1) The Antichrist will be the ultimate epitome (the very climax) of human evil, which is why he is referred to in Scripture as the “man of lawlessness” (2 Thessalonians 2:3). Although Trump is an egomaniacal rascal, dissembler and compulsive liar, he cannot possibly fit the epitome of evil mentioned in 2 Thessalonians 2. There have been many in history who have been far more lawless than Trump; but even so, none of them was the Antichrist, and neither is Trump.

2) The Antichrist will be revered as the leader of the whole world, voluntarily revered by all (and that “all” will even revere Satan who energises the Antichrist), heading up a global government, rather than merely being the ruler of a single nation-state (Revelation 13:3-4, 8). Before going any further with this section, I should explain here that the “beast” set forth in the thirteenth chapter of the Book of Revelation depicts the way that the “mystery of lawlessness” and the “spirit of the Antichrist” have manifested exponentially in governance and world culture during the whole Gospel Age as a satanic world-system which climaxes in the actual “man of lawlessness”, the Antichrist. The two beasts mentioned in that chapter represent symbolically a different aspect of the “spirit of the Antichrist” and the satanic world-system — two sides of the same coin, as it were. Thus, the first beast out of the sea is the political, governmental, and administrative aspect of the enforcement of Satan’s kingdom-building across the planet, leading ultimately to the creation of a global government. Whereas the second beast out of the earth involves all the ‘spirit of the antichrist’ influences in society of a pseudo-religious nature, the application of godless philosophy and science — along with the supportive unethical use of technology — which will endorse, prop up and advocate the first beast. Therefore, the second beast provides the undergirding religio-philosophical rationale and the scientific foundation for the whole political beast-system, and culminates in a kind of global oneness religion alongside the global government. [For a detailed explanation of all this, please see sections 5-8 of Chapter 6 in my commentary on the Book of Revelation, “The Essential Apocalypse”,  which you can download freely here: https://diakrisis-project.com/2024/10/06/the-second-edition-paperback-of-the-essential-apocalypse-is-now-ready-for-purchase-delivery/ ]. The only dissenters of that reverence toward the Antichrist will be genuine disciples of Christ, who will be increasingly bumped off for their awareness of who he is and their refusal to submit to him (Revelation 11:7; 13:7). It is very obvious that Trump is not the revered leader of the whole world. In fact, the majority of people in the world regard Trump as an uncouth ‘potty-mouthed’ moron — the very opposite of how the real Antichrist will present himself, who will have the whole world eating out of his hand, so to speak, with his demonic leadership skills, smooth-talking sophistry and mesmeric attraction. Therefore, Trump cannot possibly be the actual Antichrist.

3) The Antichrist will put himself above every religion/belief/philosophy and proclaim himself to be God (2 Thessalonians 2:4). Trump has never made such assertions about himself and even if he was to do so, very few would take him seriously as he has no spiritual credentials whatsoever (apart from spouting utterly false “Christianity”) and he comes across as the ultimate material man. Thus, he cannot be the Antichrist.

4) The Antichrist will counterfeit the second coming of Christ and will be extolled as the ‘World Teacher’ which many religions claim will come to save the world and bring in utopia on this present earth. In His sermonic context of the great tribulation on the Mount of Olives, Jesus says, “At that time, if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There He is!’ do not believe it” (Matthew 24:23). Of course not. For at the time when the great tribulation begins, the only ‘christ’ on the scene will be a false one: Namely, the Antichrist!

The Greek word for Antichrist, ἀντίχριστος, antichristos, has the prefix ‘anti-‘ which in Greek means both “against” and “in the place of”. This has serious implications for the identity of the Antichrist. For it shows that his coming will be a counterfeit of the second coming of Christ and this will fool many. In fact, this deception is shown in the use of the same Greek word being used for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and the coming of the Antichrist. Theologically, the word παρουσία, parousia, has always been associated with the second coming of Christ; yet in the same chapter describing the two events, that same Greek word is used for both (see 2 Thessalonians 2:1, 9). This surely more than hints that unless great discernment is exercised, the parousia of the Antichrist will be mistaken by many for the parousia of the Christ. In fact, knowing the difference between the coming of the Antichrist and the coming of the true Christ — distinguishing between one parousia and the other — will be a hallmark of true faith. For the coming of the Antichrist will be steeped in deception of the highest order. Thus, the Jewish people will think that their Messiah has finally arrived (as is even hinted at in John 5:43). Most Muslims will welcome the Antichrist as their expected saviour, the “Mahdi”. Buddhists will welcome the Antichrist as their expected saviour, “Bodhisattva Maitreya”. Theosophists and New Age folks will welcome the Antichrist as their expected “World Teacher” (as touted by Alice Bailey and her ilk). Hopi Indians (and those who revere them) will welcome the Antichrist as their expected “Pahana”. Many other traditions are expecting some great “World Teacher” and saviour to arrive on earth and save it. Even (God forbid!) many of those who profess to be “Christians” (but aren’t really) will fall for the deceptive sway of the Antichrist, believing him to be the returned Christ. The Antichrist will be welcomed with open arms by ET and UFO lovers, not to mention those in hock with the World Economic Forum who are fomenting a global religious alliance as well as a global government. [For much expanded information on this whole subject area, please read section 7 of Chapter 6 in my commentary on the Book of Revelation, “The Essential Apocalypse”, which you can download as an e-Book here: https://diakrisis-project.com/2024/10/06/the-second-edition-paperback-of-the-essential-apocalypse-is-now-ready-for-purchase-delivery/ ]. Suffice it to say that a man like Donald Trump is not remotely a candidate for these expectations of world religions and philosophies as their avatar of the world’s salvation and bringer of utopia to planet earth! Therefore, Trump cannot pssibly be the Antichrist.

5) The Antichrist will be energised by Satan with supernatural powers, the presentation of “signs”, and the ability to perform false miracles (2 Thessalonians 2:9). The coming of the Antichrist will be a satanic supernatural event of great sophistication and he will have advanced supernatural capabilities, being directly energised by Satan, as that Bible text explicitly states. Does that in any way describe the characteristics of Donald Trump? The very idea is utterly ludicrous, and needs no further exposition! Therefore, he cannot possibly be the Antichrist.

6) The Antichrist will direct the mass slaughter of genuine disciples of Christ (Daniel 7:25; 12:7; Revelation 11:7; 12:7). This is the action of someone who has total global power and the support of the whole world. Can you imagine Trump being involved in such an act? He has neither the power nor the capability and following to do so. Therefore, he cannot possibly be the Antichrist.

Postscript

Now, having shared all those hallmarks of the genuine Antichrist, it is clear that Trump does not even exhibit one of them. However, although Trump does not match up with any of the hallmarks of the actual Antichrist in the Bible, his and Vance’s advocacy of A.I. and Transhumanism will pave the way for the actual Antichrist, and he still has a few lesser ‘mini-antichrist’ characteristics. For example, he has an exaggeratedly high opinion of himself, bordering on mental illness, having delusions of grandeur. (In fact, I would say that his entire cabinet and entourage share in that and are plainly afflicted with multiple personality disorders). He runs his acolytes (MAGA adherents) like a cult, believing that he can commit any evil act and still retain his voting base. He uses known hypnotic techniques in his speeches. [As I have shown in a previous article: https://diakrisis-project.com/2024/07/17/the-cult-of-trump-and-how-he-was-able-to-create-it/ ]. He is a proven liar and dissembler. But he comes nowhere near matching the full picture of the Antichrist presented to us in Scripture, who will appear to be extremely sophisticated and a practising magician, shaman and wizard to boot, with a hotline to Satan, using extreme deception, with the ability to mesmerise and control others well beyond normal human capability.

Really, only those who are genuine disciples of Christ will be able to resist and oppose the real Antichrist and his whole rotten entourage; and only they will understand what is happening and why (which will be why they will have to be killed). So, if you want to make sense of everything that is coming and will come upon this earth, you really should devote yourself to the truth about Christ right now, complete with sorrow for your previous denial of who He is and what He stands for. Then life on this planet will begin to make sense at last. [Please message me if you want to know more].

Now, after all the words I have shared above, I sincerely hope that I have convinced you that any claim of Donald Trump being the Antichrist, when compared with Scripture, must surely be entirely bogus, and those who claim it are false teachers and false witnesses in the face of all the biblical evidence. He has a few ‘mini-antichrist’ characteristics but he cannot possibly be the actual Antichrist. That heinous revelation is still reserved for a future date.

Alan Morrison

© Copyright, Alan Morrison, 2025
[The copyright on my works is merely to protect them from any wanton plagiarism which could result in undesirable changes (as has actually happened!). Readers are free to reproduce my work, so long as it is in the same format and with the exact same content and its origin is acknowledged]

Copyright Kärlek till Sanningen All Rights Reserved 2021

[HERE IS AN EXTRACT from my recent 212-page book, “Discerning the Signs of the Times: The CIA & Subversion through Mind-Control, Satanism, Sorcery, & the Use of Religion & Cults as Tools of the New World Order” (now on v.1.8). In a discussion concerning the role that psychedelic drugs has played in the furtherance of the New World Order, I inserted an “Excursus” (sidebar exposition) about “The Thread of Satanic Religion from Antiquity to the Present”. I present that section to you here (in its context) as a taster for the book which, as you will see here, involves dealing with many subjects more than the CIA’s New World Order antics. You will find a free download link to the book at the foot of this extract]

THE USE OF PSYCHEDELICS falls neatly within the province of the sorcerer, who essentially indulges in black magic, the dark arts; though — true to demonic strategy — it all masquerades as being beneficial. It is no coincidence that the Koine Greek word for sorcery or magic arts is φαρμακεία, pharmakeia, from where our word “pharmacy” is derived. This word-origin goes back to the common use of drugs as potions for trance possession, the casting of spells, and other activities in the pantheon of the dark arts. What we are dealing with in all this LSD mind-control business is diabolical sorcery plain and simple — dark arts by numbers for the masses. It masquerades as being spiritually beneficent, but in reality it is a deception designed to induce people into a satanic web of intrigue and, ultimately, insanity — although that insanity does not have to mean a psychiatric diagnosis and hospitalization, for it can also simply refer to being under the control of the demonic realm.

This sorcerous aspect of hallucinogens makes one wonder why conspiracy character, David Icke, should be promoting “Ayahuasca Healing Retreats” which encourage people to ingest one of the most potent psychoactive substances known to humanity and to engage in remote viewing techniques, as used by the CIA. [See https://davidicke.com/2020/02/07/ayahuasca-ceremonies-holistic-sanctuary-heres-work/ . For Icke’s comments on Remote Viewing, see https://davidicke.com/2022/08/14/native-elder-i-was-told-that-there-are-four-violent-species-in-the-universe-humans-were-one-of-them/ . I will be saying more about Remote Viewing in Part 9 of the book]. This is the way that disinformation and deception operate today — especially in regard to how Icke pulls conspiracy-minded people into his web of neo-Gnosticism, shape-shifting “lizard-people” (a cheap and kitsch parody of genuine demons) and shamanism and deludes them into believing that they can change the world into some kind of utopia. And all this, despite his false prophecies that there would be cataclysmic pole-shifts in the 1990s and that the world would end in 1997! [Sidenote: It is a tragedy that so many who wake up to the conspiratorial nature of life on this planet get ‘nobbled’ by shill neo-Gnostic occultists such as David Icke, thus drawing them away from the genuine spiritual truths which lie behind all this dark activity and pulling them deeper into the rabbit warren of darkness masquerading as light. This is why merely calling oneself a “Truther” is so inadequate in terms of the profound perception of truth. At best, it is only a stepping stone. To read more about this, see my article, “The Inadequacy of Being Merely a ‘Truther’”, https://diakrisis-project.com/2022/07/12/the-inadequacy-of-being-merely-a-truther/ ].There is no doubt in my mind that David Icke is ‘controlled opposition’ — of which there are now many — a one-man MI5 counter-intelligence shill in savant clothing to lead seeking people ‘away with the fairies’ into fantasies about shape-shifting “lizard people” and the big lies inherent in neo-Gnostic teachings. As the late ‘old-school’ conspiracy researcher, Alan Watt, rightly put it:

“MI5 and MI6 have a place outside The Cotswolds where they train people to go out into the world and create mysticism and confusion. And Aleister Crowley was one of the first men they sent out there to set up the OTO, The Ordo Templi Orientis, a higher Masonic group, which most people in Hollywood join and most musicians join, and they followed him [Crowley] up with many others, since. Now David Icke took everyone else’s work who’d done the real investigations. He shot to the top. All the doors opened for him. You couldn’t buy that kind of publicity unless someone gave the nod at the top. It costs millions just to publicize him and he became a superhero, leads all the people using all of this information of other authors, and then leads you off like the pied piper in a circle to the lizard people, and all of those authors in the backs of his book are now ridiculed into the same place that he’s taken you: that’s called “counter-intelligence”… I’m sure he knows exactly what he’s doing”. [This is an excerpt from a video on “David Icke and Counterintelligence Operatives”, in which the late Alan Watt is calling out David Icke as being an asset or agent of MI5/MI6, the British intelligence services. (MI5 is the UK equivalent of the FBI; MI6 is the UK equivalent of the CIA). The link is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5K4dOnhOCmo ].

I felt compelled to share this about Icke in the middle of a section about mind-control through hallucinogens, which he is also advocating through Ayahuasca. It is a major element in the waylaying of people to prevent them from growing in real knowledge and truth and instead leading them down a dark rabbit-hole. It involves modern shills teaming up with ancient shamans to hijack the mass of minds — satanic religion from olden days to the present. This is why I feel moved to share this. There are now so many ‘controlled opposition’ shills in the shadows of the internet spewing out disinformation mingled with enough truth to make them seem credible. People need to be hugely vigilant; but their prejudices can prevent them from being so.

Readers can come to their own conclusions about the real aims of these Ayahuasca retreats in the dark agenda of the demonic realm. Retreat attendees regularly describe staying in the midst of representations of multiple Peruvian deities while imbibing the psychotropic beverage. Mark my words: Ayahuasca is a pathway to spiritual ruin — either by being lulled into a false sense that one is ‘evolving’ and becoming more “spiritual” (when one is really being profoundly influenced by, and opened up to demonic entities), or through entering a nightmarish hell from which there is no escape.

In this respect, I was not shocked to discover that one of the principal organizers of Ayahuasca retreats in Peru, Malcolm Rossiter, Director of “Blue Morpho”, who had years of experience as a shaman, tragically decided to take his own life in November 2018. Please be aware that I am not at all gloating about this, as I would never do such a thing; for it is tragic. I am simply sharing it as a heartbreaking and salutary lesson to dissuade readers from indulging in this hyper-trendy drug, which will either suck you into a world of demonic influence (which deceptively feels sooo wonderful and enlightening!) or it will back you into a nightmare of madness, a huis clos of excruciating psychic pain which will overturn your existence.

Malcolm Rossiter’s Facebook profile, still open, announced it like this: “It is with great sadness that I am ending my existence on this earth. I am energetically backed into a place I envision not returning from”. [See https://www.facebook.com/MalcolmRossiter1 ]. That is New Age jargon for the fact that he had come face to face with the darkness which lies behind all shamanistic enterprise — a cul-de-sac from which there is no exit, if penetrated deeply enough. It is heart-rending to see comments under his announcement like, “If this happens to you, what hope is there for the rest of us?”

New Spirituality folks always romanticize (and gloss over) the religions of ethnic peoples without realising that prior to the coming of Christ almost the whole world was given over to satanic religious practices, which have now been portrayed as if they were true spirituality and incorporated into the New Age Movement, with participants all imagining this is the way to go.

Therefore, at this almost exact median point in this little book, before resuming our exploration of the ‘brave new world’ of mind-control under Aldous Huxley and the CIA’s involvement in distributing hallucinogens to fulfil its own agenda, in order to clarify why I should take issue with New Age and ethnic religions and the destructive nature of taking potions for the purposes of alleged ‘mind-expansion’, it would be prudent to insert here, as a kind of sidebar, a detailed excursus on “The Thread of Satanic Religion from Antiquity to the Present”. Then, hopefully, readers will understand my lack of leniency towards those influences. For all the subject matter in this book concerning intelligence services and mind-control is not taking place in a vacuum, but is symptomatic of the spiritual warfare being waged by the fallen archangel, Satan, and his demonic realm in order to install their usurped kingdom on earth, culminating in a one-world government headed up by the “man of lawlessness”, the Antichrist — thus bringing before you the central leitmotif that I mentioned right at the beginning of this book, which is, if you recall: “That everything written in this book concerning governance, politicking and other world developments is leading inexorably to the formation of the above-mentioned one-world government which will be headed up by that ‘world leader’ whom disciples of Christ will have no trouble identifying as the Antichrist”. So here is the excursus:

______________________________________________________

EXCURSUS: “The Thread of Satanic Religion from Antiquity to the Present”

This is a difficult truth for many, but all the world’s religions are a warped external parody of genuine inner spirituality. Their robes, rituals, chanting, idols, rosaries, prayer beads, oblations, animal and human sacrifices, superstitions, hierarchies, temples, etc., are outward tokens intended to provide a whiff of spirituality to the dead husk of religion. There are very many lovely people in the religious scene all over the world doing good, often in dangerous circumstances. But that is not because of their religion but because of their varying levels of internal light. The stark reality is that all religious enterprise outside of the Christ is ultimately going to be satanic because it denies the centrality of the Christ to the existence and continuation of this creation, and rejects the fact that He came as God manifested in the flesh to transform the world. That is the ‘spirit of the Antichrist’ right there.

“Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus has come in the flesh is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist” (First Letter of John, chapter 4, verses 2-3).

In contrast to that, the sacred texts say of the Christ: “All things were created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together” and “in Christ all the fullness of the Deity dwells in bodily form” (Letter to the Colossians, chapter 1, verses 16-17; chapter 2, verse 9). All religious enterprise which operates outside of that knowledge nullifies human regeneration through the Holy Spirit, and it contradicts the Divine restoration of all things through a supreme act of recreation into a wholly new unfallen cosmos. Here is the terrible Truth spoken by Christ Himself concerning all the teachers and gurus from the past who have claimed ‘messiahship’ or who have not led people in the direction of Christ as the promised Saviour: “All who came before Me were thieves and robbers” (Gospel of John, chapter 10, verse 8).

Until Christ was revealed, with few exceptions, darkness reigned over the earth in great measure, the legacy of the Fall. Since that Fall, initiated by the fallen archangel, Satan — as recorded in the Book of Genesis, chapter 3 — satanic religious pursuits came to be the dominant influence in the world. All the various kingdoms of the world — from Mesopotamian and Sumerian to Babylonian, Assyrian, Grecian and Roman — have been satanic in their predatory, plundering vision under corrupt self-deifying leaders, priests, generals and emperors; while their religious activities were full of superstition, idolatry, sorcery, temple prostitution, and even human and child sacrifice. This was also the case in lesser empires, such as Aztec and Mayan, the latter of which is considered to be hyper-trendy in New Age circles, despite the fact that Mayan children would be killed in sacrifice and thrown into cenotes (waterholes) in little pieces in order to appease the ‘gods’ for the harvest — the same cenotes today in which New Age folks love to swim to plug into the Mayan ‘energies’.

It is trendy in the New Age scene and ‘woke’ thinking to put ancient ethnic religious practices on a pedestal and romanticize them (Satan’s little trick to blind you to their evil). But there was nothing noble or romantic about them whatsoever. They were gross manifestations of darkness utilizing sorcery and magic arts; but it takes a cleansed heart to see that and to acknowledge it.

Until the coming of Christ, Satan had been “the ruler of this cosmos” as usurper for an exceedingly long time — right from the Fall at the beginning of human history. Christ’s coming was to evict Satan from that position, which was why He said shortly before His death, “Now is the judgement on this world. Now the ruler of this world [i.e. Satan] will be cast out” (First Letter of John, chapter 3, verse 8b; Gospel of John, chapter 12, verse 31). Thus, the major religious and spiritual influences throughout history have been largely under Satan’s domain as humans sought warped ways to make sense of their alienation from the Divine in this world. All the idolatry, false gods, sorcery, human and even child sacrifice, priestcraft, temple prostitution, wacky mythologies through the ages across the globe, with vast war campaigns carried out in their name by emperors who even demanded divine worship of themselves, have plainly been under Satan’s instigation — avatars of Satanism posing as religion and empire — right through to the present day. All those idols! People made their gods as projected images of their own twisted fears, desires and superstitions. Or they deified themselves (as do all those today who follow in their footsteps). Satan’s perfect work. This is why serpent-worship has been so prevalent in so many ancient religions. That is the symbol of Satan and those religions were his babies.

All that satanic mess of religion has been continued today in the vast number of occulto-magical offerings in the spiritual scene — especially the New Age and shamanistic strains. In this sense, we can also include all religions (including the false-church version of “Christianity”) as varying forms and degrees of Satanism, for they fulfil Satan’s ambition to keep people ignorant about the true Christ while, at the same time, imagining they are becoming “enlightened” or, in the case of false disciples of Christ, deluding themselves that they are “loved by Jesus” or that they are “moving in the Spirit”.

