moving plates

at the place i volunteer there is a man that swears he can feel an earthquake days before it comes. since the 1970s he says that before a quake he will experience a uniquely terrible headache. he believes that he is ultra sensitive to energy that is released in the earth. because of this, he claims to feel it coming.

i also know a different guy who lives in ohio, claims to be an "apostle", and has a website where he exploits people for money and instructs people with fine detail on how to live their lives. he is into the whole fivefold thing and has used this way of thinking to claim that he is superior in his ability to discern what God says and wants in specific situations--indeed, in almost every situation.

so how do we know what God is saying or doing or wanting when all knowing is only perspective? when does it become dangerous to think that God is on a particular side or behind a particular cause or acting in a specific situation? Obviously we all know the extreme examples of the abuse of this-- the guy in Ohio for example--or things our ancestors did or things that even our contemporaries do in the name of God. But what about having small insights and intuition about things?

sometimes i think i have a glimpse of what is going on; not really a vision, but the outline of a puzzle piece. but then, all of us, all of humanity is driven to create stories and give meaning, give a coherence, a narrative, a morality to events and happenings. i want to know how we know this meaning is from God and not produced by our own spectacularly fantastic imaginations?