Summary: <a href="http://skeptiko.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/please-share-skeptiko3.jpg"></a><br> Michael Cocks, has been an Anglican Priest for 60 years, so what’s he doing talking to channeled spirits?<br><br> <a href="http://skeptiko.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/michael-cocks-skeptiko-344.jpg"></a><br><br> <br> photo by: Skeptiko<br> Welcome to Skeptiko, where we explore controversial science and spirituality, with leading researchers, thinkers and their critics. <br> I’ve been wanting to do a show about channeling for quite some time because between this crazy scientific atheism, “I wouldn’t believe it even it was true” mindset, and the gullible, “I’ll believe anything as long as I don’t have to think too hard and it doesn’t conflict with my existing beliefs”… between those two, there’s a huge amount of stuff that claims to be channeled material from ascended beings — whatever that means — that purports to communicate the real truth.<br><br> <br><br> So when Michael Cocks, an 88-year-old Anglican priest from New Zealand, contacted me about his book, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005ZGNAJ2/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1">Afterlife Teaching from Stephen the Martyr</a>, I thought, “Wow, here’s a great opportunity, I’m not sure that Stephen the Martyr is even a real being let alone that he’s channeled this book for this guy, great stuff.”<br> So I did, and I have to tell you, I hit Michael with everything: why we should believe it, what he did to verify whether he was really having communication with this historical figure from 2,000 years ago, how he went about verifying that — which turns out to be quite amazing, I mean he really did the kind of research that you would expect a historian or a biblical scholar to do to find out if there’s anything to it — so [I’ve] got to give him kudos for that. I also asked him about a bunch of other strange things, synchronicities and other pretty amazing things that happened surrounding this whole experience that he had, for 40 years….<br> Alex Tsakiris: There’s all these idiosyncrasies to the tradition [the channeler] has this deep knowledge of that it is just impossible to believe that this guy from Kent, just, you know, rolls out of bed…<br> Michael Cocks: He couldn’t have known it, it took me 30 years of research before I finally got it right and a lot of coincidences. I considered the Dead Sea Scrolls, everything. It couldn’t have come out of his head.<br> Alex Tsakiris: I think that’s one of the things that people have a hard time wrapping their heads around is — what the heck is Stephen doing coming back and writing books?<br> Michael Cocks: Stephen’s message is very similar to that of the Franciscans: the higher we go, the more we are each other, the lower we go, the more separate we are… <br> Michael Cocks: It starts off [with] a Catholic lady called Olive Ashman, in bed with her husband Tom. Tom, who’s not previously been a medium, but he starts to talk in his sleep and Olive hears a voice say, “Sic Ecclesia, Spiritus, Sanctus,” “thus in the church is the Holy Spirit,” and she found that Tom was able to go into trance and the spirit continued to talk and then identified him with Stephen.<br> The Ashmans were living in Sevenoaks in Kent. I, here in New Zealand, although about that same day received a book of prophecies — from a lady I didn’t know called Mrs. Cropinger in North Island — about me and what was about to happen to me.<br> Alex Tsakiris: Okay, so let me get this straight, first of all, what year is this about?<br> Michael Cocks: 1973.<br> Alex Tsakiris: Okay, so this is 1973, so now that’s what 44 years ago and later you discover… you just get the book of prophecies, you don’t know anything about this other experience going on in Kent, but later you find that it happened at exactly the same time?<br>