In his warped wisdom, Satan has provided a religion to suit everyone, according to their cultural bents and personal tastes. For, if I may put it like this, most people choose the religion which best suits their personality disorder, personal and cultural idiosyncrasies and social status. Their religious choices are therefore merely a subjective extension of their egos rather than an engagement with the challenge of objective truth. Raging, sexually-repressed people will go for the religions with a fundamentalist dogma. The more liberal ‘bypassing’ types who are sitting on a pile of dark anger but want to disguise it with an outward cloak of smiling benevolence and repressive pseudo-calmness will go for Buddhism and Zen or wishy-washy liberal mainstream or Evanjellycal style of “Christianity”. [I call them ‘Evanjellycal’ rather than Evangelical because of the way that they wobble around like a jelly about everything, fail to stand up unequivocally for truth and light, always sit on the fence and exercise compromised hyper-diplomacy instead of clearly ‘calling a spade a spade’ — all of this being done to show how ‘super-tolerant’, ‘reasonable”, and ‘loving’ they are, “just like Jesus” (so they falsely think)]. The hordes of poor people who need a load of amulets, rosaries/prayer beads, statues, priestcraft, superstitions, worthless mythology, comforting afterlife fantasies about reincarnation or purgatory, idols, gods and goddesses, will go for Hinduism or Vatican-style ‘Marian’ Catholicism. Intellectuals who believe that organised religion is beneath them and who want to feed their egos with notions of penetrating realms normally hidden from the masses will go for Theosophy, Anthroposophy or neo-Gnostic Alice Baileyism. Trendy fashionistas who want to convince their egos that they are more spiritual than any of the rest (yet who also want to make loadsamoney out of it) will go for New Ageism, pseudo-shamanism, yoga and meditation (all of which, through spiritual bypassing, also mask a mass of unresolved baggage). There is something for every surfer on Satan’s religious or super-spiritual smorgasbord!

Going through the Old Testament, we find that even in the midst of all the horrific bloodbaths and religious darkness of the satanized kingdoms and religions, there was always a minority of humble, faithful seekers who eschewed the prevailing Satanism which surrounded them and were filled with Light and “looking forward to the city with firm foundations, whose architect and builder is God” (Letter to the Hebrews, chapter 11, verse 10. This was also Paul’s reasoning when he told the people of Athens about the “unknown god” whom they worshipped: “What you worship without knowing it, this I proclaim to you”, Book of Acts, chapter 17, verse 23. He was completing their inadequate light). That “city” (which is symbolically spiritual rather than of earthly origin) was known as “Zion” in the Old Testament (which would be established by Messiah) and “the New Jerusalem” in the New Testament [The spiritual word “Zion” has been hijacked by people calling themselves Jews today who do not believe the Messiah has come and who have put all their hope in an earthly territory called Israel. Even many so-called ‘Christians’ revere Israel and support its atrocities. To read more about this, see my article, “Abraham our Father: Jerusalem our Mother”, https://diakrisis-project.com/2020/07/08/abraham-our-father-jerusalem-our-mother-substantial-update/ ].

This was the case right from the beginning, although always very much a minority in the midst of the web of satanic religion which stretched across the globe and which, in Noah’s time, had become so downright evil that the judgement of the flood was pronounced. Later, into the midst of the resurfaced evil, we had the ancient nation of Israel instituted by God to be an example of His spirituality and obedience to His will — as opposed to all the other nations who were steeped in satanic darkness. However, even though the people of Israel were clearly shown how to be ‘in sync’ with the Divine, the majority of them kept rebelling and apostatized while a comparative few (including the prophets) remained faithful and were persecuted by the apostates. The history recounted in the Old Testament shows this over and over again.

Thus, by the time that the Christ finally came, Messianic expectation was huge. Yet, the divide between the faithful and the unfaithful continued to play itself out in the responses of the people to His coming. There were those materialists in Israel (the majority) who had no understanding of spiritual light (just like in so much of the visible church today), and who wanted Messiah to come merely in order to liberate them from the Romans, in the manner of a fancy king, a majestic earthly figurehead. Then there were those (very much the minority) who understood Messiah in a spiritual way as being the one who would restore the universe from its satanic stranglehold into a new universe wherein no darkness remained — the ultimate manifestation of the kingdom of God, exactly as predicted in the Book of Isaiah, chapter 65, verse 17: “Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind”.

From the coming of the Christ, His resurrection and ascension, until now, despite the fact that Christ won a victory over Satan and his demonic cohorts, that satanic religion of the past has continued unabated and has even developed new forms. Whereas in ancient times it was sufficient to inveigle the people with satanic religious cultic practices, Satan is now far more subtle in his strategies, for he is looking towards the time when his kingdom-building will give way to a global government over which his own man will preside.

As the population of the world has hugely grown over the past two thousand years and technology has advanced along with many potentially-destructive scientific discoveries, Satan has been at the heart of those areas using them for his own kingdom building. Thus, all political/governmental developments have been secretly machinated by human cabals under guidance of demonic direction, either wittingly or unwittingly. Satanic religion today is not about bowing before wood and stone idols or sacrificing children to Molech or whomever, as it was in the ancient past, but it is now about giving one’s allegiance to leaders, experts, scientists, gurus, and others who have a satanic agenda — a development which will build up to the formation of a global government under a leader who will be Satan’s own man for the job. That allegiance is the real ‘mark of the beast’, as I have shown in previous articles [see, e.g., https://diakrisis-project.com/2021/12/26/identifying-the-mark-of-the-beast-the-number-666/ ].For the new interfaith religion of the world is “let’s all come together in peace and unity”, but imagining they can do that without acknowledging the One who created the world and still continuing in narcissistic endeavour and complete disregard for God’s laws.

Over against all that, throughout this age, since the time of the ascension of Christ, souls are being called out of this world to be His disciples. People may say they are following the Light or are ‘lightworkers’, but one’s understanding of the Light of God and the way it has dealt with (and is still dealing with) the darkness of Satan can only really be fully understood through a knowledge of Christ and His unique work in the cosmos. To know Christ is to have a fuller understanding of spiritual realities than is possible through any other means. If anyone has some light, it is only because it has been imparted by the Spirit of Christ in the first place.

I have known a number of people who have said that they would prefer to stick with their present teacher or guru, whom they claim has been ‘enlightened’, rather than learn more about Christ; to which I always reply: “If you believe that, then why hang around with the monkey when you can enjoy the fellowship of the Organ-Grinder Himself?” Christ is the real thing. Gurus who do not acknowledge Christ as God uniquely manifested in the flesh are just pretenders, thieves of your soul and robbers of your future telling you about what amounts to an unattainable ‘enlightenment’ — the ultimate satanic ruse to befuddle those who are seeking truth.

Then there are those who have said to me: “But why do I have to be a disciple of Christ? If I love the Light and reject darkness, isn’t that good enough? What’s all this stuff about Christ?” This is precisely why I write what I do: To show how Christ is the centrepiece of everything. The Light would not exist without Him, for He IS the Light!

I do believe that it is still absolutely possible to follow the Creator, love the Light and reject the darkness, waiting on His leading and watching out for what He reveals, if one has never heard about Christ — being a kind of ‘disciple-in-waiting’, as it were, lacking full knowledge yet still having one’s heart in the right place. In this way, one would still be received by God as if one is a disciple of Christ, for Christ is that Light. But when one loves Light, eschews darkness, and hears about Christ, thus receiving the fuller understanding, the fulfilment of it, it is as if something within has silently and irreversibly fallen into place. It is as if one is receiving primordial knowledge that one feels one must surely have known already. If one loves the Light and rejects darkness, then one will in fact rejoice to hear about Christ and will be filled with love for Him and feel fulfilled to know that Christ’s Spirit indwells the one who loves the Light (Gospel of John, chapter 10, verses 4 & 14). By that stage, one will realise that one has really been a disciple of His all along. It is as if the long-awaited teaching has finally arrived. The knowledge of Christ is the ‘missing link’, that final piece of the jigsaw puzzle, in the profound quest for the Light.

So do not be seduced into believing the spiritual-chic jive about ethnic religions. All that idolatry, superstition, magic and mumbo-jumbo has to go, if one wants to be cleansed. The pathway to spiritual truth is not through some attachment to superstition, or some kind of mystical but unattainable “enlightenment”, or the achievement of ‘personal divinity’, for these are illusions hatched by the demonic realm to fool the seeker unawares. I have watched people chase those elusive (and illusive) goals through their entire lives, always imagining that they are on the verge of achieving something. But it is all a chimera designed to lock you into an unfruitful lifetime pursuit that can never be achieved and can only lead to personal spiritual ruin.

True spirituality is not about a nebulous ‘enlightenment’ or the delusion of achieving godhood but is about submission to a higher being than oneself; and that higher being is one’s Creator. Submission is almost a curse-word for many today, especially for neo-Gnostic folks who revel in their imagined personal divinity and see themselves as ‘God’ or striving to be that. But when one willingly submits oneself to discipleship to Christ, a whole new realm opens up and one becomes adopted into the family of God and a harbinger of the future new creation. [It might be worth reading, as this point, my recent article, “Knowledge Which Has Deliberately Been Kept From You”, https://diakrisis-project.com/2021/09/22/knowledge-which-has-deliberately-been-kept-from-you/ ]. For the disciple of Christ is certainly a “partaker in the divine nature”, receiving all the benefits of being no longer alienated from God; but disciples are never partakers in the actual divine essence. For that is what marks out the vital difference between the so-called ‘New Spirituality’ of the neo-Gnostic and pure discipleship to the Christ. Being a servant of God and disciple of Christ is infinitely more spiritual than foolishly imagining one has ‘found one’s personal divinity’. The former is a Divine gift while the latter is a satanic delusion.

This excursus has been shoehorned into this book to give the spiritual background to all that is being written up in it, so that readers will have a context for my findings, statements and conclusions. I do not want this work to be a dry rehashing of conspiracies. But, rather, I want it to open the door to a deeper understanding of world events and show how they are intimately related to spirituality and the ancient battle between light and darkness.

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Now to return to looking into the role of Aldous Huxley, his CIA and other reprehensible connections, plus the role he played in proselytizing hallucinogens as the answer to the world’s problems. For, ironically, the blissed-out druggie “Soma” dystopia he lampooned in his book “Brave New World” is the very world that he was himself advocating!

Alan Morrison

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[The above is an extract from my recent book, “Discerning the Signs of the Times: The CIA & Subversion through Mind-Control, Satanism, Sorcery, & the Use of Religion & Cults as Tools of the New World Order”. You can download the entire 212-page book (now on v.1.8) free of charge from this link: https://diakrisis-project.com/2022/09/14/new-book-discerning-the-signs-of-the-times/ ]

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© 2022, Alan Morrison / The Diakrisis Project. All Rights Reserved. 
 
[The copyright on my works is merely to protect them from any wanton plagiarism which could result in undesirable changes (as has actually happened!). Readers are free to reproduce my work, so long as it is in the same format and with the exact same content and its origin is acknowledged]

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INTRODUCTION

If you were so inclined, the two books of Samuel could be read solely as historical literature. No doubt that is how many would approach them. But that would entirely miss the primary Divine reason for these works ever being included in the books of the Bible.

Books I and II of Samuel are Spiritual Documents

The two books of Samuel are first and foremost spiritual documents. It is true that they are real history, that it all actually happened. But the fact that they are history is secondary to their didactic (teaching) function in the Word of God. Paul the Apostle tells us that there are other purposes than the mere conveyance of historical facts in the books of the Old Testament: “For everything that was written in the past was written for our instruction, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures, we might have hope” (Romans 15:4). There is a teaching element, “for our learning” and, through that teaching, comes the engendering of hope.

Books I and II of Samuel are Full of “Types”, Warnings, and Exhortations

Another radical element in these Old Testament history books is that of warning, or exhortation. If we listen to “the music behind the words” of the Bible, we can look at what happened to the characters of the Old Testament and see them serving as “types”. A “type” is a pattern or a kind of example or a forerunner, a symbol, a very powerful symbol — so powerfully symbolic that it carries many lessons for those who will learn from the example; and the Bible, especially the Old Testament, is full of “types”. Again, Paul specifically refers to these typological examples when he says: “Now these things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come” (1 Corinthians 10:11).

In other words, the principal characters of the Old Testament and the historical events in which they were involved contain a spiritual significance which must be understood properly if one is to grasp the deep things of God in His word. The Greek word translated as “examples” in the above Scripture verse is tupos, from where our word “type” is derived. Therefore, these things happened to them so that they could serve as “types” or patterns — spiritual examples from which we can learn.

Examples of this sort of “typology” can be seen over and over again in the life of numerous key Old Testament characters. For instance, look at Moses. His life and experience was a model of Scripture typology. As but one example, he leads the children of Israel to freedom out of the house of bondage under Pharaoh, through the wilderness into the promised land. The typological significance of this is parallel with the fact that Christ leads His people out to freedom from being under bondage to Satan, then leads them through the wilderness of this world into the heavenly life to come. Moses was thus a “type” of Christ, as also were Samuel and David.

The three central characters of the two books of Samuel — Samuel, Saul, and David — provide us with hugely important general typological lessons for our spiritual life, our growth as children of God and our understanding of ourselves in relation to the world around us and our fellow professing Christians. Familiarising ourselves with these three men and the events surrounding them provides a key to grasping not only our salvation in Christ but also the actual outworking of it in our lives.

In an earlier CyberSermon, I looked at the great, symbol-laden story of David and Goliath and we saw how the little man David, who is deliberately said to have had no sword or spear, conquered the three-meter-tall giant, Goliath. [That CyberSermon was called “Lessons from the Conflict Between David and Goliath”. Just click on that title to read it]. In this present message, our text is 1 Samuel, chapter 18, in which we are now looking at David’s conflict with Saul.

NB: David and Jonathan Were not ‘Gay’!

Immediately, when we look at 1 Samuel 18, I am forced to mention David’s relationship with Jonathan. It is a very well-known relationship, and it furnishes us with a great example of an honourable, faithful, trusting, and beautiful relationship that can exist even between two men whose hearts are in the right place.

As you may be aware, this relationship has been seized upon by homosexuals to prove that sodomy is a perfectly legitimate activity, even for a Christian person who walks closely to God. If you ask any well-versed homosexual person, they will tell you without any hesitation that David and Jonathan “were gay” and provide proof that God’s people can practise guilt-free sodomy. I think that is not only playing fast and loose with Scripture, but it is also an insult to the very idea that two men can have a close relationship without engaging in homosexuality. I think we need to recognise that and rejoice in it — that two men can be extremely close without a trace of sexuality being involved.

Very often, men are portrayed as being unable to have close relationships other than a casual one over a glass of beer in a bar. But it is a fact — and it has biblical authorisation here — that it is good for men to be close to one another if that is possible and it should be encouraged.

However, my purpose here is not to concentrate on the relationship between David and Jonathan; I will save that for another time. I am here contrasting Saul and David as two very different individuals.

• First, there is Saul — an unbeliever who has some religious tendencies but never learns from his mistakes, never really honours God, disobeys Gods commands, often defies God’s word, and even engages in activities, feelings and actions which encourage the presence of evil spirits.
• Second, there is David — a flawed believer, a very spiritual man, but who suffers a great deal, especially in this early part of his life.

The contrast between these two men tells a hugely significant backstory, and we need to take the lessons on board for our own comfort and in order to provide us with explanations about the circumstances in which we can so often find ourselves.

I want to look first at those actions of Saul’s which betray the true state of his heart, followed by showing what are David’s responses to Saul’s actions. Then I will look at what it is that actually provokes Saul to jealousy, because this tells us a great deal. Remember, we are supposed to be learning lessons here for ourselves. Above all, we are supposed to be applying these things to our own lives. If we fail to do that then we are wasting our time going through these Scriptures.

Then I will present a revealing summary of Saul’s character followed by some of the overarching spiritual lessons that we can receive from this portion of God’s word.

I. THE ACTIONS OF SAUL WHICH BETRAY WHAT IS REALLY IN HIS HEART

The first action of Saul which betrays what is really in his heart is that…

1) He is Willing to Sacrifice the Happiness of both of his Daughters (and also Get his Son-in-Law Killed!)

 “Then Saul said to David, ‘Here is my older daughter Merab. I will give her to you in marriage. Only be valiant for me and fight the LORD’s battles’. But Saul was thinking, ‘I need not raise my hand against him; let the hand of the Philistines be against him’… ‘I will give [Michal] to David’, Saul thought, ‘so that she may be a snare to him, and the hand of the Philistines may be against him’”.1 Samuel 18:17,21

We see here that Saul is perfectly willing to sacrifice both of his own daughters’ happiness. He is going from bad to worse. You can see by this that the spirit of God has left him. He is no longer empowered to act in his role as king and it has left him very open and vulnerable.

He is filled with dangerous feelings and jealousy towards David. And even here, in verse 17 of our chapter, we see that Saul was perfectly willing for his own daughter to marry somebody who he was hoping would get killed off by the Philistines and who would therefore be widowed. This is the kind of thinking that was going on in Saul’s mind. Is that the mind of a man of God?

Again, in verse 21, he is not at all concerned about his daughter’s happiness. Any father, when he gives away his daughter’s hand in marriage, wants her to be happy more than anything else in the world. You want the very best person for your daughter — you want the very best situation for her. But he is totally unconcerned about his daughters’ happiness. He is willing to sacrifice their happiness in order to pursue his own hateful ends. This is Saul.

And let me say this: He was not “a carnal believer” — as some people actually claim, with those ridiculous words, for there is absolutely no such thing! The conceit that there can be a “carnal believer” is to fail completely to understand the Spirit’s work in the heart of Christ’s disciples. Carnality — wallowing the mere fleshly aspects of life — is not an indulgence of a genuine disciple of Christ. In fact, Saul was a complete hypocrite masquerading as a believer. He talks about “fighting the Lord’s battles” out of one side of his mouth while out of the other side he is scheming to have the commander of God’s troops slaughtered.

He is willing to use his daughter to entrap David into a horrible situation. Already, we see that he has an attitude problem in a major way, and it comes through in all his activities. Such people — and there are always many all around us, even in churches! — are unstable and highly dangerous.

Another action of Saul which betrays his heart is

2) His Jealousy

 “Saul was furious and resented this song. ‘They have ascribed tens of thousands to David’, he said, ‘but only thousands to me. What more can he have but the kingdom?’ And from that day forward Saul kept a jealous eye on David. The next day a spirit of distress sent from God came upon Saul, and he prophesied inside the house while David played the harp as usual. Now Saul was holding a spear, and he hurled it, thinking, ‘I will pin David to the wall’. But David eluded him twice… When Saul realized that the LORD was with David and that his daughter Michal loved David, he grew even more afraid of David. So, from then on Saul was David’s enemy”.1 Samuel 18:8-11, 28-29

It is important to look at Saul’s jealousy because this is one of the main driving forces in the man’s life. If you just look at the above verses, you will see that Saul’s life is now empowered totally by jealousy. It has become his all-consuming passion. I want to talk a little bit here about jealousy. Because jealousy is very prominent in many areas of life. It is even very prominent in the life of many churches. Sibling rivalry among those who claim to be brothers and sisters in Christ is a real problem, as any perceptive pastor will concur.

The interesting thing about jealousy is that it very often does not reveal itself publicly. It is something that a person can hold within their heart. Fortunately (or unfortunately from the jealous person’s point of view), jealousy has a tendency to come out in certain obvious ways. And people who are discerning can notice it in other people from time to time. Thus, jealousy is something that gets harboured in the heart; and as we will see very shortly, there is nothing more dangerous for a person than to harbour something of this kind in their heart. This is one of the main fuels behind all Saul’s actions towards David — his abiding jealousy.

A Serious Question for You

At this point, I want to ask you a serious question here. When you see somebody else that you know — and this needn’t necessarily be in the church, it could be anywhere; it could be at your place of work, it could even be in your family — maybe you see your wife or husband or even a child, somebody that you know who is much better at something than you are, shining in something in which you would like to shine, receiving congratulations from other people for something that you want to have but haven’t got… what do you feel in your heart? How do you respond to that? This is very important because jealousy arises from pride. That is the root-cause of jealousy; and pride is the first sin. It is the primal sin that came into this universe. Jealousy results directly from that.

It would be interesting to speculate here about what it was that fuelled Satan’s original rebellion. Was it jealousy of God’s status as God? I put it to you that it was. When he came to Eve and said, “has God really said…”, what lay behind that contemptuous question? Surely, Satan, the mere angel and creature, was jealous of God’s position as God. I put it to you that the sin of jealousy very possibly fuelled the rebellion that happened at that early point in history.

Jealousy is something that lies at the very root of pride in the human heart. I think it is something that we can all harbour in ourselves. So, I ask again, how do you respond, how do you feel when you see somebody excelling at something at which you want to excel? Does it fill you with joy or with jealousy.

Many years ago, a man came to my house who was going to lead a service for me in the church in which I was being installed as pastor. At one stage, he turned to my wife and said, “How do you feel about your husband’s ordination?” She said “well, I feel very happy about it, why do you ask?” He replied: “When I was being ordained I discovered later that my wife was seething with rage in the congregation because she felt that it was she who ought to be ordained in my place”.

Apart from the mistake of the lady wanting to be a pastor herself, how bizarre it was to be jealous of her husband’s pastorship. But it just shows what an awful thing it is for someone to be eaten up by jealousy in that way. This was not the only time that I became aware of such an Amazonian element in a pastor’s wife. And jealousy can so easily eat any of us up.

I want to warn you seriously against jealousy with all my heart because when you see somebody else who is shining at something at which you would like to shine, you should be only too pleased. You should want to follow their example. You should find them an inspiration. You should be happy for them. You should see them as someone to emulate and copy rather than someone of whom to be jealous. Saul’s jealousy was all-consuming. And it IS an all-consuming thing. I want to counsel you never to let jealousy even have a moment’s place in your heart. You will shortly see why I counsel you about this so earnestly.

What about David’s responses to Saul’s actions?

