at Quaker House. And I was living in Atlanta, Georgia at the time. I went to college in Florida, but I ended up living in Atlanta, Georgia. And Quaker House announced this course that would be that they would host.

Now, Quaker House was not sponsoring the course, but they were hosting it. Yeah, right, right. And it was called Inner Light Consciousness. And that really appealed to me because the Quakers, you know, the whole thing of the Quakers is the inner light that there is an inner light in every man to guide him.