II. DAVID’S RESPONSES TO SAUL’S ACTIONS

The primary response that we see from David to Saul’s actions is

1) His Continuing Respect for His King

Well, first, you find David responding here like a gentleman. You see him behaving with continuing respect for his king. In spite of all that Saul has done — even throwing a spear at him when all David was doing was playing a harp in order to try and encourage him to feel better, using music as a form of medicine — we always find that David’s behaviour is immaculate towards him. He shows great humility and graciousness, and that should be an example for us whenever we are under any kind of persecution and attack. Jesus commands this all the time, saying that you are blessed when you suffer for righteousness sake. And in such a situation you must, as Jesus says, “turn the other cheek” (Matthew 5:39).

The True Meaning of “Turn the Other Cheek”

Incidentally, this does not mean that if any young punk comes up to you in the street and tries to slit your throat with a razor you should just stand there and offer it to him meekly. The law of non-retaliation when someone slaps you “does not repeal the law of self-preservation”, as Matthew Henry puts it so succinctly. In such an instance, the law of good order must be upheld, and you have a right to defend yourself — although without becoming a vengeful vigilante. In Matthew 5:38-42, the Lord Jesus is speaking against the automatic use of vengeful action (the “eye for an eye” mentality).

When it comes to persecution for our faith, we are encouraged to “heap coals of fire on their head” as the Proverb puts it (Proverbs 25:22; cf. Romans 12:20). Do you know that phrase? What it means is this: the nicer you are in the face of persecution, the more the symbolic “coals of fire” are heaped on that other person’s head. It is their problem, they are going to have to deal with it, and you must simply maintain your integrity, because once you respond in a negative way, they’ve got a moral case against you.

The book “1984”, by George Orwell, was designed to show what the world is really like under a totalitarian regime (and also to provide a glaring depiction of betrayal on multiple levels). It is an interesting book for Christians to read because it gives a little glimpse of what the world will be like under the Antichrist. At one point, the main protagonist of the book, Winston, is being interrogated by the state police in ‘Room 101’. All the interrogator wants to do is demonstrate that Winston is actually just like him — a nasty person with no moral scruples. He manages to do it — he breaks him and proves his point. And that is what they want to do to you too: they want to break us — they want to be able to say: “You see! You are just like us! When the veneer of peace and love is stripped away, you behave in the same way as us. You are just as morally repugnant as we are!” That is why it is so important, when we are being persecuted for our faith, that we must respond in as gracious a manner as possible, at all costs. And that is David’s response here with Saul. He shows continuing respect for his king, in spite of all that he is undergoing at his hands.

Another of David’s responses to Saul’s actions is

2) His Constant Humility

His constant humility throughout all these difficult situations. The king wants him as his son-in-law. Some people could get swell-headed at that point. But not David; not at all. Instead, he says ‘But I’m just a little nobody’ (1 Samuel 18:18). David’s humility in his dealings with Saul is something we observe continually.

III. WHAT IS IT THAT PROVOKES SAUL TO JEALOUSY?

We need to look at this because it tells us a great deal more about Saul. First of all, Saul is provoked into jealously by

1) David’s Popularity, Talents, and Abilities

When Saul hears that the women are all singing ‘Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands”, his anger is aroused:

 “And as the women danced, they sang out: ‘Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands’. And Saul was furious and resented this song. ‘They have ascribed tens of thousands to David’, he said, ‘but only thousands to me. What more can he have but the kingdom?’ And from that day forward Saul kept a jealous eye on David”.1 Samuel 18:7-9

David was very good at his job. He won campaigns. He was a great soldier. Saul also used to be the great soldier. Now David is an even greater solider. In verses 14-16 of our text we see Saul’s jealousy consolidated:

“David continued to prosper in all his ways, because the LORD was with him. When Saul saw that David was very successful, he was afraid of him. But all Israel and Judah loved David, because he was leading them out to battle and back”.

The Sauls of this world will always refuse to recognise the true talents of other people. That is one of the main problems in jealousy: A refusal and a failure to recognise the greatness of others and honour the talents of others. The mark of a truly big person is one who can find a welcome space for anybody’s talent, no matter how great. There should be no question of ever having to be jealous about it.

Another thing which provokes Saul to jealousy is

2) God’s Obvious Presence with David

Secondly, Saul was jealous of the fact that God’s presence was clearly with David. This is the very last thing that a believer needs to be jealous about. An unbeliever, yes; but a believer? Never! If you see somebody who looks very obviously as if they have the Lord’s presence with them, what feelings do you have? Just imagine, here is Saul who is jealous and filled with hate and enmity because of David’s clear spirituality: “Now Saul was afraid of David, because the Lord was with him, but had departed from Saul” (1 Samuel 18:12).

If the Lord has ‘left you’ for a time and you see somebody else who the Lord is with, what do you do? Do you set out to destroy that person through spreading nasty rumours about them? You might think, “well no-one would do that”. My friends, I can assure you that they would do so, and I have seen it many times. It happens repeatedly, even in churches — especially in churches. This is the sad truth.

When you see somebody who plainly has God’s presence with them, who is obviously a godly person, and you feel as if the Lord has left you, then you should say, “I must make that person my teacher. I must make that person into one whom I must follow and find out why they’ve got what they’ve got. I’m going to follow that person and take them as my example in my Christian faith”. That is the response of the true believer — the David. However, the false professor — the one who is merely playing the role of a believer, the Saul — will indeed be jealous and embittered when they meet a person of true faith.

A Little Anecdote on this Subject

Here’s a little anecdote: I remember a time when I was preaching at an evangelical church in Scotland and I was having a conversation with a woman after the service while we were all quietly sipping tea in the genteel environs of a well-furnished, restored 17th century hall attached to the church. She was a lawyer of some repute and a big wheel in the congregation. You could tell by the way that she swaggered around. It all proceeded calmly until she suddenly asked me the question: “You’re not one of those fundamentalists are you?” I replied politely: “Well if by that you mean do I believe that the Bible is the word of God and that Jesus Christ was the Son of God who came to take the penalty for our sins on the cross, then yes I am”. In an instant the calmness gave way to a violent tirade in which she began to yell at me, saying: “You people make me sick with your arrogance and narrow-mindedness. Who DO you think you are?” The word “do” was king-sized. She went on for a few sentences more of similar invective while the conversation in the hall stopped and all were in rapt attention on the unfolding scene. My wife was standing next to me open-mouthed. You could have heard the smallest sugar-lump fall to the floor. When she had finished, I said to her very gently and quietly: “I simply responded to your question. Do you not think that it is you who has been arrogant and narrow-minded in your quick condemnation of someone who you do not even know?” At that point the minister intervened and tried to smooth it all over, as ministers are wont to do, and everything soon returned to normal with the quiet sipping of tea and scattered hushed conversations. She then calmed down and continued to talk to someone else as if nothing untoward had ever taken place. However, in the car park as we were just about to get into our car, she came rushing up to me, grabbing my arm, and said, with a manic, desperate look on her face, “Where do you people get your faith?” There was the key. She was a Saul. She went to church each week; she sang the hymns; she prayed the prayers; she put her cheque in the bag; she carried her Bible; she called herself a believer. But when a genuine Christian had come to her church and preached a sermon which revealed her heart, instead of humbly embracing the Lord herself, she had to attack the one responsible for showing the wretchedness of her situation. I said to her that I would be happy to talk to her in depth about my faith whenever she wanted, but I could see that her question was rhetorical rather than desiring a real answer. We gave her our phone number and said she could phone us anytime. Needless to say, she never did.

If you are lacking God’s presence in your life and you meet a person of faith, it is so ludicrous to go down the road of jealousy because what happens is that God’s presence will go even further away from your life! This is the loop in which faithless people find themselves when they belittle the faithful. Do you see here how blind a person becomes? Once they go down the pathway of hardening their own hearts and then God hardening their hearts even more, and them then hardening their hearts even more, it gets increasingly difficult to get back on the true pathway once more.

This is why I say to all Christians, look out for somebody who is obviously more mature in the faith than you and follow them, make them your role model, attach yourself to them and find out what makes them tick. How do they actually work? And make sure that it all rubs off on you — as it always does. Whenever you hang around with spiritual people, it rubs off on you. Just the same as when you hang out with evil people, it will rub off on you. No doubt about that.

Another thing that provokes Saul to jealousy is

3) His Daughter’s Love for David

This, again, is ridiculous. There is nothing more that a father wants than to see his daughter fall genuinely in love with somebody noble and upright — especially an admirable person such as David, and a humble person such as David was. You notice how he said, “I am a poor man and lightly esteemed” (1 Samuel 18:23). He hadn’t even got enough money for a dowry. What father could possibly be grieved by his daughter falling in love with and marrying a humble and brave man? Yet we read that “When Saul realized that the LORD was with David and that his daughter Michal loved David, he grew even more afraid of David. So from then on Saul was David’s enemy” (1 Samuel 18:28-29).

What ludicrous grounds to be jealous of, or at enmity towards, David. The fact that his own daughter loved him. Amazing. That was a threat to Saul of course. Saul just wanted to use his daughters to marry David so that he could have power over David and use them to get at him, as you will see later on in the Scripture. However, if his daughter was going to be “in love” with David, that was going to cause severe problems, because she wasn’t going to be able to be manipulated by her father. And in fact, Michal was not able to be manipulated by him, as we discover later.

Here we must ask ourselves some questions: Are these the signs of a true believer in the Lord? Would such behaviour characterise a genuine disciple of the Lord? Many say that Saul was merely a “carnal believer” who had not matured. But he never did! He remained David’s enemy “the rest of his days”.

There is no such thing as a “carnal believer”. There are certainly immature believers; but the Christian life is an upward path from the beginning — gently sloping to start with and steepening throughout our lives. Far from being worldly and superficial, all the immature believers I have known have been actually extremely keen and almost over-the-top in their dedication to the Lord, still buzzing on their new-found faith. Yet the kind of enmity and jealousy, coupled with the desire for manipulation, which we see in Saul is endemic in so many churches today, primarily because there are so many false professors — so many Sauls — masquerading as the faithful.

Another thing which provokes Saul to jealousy is

4) His Deep Fear

We see here what is, at root, the main cause which lies at the back of of jealousy. Yes, pride is there. But pride too is a result of fear. This is what you can say about yourself or about any other jealous person that you know of: What ultimately lies behind jealousy is fear. In verse 12, we see that fear is intimately linked in with jealousy, which is very psychologically acute here. “So Saul was afraid of David, because the LORD was with David but had departed from Saul”. The Lord was with David, so Saul was filled with jealousy. But it was fear which undergirded that jealousy.

Again, in verse 15: “When Saul saw that David was very successful, he was afraid of him”. And that is what fuels jealousy: fear. Afraid that this other person will look better in the eyes of the world than we look.

Again, in verse 29, we see that when Saul realised that the Lord was with David and that his daughter loved David, “Saul grew even more afraid of David. So from then on Saul was David’s enemy”. There is fear right there. Three times it is mentioned very plainly that behind Saul’s jealousy lay fear. You will surely have found all this out for yourself.

Have you ever worked in an office where the manager or boss is clearly an incompetent person who doesn’t even deserve to have that job? Everyone knows it, although no one would ever dare broach the subject. So he looks at you, an underling, just a little person in the firm and sees somebody of integrity, intelligence, ability and so on. What happens next? Does he seek to promote you and even benignly regard you as his protégé — a future successor to his job? No. Instead he becomes filled with jealousy. Why? Because he’s afraid that you will expose the fact that he doesn’t deserve to have that job and that you might actually be deservedly in line for his job. There is a fear there, an insecurity. But instead of improving himself, the boss sets out trying to undermine your work and even to destroy you.

All this is classic behaviour. I have seen it so many times (mainly because the world is full of incompetent bosses). I have even seen it in many churches (mainly because the visible church is so full of puffed-up pastors!).

Another thing which provokes Saul to jealousy is

5) The Presence of an Evil Spirit

There was something else which lay at the back of Saul’s jealous actions. Two verses are pivotal to the whole story of the life of Saul: “from that day forward Saul kept a jealous eye on David. The next day a spirit of distress sent from God came upon Saul, and he prophesied inside the house while David played the harp as usual” (1 Samuel 18:9-10). Saul’s jealousy takes a quantum leap in his heart at that point. It is no coincidence that this happened, as the Scripture plainly shows. From the moment that Saul began to keep a jealous eye on David, the very next day an evil spirit from God came powerfully upon Saul. (Regarding Saul’s “prophesying”, see the special Excursus on this subject further below).

Notice that this was an evil spirit sent from God. It always is. No one is afflicted by an evil spirit unless the Lord condones it. In the Book of Job we see that He outright directed it! (Job 1:6-12; 2:3-6; cf. 2 Corinthians 12:7-9).

It is God who is in control of everything. Satan cannot just go around afflicting anybody he wants, anytime he wants, at random, at his own will, whenever he likes to do so. He is subject to the will of God. He is subject to the sovereignty of God. We see that very plainly here. But God allows people to be afflicted by evil spirits when they do things which are deserving of such affliction. As William Green put it:

“If you steadfastly resist the devil, confiding in the grace of God and the salvation of Jesus, he cannot touch a hair of your head. Temptation and sin, if you bravely resist them, will react to your everlasting welfare: your position is impregnable, the protection is ample, the armament is invincible, the supplies abundant, and the fortress can never be entered by the enemy, unless betrayed into his power by your own treacherous hands”.W.H. Green, The Argument of Job Unfolded, Klock & Klock, 1978), pp.68-69

“Unless betrayed into Satan’s power by your own treacherous hands”. This is just to let you know that evil spirits do not go around doing exactly what they want to do; they are under the judgement, sovereignty, and permissive hand of God. This is an evil spirit sent from God which came forcefully upon Saul because Saul himself already provided the foothold for this to happen. Gradually, Saul is being set loose to be overwhelmed by the destructive power of his own sinful madness.

In case there are any readers who may still imagine that Saul was simply a wayward believer, I will now give a summary of Saul’s character.

IV. A SUMMARY OF SAUL’S CHARACTER

Saul is not a “carnal believer”, as some would put it. I do not believe that he was a believer at all. When we compare David and Saul, they are as different as chalk and cheese. We are seeing the difference between the devout believer and the carnal professor — someone who is of the world but who professes to be a believer. It is to demonstrate this difference that I am writing this piece at all. This is why I ask the question: “Are you a Saul or a David?” Are you a genuine disciple of Christ, or are you someone who merely professes to be a Christian — a charlatan?

The centrepiece of chapter thirty-one is the suicide of Saul. This is really the climax of the contrast we see between Saul and David. Saul is an object-lesson in the essential difference between the unbelieving but quasi-religious carnal man and the believing spiritual man (David).

In Saul, we have an awesome study of a nominal believer — a believer in name only. There is a pattern to Saul’s life. His downfall did not happen in a vacuum. One sin never terminates in itself. It always leads to greater sins, and so on, down the line. One sin opens the door for another. It always involves progressive disintegration ultimately leading to destruction (which is complete separation from God, 2 Thessalonians 1:9). This is plainly shown in the Scriptures. As one example, we see that a refusal to acknowledge the reality of God and subsequently indulge in in idolatry leads inexorably to sexual perversion (Romans 1:21-27).

So how can we summarise Saul’s character? What brought him to the wretched point of consulting a witch and then committing suicide? If you look back over his life you will see that the futility of his dying moments was rooted in all that had progressively deteriorated in the previous years of his life. Let us just trace some of the events which shaped Saul’s life.

1) He was the People’s Choice

Saul was not made king as a result of spiritual deliberation and Divine consultation. The people of Israel merely wanted a physically big man — a mere warrior, an Arnold Schwarzenegger or Robocop — at their head so that they could be like all the unbelieving nations. He was the people’s choice, and the Lord merely gave them what they wanted in order to show them the foolishness of their ways. You can read all about this in this example here:

“But when they said, ‘Give us a king to judge us’, their demand was displeasing in the sight of Samuel; so he prayed to the LORD. And the LORD said to Samuel, ‘Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you. For it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected Me as their king. Just as they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking Me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you’… Nevertheless, the people refused to listen to Samuel. ‘No!’ they said. ‘We must have a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to judge us, to go out before us, and to fight our battles’”.1 Samuel 8:6-8, & 19-20

Saul as king was the result of a petulant ‘democracy’ — people power being exercised in defiance of God’s will being expressed through the prophet. Need I say more?

Another betraying aspect of Saul’s character was that

2) He was Just a Military King and Nothing More

Because he was not chosen on the basis of spiritual deliberation and Divine consultation, Saul was merely a military king over the Lord’s people. He was good at smiting Amalek, but he could never provide the people with spiritual nourishment. Even in the last event of his life, he was a total failure.

This was because God had forsaken him; and you can guarantee that God had forsaken him because he had already forsaken God. The one is the natural fruit of the other.

Another betraying aspect of Saul’s character was that

3) He Set Himself up as a Priest

Saul, through impatience, arrogated to himself the priestly office, offering sacrifice at Gilgal (1 Samuel 13:7-10). For this sacrilege his rejection from the kingship was prophesied by Samuel.

Another betraying aspect of Saul’s character was that

4) He was a Wanton Murderer of the Lord’s Priests

In Saul’s fanatical desire to find David and kill him, he paranoically presumed the conspiratorial guilt of the priests in harbouring David. As a result, off his own bat, he not only had eighty-five priests put to death (1 Samuel 22:18) but also “Nob, the city of the priests, he struck with the edge of the sword, both men and women, children and nursing infants, oxen and donkeys and sheep — with the edge of the sword” (1 Samuel 22:19). Do you really consider that to be the work of a devout follower of the Lord?

Another betraying aspect of Saul’s character was that…

5) He was Only a Religious Man

He had a complete lack of genuine spirituality. He certainly participated in religious festivals (e.g. 1 Samuel 20:5,24) but such participation was so empty that Saul was willing to kill someone on that very feast day! (1 Samuel 20:31, David; & 33, Jonathan). One is reminded of the Pharisees seeking to kill Christ on the Passover (John 18:28)!

The Sauls of this world always busy themselves with religious activities. They love to be seen to be doing “the right thing”. They thrive on public shows of religion. True spirituality, however, does not reside in such externalities, as David knew very well and expressed in his psalms:

“For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it; You do not delight in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart — These, O God, You will not despise”.Psalm 51:16-17

It is true that Saul is said to have prophesied, but again that is no proof that he was a spiritual man or a believer. (See the Excursus on this subject of Saul prophesying a little further below).

Another betraying aspect of Saul’s character was that

6) He Often Behaved as if he was Demon-Possessed

As we can see very well from these verses:

• 1 Samuel 16:14: “After the Spirit of the LORD had departed from Saul, a spirit of distress from the LORD began to torment him”.
• 1 Samuel 18:10: “The next day a spirit of distress sent from God came upon Saul”.
• 1 Samuel 19:9: “But as Saul was sitting in his house with his spear in his hand, a spirit of distress from the LORD came upon him”.

Another betraying aspect of Saul’s character was that

7) He was an Inconsolably Jealous Man

This we have already shown in looking at 1 Samuel 18 & 19.

Another betraying aspect of Saul’s character was that

8) He was very Disobedient

A classic example occurred when Saul was given the Divine command to destroy Amalek (Samuel 15:3) and he decided to pursue a different pathway (1 Samuel 15:9). In fact, that all went back to a stark original prophecy in Deuteronomy 25:19 which Saul was supposed to faithfully fulfil:

“Therefore, it shall be, when the LORD your God has given you rest from your enemies all around, in the land which the LORD your God is giving you to possess as an inheritance, that you will blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven. You shall not forget”.Deuteronomy 25:19; cf. Exodus 17:14-16

We see here how God deals with subsequent generations of nations just as He deals with subsequent generations of families “of them that hate Me” (cf. Deuteronomy 7:2-6; 12:2-3; 20:10-18).

Another betraying aspect of Saul’s character was his

9) Failure to “Take the Rap”

The classic example of this occurred in 1 Samuel 15 after Saul had been found out for not having obeyed the Lord’s commandment to destroy Amalek. He made numerous excuses, even lied (1 Samuel 13:9) and blamed everyone else but himself (1 Samuel 15:13-15). Are those the actions of a man of God?

Another betraying aspect of Saul’s character was his

10) Fear of Man

The key to this entire incident in 1 Samuel 15 lies in Saul’s own ghastly admission: “I feared the people and obeyed their voice” (1 Samuel 15:24). Just has he himself had been “the people’s choice” rather than the Lord’s, so he tended to play to the desires of the people rather that find out what the Lord wanted. “The fear of man brings a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord shall be safe” (Proverbs 29:25).

Another betraying aspect of Saul’s character was his

11) Phony Repentance

Again, we see this typified in the incident in 1 Samuel 15. On two occasions Saul made out that he was repenting. The first time (1 Samuel 15:24) was so obviously just to get himself off the hook; the second time (1 Samuel 15:28-30) it was an act of hypocrisy in order to avoid any shame before the people.

These are a few of the aspects of Saul’s character which should demonstrate to us that the man was not a believer but a false professor. Obviously, all believers do stumble from time to time; but the key is that they always learn from their mistakes and grow accordingly. We never even once see that in Saul’s life but always in David’s. This is the key difference between the two men which demonstrates the fact that the one was a true believer while the other was a false professor.

Before continuing our study with some spiritual lessons to be gleaned from our text in 1 Samuel 18:1-30, here is a

BRIEF EXCURSUS ON THE SPIRIT OF PROPHECY IN SAUL

On three occasions in the First Book of Samuel, we read that Saul prophesied (1 Samuel 10:10; 18:10; 19:23-24). Many assume that this shows that he was a true believer; but this is not the case at all.

We need to understand what is meant here by prophesying, and what is meant by the Spirit of the Lord coming upon him. We must never have a stereotyped idea of prophesying. Prophecy is not merely speaking God’s word about the future — making divinely-appointed predictions. That is a very limited view of prophecy. For prophecy is also just as much about singing and praising God with thanksgiving (1 Chronicles 25:1-3). It is also about strengthening, encouraging and comforting God’s people (1 Corinthians 14:2-4). Sometimes, as we see in the New Testament, this sort of prophesying was given in other languages (though never in gibberish), e.g., Acts 2:11: “We hear them speaking in our own languages the wonderful works of God”.

This is plainly what was happening to Saul in 1 Samuel 10 when the Spirit of the Lord came upon him. In saying this, it doesn’t mean that Saul was regenerated and had the permanently indwelling Holy Spirit. Rather, he was receiving a temporary ‘anointing’ for the purpose of being transformed into an aggressive warrior and leader of the Lord’s ancient Covenant people.

We see these special anointings with God’s Spirit in other places in Scripture. For example, Bezalel son of Uri was “filled with the Spirit of God” by the Lord, “with skill, ability, and knowledge in all kinds of craftsmanship to design artistic works in gold, silver, and bronze, to cut gemstones for settings, and to carve wood, so that he may be a master of every craft” (Exodus 31:1-5).

Again, we see that the LORD “raised up Othniel son of Caleb’s younger brother Kenaz as a deliverer to save them. The Spirit of the LORD came upon him, and he became Israel’s judge and went out to war” (Judges 3:9-10).

Thus, when the Scripture says that God changed Saul’s heart, and that he was changed into a different person, this was a complete change of personality to equip him for his kingly role. It was not regeneration or conversion.

Many claim that Saul was indeed regenerated but was a carnal believer who never matured. This is a woefully inadequate view. “By their fruits you shall know them”. A survey of Saul’s life reveals it all, as we have shown in our main text. He was repeatedly and wilfully disobedient to both Samuel and the Lord; he had an evil spirit; he was consistently jealous and murderous towards his rival David; and the last religious act of his life was the consultation of a known witch. If that is what it means to be a believer, then we might as well go and live on the planet Zargon!

This idea of the “carnal believer” who persistently behaves like an unbeliever is just an excuse for professing ‘Christians’ to live how they want, and it is one of the biggest delusions in the history of the Church. The play-off between Saul and David, which takes up so much of Bible history in this book is not the play-off between a “carnal” believer and a more “spiritual” believer, as some would claim. It is the play-off between an unbeliever masquerading as a believer and a genuine believer who is flawed.

So, what was Saul doing when he prophesied? Nothing happened of any spiritual significance. Even after all his prophesying Saul was still the same wicked man as before — worse even. In 1 Samuel 18:10, here was a man who was rejected by God, empowered by an evil spirit, expending all his energy on killing a servant of God and is now engaged in prophecy! He was entranced but he was not truly changed. In 1 Samuel 19, he was a madman who picked up in a contagious way what his servants experienced. One can see this in church meetings. The same contagious madness which characterised the “Toronto Blessing” and other Charismatic atrocities came upon Saul when he saw others engaged in this ‘prophesying’.

We have here something corresponding to mesmerism. It was like a contagion which he contracted. Remember, the gift of prophecy has sometimes been given to men who knew nothing whatsoever of the grace of God, such as Balaam (Numbers 22-24), and even the evil high priest Caiaphas (John 11:51).

Why did the Spirit of God come upon Saul?

Firstly, the Spirit of God came upon Saul to give him a further opportunity to repent of his wicked ways? The Lord often places people in certain circumstances which can affect their lives to such an extent that they come to Him. A marriage, a bereavement, a change of circumstances, etc.

Secondly, the Spirit of God came upon Saul to show him that it was God with whom Saul was dealing, not David.

Thirdly, the Spirit of God came upon Saul to restrain Saul so that David could get away (1 Samuel 20:1a). The Lord uses many varieties of means and instruments to bring about the safety of His servants.

We must bear in mind that religious experience or activity do not indicate spiritual standing before God. In 1 Samuel 19, what happened to Saul was that he was riding on the crest of an emotional wave. He was like the man in the Parable of the Four Soils who received the Word with joy, but who had no real root, and so withered away (Matthew 13:18-23). Saul is like the man who received the seed that fell on rocky places who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. But since he has no root, he lasts only a short time. Riding on a religious and psychological high, he was carried away here. But it was not to last. Outwardly he was changed in order to fulfil his office, but there was no real work of the heart happening.

If you want an explanation of Saul prophesying, you need turn no further than to the following searing statement of the Lord Jesus, who shows that even the manifestation of prophecy in a person is no witness to their true spiritual condition:

“Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore, by their fruits you will know them. ‘Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’”Matthew 7:17-23

What a warning that is to us too. Has a real work been done in us, or is it just a pretence, as with Saul? So ends this excursus.

As we bring this study to a close, after that brief excursus, let us examine some of the spiritual lessons we can learn from the relationship between David and Saul and their lives.

V. SOME SPIRITUAL LESSONS TO BE GLEANED

The first lesson that you will notice relevant to your Christian life is that…

1) Blessing and Affliction Follow as Surely as Night follows Day

Look at the context in 1 Samuel 18. David has just scored an enormous victory over Goliath. This is a highpoint in the history of Israel, and surely in David’s life; the little man conquers the great big warrior who nobody in Israel would take on. The possibility is there for David to feel very pleased with himself. So you find that whenever you have great blessing like this, a great victory, just to prevent you from getting any grand ideas about yourself and beginning to imagine that you are the greatest thing that has ever been invented on this planet, the Lord comes in there and pulls the carpet out from underneath you, just to keep your growth going and to remind you of His motto: “Without Me, you can do nothing”.

David becomes a huge hero in Israel and then is humbled. This is repeated so many times in Scripture, where the Lord has somebody who is an absolutely remarkable person, a hero in every sense of the word, humbled. The Lord humbles that person for a reason. We have looked at this phenomenon many times. It happened to the Apostle Paul. Paul had vision of heaven — more than a vision, he went to heaven, he saw it. Any normal person would have come back saying “Hey guys, you’ll never guess what I’ve seen. I’ve been to heaven, and I’ve seen the whole thing”. Well Paul says, “just to keep me in my place and prevent me from the sin of pride, God gave me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger from Satan” (2 Corinthians 12:7-9).

We are dealing with the same thing here with David. It is a pre-emptive action on God’s part so that one of his saints doesn’t become filled with pride. And so it is here. Hot on the heels of his victory over Goliath and the subsequent hero-worship of the people, we find that David begins to be persecuted by Saul. Just look the sequence. First, we read:

“As the troops were returning home after David had killed the Philistine, the women came out of all the cities of Israel to meet King Saul with singing and dancing, with joyful songs, and with tambourines and other instruments. And as the women danced, they sang out: “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands”.1 Samuel 18:6-7

Then, two verses later, we read: “From that day forward Saul kept a jealous eye on David”. Blessing and affliction follow as surely as night follows day. All the way through here, you find that whenever David has great blessing in his life and has great victory, the Lord tempers it with affliction. That is why David could say in a song; “Before I was afflicted I went astray, But now I keep Your word”, and “It is good for me that I have been afflicted, That I may learn Your statutes” (Psalm 119:67 & 71). David learned his lessons; Saul didn’t. That is the fundamental difference between the believer and the false professor. Forgive me for asking but which one are you?

The true disciple of Christ has a wholly different understanding of affliction from the rest of the world. That is why James says at the very beginning of his letter the most remarkable thing: “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience” (James 1:2-3). “Hold on a minute”, you may say, “what can possibly be joyful about that?” It is a different perspective, a different mindset, a different way of looking at things altogether. The Lord is afflicting me, He wants me to learn… He is teaching me a lesson… He is keeping me humble… He is keeping me faithful… He is keeping me close to Him… He is reminding me that He is present with me. When I’m being afflicted, I know that the Lord is with me. That is the rule. And that was the rule for David here.

Look at Jesus’ temptation. We can see the pattern very powerfully there:

“Then a voice came from heaven, ‘You are My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’ Immediately the Spirit drove Him into the wilderness. And He was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan, and was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered to Him”.Mark 1:11-13

That is a pattern in all our lives. Victory and blessing, immediately followed by humbling affliction — but always with the Lord keeping us and ministering to us (even through His angels!).

So that is the first lesson that we can draw from here: blessing and affliction follow as surely as night follows day.

You see it in Revelation 12:16, where you read in symbolism that “the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed up the flood which the dragon had spewed out of his mouth”. Then at that point, straight away, in the very next verse (breath), we read that “the dragon was enraged with the woman, and he went to make war with the rest of her offspring, who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ” (Revelation 12:17). The woman is a symbol of God’s people, receiving help in the wilderness of this world in various situations, and then, next minute — boom! — the dragon, the symbol for Satan, was enraged at them and began to persecute them savagely. For the man or woman of God, where blessing is, affliction will surely follow.

However, the last thing you should think is “well that must mean that God has left me”. Quite the reverse is true in the Christian’s life. Affliction is God’s school for the saints and a sure sign of His presence rather than abandonment. It is God’s gymnasium, where the saints are exercised. That very word “gymnasium” is the one that is used in Hebrews 12:11, where it says that whenever you are afflicted through God’s chastisement, it is not pleasant at the time, but grievous, very painful, “but afterwards it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it”, or exercised by it. The Greek word for trained/exercised there is “gumnadzo”, from where we get our very word “gymnasium”. Affliction is God’s gymnasium, to exercise us spiritually — and it really works, every time! (For an in-depth discussion of the presence and purpose of evil and affliction in the world, please read my free-to-download article, “Tested by Fire — The Origin & Purpose of Suffering and Evil”. You can click on the title to go there.).

David actually provides for us a model of how to deal with affliction:

“Now David was greatly distressed, for the people spoke of stoning him, because the soul of all the people was grieved, every man for his sons and his daughters. But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God”.1 Samuel 30:6

But David strengthened himself in the Lord. When do we read that Saul ever did such a thing? Never. For that is the hallmark of the spiritual person and Saul is not a spiritual person.

Another spiritual lesson that we can draw from this part of God’s word is that

2) All the Scheming of Satan Always Comes to Nothing

Satan must have really hated David here, and I mean really hated him. Do you remember how Goliath looked at David, at this nice ruddy fresh-faced little boy. Instead of saying “I can’t fight this child, this is totally unfair”, the Scripture says that he looked at David and despised him (1 Samuel 17:42). Well that is Satan, when he looks at believers, looks at Christians, we pathetic little people on the face of this earth, he despises us. He doesn’t ever feel compassion for us. There is no point in asking him to show mercy to you; he despises us. But yet, all the schemings, anything that he can do, have to come to nothing, because he is completely under God’s control. And in fact, the Lord uses them to His advantage, especially with those who are His.

Here was David being persecuted. Saul has an evil spirit which is making him do all sorts of nasty things to David, but ultimately this is going to work out to David’s advantage, because it is training him for his future office as king. That is what is happening. Affliction is the very best training one can receive for a position of leadership in the Lord’s work. Moses knew it. Paul knew it. All true leaders know it.

Satan must have thought he was being very cool when he had Christ put to death; but in doing so he undid everything that he had worked towards down through all the ages on this earth. All of it came to nothing, backfired on him. This was what happened with Christ’s crucifixion. Satan made a total fool of himself (as did his human earthly agents). “Having disarmed the powers and authorities, God made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross” (Colossians 2:15). All the schemings of Satan always ultimately come to nothing. Remember that fact. It will serve you well to do so.

Another spiritual lesson we can glean is the importance for us to

3) Understand the Vile Lengths to which Wicked People will Go in Order to Achieve their Goals

 Saul’s speech in 1 Samuel 22:6-8 is the master work of manipulation and paranoia which we typically find in the words and behaviour of all the Sauls of this world. First, he appeals to their personal interests in v.7 (neat move that; always works). Then he falsely accuses them of conspiring against him, v.8. Then he makes out that Jonathan has encouraged David to lie in wait for him, v.8, when nothing could be further from the truth. The Sauls of this world always project their own rubbish onto the people they envy. It was actually Saul who was lying in wait for David, not the other way round! What a classic case of projection that was. Then he accuses the priests of conspiring against him with David, v.13, which was not true. Finally he orders Doeg to kill all the priests, eighty-five of them, and gives orders to destroy the priestly town of Nob, including the women and children and babies.

There is nothing worse than a cornered Saul in this world. They will stop at nothing to achieve their own selfish ends. So always beware of cornered Sauls.

Another spiritual lesson we can glean here is that

4) David is a ‘Type’ of Messiah

Finally, we see David as a type of the Messiah who was yet to come. I have mentioned this many times. David is a type of Christ; he brings pictures to us of Christ. What we see here concerning David in his humiliation and his affliction on the way to taking the throne mirrors exactly the Lords humiliation on His way to his Ascension to heaven and taking his rightful place next to the Father. “In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting for God, for whom and through whom all things exist, to make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering” (Hebrews 2:10). Completion comes through suffering.

When the Lord Jesus Christ came to this earth, the beginning of His humiliation was his incarnation and it just goes down… and down… and down… increasingly persecuted and then eventually killed, buried, raised from the dead and ascended to heaven once more to sit at the right hand of the Father. That is the way of growth in the Christian life, through the refining fire of suffering.

But the awful irony is this: That later, David would take a leaf out of Saul’s book, when he arranged to have Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband, killed in battle because he was physically attracted to Bathsheba. He had seen her bathing in the nude from the roof, and he thought “I’ll get her husband bumped-off and then I can have her all to myself”. That was a leaf straight out of Saul’s book on powermongering. Isn’t it remarkable? But how did this happen? Well, so long as David walked with the Lord, he remained with the Lord, and he remained out of trouble. But you’ll see that David virtually brought it on himself because of the state of his life at that time.

The big difference though is this: Saul never did repent. Never at any time did he feel any genuine, lasting remorse for any of his actions. He never repented of what he wanted to do to David, but yet David did repent, and we have it clearly laid out in Psalm 51 in Scripture. That is the crucial difference between a believer and an unbeliever. It is the difference between a true believer and the one who only plays at being a believer.

 Before our conclusion to this message on 1 Samuel 18:1-30, here is a

BRIEF EXCURSUS ON SAUL’S CONSULTATION OF THE WITCH AT EN-DOR

Saul’s consultation of the witch at En-Dor (1 Samuel 28:7-25) has often proven to be a difficult text for many. Did Saul break God’s law because it was only Samuel who appeared? How could a believer consult a witch? Was it really Samuel who appeared? The questions are many on the lips of many.

Firstly, it must be acknowledged that consulting mediums is contrary to God’s Law (Exodus 22:8; Deuteronomy 18:9-14). The increase of such mediums is a sign of a corrupt and unclean nation. They bring a curse down upon a nation. Sorcerers “shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death” (Revelation 21:8; 22:15). Was it Really Samuel who appeared? Some have said that it was, that God permitted this in order to bring judgement on Saul. Another more satisfying explanation is that this is a demonic manifestation — as are all alleged spirits of dead people. Some reasons which can be given to show that it could not have been the actual Samuel who appeared are as follows:

1) There is a vast unbridgeable gulf between the living and the dead: “As the cloud disappears and vanishes away, So he who goes down to the grave does not come up. He shall never return to his house, nor shall his place know him anymore” (Job 7:9-10). “But now he is dead; why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me” (2 Samuel 12:23).

In Luke 16:19-31, Abraham refuses the rich man’s request to send Lazarus to his father’s house to preach to his remaining brothers: “They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them”. And it is said there that a great chasm has been fixed between the living and the dead (v.26). Just as there is a gulf fixed between heaven and hell, so there is also one fixed between this place and that of the dead, good or bad.

2) If it had been the real Samuel, it would give credence to the power of a witch and to the effectiveness and usefulness of sorcery. In fact, it would virtually have legitimised sorcery. Would God want that to be the case recorded in His word?

3) If it had been the real Samuel, the apparition would not have been said to have come “out of the earth”.

4) God had never answered Saul by the living prophets or in any other manner (see 1 Samuel 28:6), so why should he do so now with the dead prophet Samuel?

5) The real Samuel would not have received such homage as this from Saul (1 Samuel 28:14), which even angelic spirits have refused (cf. Revelation 19:10; 21:9-10).

6) The apparition only appeared to the witch and not to Saul himself, as is plain from 1 Samuel 28:13-14. Clearly, she conversed with an evil spirit and thus by its assistance pretended to bring up a dead person.

7) If it had been the real Samuel it would lend credence to the reality of ghosts. But alleged ghosts are all about trickery and delusion on the part of demons; for there is an unbridgeable gulf between the living and the dead.

8) If it had been the real Samuel, the prophet would not only have accused Saul of failing to kill Agag (1 Samuel 15:18), but he would also have accused him of consulting a witch instead of the Lord!

9) There is no disturbance (see 1 Samuel 28:15) which could be worked on the departed in heaven by people such as Saul.

10) The real Samuel would not have said to Saul “tomorrow you and your sons will be with me” (1 Samuel 28:19). For Saul would surely not go to the same place as Samuel after death (although Jonathan no doubt would). This is a horrible lie of the devil, who continually tries to make all people think that they will go to heaven.

For these reasons, I do not believe that the apparition conjured up by the witch could have been the real Samuel. There is also an important spiritual lesson to be learned here: Demons can speak the truth when it suits their cause. With God’s permission, this demon neatly sets out the reality of Saul’s situation: 1) Abandonment by God; 2) Taking of the kingdom from him and the giving of it to David; 3) Failing to kill Agag; 4) Forecasting defeat in the battle.

Like all demonic entities, his purpose is to make people despair. But you see here how demons are even willing to highlight men’s sins for their own purposes. In the final analysis, it was Saul’s consultation of a witch which was one of the principal reasons for the Lord killing him (1 Chronicles 10:13-14).

Yes. That’s right. God kills people. Are you shocked? The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Even life itself. So you had better get over it. He is the Potter, and we are the clay (Romans 9:20-21). He moulds as He wishes and discards as He desires. Let that be a major warning to us all.

So ends this excursus on Saul’s consultation with the witch at En-dor.

CONCLUSION

The question remains: Are you a Saul or a David? You now have enough data to give an intelligent response to that question.

When we sum it all up, we simply have to say that Saul was not a saved man. For there is no evidence of a relationship with the Lord. There is no evidence of learning from his mistakes. There is no evidence that he did anything other than follow his own course in life without any thought for where the Lord wanted him to go and what He wanted him to do.

So when he was confronted with the choice between being tortured by the Philistines and taking his life, he took that latter course. If he had been a believer, what do you think he would have done? His epitaph tells it all:

“So Saul died for his unfaithfulness to the LORD, because he did not keep the word of the LORD and even consulted a spirit medium for guidance, and he failed to inquire of the LORD. So the LORD put him to death and turned the kingdom over to David son of Jesse”.1 Chronicles 10:13-14

Saul’s history is the product of that pivotal verse in the First Book of Samuel which says: “Those who honor Me I will honor, and those who despise Me shall be lightly esteemed” (1 Samuel 2:30). As Matthew Henry puts it in his comment on this verse:

“Not only God will lightly esteem them… but they shall be lightly esteemed by all the world; the very honour they are proud of shall be laid in the dust; they shall see themselves despised by all mankind, their names a reproach; when they are gone, their memory shall rot, and, when they rise again, it shall be to everlasting shame and contempt. The dishonour which their impotent malice puts upon God and his omnipotent justice will return upon their own heads”.

Such is the fate of all active atheists — of all those who do not love God and His truth, all those who have open or secret contempt in their hearts for things Divine and for the true people of God.

Saul was a man who professed outwardly a concern for the things of the Lord, but inwardly he was in opposition to the real intent of the Lord. He was for himself rather than the Lord. He was the perennial pretend-believer. The Lord Jesus warned us about these “tares” (or ‘Zizania’, Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43). The world is full of them, and churches are brimming over with them. Many churches are even run by them! They are the leaders of denominations. They even head up ministries on the internet. And the corridors of political power are clustered with them as they overlay their strange understanding of Christ and the Bible on their bellicose governmental machinations.

Remember this: Sauls always spell trouble for believers. But what the Sauls of this world will never understand is that — by a masterstroke of the Lord — whatever trouble they bring into the lives of true believers, it can only strengthen the faith of those believers. Saul’s persecution of David drove him ever closer into the arms of God. As he says so eloquently in a Psalm, plainly in reference to this Saul-stricken period in his life:

 “In God alone my soul finds rest; my salvation comes from Him. He alone is my rock and my salvation. He is my fortress; I will never be shaken. How long will you threaten a man? Will all of you throw him down like a leaning wall or a tottering fence? They fully intend to cast him down from his lofty perch; they delight in lies; with their mouths they bless, but inwardly they curse. Selah. Rest in God alone, O my soul, for my hope comes from Him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; He is my fortress; I will not be shaken. My salvation and my honor rest on God, my strong rock; my refuge is in God. Trust in Him at all times, O people; pour out your hearts before Him. God is our refuge”.Psalm 62:1-8

Not only did David predict the death of Saul in v.3 of that psalm, but he provided us with a model for our devotional life in times of affliction. But be warned: when the Sauls of this world see your increased devotion, they will only increase their malice. In the final analysis, your only defence is to do what David did in his seemingly hopeless situation: To strengthen yourself in the Lord your God, who is your refuge.

Alan Morrison

© Copyright, Alan Morrison, 2023
[The copyright on my works is merely to protect them from any wanton plagiarism which could result in undesirable changes (as has actually happened!). Readers are free to reproduce my work, so long as it is in the same format and with the exact same content and its origin is acknowledged]

“CounterCulture Disciples of Christ”. That is what we are or what we should be. “Do not be conformed to this age but be transformed through the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2) — the ultimate CounterCulture statement. A lot of folks think that simply means not getting involved in the typical culture of ordinary society — hanging out in bars and nightclubs, street-life, drug use, non-stop consumerism, self-centredness, materialistic living, and so on. But it goes so much deeper than that. Let me expand…

You probably read that above quote from Romans and thought, “Hang on, that should really be ‘conformed to this world’. He must be using one of those New Age Bible versions instead of the Authorized King James Version”. Actually, almost every single Bible translation that you could gather uses the word “world” there (including the KJV, which also has its flaws, as any student of the original languages will affirm). But the Koine Greek word in the original manuscripts does not use the word which is normally translated as “world”, which would be κόσμος, kosmos. Instead, it uses the word αἰών, aión, meaning “age”. This is subtly significant. As Kenneth Wuest puts it in his “Word Studies in the Greek New Testament”:

“The word ‘world’ is aión, which Trench defines as follows : “All that floating mass of thoughts, opinions, maxims, speculations, hopes, impulses, aims, aspirations, at any time current in the world, which it may be impossible to seize and accurately define, but which constitute a most real and effective power, being the moral, or immoral atmosphere which at every moment of our lives we inhale, again inevitably to exhale”, — all this is included in the aión (age), which is, as Bengel has expressed it, “the subtle informing spirit of the kosmos or world of men who are living alienated and apart from God.” The Germans have a word for it, the zeitgeist or spirit of the age. This masquerade costume which saints sometimes put on, hides the Lord Jesus living in the heart of the Christian, and is an opaque covering through which the Holy Spirit cannot radiate the beauty of the Lord Jesus. The world says to that kind of a saint, ‘The modernism of your appearance nullifies the fundamentalism of your doctrine’”. (Kenneth Wuest, “Word Studies in the Greek New Testament”, Vol.3, William B. Eerdman’s, 1955, p.207).

So, when the word, aión, is used in the New Testament, it does not so much represent the kosmos as it does “the subtle informing spirit” of it — whatever happens to be the current zeitgeist of the age. Thus, when we are called not to be conformed to this age, we are being exhorted to keep ourselves unaffected and uninfected by the trends, fads and fashions, popular ideas, bandwagons, lifestyles, moral philosophy, or whatever else is in vogue at any particular time in this fallen world and also in the visible church which has been well and truly corrupted. The same word, aión, is used in 2 Corinthians 4:4, “the god of this age which blinds the minds of unbelievers”. That same “god” also blinds the minds of many of those who profess to be ‘Christians’, as I will show below.

The Lord Jesus Christ actually “gave Himself for our sins” precisely “to rescue us from the present evil age” (Galatians 1:3-4), where the Greek is also aión. It is to this evil age — out of which Christ has rescued us — which we are not to be conformed. This evil age in the midst of which we are presently living is coming to a climax via the “mystery of lawlessness” which undergirds it, and which energizes it, but which has been under some Divine restraint to prevent it from climaxing before its time (2 Thessalonians 2:7-8). From this — this evil age and the mystery of lawlessness which permeates it — we who are genuine disciples of Christ have been rescued and should therefore have no part in it whatsoever otherwise we make a mockery of that rescue.

Currently, the “subtle informing spirit” of this kosmos — the zeitgeist of this present evil age — would involve all the ‘wokeness’, political correctness, all the facets of warped sexuality and what I call ‘Pride-ism’, gender ideology, ‘spirituality’ based entirely on subjective experience rather than objective truth (e.g. New Ageism), the glorification of freewill, feminism, disinformation and lies, the so-called “Law of Attraction”, widespread narcissism, psychological operations and mind-control, ‘apocalyptic’ hysteria (false teaching about the end of this age), Transhumanism and “Human 2.0” alongside one-world globalism, and so many other aspects of lawlessness before God.

Much of that list has spilled over into the visible church too, as I will demonstrate here, resulting in the likes of the “Gay Christian Network” and “OneBodyOneFaith”, plus many denominations which have compromised regarding matters of sexuality. We have whole movements in the Christian scene which are based entirely on subjective experience rather than objective truth (e.g. the Charismatic-Pentecostal Movement, “slain in the spirit”, tongues-babble, false revivals, etc.) or on the “Law of Attraction” (Prosperity Theology, Power of Positive Thinking churches, such as Norman Vincent Peale’s church in New York which had such a formative influence on that deceptive clown, Donald Trump). We have women pastors and teachers (“Christian” feminism). We have a blasphemous and narcissistic glorification of freewill which has spun way out of control (as I demonstrated in my previous paper, “You Were Once Darkness”). We have disinformation psyops disseminated by many professing ‘Christians’ (e.g. QAnon). We have ‘apocalyptic’ hysteria (false teaching about the end of this age in the form of much baloney about the ‘mark of the beast’, ‘666’, Christian Zionism, the whole Israel-first schtick, the Hebrew Roots Movement, a pre-tribulational “rapture”, appalling interpretations of the Book of Revelation, etc.). We have Vatican support for Transhumanism and globalism. We have so many different “movements” and -isms which all vie to present themselves as the “real” Christianity but are up to their eyeballs in the zeitgeist of this age. The unclean foulness of this aión has come into the visible church with a vengeance (literally, cf. Revelation 12:17). But as Kenneth Wuest put it: “The world says to that kind of a saint, ‘The modernism of your appearance nullifies the fundamentalism of your doctrine’”. Conformity by the believer to the zeitgeist of this age is, as Wuest similarly put it, “a masquerade costume”. If worn often enough, it becomes one’s skin rather than merely one’s costume.

Do not be conformed to the zeitgeist of this age, whether it is in the world or in the visible church. If necessary, you will have to make a stand to the ‘Nth’ degree, even standing contra mundum (one versus the world).

When you were spiritually “dead”, as an unbeliever, “you walked according to the aión of this kosmos” (literal translation of the Greek in Ephesians 2:1-2). You walked according to the aión, the zeitgeist of this present evil age. But now you have been “delivered from the dominion of darkness and transplanted into the kingdom of God’s beloved Son” (Colossians 1:13). That aión is like a cult — an ungodly culture. Now you know what it means to be a CounterCulture Disciple of Christ.

So you will need to stand apart from the practitioners of the zeitgeist of this age — apart from those who you consider as “friends” if they do not share your stand — apart from your family if they try to undermine your faith and drag you down into their conformity to this evil age — apart from your work colleagues if they try to use their positions to undermine your spiritual stand — even apart from your church and all churches if they are drinkers of the spirit of this evil age. That is what it means to be CounterCulture. Instead, you will love to live in that state of continual transformative metanoia which renews your mind — “mind” there meaning the very heart of you with all its godly desires, righteous will and devout aspirations.

Alan Morrison

AT THIS POINT IN OUR EXPLORATIONS, it would be prudent to write a few words as another Excursus about why the phenomena we have just explored in the previous section should happen at all. If we understood the reasons behind the development of religion and phony spirituality, we would be far less easily taken in by them.

Obviously, one of the reasons for these phenomena is that people are seeking in some kind of way — even if it is only to be distracted from the humdrum patterns of everyday life. Some are more serious, therefore their involvement with those phenomena will be a temporary distraction through which they have to pass before they can stabilize into true spirituality. I have experienced the difference between those two types, the dilettante and the serious. The former will become defensive and even vicious if they read my writings. The latter will be inquisitive and want to know more. However, by far the biggest reason for these phenomena is that most people in this world are influenced according to their subjective experience. It is all about them and a feel-good factor rather than finding comfort and faith in the purity of objective truth. Let us look at some typical examples of this phenomenon in three case studies:

CASE #1: “As I entered the vast cathedral, a choir was singing the Miserere by Gregorio Allegri and I was immediately overcome by a sense of the presence of God”.

Here the person imagines that the understandable awe at the architectural achievement of the edifice and the audio-reverb of the choir echoing around the rafters signifies the presence of God. There is no doubt whatsoever that a vast cathedral can be awe-inspiring and Allegri’s Miserere is a very beautiful piece of music which can instill a sense of peace in the listener. But neither of those things are in themselves exclusive indicators of ‘the presence of God’. Of course, God is surely present in that cathedral, but He was also present in that muddy puddle which you stepped in (and bitterly cursed) on the way to the cathedral, for God is omnipresent. You do not have to visit a cathedral or listen to Allegri for God to be present. You are confusing the release of dopamine, oxytocin and endorphins in your body with the presence of God. For those are all released when listening to fine music (and even more so when singing it). Essentially, your quasi-religious experience in the cathedral was based on pure subjectivism rather than objective reality. When you can laugh instead of curse when you step in a muddy puddle, knowing that God is right in there too, then you will have a better understanding of the presence of God — one which is rooted in objective truth rather than in mere subjective experience, as I will show below.

CASE #2: “As the pastor tapped my forehead with his hand and spoke in tongues over me, I felt the Holy Spirit enter me and my knees went weak and I collapsed in a heap on the floor as if I were drunk. From then on, I believed”.

I can assure you that this had nothing whatsoever to do with the Holy Spirit entering you, but was simply the result of hypnotic suggestion. You had seen the pastor performing this trick many times and watched all the people go down like ninepins under his hand. You knew what you had to do. So you were already primed like a clockwork toy for this to happen to you, too. I have seen exactly the same trick performed by Eastern gurus such as Bhagwan Sri Rajneesh — a hedonistic charlatan who changed his name to OSHO, and whose ashram was known to have been infiltrated by the CIA [see https://indiafacts.org/religious-crusades-cia/ ]. [See the photo attached to this piece comparing the charismatic “Christian” practice of being “slain in the spirit” and OSHO’s administration of the same devilish initiation]. And, no, that was not a ‘counterfeit of the Christian experience’ as until the charismatic movement came along no God-respecting pastor would entertain such stupidity with the people in his care. These are satanic tricks to inculcate the illusion of genuine spirituality, yet they are taken as normal in so many churches today. It is merely one more example of subjective experience being used falsely as a yardstick to trounce the objective power of God.

You say that from that phony experience onward you believed. Believed what? That a pastor can ‘zap’ you into imagining you have been indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God? The Holy Spirit is described as the One to “whom God has given to those who obey Him” (Book of Acts, chapter 5, verse 32). Being ‘zapped’ by a huckster pastor (like in the image above) does not constitute obedience to God. The same idea of preliminary obedience is present when Jesus said to His disciples, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate to be with you forever — the Spirit of truth” (Gospel of John, chapter 14, verses 15-17). So, keeping His commandments. There is yet another preliminary element as well. It is what is conveyed in the Koine Greek word μετανοέω, metanoeó, which is often translated as “repent” but in the Greek it fully means vowing to live a totally different life, with a completely transformed mind, turning your back on your former ways (Book of Acts, chapter 2, verse 38). That vow of transformation, coupled with obedience to Christ and keeping His commandments, are what gives rise to the Holy Spirit coming into a person and ‘taking up residence’ there. That is objective truth in action. I do not see any of that present in your unfortunate subjective experience at the hands of that impostor who laid his filthy hands on you. So now you know what to do if you are serious about being Christ’s disciple and wanting to receive His Holy Spirit: Obey God, love Christ and keep His commandments.

CASE #3: “As I listened to the Tibetan singing bowls ringing out, I felt a sense of deep relaxation and amazing things happening inside my body. The vibrations resonated with my energies and I felt myself align with my higher self, the God within”.

I am sorry to tell you that what you experienced was mostly the placebo effect coupled with a reduction in your stress-inducing cortisone levels and an enhancement of the same hormones I mentioned above in relation to music-listening, which brings feelings of relaxation that those hooked on subjective experience translate as a higher spiritual phenomenon. New Age practices are predominantly emotional/ hormonal highs involving autohypnotism to induce an altered state of consciousness, making the experiencer confuse that with some kind of spiritual occurrence. Getting ‘blissed-out’ has nothing to do with true spirituality. It is instead a self-indulgent practice which has been mistaken for spiritual advancement. The demonic realm uses subjective experiences to deceive you into imagining that you are advancing spiritually and to deflect you from discovering the objective truth which will set you free. Like the ‘slain in the spirit’ experience of “Christians”, New Age folks have been programmed about what will happen when they undergo various ‘therapies’. It is entirely subjective, which is the axis on which all New Age workshops and experiences turn. New Age religion dines on a smorgasbord of subjectivism, which is just another form of narcissism.

(NB: I should also add that the illusion of “the God within” is another lie sold to you courtesy of the demonic realm. I have already addressed this lie in full in earlier sections of the book, especially in the Excursus on “The Thread of Satanic Religion from Antiquity to the Present”].

I could share many more cases, but I hope the point has been made. It is not on any subjective physical or emotional experiences that a disciple should base his or her sense of peace but, rather, on the objective fact of having been reconciled to God through Christ, exactly as promised in the sacred texts to those who align themselves with the will of God. There is a vast difference between ‘feelings’ of peace and actually knowing that peace has been forged. The first is an artificial peace based on subjective experience, while the latter is a true peace rooted in the objective work of Christ. The world will offer you an earthbound peace which will either be the space between two wars or the illusion of bliss (cf. Gospel of John, chapter 14, verse 27). But Christ will bring about an actual condition of peace which is permanent and spiritual — a state which persists even in times of affliction and regardless of how ‘good’ or ‘bad’ we may feel. Subjective experience is not a litmus test of spiritual truth. As Jesus said to His disciples, “Do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven” (Gospel of Luke, chapter 10, verse 20). That is objective truth!

The visible “Church” is now in the throes of a major time of sifting as a result of Divine judgment, in which there is increasingly a visible separation into two distinct kinds of gatherings — one true, the other false. The true Ekklesia consists of disciples who are naturally and effortlessly obedient (and love to be so) to the teachings of Christ and the Apostles, who establish their gatherings through healthy teaching, who base their salvation on what Christ did in space, time and history, and who are willing to lay down their lives in order to defend the truth. The false ‘Church’, on the other hand, consists of those whose ‘Christianity’ is based on personal revelations, fashionable ideas, and cleverly manipulated subjective religious experiences. The one is obedient to the revealed will of God, the other is manipulated by the forces of darkness.

This is why I have entitled this excursus “The cult of subjectivism vs the truth which sets you free”. The false ‘Church’ indulges in the former, whereas the true Ekklesia rejoices in the latter. When Jesus wanted to finger some people who had falsely claimed to believe in Him, He uttered these all-important words: “If you continue in My word, you are truly My disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (Gospel of John, chapter 8, verses 31-32). Those people then went on to show their true colours. Objective truth, spiritually speaking, involves knowing the truth which sets one free; and the only way to know that is to live your life according to Christ’s word and thereby to truly be His disciple. When you live according to Christ’s word, you know for sure that He cast out Satan from his usurped rulership of the world when He died and rose again and ascended to heaven. It is recorded… objectively. That is it. All your subjective experiences are meaningless spiritually — mere shiny dross on the stinking carcass of life in this corrupted fallen world. But living in the knowledge that Christ, through His death, resurrection and ascension, has cleared the way for you to overcome spiritual death and to be freed from living a life of moral failure is the truth that makes you free. This is in complete contrast to the prevailing cult of subjectivism (and it IS a cult!) which is not only the basis of New Age and other merely religious experience, but has now also become the dominant yardstick in so many churches.

Finally, we cannot ignore the fact that the visible church has become a hotbed of infiltrators and even spooks (as we have seen in previous sections of this book) who have crept in, influencing people with phenomenal, entirely subjective experiences to distract them from ‘the simplicity which is in Christ’ and what should constitute the true regeneration (and, ultimately, resurrection) of a human being. What we mostly have now representing “the Church” in the world is a hotch-potch of crazy subjectivist ideas which have initiated movements, megachurches and ministries influencing millions upon millions of gullible folks with fantasies and fallacies that beggar belief. During the coming years, or however long remains of this present evil age, that ‘hotch-potch’ of crazy subjectivism (which is essentially a lie) will massively increase and the love of truth will decrease commensurately, climaxing in the time when they will have “refused the love of the truth that would have saved them” (Second Letter to the Thessalonians, chapter 2, verse 10). Until people learn the difference between the cult of subjectivism and the objective truth which sets them free, they will continue to be inveigled by strange teachings and practices which are very far removed from truth.

Alan Morrison

[The above is an extract from my recent 210-page book, “Discerning the Signs of the Times: The CIA and Subversion through Mind-Control, Satanism, Sorcery, and the Use of Religion and Cults as Tools of the New World Order”. You can download it for free here: https://diakrisis-project.com/…/new-book-discerning…/ ].

© Copyright, Alan Morrison, 2022

[The copyright on my works is merely to protect them from any wanton plagiarism which could result in undesirable changes (as has actually happened!). Readers are free to reproduce my work, so long as it is in the same format and with the exact same content and its origin is acknowledged]

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[BELOW are some thoughts about a strange teaching in many churches known as “The Rapture”, in which disciples of Christ will allegedly suddenly disappear off the face of the earth, while all others will be left behind to undergo the great tribulation under the Antichrist. My thoughts on this actually constitute a 4000-word ‘excursus’ related to Rev.11:11-12 in chapter 5 of my upcoming pastoral commentary on the Book of Revelation, “The Essence of Apocalypse”. I have extracted it here as a stand-alone article. I hope that you find it helpful and encouraging]

At this point in the book, as we are dealing with the resurrection of the saints (as depicted in the Book of Revelation, chapter 11, verses 11-12), it seems judicious to divert ourselves for a few moments in an excursus about what is commonly called “The Rapture” — a term which seems to have captivated the minds of so many church-people, for whom it has become their go-to heart’s desire. I keep seeing, “I can’t wait to be raptured!” or “The Rapture is the next item on the prophetic agenda”, or I read about rear car bumper stickers advising the driver behind to keep well back as the driver in the car with the sticker “could be raptured at any moment”, implying that the vehicle in front will have no driver and the car will go out of control! Right off, let me say that all these sentiments are totally misplaced as the next items on the prophetic agenda are the firming up of the great apostasy and the formation of a global government along with the revealing of the Antichrist which triggers the great tribulation (Second Letter to the Thessalonians, chapter 2, verses 1-3).

This ‘Rapture’ craze has arisen historically in the USA in the 19^th century through Plymouth Brethren teacher John Nelson Darby, then eventually massively popularized through the Scofield Reference Bible in the 20th century. I remember someone giving me one of those ‘bibles’ in my early believing days. As I perused the extensive notes, I had the distinct feeling that I was holding something really tacky in my hands. I will never forget that feeling, which is a bit like having something dirty on your skin which needs to be washed away as soon as possible. I truly enjoyed throwing it in the bin. Thank God for the gift of discernment!

When I was looking into all this, I watched a number of the “Left Behind” movies. All I can say is, “What a load of old codswallop!” Really, what are people coming to that they make a comic-strip story out of thin air and completely undermine what the Ekklesia should really be looking forward to in prophetic and eschatological terms? Is the Church on crack? Seriously! This idea of the ‘rapture’ has evolved partly because of a Greek word which occurs in the First Letter to the Thessalonians, chapter 4, verse 17. The text in English says:

“For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a loud command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will be the first to rise. After that, we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord”.First Letter to the Thessalonians, chapter 4, verse 17

The idea of the “rapture” comes from the words “caught up” in the above text. This is a translation of the Greek word, ἁρπάζω, harpazó. The Latinization of that word is the origin of the English word “rapture”. One Greek word-study source states that this word means “to take by an open display of force (i.e. not covertly or secretly)”. The same Greek word was used in the Bible to refer to Christ “plundering” Satan’s possessions: “How can anyone enter a strong man’s house and plunder his possessions, unless he first ties up the strong man?” (Gospel of Matthew, chapter 12, verse 29). So we can be certain that the act of being “caught up” (essentially ‘plundered’ or even ‘taken forcefully’!) in that text is not some secret phenomenon but is a sudden, openly-viewed one. This is important, as I will show below.

In the above text, we see that the saints at Thessalonica had become concerned that those who had died may not be resurrected, so Paul was putting them right. The dead who have been faithful disciples of Christ when they were alive will be reunited with the transmuted particles of energy which made up their physical bodies (wherever, and in however many many bits, they may be!) and raised from the dead first, then those who are alive would be transmuted too (“changed in the twinkling of an eye”, First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 12, verse 22), and would join them in the presence of God (which is the symbolic meaning of “clouds” here and in many other texts, as I have discussed at length in chapter 3, §6).

It is obvious that the text above which speaks of “we who are alive” being “caught up” together with those who are “the dead in Christ” is a direct reference to the resurrection of the saints at the time of the end, at the second coming of Christ, just before judgement rains down on the earth. In that event, the dead saints will rise first with their resurrection bodies, then those who are still alive will be transformed too, and it will be witnessed by the world (Book of Revelation, chapter 11, verse 11). People will see the risen saints! There is no rapture as a separate incident happening out of the blue before the great tribulation or years before the second coming of Christ. That is a completely false teaching.

Paul speaks in the “caught up” text about “the trumpet of God”. That is symbolic of the Divine fiat which draws the saints heavenward. We see in the Book of Revelation that it is styled there symbolically as the seventh trumpet — the final trumpet which heralds the end and gives way to the judgement bowls of the fury of God being poured out on the cosmos. It is clear that the resurrection of the saints will come after a good while of the great tribulation, and immediately before the judgement. [In chapter 9 when dealing with chapter 20 in the Book of Revelation, I will show that there will be no thousand-year reign of Christ on the earth, as that is another literalist fantasy which is cut from the same cloth as the ‘Rapture’].

The resurrection of the saints coming right on the heels of the great tribulation (and therefore leaving no place for a secret advance ‘rapture’ or any earthly millennium) can be demonstrated in many places. For example, in the Book of Revelation, chapter 11, verses 1-6, we read about the “two witnesses” — a symbolic literary device depicting the Ekklesia testifying to the world about Christ throughout the Age of the Ekklesia, the period of time between the ascension of Christ and the resurrection of the saints. I have taken readers through this already earlier in this chapter. Then we read, “When the two witnesses have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up from the Abyss will wage war with them, and will overpower and kill them” (Book of Revelation, chapter 11, verse 7). This is a clear reference to the Antichrist, empowered by Satan, persecuting and killing the saints, such as we will discover in chapter 13, verse 7: “Then the beast was permitted to wage war against the saints and to conquer them”. As we see above, that will be straight after the Ekklesia has “finished its testimony” (i.e. the end of all gospel proclamation has been reached).

The same timeline is emphasised in a prophecy in the Book of Daniel, when he speaks of “a time of distress, the likes of which will not have occurred from the beginning of nations until that time” — plainly the same time of great tribulation as that to which Christ refers in chapter 24 of Matthew’s gospel and those two references from the Book of Revelation above. Again, this is immediately followed by a reference to the resurrection from the dead: “But at that time your people—everyone whose name is found written in the book—will be delivered. And many who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, some to everlasting life, but others to shame and everlasting contempt” (Book of Daniel, chapter 12, verses 1-2).

So it is obvious that the saints are not going to be secretly ‘raptured’ off the earth but will go through the great tribulation and then be resurrected at Christ’s return. No ‘rapture’ and no ‘thousand-year’ reign of Christ on earth. This is precisely why Christ said that those who persevere to the end will be saved (Gospel of Matthew, chapter 24, verse 13). They must persevere because of the tribulation. The Lord Jesus said Himself that the time of great tribulation would be triggered by the revealing of the Antichrist (Gospel of Matthew, chapter 24, verses 15-22). [I should also add that the “abomination of desolation standing in the holy place” in verse 15 of that text is clearly parallel to Paul saying that the Antichrist “will seat himself in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God” (Second Letter to the Thessalonians, chapter 2, verse 4). Although this is an echo of what Antiochus IV Epiphanes did in 168 BC, when he sacrificed a pig to Zeus in the temple in Jerusalem (for Antiochus IV was a type or forerunner of the Antichrist), the words of Jesus and Paul have nothing to do with any physical temple but point to the Antichrist (the “man of lawlessness”) who will set himself up as God to be worshipped in the minds and hearts of humanity — the ultimate blasphemy].

We also see that immediately after the tribulation of those days:

“The sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and all the tribes of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory. And He will send out His angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather His elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other”.Gospel of Matthew, chapter 24, verses 29-31

Again, we have that phrase, “coming on the clouds”, symbolic of the Divine presence (see chapter 3, §6, above for more on this). What so many call “the Rapture” is actually the resurrection of those disciples who are still alive at the second coming of Christ which comes at the end of the great tribulation (in which the saints will have suffered but which time is cut short for their sakes, as Jesus clearly states, Gospel of Matthew, chapter 24, verses 21-22) and precedes the terrible judgement on the world which comes immediately after it. The passage above from Christ is exactly as Paul said it would be. That is not some secret rapture prior to everything else eschatological. It is the resurrection! Why do people have to invent these diversionary comic-book scenarios which are an embarrassment to truth rather than an enhancement of it?

So it is after the tribulation that the saints will be resurrected. There is no place anywhere in the scriptures for a separate previous “rapture” off the earth of the saints before the tribulation or resurrection. Not only that, but the resurrection and accompanying judgement form the immediate precursor to the new heavens and new earth, and not to any thousand-year reign of Christ on this earth as it is presently constituted. We can see this from Peter’s words here, when he speaks of

“the coming of the day of God, when the heavens will be destroyed by fire and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with God’s promise, we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells”.Second Letter of Peter, chapter 3, verses 12-13

In the same context, Peter says that “the Day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar, the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and its works will no longer be able to be found (literally ‘unfindable’)”. So Christ returns and then the present heaven and earth will be destroyed. No place then for any dodgy thousand-year reign of Christ on this earth, for the false state of Israel will be long gone! [I mention Israel here because it plays a big part in the Endtimes of the ‘rapture/millennium’ folks. One could almost say that the ‘rapture’ and ‘thousand-year reign’ have been invented specifically to accommodate the judaizing which is so popular in dispensationalist rapture/millennium circles]. So what we are looking forward to is not a secret advance ‘rapture’ or a thousand-year reign of Christ on the earth. Those are will-o-the-wisp inventions. Instead, we are looking forward to the return of Christ and the new heaven and new earth.

The “day of God” or the “day of the Lord” are interchangeable phrases which refer to the return of Christ. To enlighten some who were saying that ‘Day’ had already passed, Paul showed the disciples in Thessalonica that the global apostasy and the coming of the Antichrist had to come first, who “the Lord Jesus will slay with the breath of His mouth and annihilate by the majesty of His arrival” (Second Letter to the Thessalonians, chapter 2, verse 8. But see the whole chapter). There is no place for any rapture there — no place for any thousand-year earthly reign of Christ in that entire prophetic passage. For these are fantasies which have been generated by hyper-literalists.

Now you may say to me that old chestnut, “What about where it says the one taken from the field, etc.?” This is a reference to the text which says, “Two men will be in the field: one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding at the mill: one will be taken and the other left” (Gospel of Matthew, chapter 24, verses 40-41). This is used as a classic proof-text for the ‘rapture’ by those promoting it. But if one looks at it in its context, then one will discover that it means exactly the opposite! So many cultish ideas develop when people take a small portion of scripture out of context. So, here is the full context:

“No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so will it be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark. And they were oblivious, until the flood came and swept them all away. So will it be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field: one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding at the mill: one will be taken and the other left. Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day on which your Lord will come”.Gospel of Matthew, chapter 24, verses 36-42

The context is clearly the second coming of Christ, which He had just been specifically speaking of in verses 30-31 of that 24^th chapter in Matthew’s gospel. Christ is comparing that time to the time of the judgement of the flood and how similar many elements will be when comparing those days with the day when Christ will return. So already this text is not about a secret rapture prior to the great tribulation. It is about what happens at the globally-witnessed return of Christ, for openly “every eye will see Him” (Book of Revelation, chapter 1, verse 7). The unbelieving, scoffing people in Noah’s time were oblivious of the impending judgement but were then “swept away” by the flood. Similarly, when Christ returns, there will be a division. There will be those who are taken away into judgement and those who will remain under the protecting hand of God and spared from such judgement. It is a classic case of the kind of parallelism which one finds throughout the Bible. The parallelism here is between those who laughed at Noah and those who have disbelieved in Christ. The scoffers of Noah were swept away by the flood and the disbelievers in Christ will be “taken away” for judgement. So, the ones who are said to be “taken” in this text are not disciples of Christ being ‘raptured’ but they are those who are not His disciples being taken away to judgement — the exact opposite of what the ‘rapture’ fantasists say!

Some may say (in that rational-sounding condescension of pretended peacemakers), “Well we have to be gracious and accept that there are differences of nuance between believers about the timing and various aspects of the second coming. After all, Scripture hasn’t been 100% clear on this”. I agree that we should always do everything we can to be gracious, but I cannot accept that Scripture has not been clear on this. I believe I have already been gracious enough as I haven’t publicly said much or written anything about the ‘rapture’ during the many decades that I have been aware of it. But now enough is enough. In a world stuffed full of dissembling, dissimulation, deception and counterfeit, I do not believe that the Ekklesia should stick its neck out to be gracious towards a teaching which has become a cancer in its midst along with many other nutty teachings. I have therefore come to the conclusion that these are not teachings about which one can graciously ‘agree to differ’. Those who have been deceived by such teachings I do feel gracious towards; but not towards the teaching itself. Like any wildfire, it seems containable at first but then it gets out of hand. And all these hyper-literalist fantasies have got out of hand. What is more, it is a terrible thing to evangelise new disciples into the Ekklesia, who will say, “What am I supposed to believe about x or y?”, and then bombard them with a pile of comic-book manufactured baloney about the Endtimes.

Imagine the pastoral fallout when the expected ‘rapture’ has not happened and the Antichrist is revealed and then tribulation against the saints goes ballistic. Many who believed that “the rapture is the next item on the prophetic agenda” (as I have read many times and heard many say) will be devastated and think that they have been “left behind”. The Ekklesia should always be prepared for persecution rather than imagining it will escape it. One of the main reasons that what presents itself as “the Church” to the world is not hideously persecuted is that it is not really counterculture and does not challenge the fundamental satanic nature of the world-system. In the main, it supports illegal genocidal wars (provided they are only initiated by the US or UK, and I remember vividly when the US/UK-initiated war on Iraq was raging, by far the most criticism of my articles proving there were no weapons of mass destruction there came from those calling themselves “Christian”. The “my government, right or wrong” attitude of many professing Christians is evidence of its failure to be counterculture). In the main, it slavishly adheres to the notion of “government good” even when it is corrupt and plainly serving satanic interests. In the main, it operates on the basis of “bums on pews” (with a ‘megachurch’ as the pinnacle of that) as a mark of success, rather than the quality of soul-growth of individual disciples, or the ability of disciples to communicate truth into a mendacious and deceptive world.

Frankly, the “Church” as the world sees it has become a laughing stock with its fads and fashions, fat-cat televangelist baloney, phony healers, Sunday-best error-spotting sexually-repressed legalistic Pharisaism, sacerdotal fetishism, with ‘woke’ figureheads of the likes of the Archbishop of Canterbury and pseudo-state pontificating rulers like the Pope of the Vatican. Sadly, the Church has, in so many areas, become a joke. This is partly why it is not generally severely persecuted. It doesn’t need to be. It destroys itself from the inside outwards. And now a great many believe with conviction that they will suddenly be transported in a ‘rapture’ off the earth before any persecution can happen to them. Is it possible that Satan himself could have planted such a ‘snowflake’ notion in the minds of so many who profess to be disciples of Christ? I believe so.

Now, if you want to say, “I believe in the ‘rapture’ but I’m not pre-trib but post-trib”, I reply thus: All that pre-trib/post-trib stuff is jargon which you do not need to spout. And you certainly do not want to be using the word “rapture” as it is so loaded. All we know is that the Ekklesia, dead and alive, will be “whisked away” by Christ when He brings the tribulation to a close (shortening it for the elect), destroys the Antichrist and brings judgement on the world. As soon as you say, “I’m post-trib”, you become embroiled in an “I’m this/I’m that” dispute, which is harmful and unnecessary. Forget the jargon. I simply declare that there will be a time of great tribulation for disciples of Christ followed by His return to judge the world and inaugurate the new heaven and new earth.

In this world, disciples of Christ “will have tribulation”. But, as Christ said as a counter to that, “Take courage, for I have overcome the world” (Gospel of John, chapter 16, verse 33). This is the essence of the teaching on tribulation for disciples. That they will undergo such affliction but that they will have more than adequate spiritual protection against it through being “sealed by the Spirit” (See Book of Revelation, chapter 7, verse 3; chapter 9, verse 4). This is why, immediately after writing at length about the horrors of the satanic world-system which climaxes with the Antichrist and terrible persecution of the saints being “conquered” by him, and the mesmerized world wandering around with the “mark of the beast” (all of which is in chapter 13 of the Book of Revelation), we are told that all the saints have Christ’s “name and His Father’s name written on their foreheads” (Book of Revelation, chapter 14, verse 1). We may well undergo hideous persecution in the physical, but we are spiritually protected. There is no need for any ‘rapture’ to whisk us away from persecution, for we have all the protection we need and will even be strengthened by it. This is why, when speaking about the great tribulation, Christ tells His people that in the midst of “the multiplication of wickedness” and “the love of most” growing cold, “the one who perseveres to the end will be saved” (Gospel of Matthew, chapter 24, verses 12-13). Similarly, in each of the letters to the seven ekklesia in chapters 2 and 3 of the Book of Revelation, those gatherings of disciples are each given a promise if they “overcome”, precisely because they will be subjected to persecution by authorities and overrun by pseudo-apostles and false teachings. Overcoming is a major hallmark of the genuine disciple of Christ. In fact, the bigger the obstacle to be overcome, the more victorious and comforted the disciple is!

What the saints need is not to be whisked away from persecution but to be sealed by the Spirit in their own spirits, which is what happens to all genuine disciples of Christ. The true disciple relishes persecution, for s/he knows that it is a faith-strengthener and courage-developer, not to mention a revealer that one is speaking the truth and doing the work. I suspect that the reasons for so many having to rely on a non-existent guarantee of being whisked away from persecution by a fictitious event is not only the poor level of teaching in the churches but the unwillingness by many to be taught and the lack of Spirit-sealing in their ranks. What other reasons could there be? It has puzzled me for decades, as the world rolls ever-closer to those prophesied times of affliction.

Alan Morrison

.© 2021, Alan Morrison / The Diakrisis Project. All Rights Reserved. [The copyright on my works is merely to protect them from any wanton plagiarism which could result in undesirable changes (as has actually happened!). Readers are free to reproduce my work, so long as it is in the same format and with the exact same content and its origin is acknowledged]

Friends, I know a lot of very good people are very sincere when they do altar calls. And people get saved…despite the altar calls, not because of them.

Why don’t I do altar calls or lead people in a sinner’s prayer? Because those things can’t be found in the Scriptures. Also, those things can convince people they’re saved when they’re not. When that happens, people will continue wallowing in sin, thinking they’re saved (I have met many of those), or else they’ll say, “I tried Christianity and it didn’t work” (I have met many of those). They only think they tried Christianity, because they did what the preacher said, and the preacher said they were saved…but they weren’t.

The Lord commanded people to “count the cost” before committing to follow him (Luke 14:25-33). Emotional altar calls (EACs) short-circuit that process. EACs use soft music, closing the eyes, and a well-intended preacher who persuades sinners to “come forward” before some are ready to repent. It’s like delivering a baby at four or five months instead of nine. Some ‘babies’ live, while some do not.

Even worse is when preachers say things like “You’ll be happy” or “Your life will be better” during EACs. Well, God did actually give promises about the Christian life. He said it would be a life of suffering, crucifying self, and opposition from this world’s system (Romans 5:3-5; 1 Peter 5:10; James 1:2-4; John 16:33; 2 Timothy 3:12).

The Lord saved thousands of people in different ways in the book of Acts, and their experience was expressed in different ways, but they all had these things in common: They heard the Gospel, they repented by faith, and they were baptized (immediately!). Oh, there’s one more thing they had in common: None of them were converted while listening to soft music with their heads bowed and their eyes closed.

I know good people will disagree with me on this. I still love you, as I’m sure you love me.

P.S. Yes, I used the word ‘manipulation,’ but I said repeatedly that they are well-intended.

This is only an effort to persuade. I don’t mean to insult anyone.

John Allcott

FOR SOME YEARS, I have been racking my brains and vexing my spirit to discover the real reason why so many are so critical of writings which genuinely expose falsehood and reveal truth. I do not mean nastily vituperative writings such as one gets from the pens of professional heresy-spotters — you know, the modern Inquisition type of people who flourish in certain ‘fundie’ sections of the churches and thrive on browbeating anyone who doesn’t measure up to their rules and shibboleths. I am instead referring to reasoned, calmly-written expositions rooted in love, but which major on truth. I know that many of you have had a similar experience, so I am writing this for your encouragement.

Every time I have written something which I am convinced in my heart is a timely word of exposure, the inevitable responses come in which complain about me being “too judgemental”, “too unloving”, “too harsh”, “too emotive”, “too hateful”, “too divisive”, etc. I remember receiving a lengthy letter from a Church of England Bishop some years ago who claimed to have read some of my publications, and he said that all the way through reading them he had one scripture buzzing through his brain — “Judge not, that ye be not judged”, which is an old chestnut used to shut people up who say awkward things. (See my article, “Ethical Quandaries: Is It Always Wrong to Judge?”). It was clear from his letter that he had not read the publications at all but had only dipped into those bits which exposed his own denominational apostasy. I wrote back a gentle letter saying that I could understand his concern and was genuinely willing to alter what I said if he could show me where I had exercised hypocritical condemnation anywhere in those publications (for that is what Matt.7:1 is really all about, as it is not at all about exercising discerning judgement). If I had been unfairly critical and the criticism could not be sustained, then I wanted to be the first to know about it and will always retract falsehoods or misrepresentations if they can be shown to be so. Well, of course, I never heard a word of reply. And it has always been the same with these folks! They are so willing to accuse you of serious things — causing division, telling untruths, failing to love the brethren, etc. But when you ask them to point to what it is precisely which is so offensive, they never, ever respond. This is because they do not have a leg to stand on.

I have been most intrigued by this phenomenon — indeed, I am prompted to write an entire paper on it, so endemic has it become in the evangelical scene. I am now convinced that the real reason that these people respond as they do is not because they have anything genuine to say about one’s writings but because they have their own secret axe to grind. And that axe of theirs goes like this:- Because your writings have touched a nerve, and have exposed something which they are into, but which they are going to cling to at all costs — because you have revealed to them a folly of theirs which they are not willing to face up to — and because you have actually DARED to highlight all that, in order to avoid the painful process of change, they are forced to lay into you with a multitude of counter-accusations. So, just like King Ahab, who was the real “troubler of Israel” (and not Elijah), they accuse the truth-tellers of being disturbers of their phoney peace (see First Book of Kings, chapter 18, verse 17). The problem is not that you’ve disturbed THE peace but that you have disturbed THEIR peace! I am convinced that 99.9 times out of 100, this is the real reason that they are so ready to hurl derogatory epithets in your direction. That is why the above Anglican Bishop reacted as he did — because he couldn’t stomach the exposure of his denomination as a falsehood-promoting organisation. So, rather than face the truth or at least investigate it, he resorted to cheap denunciation of the writer as a hypocrite! Do you think that such duplicity is what God intended for the progressive sanctification of His people?

Another example: I wrote a piece in a national Christian paper exposing the Toronto Blessing for what it was (and still is!). Within a week of publication both Canon Michael Green and the late Anglican Bishop, Sandy Millar, had written lengthy letters to the editor complaining about what I had said. Among other things Michael Green accused me of making up things in the piece which he found unbelievable. I then wrote to him and sent video evidence to prove that what I said was true. I asked him to substantiate all his complaints in detail. My letter was written in a reasonable tone. Needless to say, I received no reply whatsoever. I ask you: Who was the real “troubler of Israel” — in this case, “troubler of the Church”?

We need to be aware of this phenomenon because it is greatly used by the prince of darkness to undermine the work of Watchmen in the Church. Do not ever be afraid to stand up to these real troublers of the Church, even if they have swanky titles or “Dip.Th” after their names. Follow up their accusations in minutiae. Gently ask them to point out to you word for word where it is exactly that you have (according to them) been “harsh”, “unloving”, “emotive”, “hateful”, “divisive”, etc. I guarantee that they will be speechless. You will hear nothing from them. This is always the way; and the reason is because their original accusations are groundless. Exposure of the truth only seems harsh and unloving and divisive to those who love the Lie. Or, as the old saying goes: “Truth seems hateful only to those that hate the truth!” It takes real courage to be so open to correction in a day when godly rebuke is regarded in such a negative fashion.

So the next time you feel moved to accuse someone of being too harsh, unloving, hateful, divisive, etc. when they have exposed falsehood of any kind, be sure to check out your own heart first and see whether you are merely knee-jerking against something false in yourself that you have been fingered about, which you are unwilling to give up, and which you will go to great lengths to cling onto — even accusing others of sinful attitudes in order to wriggle out of your dilemma. This is yet another aspect of the way that so many of those who profess to be ‘Christian’ have serious psychological issues which they are not willing to work through, even though that is a necessary part of the metanoia experience. For if one does not slough them off, one will just be a liability in the Church and among one’s friends and family. Spiritual transformation must inevitably lead to a transformation of one’s psychological and emotional patterns, or one has to doubt that such transformation has taken place.

Another example: In the wake of the death of Diana Spencer (Princess Diana or Lady Di), I had an e-mail exchange on the subject with a man who is supposed to be one of the world’s leading Baptist writers and thinkers. He said that he was “honestly profoundly unimpressed with the material on Diana. It is ad hominem to the extreme, sensationalistic in excess, and weird at best. You provide nothing but opinion and guess work”. During the course of my writing about that subject (which I admitted was speculation mingled with fact), I stated that the driver of the car in which she died was an MI6 asset — a fact which was later publicly proven to be true. Yet I was pilloried for saying so at the time. However, this ‘leading Baptist writer and thinker’ should really have said: “I don’t understand what you’ve written here. It is beyond my grasp with the knowledge that I have at present. Time will tell whether what you say is true. I will carry out my own investigation”. You see, my friends, the real reason why he knee-jerked against what I said about the Diana business (and there is always a real reason lurking in the background  was because elsewhere in my writings I had made a brief critical remark about the theologian Karl Barth. But, like so many neo-evangelicals, he is a great supporter of Karl Barth; so it was like a red rag to a bull. My having said a single sentence about Barth, he then spent 450 words defending Barth, accusing me (wrongly, as it happens) of knowing nothing about the man, etc. Then, in the same letter, he launched his broadside against what I’d said about Diana. This is just another example of that phenomenon we described above — “You have exposed something which they are into, but which they want to cling to at all costs; you have revealed to them the folly of their ways which they are not willing to face up to, and in order to avoid the painful process of change they lay into you with a multitude of counter-accusations”.

Why do you think that King Ahab said what he did to the prophet Elijah about him being a “troubler of Israel”? Because deep down within his being he knew that Elijah was in the right and felt him to be a threat to his falsehood. Why do you think that Pashur, the chief policeman of the Temple (whose job was to root out false prophets), was so ready to put Jeremiah in the stocks after he prophesied the truth? Because Jeremiah’s prophetic accusations (see Book of Jeremiah, chapter 19, verses 14-15) revealed Pashur’s inadequacy in his job. Rather than admit it, he set upon discrediting Jeremiah. Why do you think that Cain was so ready to destroy Abel? Why do you think that Saul was so ready to destroy David? Why do you think that Diotrephes was so ready to get rid of others out of the church (Third Letter of John, verses 9-10)? Why do you think that the Pharisees accused the Lord Jesus Christ of being a troublemaker, a lunatic and a demoniac? Because deep down they knew that even His very presence was a threat to all the junk which they had erected as truth, but which was in reality a gross lie. Rather than admit the truth about themselves, they spewed out false accusations against Him. In the world of psychology, it is called “projection” when people project their own crap onto you, as if it is you who is the guilty party rather than them. So, if you are a forthteller or truthteller, you had better be ready to have the twisted innards of others splurged all over you, if it has not already happened. Such are the real troublers of Israel. It has always been this way — and will continue to be so until the Day comes when there will be no more cover-ups, no more whitewashes, and no more fending off the truth through phoney charges.

For everyone’s workmanship will be evident, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will prove the quality of each man’s work. Frankly, I can hardly wait!

.

.

© 2023, Alan Morrison / The Diakrisis Project. All Rights Reserved. 
 
[The copyright on my works is merely to protect them from any wanton plagiarism which could result in undesirable changes (as has actually happened!). Readers are free to reproduce my work, so long as it is in the same format and with the exact same content and its origin is acknowledged]

When presenting the Gospel to a lost sinner, the good news is that they are being saved from something – namely eternal death (the second death). They are not being saved from eternal torment. While it is not essential that you hold to CI, it is nonetheless a Gospel issue. You can’t avoid the subject when sharing the Gospel of salvation. The bad news is that sinners will be judged and condemned to eternal death. The good news is that Jesus paid the penalty of death on your behalf. Through faith in Him you can have eternal life rather than eternal death. Those who hold to ECT are not lost for holding to it, just misguided on this particular doctrine.

Here is why it matters to me:

First, we all have things we are “hung up” over. Things we feel passionate about. Things we focus a lot of our time and energy on. This is normal human behavior. We all do not focus our lives on the same things. I am “hung up” on several things. The Kansas City Chiefs. Fighting leftist liberalism that is destroying our country. Promoting the Gospel and biblical truth to believers and the lost. And yes, defending the fundamental biblical truth of Conditional Immortality – that immortality and eternal life is only promised to believers in Jesus, not to the lost. These are a few of my “hang ups.”

Second, why I care so much? Three reasons: A. B. C.

A. DEFENDING BIBLICAL TRUTH. I stand in the tradition of the Reformation. I hold to the biblical values as promoted by the Reformers. (Faith alone. Grace alone. Scripture alone.). Many Evangelicals such as myself believe that one theological area the Reformers failed to reform adequately is Conditional Immortality and the eternal destiny of souls. Catholicism got many doctrines wrong and taught things that were in direct contradiction to the biblical record. One of those things is that all souls are inherently immortal and that the lost will live immortally in a perpetual state of torment. Many Evangelicals believe this is a neglected doctrine that needs to be corrected. The Bible clearly teaches that immortality is a gift that will be imparted to believers and that the lost will perish for eternity. The Bible teaches that the wages of sin is death (the end of life) and it is not eternal torment.

B. DEFENDING THE CHARACTER OF GOD. I believe that slander, falsely defaming and accusing someone of something that is not true is an awful sin. In my view, teaching Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT) is a slander on the name and character of God. It makes God to be a monster and a cosmic sadistic torturer who is never satisfied in punishing the lost. God is a just God. God has determined that the just wages of sin is death- not eternal torture. Jesus paid this just penalty through His death on the cross. The lost do not need to be punished far beyond what a God of justice has determined to be just. Even in the Old Testament, Justice was an eye for an eye. Eternal torture in hell goes far far far beyond an eye for an eye. It’s even more than a billion eyes for an eye. It is endlessly and mercilessly “punishing” someone for sin. It goes from punishing to endless sadistic torture. This is not the character of a loving, just and merciful God we come to know in the Bible. So I am defending the name and character of God against a horrific slander. It also keeps some lost people from converting to such an awful God. Many atheists have said as much.

C. OBEDIENCE. As a Christian, I feel an obligation to share and teach the full counsel of God as taught in His Word. I see Conditional Immortality taught throughout the whole Bible – from Genesis to Revelation. It is not a minor doctrine. Death and immortality are at the heart of the Gospel. Through Adam sin and death (loss of immortality) entered the world. And Jesus brought the possibility that sinners could regain immortality and have the eternal life that was lost through Adam for those who believe. Those who do not believe will perish and remain in death. As an Evangelical, I feel a responsibility to help restore this fundamental biblical truth back to the Evangelical church. In the tradition of the Reformers, we Evangelical Conditionalists feel compelled out of obedience to restore and share this fundamental biblical truth.

If you also care about defending/proclaiming biblical truth; if you care about defending/proclaiming the true character of God; or if you want to walk in obedience to defending/proclaiming biblical truth to both believers and unbelievers, then I would hope and pray that this issue would matter to you since it lies near the heart of the message of the Gospel.

Richard Dobson

[For those who may want it, there is a PDF format version of the paper at the foot of the text below]

PART 1:
Prologue to this Paper —
The Background to the Deception & Contagion

In the Christian scene over the last few decades, I have heard enough to make me wonder if vast swathes of the visible church are on crack! Much of it is so nuts that it is barely believable, but nevertheless it is all really happening. Anything from the churches in which people practice barking like dogs, hysterically laughing and twitching uncontrollably, howling like wolves, even so-called “vomiting in the Spirit” (bet you’ll do a web-search on that one!), to those in which pastors claim that oil is leaking out of their hands or gold is appearing in their teeth, to pastors with private jets telling their congregations to tithe loadsamoney in order for them to be blessed, to pastors and whole congregations waffling in pagan gobbledygook while ludicrously claiming it is their “private prayer language” and a special “hotline to God”, to congregations which plainly do not know the difference between metanoic spiritual transformation and autohypnosis. If the lunatics have taken over the asylum in this world (which indeed they now have), then the visible church also forms a large part of that asylum.

[Just to be clear, by the phrase “visible church”, I mean the church to which people in general in this world are exposed, as seen on the High Street or on TV. The visible church is not the same as the ‘body of Christ’ (what I call the “Ekklesia”), which only consists of genuine disciples of His. Obviously, the ‘body of Christ’ is part of the visible church; but the visible church does not represent the ‘body of Christ’. The visible church is made up of both genuine disciples of Christ and anyone else who claims to be, or who thinks they are, or who passes themselves off as ‘a Christian’].

I regularly receive numerous messages from folk who have ‘stumbled’ onto my website who are being screwed up by the lunatics and are suffering because of it. By “the lunatics” I mean either ‘heavy shepherd’ style elders and pastors misusing authority and thereby abusing the sheep, or those caught up in the Pentecostal/Charismatic scene who are promoting practices which are more in line with Pagan/New Age/Eastern mysticism than the Ekklesia which Christ came to build. I dealt with ‘heavy shepherding’ several years ago in a series of articles about spiritual abuse. It is the latter development on which I want to concentrate in this paper.

Throughout the past few years, I have felt an increasing burden for the fact that a snowballing number of otherwise evangelical churches are being seduced into the ways of superstition, animism and outright sorcery. This concern has been especially heightened through counselling those whose lives have been shattered as a result of their involvement in these things. True saving faith is undermined and substituted with a hollow triumphalism, while fortune-tellers masquerading as New Testament prophets are given a platform at major ‘evangelical’ gatherings, influencing both mature and infant Christians alike with their ‘divinations’.

It is with some trepidation that I embark on speaking out against people who profess to be ‘Christians’; and there may be those who would call me divisive because of what is written in these pages.  But the division has already occurred in so many churches through the insensitive, forceful crusading of those who have been hoodwinked into accepting unbiblical and unhealthy modes of thought and behaviour.  Therefore, from a negative standpoint, I felt that the time had come to expose the techniques through which these problems are being effected.  But from a positive standpoint, it is my parallel aim to bring some edifying, healthy Biblical teachings which will feed the flock and demonstrate that there is no necessity for these contemporary movements within the Church — though one can certainly see them as part of the proliferating apostasy.

The Inability to Distinguish Between Mysticism
and Authentic Spirituality

It is so important to expose the inadequacies and deceptions of the theological rationale of the Charismatic Movement of today. In many churches, because of the profound ignorance about pagan religions and the lack of discernment concerning Satan’s true strategy among believers, there has developed a widespread inability to distinguish between mysticism and authentic spirituality, between sensual euphoria and true worship, between mere religion and the heart-work of Christ in a soul, and between the fleshly thrust of the human spirit and the transcendent work of the Holy Spirit. There is a desperate need for a systematic exposition of the earnest ‘suffering servant’ nature of the disciple of Christ, in order to neutralize the widespread but irresponsible teaching in many churches that God wants everyone to be healed of their diseases and financially prosperous. The Church is crying out for healthy teaching on apostleship, prophecy, tongues, spiritual gifts in general, and the real ‘Baptism with the Holy Spirit’. There is also a need to restore the word ‘renewal’ to its biblical meaning, as it has been hijacked from its original scriptural context in support of a limited, sectarian cause.

Satan’s Twin-Pincer Strategy Against the Church

A broad examination of Satan’s undermining of true spirituality today reveals a twin-pincer movement against the Church involving syncretism and mysticism. Syncretism involves the belief that all religions — in which the Ekklesia that Christ came to build is mistakenly included — are merely different cultural expressions of the same deity and ideals; while mysticism involves the contrived suspension of rational faculties, together with the conceit that Divine power can be tapped into, and even realised in oneself, through initiation into certain techniques. But such subjective teachings can only emerge in the absence of any objective Truth. The genuine disciple of Christ upholds the fact that such objective Truth has been revealed in the Bible, which is the word of God.

The Difference Between Rationalism and Rationality

It seems that there is some considerable confusion in many churches today in terms of identifying the difference between (unhealthy) ‘rationalism’, whereby the miraculous is denied and the supernatural work of the Spirit blasphemed, and (wholesome) ‘rationality’, whereby the disciple of Christ exercises necessary discernment and chooses that which is compatible with the law of God. Because of this misunderstanding, it is often said in Charismatic circles that the use of the mind is destructive to true spirituality, and there is a general belittlement of the intellect over against what is deemed to be ‘the Spirit’. But there could be no more demonic suggestion than this. The suspension of the rational has been the stuff of mysticism and cultdom since the beginning of human history. Far from suspending the activity of the mind, the indwelling Holy Spirit actually sharpens and transforms it so that it works powerfully and in the full service of the Lord Jesus Christ (Gospel of Luke, chapter 21, verses 12-15; First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 2, verses 15-16; Gospel of Matthew, chapter 22, verse 37; Letter to the Romans, chapter 12, verse 2; Letter to the Ephesians, chapter 4, verse 23; Second Letter to Timothy, chapter 1, verse 7).

So let us wholeheartedly reject humanistic ‘rationalism’; but let us at the same time embrace the exercise of the God-given faculty of ‘rationality’, by which healthy discernment is established and every false way shunned. Surrounded by such extreme forms of deception and delusion at this watershed time in history, never before has a ‘sound mind’ been so necessary in the life of the Church. To substitute rationalism with mysticism is the spiritual equivalent of moving from a one-dimensional world into a black hole.

The Lunacy is No Longer Fringe but Mainstream

You see, my dear friends, the problem with the lunatics that I mentioned above is that they are not now merely “a fringe”. Lunacy has gone mainstream now. I remember how when I lived in the UK I was inundated with mail and phone calls from people of all church types who wanted counselling. Many were from churches in the mainline Anglican denomination whose vicars were giving out phony words of knowledge and making cavalier pronouncements about demon possession of congregants which were tearing people apart. I remember going to give a talk at that time in the North East entitled “When a Church Becomes a Cult” — a title not designed to win me any popularity contests. This was at the request of an Anglican vicar who was horrified at what his fellow vicars in the county were up to. His bishop was apparently a spineless chap who was aware of these problems but seemed unable (or unwilling) to do anything about them, which is usually the case with these wimpish people in so-called ‘high office’. So I was invited to go there and stir things up.

Being able to “stir things up” these days is simply a question of speaking truth into a situation. That is all it takes to generate a major chemical reaction! When I write about these things, I am not indulging in gratuitous violence. I am simply expressing my exasperation that such things should be happening in the name of Jesus Christ and screwing up the lives of those who have been bamboozled into thinking that they are entrusting themselves to Him. A new disciple going to a church for the first time today is now a pig-in-a-poke hazardous operation.

Dangerous Forces & Energies

One of the main reasons that these things have been able to flourish is because people have naively failed to realise the fact that this Pentecostal/Charismatic stuff is playing around with dangerous forces and energies. This is what the Apostle Paul was trying to straighten out at the church in Corinth. Before they professed faith in Christ, as pagans they were “led to dumb idols” (First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 12, verse 2), as if being “carried away” by some crazy impulse. The Greek word translated as “carried away” there is ἀπάγω, apagó, which literally means to be seduced or swept along without any rational reason; a bit like the English phrase “going away with the fairies”. Paganism is about letting it all hang loose. If it feels right, do it! But discipleship to Christ is not about frenzy or impulse; it is about sobriety and self-control (one of the fruits of having the indwelling Holy Spirit, Letter to the Galatians, chapter 5, verses 22-23). This is a lesson which was needed not only by the church at Corinth in the first century AD, but it is a lesson sorely needed in the churches of today. This has nothing whatsoever to do with being rationalistic or suppressing the supernatural. Our God is certainly a God of miracles and infinite power; but He is not a God of confusion and disorder (unless He is bringing those on people as a judgement, Book of Exodus, chapter 23, verse 27; Book of Deuteronomy, chapter 28, verse 28, which is probably the case with many so-called churches today).

A Trapdoor into the Sewer of Hell

As I look out over the whole panoply of the last century and the first two decades of the present, I see a world and false church coming increasingly under the powerful delusory sway of the demonic realm. Because that realm has been under Divine restraint throughout this Gospel age (until such time as that restraint will be let loose, Second Letter to the Thessalonians, chapter 2, verses 6-7), methods have had to be devised by the powers of darkness to bring people more easily and readily under their sway. It seems that a trapdoor into the sewer of hell was gradually opened up over the past hundred and twenty years and more, letting out a flood of psychic sewage to prepare the world for the ultimate deception to which this age has been irresistibly leading. In the last three decades of the nineteenth century and the first two of the twentieth, a vast array of secular pseudo-spiritual forces was lined up to kick down any remaining traces of the true faith as being authoritative in the world and to open up successive generations to the teachings of demons. All within a relatively short period of time, there was Charles Darwin (theory of evolution advocate), Carl Jung (mystical psychologist and OSS agent, advisor to CIA Director, Allen Dulles, and therapist to his wife, Clover), Helena Blavatsky (founder of Theosophy), Annie Besant (major proponent of Theosophy), Swami Vivekananda (guru missionary of Hinduism to the West), Rudolf Steiner (founder of Anthroposophy), Alice B. Bailey (Lucis Trust founder and original proponent of the term ‘New Age’ in her literature), Phineas Quimby (founder of the New Thought Movement, a precursor of the New Age Movement which inherited many of its tenets, such as visualisation, affirmations, and the so-called ‘Law of Attraction’), and later Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (ardent pseudo-evolutionist and one of the primary philosophical sources of the New Age Movement). All these ‘influencers’ opened up the world to pseudo-scientific and psycho-spiritual developments in the ‘spirit of the Antichrist’ which would have a huge effect on the subsequent occult exploration of human consciousness. [All this I have catalogued in earlier books such as “The Serpent and the Cross”, and to a lesser extent in “Narrow Gate ~ Pathway Strait” and “Discerning the Signs of the Times”].

The two world wars dampened down the development of these psycho-spiritual movements, although they would have a profound effect on the parallel movements in world government — notably the inception of the League of Nations (1920), the United Nations (1945) and the Council of Europe (1949) as clear precursors of global government. Things were moving closer. However, in the 1960s, there was another burst of demonic world power through the hippy scene and the massive increase in ‘consciousness-exploration’ that brought in the use of psychedelic drugs (mainly through a CIA mind-control psyop — see my free-to-download book “Discerning the Signs of the Times“ for details), plus the popularising of yogic meditation and ‘human potential’ therapy groups, all of which opened many up to psychic interference and demonic manipulation. This merely accelerated and exacerbated what had already been achieved at the beginning of that century. The forces of darkness and disintegration (degeneration) masquerading as the power of love and unity has been one of the greatest works of Satan — never more than during the past century or so. Now, in the year 2023, we are fast approaching the planned climax of this movement. The iniquity which really lies behind the supposed New Age Utopia — their pretended ‘Great Shift’ or pseudo-’Great Awakening’ — is poised to begin.

The Origin of the Charismatic Movement

Now listen to this carefully, my friends. In the same time period that we find dark psychic forces began to move powerfully in the secular world, very similar forces fronting as ‘Christian’ began to develop within the visible church in parallel to its secular counterparts, which would also open up churches to psycho-spiritual influences which would have a huge impact on the subsequent development of the practices of the visible church. In the last part of the 19th century and the first part of the 20th century, we had the start of the Pentecostal movement (notably in the Azusa Street event in 1906) bringing in its psychic power-games masquerading as “spiritual gifts” and the secondary “Baptismal Fire of the Spirit” which was making them speak gibberish, supposedly as evidence of their spiritual rebirth. Then, in the 1960s we had the Jesus People (which was ‘Christianised’ hippiedom, which gave birth to the Children of God, with their child abuse and “Flirty Fishing” offering sex to ensnare men in the cult) and the subsequent growth of the Charismatic movement, John Wimber’s Signs & Wonders Movement,  which also grew directly out of the Jesus People, which had been brought about as a CIA-induced psychological operation (again, all of which I demonstrate in my book, “Discerning the Signs of the Times“).

I do not believe that it is a coincidence that during the same time-periods that the world was gradually but pointedly being prepared for the ultimate psychic deception (the revealing of the Antichrist), we find similar powerful forces at work in the visible church, effectively handing vast swathes of it over to Satan and undermining its power of truth in the Gospel. It is this connection between the powers of darkness operating in parallel in the world and in the church which needs to be understood today. It is an agenda which operates on a very similar ‘frequency’: New Thought Movement, Theosophy, Pentecostal Movement, Eastern mystical Western propaganda (including yoga, meditation and Kundalini), New Age Movement, Charismatic Movement, Signs & Wonders Movement, Catch the Fire Movement, etc. They all operate in the same ‘energetic’ milieu but with different labels.

Now I know you might say here that the Pentecostal Movement is quite tight about the divinity of Christ, etc. That is true, to a point. BUT that is another deceptive aspect. For this is the movement which legitimised the phony “Baptism with the Spirit” and speaking in so-called ‘Tongues’ and subsequently lent that seeming legitimacy to the Charismatic Movement. For once one starts getting into all that demonic stuff it always escalates into unhealthy teaching, abounding craziness and the inability to see that it is crazy, for it is like a rabid contagion.

This does not mean that no one has ever been spiritually saved in the Pentecostal/Charismatic/Jesus People scene. That is not at all what I am saying. God moves and works in all sorts of wacky scenarios which human beings have devised — not because of them, but in spite of them! So, yes, many most likely have been saved in the Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, but this has nothing to do with the movements themselves. It is simply because — in spite of the dross which has been added — the Gospel of salvation is still, in one way or another, proclaimed. God is sovereign, even in the darkest hole! The reality is that any genuine disciple of Christ who finds himself or herself in that unhinged environment will at some stage become uneasy and move on to more genuinely spiritual things. It is a lovely fact that those disciples who have been seriously deceived in their life-journey and have subsequently seen through that deception are often much more discerning and wise afterwards than those who have not. So there is a silver lining even in that.

The Prevalence of ‘Altered States of Consciousness’
and their Purpose

Any occultist/witch/New Ager/yogi will corroborate the fact that the essence of their craft is to find entrance into an altered state of consciousness (known as ASCs). For, unbeknown to them, such states are being induced by the demonic realm, because those are the states through which the forces of darkness have the easiest access to human minds. That is also what lies at the heart of the Pentecostal/Charismatic experience. Take away their altered states of consciousness and there is no Pentecostal/Charismatic Movement. It is no coincidence that even occultists and New Agers themselves see these movements in the Christian scene as very much a part of the New Age. I have read numerous accounts by leading occultists in which they identify the Charismatic Movement as being the collective exercise of psychic power. One example is Peter Spink, who was the Canon of Coventry Cathedral in the U.K. Peter Spink, like a number of his Church of England ministerial counterparts, was essentially a New Ager. And he speaks about this connection in his 1996 book, which is significantly entitled, “Beyond Belief: How to Develop Mystical Consciousness and Discover the God Within”. He writes:

“Since the 1960s a great deal of supernormal or charismatic energy has been released into Western society. Many factors have contributed to this development. The old secular and religious stereotypes have been challenged. Shocks have been administered to ancient institutions… Within the Christian Church a movement which came to be known as the Charismatic Revival came to birth in the transition period of the 1960s. This movement has acted as a catalyst for a great manifestation of energy in churches which for centuries had been locked in stereotyped forms. Over a wide spectrum religious conventions have been shocked into oblivion. The [Charismatic] movement has been characterised by a great proliferation of psychic gifts. Hitherto subservient and conventional congregations have experienced great explosions of energy. Understood to be ‘gifts of the Spirit’, powers of healing, speaking in tongues, clairvoyance and clairaudience have characterised the movement… The break with centuries of conventionalism has undoubtedly achieved a great deal. The weakness of the movement lies in the fact that frequently it has failed to perceive itself to be in a stage of transition and as a result has turned introspectively in upon itself… Various New Age groups have effected similar results from the use of shock techniques. The Findhorn Community…has pioneered the way in this field, organising a great variety of courses bringing thousands of young people into experiential situations designed to release creativity”.Peter Spink, “Beyond Belief: How to Develop Mystical Consciousness and Discover the God Within”, Piatkus, 1996, pp.67-68

My friends, the Charismatic Movement and the Findhorn Community (one of the original New Age communities, which was greatly influenced by Alice Bailey’s disciple, David Spangler, and was originally initiated by a former MI6 operative, Dorothy Maclean) are just two different aspects of the New Age Movement. The Charismatic Movement is simply a Christianised version of the New Age and pagan experiences, pushing altered states of consciousness and the litmus test of subjective emotional experience, whether it likes that description or not.

All those practices of the pagan, New Age and Eastern mystical afficionados have their parallels in the Pentecostal/Charismatic Movements. All the falling down, mad laughter in church meetings, speaking gobbledygook, going into trances, getting ‘blissed-out’, phony ‘words of knowledge’, and so on are very immature editions of either outright pagan, or New Age, or Eastern mystical activities hiding behind the name of Jesus. In support of this, I would like to highlight that statement by Canon Spink, above, which says: “The weakness of the [Charismatic] movement lies in the fact that frequently it has failed to perceive itself to be in a stage of transition”. What he means by this is that the kind of psychic experiences common in this movement, when they happen in, say, Tibetan Buddhism or Hinduism, they are seen not as ends in themselves to be sought after as the end-experience (as they are in the Charismatic Movement) but merely as stages on a spiritual journey. A so-called ‘Second Blessing’ style experience, the ability to speak gibberish (so-called ‘Tongues’), prophetic pronouncements, ecstatic feelings, even sexual orgasms, falling down, uncontrollable laughter and crying, psychic experiences of clairvoyance and clairaudience are all part and parcel of pagan religion and Eastern mystical practice of one sect or another.

The Pentecostal/Charismatic Movement is therefore regarded by the Eastern yogis of Hinduism and Buddhism (as well as by Canon Spink) as an immature variation of its own practices. Before further examining this parallel between the Charismatic Movement and the pagan/New Age/Eastern mystical mindset more closely, I first want to provide a little Excursus on the dark consequences of deliberately entering altered states of consciousness.

Excursus on the Dark Consequences of Entering
‘Altered States of Consciousness’

As soon as you deliberately open yourself up to an ‘altered state of consciousness’ you lay yourself wide open to interference from the powers of darkness. This is something which is not understood if one is not a disciple of Christ. Outside of Old Testament Israel, all religious practices prior to the coming of Christ existed to make people think that getting “blissed-out” and entering an ‘altered state of consciousness’, or inducing some kind of frenzy à-la-whirling-dervish, is the high spiritual pathway, and that fictitious notion has been passed down to all those engaging in trendy related ‘spiritual’ practices today, such as yoga, meditation, occult practices, sorcery, ingesting psychotropic drugs (e.g. mushrooms, LSD, Ayahuasca, etc.) and various New Age ‘therapies’. But, until Christ came to earth, apart from Old Testament Israel, which was created by God, the heathen religions were Satan’s ‘babies’. [See my article “Satanic Religion from Antiquity to the Present“].

So, as soon as you start exploring psychic dimensions, entering an ‘altered state of consciousness’, you are opening Pandora’s Box to the demonic realm. All those ‘spirit-guides’, the visits from extra-terrestrials, those ‘channelled’ discarnate entities telling you they are from other galaxies or dimensions such as the Arcturians, the Anunnaki and the Pleiadeans, who are claimed to continually provide the ‘channellers’ with information about ‘shifts’, ‘portals’, ‘ascensions’, and other assorted aspects of New Age delusions — they are all demonic manifestations posing as ‘angels of light’ designed to ensnare you in the deep things of Satan. It is all designed to distract people from the truth and keep them languishing on a phony featherbed of lies about love, peace and unity, and the “coming shift” or whatever other rainbow-coloured delusion is the flavour of the day in New Age chic. For the fallen archangel and his cohorts do not come to humans with horns and goats’ hoofs. That is just a sideshow for the few who like to engage in dim-witted darkness. The vast majority of the traps and snares of the satanic realm are beautiful on the outside but utterly unclean on the inside. Those who fall into those snares will either imagine they are being filled with the delusion of experiencing “love and light” (all the while giving themselves over to the influence of satanic lies and illusions) or they will find themselves spiralling downward into a state of hopelessness and despair, which can even lead to actual suicide (a number of cases of which I am very much aware of).

You may ask, at this point, “Why should it only be demons that are encountered in an ‘altered state of consciousness’?” Good question. It is because, in the first place, you are entering their territory. They hang out on a plane that is outside normal human consciousness and they want you in there! They are highly predatory and if they catch you entering their territory, you are giving them free access to your mind, heart and soul. Even on this earthly plane, the world of humans is a dangerous place. But when you enter an altered state of consciousness or practice ‘channelling’, you are moving into doubly-dangerous territory because that is the plane on which demons have unfettered access to the human mind. Their territory is “the air” and Satan is “the ruler of the power of the air” (Letter to the Ephesians, chapter 2, verse 2). The “air” there most likely refers to the etheric envelope which is parallel to the atmosphere surrounding the earth. They are spirit and exist on that spiritual plane. The moment you step outside the material plane by entering an ‘altered state of consciousness’, you have surrendered yourself into their hands, for to enter it would only be done by those who are disobedient. This is also why Satan is referred to in that exact same verse from the Letter to the Ephesians above as “the spirit now energising those who are disobedient”. When you enter their territory, those demons do not come at you with horns breathing fire like dragons; they sidle up to you with seductive words about light and oneness and beautiful things. They are the ultimate in a level of deception which none can resist if they have placed themselves at those demons’ disposal.

Now you may go on to say, “Why wouldn’t I encounter good angels in an ‘altered state of consciousness’?” To which I reply: When you are not bonded with Christ the good angels have no part in your life. It is as simple as that. Therefore the only entities you can possibly encounter in an ‘altered state of consciousness’ are demons, which are the fallen angels. The good unfallen angels have only been tasked to minister to those who are Christ’s disciples. As the sacred text says, the good unfallen angels are “ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation” (Letter to the Hebrews, chapter 1, verse 14). So I can assure you that if you are not bonded with Christ, then any entities which you encounter in an ‘altered state of consciousness’ will be from the dark side. Added to this, you have no protection if you are not bonded with Christ, because it is not our place to attempt to communicate with angels, period. To do so is disobedience. It is not our place to intrude into the occult dimensions. After all, “the secret things belong to the lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever” (Book of Deuteronomy, chapter 29, verse 29). We are living in the midst of a spiritual battle of immense proportions. This is what has to be considered when talking about altered states, which is where demons roam waiting for willing prey to intrude on their space.

Then you may say, “So if I become a disciple of Christ can I enter an ‘altered state of consciousness’ and hang out with the good angels?” Most certainly not. You do not need to go to them, for they will come to you, if needed. That is their role: Not to receive you onto their territory but to assist you on yours, if you are Christ’s disciple. The good, unfallen angels will minister to you in whatever way is necessary in your life on behalf of your Master, the Lord Jesus Christ, without you having to do anything. It is not our place to seek out discarnate entities. Only those who are ruled by darkness and who are dedicated to the occult would feel the need to do that — to intrude into the forbidden ether.

When you are Christ’s, your calling is simply to lead a devout life, to do good to all, to deny yourself and live for others, to be diligent, to declare the truth unequivocally in a messed-up world of evil, to live in a state of constant prayer, to proclaim Christ whatever the cost to yourself, to expose darkness, to familiarise yourself with God’s word in the sacred texts, and to live each day with all the enthusiasm possible as if it is your last. In the midst of all that, you will grow spiritually and become closer to God each day. There is no need whatsoever to enter a state of altered consciousness in order to seek out discarnate entities or to achieve some phony ‘higher’ level of spirituality. To do so is rooted in pride, leading to spiritual suicide and utter shipwreck.

Here ends the Excursus on the dark consequences of entering ‘altered states of consciousness’. Now to return to examining the parallel between the Charismatic Movement and the pagan/New Age/Eastern mystical mindset.

Releasing Kundalini Energy

Among the leading promoters of the New Age via Eastern mysticism in the U.S. in recent decades was a guru known as Master Da Free John (alias Franklin Albert Jones or Adi Da), a former Lutheran seminarian who headed up a ‘spiritual fellowship’ known as the ‘Johannine Daist Communion’. In his booklet “A Call for a Radical Reformation of Christianity”, Da Free John wrote:

“John says not only that Jesus taught that God is the Living Spirit…but that he taught that the Way to worship God is to worship in the Spirit. That is, Jesus taught a method of worship that involved ecstatic bodily Communion with the Life-Power via breathing and feeling, based on Truth (or an awakened understanding of the Divine Reality)”.Da Free John, “A Call for a Radical Reformation of Christianity”, Dawn Horse Press, 1982, p.28

All this has a great bearing on the experiences being generated in Charismatic-Pentecostal circles today. For the ecstasy and ‘altered state of consciousness’ being induced in these circles is nothing less than a Westernised, Christianised initiation into the world of the New Age and Eastern mysticism. The guru Da Free John, who received initiation into the ‘serpent-power’ of Kundalini Yoga from Swami Rudrananda, advocated precisely the same experience for his devotees, all in counterfeit ‘Christian’ terminology, claiming that

“The ‘Spirit-Power of baptism’ is an esoteric process wherein the Life-Current in the body-mind (and principally the central nervous system) of the human individual is stimulated to a point of profound intensity and turned about in its basic polarization or tendency… The effect of Spirit-baptism was an experience of bodily conversion to a subjective movement of Life-Energy away from the ‘flesh’… As a result of such baptism, the various classical mystical phenomena arose, and this entire procedure was called… ‘to be born again, via the Spirit’”.Ibid., p.29

The intense religious ‘Crisis Experience’ which is being induced in Charismatic-Pentecostal circles is no different to that being induced in countless world religion circles and New Age Communities via what is known as ‘Shaktipat’ — when a guru touches your forehead and you get zapped. Only the terminology is different. As far as the Yogic practitioner, Tantric Buddhist, Neo-Gnostic, Navajo ‘Hand-Trembler’, or Arctic Shaman are concerned, the modern charismatic practices (which are very different to the original New Testament practices laid out in Scripture) are immediately identifiable with their own. Such a “second blessing” and the attendant supernatural occurrences are not only common in these cultures but are counted as something to be eagerly sought after. In the pathway of the Indian mystic on his way to enlightenment, for instance, such psychic powers are known as “Siddhis”. He seeks to achieve a state which is known in Sanskrit as ‘Nirvana’, the literal meaning of which is ‘a blowing-out-of-the-mind’ — hence the psychedelic drug-user’s phrase which refers to having a ‘mind-blowing’ experience. This blowing out of the mind is precisely what the Charismatic phenomenon is all about. I remember charismatic pastor, John Wimber, telling those who attended a conference to “leave your minds at the door”. I have heard an Eastern guru say the same thing: “Leave your mind at the door with your shoes”. These are the facts which account for the huge success of the Charismatic Movement in the less developed countries, where magic, witchcraft, occultism and superstition already hold sway.

The energy being manipulated in Pentecostal/Charismatic/Toronto Blessing/etc. circles today is what is known in Eastern mysticism as Kundalini energy, or Serpent-Power. That is why you can find people in churches writhing about or slithering up staircases with their tongues going in and out like a lizard (as reported in a mail I received from an alarmed subscriber). These people are playing with (occult) fire. (The “Toronto Blessing” was even characterised as “Catching the Fire”). But they have no conception of the dance in which they are involved. To gain a sense of the uncanny parallelism between the psychic powers developed within the Pentecostal/Charismatic Movement and those ‘Siddhis’ produced through the pagan practices of Eastern mysticism, compare Ajit Mookerjee, “Kundalini: The Arousal of the Inner Energy”, Thames & Hudson, 1978. The ‘serpent power’ unleashed through Kundalini Yoga is startlingly similar to the ‘power’ which is ‘hyped-up’ in Charismatic meetings and which is sought out in a secondary spirit-baptism. These facts should be opened up when witnessing to Charismatics as they are most afraid of the occult. An undergirding characteristic of the Charismatic Movement is flight from fear through superstitious ritual and the effecting of mass-hypnosis through suggestion and hysteria (mass psychogenic disorder).

Subjective Experience is the Church’s Achilles Heel

The true disciple of Christ could so easily fall into a deep sense of sorrow at this point. Not only has the word “Christian” long fallen into misuse (which is why I prefer the phrase “disciple of Christ”), but the word “evangelical” has also been hijacked from its rightful designation. The full significance of this is shown by the fact that a photograph, in a book on world religion, of a group of people with their eyes closed — arms waving ecstatically in the air — has a caption which describes it as “an evangelical meeting”. [Ninian Smart, “The World’s Religions: Old Traditions and Modern Transformations”, Cambridge University Press, 1992, p.369]. Whatever else that is, such religious behaviour is not representative of genuine evangelicalism but of the New Age, blissed-out baloney in the Charismatic Movement. The word “evangelical” is derived from the Greek words eu, ‘well’ or ‘good’, and angellos, ‘message’. An evangelical is someone who has an ‘excellent message’ to proclaim which involves verbal propositions. An evangelical engages with people’s minds in the world of ideas. To be “evangelical” is to hold spiritual concepts that make things happen, rather than to induce religious experiences that stop people thinking. Even secular wordsmiths know what the word “evangelical” means. The Chambers English Dictionary, for example, defines it as:

“Of the school that insists especially on the total depravity of unregenerate human nature, the justification of the sinner by faith alone, the free offer of the Gospel to all, and the plenary inspiration and exclusive authority of the Bible”.

But the corruption of the ‘Christian’ scene today has reduced all that solid stuff to a mindless, arm-waving ecstasy. Fallen human beings have always preferred spurious religious experiences to genuinely dynamic ideas rooted in truth; and the same tendency has always threatened the Church. There are so many people today who profess to be ‘Christian’, yet who seem to spend their time “in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing” (Book of Acts, chapter 17, verse 21). In other words, they are like loquacious prattlers, always wanting to catch up on the latest religious gossip and spread it abroad. They have become ‘seed-pickers’ — spiritual dilettantes pecking around in the religious and psychological market-places of the world without even realising that they have been duped. Their reliance on subjective experience alone has been their Achilles Heel. All this is not representative of the true Ekklesia of Jesus Christ. When we begin to consider the full implications of the words of the Lord Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 7, verse 14, an awesome truth should impale itself upon our hearts: “Narrow is the gate and difficult is the way that leads to life, and only a few find it”.

Concluding Thoughts to Part 1

Again, I say, none of this is coincidental. We are on the way towards a global deception of unparalleled proportions, which will surely lead not only to the formation of a one-world government (already in the pipeline) but also to the revealing of the Antichrist. And in the preparation for this, it will be seen that the peculiar antics of the Pentecostal/Charismatic Movements and where they are heading — not to mention the laughing-stock into which they have made the visible church — will have as much a part to play as theosophy, Hinduism, Buddhism, LSD, Cannabis, Hypnosis, Shamanism, New Ageism, power-elites, mind-control, psychological operations, and the worldwide experience of UFOs and ETs, in terms of allowing subjective experience to dictate spiritual perception.

I know these are not popular or comfortable truths. But, having first realised all this when I became a disciple of Christ in the mid-1980s (having previously experienced many of the New Age/Eastern mystical practices along the way), I have seen nothing since to persuade me otherwise. On the contrary. What I have witnessed during the past nearly forty years has only served to support this belief. I only wish it was otherwise. I would dearly love there to be peace in all the churches and a beautiful world, if such a thing was possible. But I anticipate that the devastation of truth we see today will only increase as the age winds down to its close — until the time that the breath of Christ’s mouth and the sword in His hand cleans it all away. “Here is the endurance of the saints, those keeping the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus” (Book of Revelation, chapter 14, verse 12).

Having opened up this Charismatic/Pentecostal can of worms, showing how it is parallel to the psychic explosion in the secular world of New Ageism and Eastern mysticism — before going on to examine the Scriptures on the widespread practice of ‘Speaking in Tongues’ (in Part 3) and those which are alleged to support ‘Spirit Baptism’ (in Part 4) — I would now like to demonstrate unequivocally, in Part 2 of this paper, how the Shamanic-Mesmeric ‘Crisis Experience’ induced by powerful suggestion techniques in Charismatic/Pentecostal environments, known as the “Baptism in the Holy Spirit” leading to the widespread practice of speaking in so-called ‘Tongues’, has nothing whatsoever to do with the authentic experience of a true disciple of Christ.

PART 2:
The Cultic ‘Crisis Experience’ of the
Pentecostal/ Charismatic Movement

The ‘Crisis Experience’ that many people claim gives rise to ‘The Baptism with the Holy Spirit’ as an additional experience which supposedly happens after being “born from above” (which they claim is supposed to give rise to the experience of speaking in ‘Tongues’ as evidence of it) is nothing less than ‘Mesmerism’, pure and simple — the manipulation of weak and gullible minds by pretended leaders who wield great influence. Consider this description of a session in occultist Anton Mesmer’s clinic in the late eighteenth century:

“Mesmer marched about majestically… passing his hands over the patients’ bodies or touching them with a long iron wand. The results varied. Some patients felt nothing at all, some felt as if insects were crawling over them, others were seized with hysterical laughter, convulsions or fits of hiccups. Some went into raving delirium, which was called ‘The Crisis’ and was considered extremely healthful”.Richard Cavendish, “The Magical Arts”, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984, p.180

That description could easily have been about what happens in many churches today, especially those which were influenced by the so-called ‘Toronto Blessing’ in the 1990s and its many subsequent offshoots which “caught the fire” (to use their own catchphrase) and have now resulted in so much worldwide madness. In R.B. Ince’s book, “Three Famous Occultists” — demonstrating that Mesmer is regarded by experts as an ‘occultist’ — a contemporary record of Mesmer’s clinics by the historian Auguste Bailly gives a similar portrayal of his manipulative sessions:

“Some are calm, tranquil and experience no effect. Others cough, spit, feel slight pains, local or general heat, and have sweatings. Others, again, are agitated and tormented with convulsions. These convulsions are remarkable in regard to the number affected with them, to their duration and force. They are preceded and followed by a state of languor or reverie… Patients experienced more or less violent perspiration, palpitations, hysterics, catalepsy, and sometimes a condition resembling epilepsy. When the crisis was at its height, the patient was carried by attendants into one of the adjoining ‘Salles de Crises’ [Crisis Rooms]; he was there laid on a couch, and usually he subsided gradually into a deep sleep from which he awoke refreshed and benefitted”.R.B. Ince, “Three Famous Occultists”, Gilbert Whitehead, 1939, pp.87-88

It is the rooting of Pentecostal/Charismatic phenomena in this Mesmeric morass of occult-hypnotic phenomena that I want to pursue in this part of the paper.

The Unique Practices of these Movements
are Occult-Hypnotic Phenomena

Although its practitioners are ignorant of the fact, variations of this ‘Mesmeric Crisis’ are being repeated in Pentecostal/Charismatic meetings throughout the world today, where it is often accompanied by a hypnotic ‘swoon’ known as being ‘slain in the spirit’. The ecstatic religious experience known deceptively in Christian circles as ‘Baptism with the Holy Spirit’ or being ‘Slain by the Spirit’ and its (usually) accompanying experience of babbling in gobbledygook ‘Tongues’ are intimately caught up with such occult hypnotic phenomena. All this highly theatrical kerfuffle comes about as the result of powerful suggestion from an influential leader/teacher. It is essentially an unwitting ‘Initiation’ into Mystery Religion — an experience that is available to anyone who is open to receive it, of whatever religious persuasion, and it has as much to do with the spirituality of Jesus Christ as a Dionysian rite or the Pythia of Delphi!

One of the major concerns about the Charismatic-Pentecostal Movement is that an untold number of people within its ranks who believe that they are Christians may never have experienced a genuine metanoic transformation. Very often, people are counted as having been ‘saved’ if they have merely had hands laid on them by someone praying over them in the ecstatic-babbling style of ‘Tongues’ (often while attempting to ‘exorcise’ demons from them), which has resulted in certain physical sensations (e.g., heat, tingling flesh, falling down, etc.) followed by a display of the same style of ‘Tongues-speaking’ which they consider to be evidence of the indwelling Holy Spirit. That phenomenon can certainly be classified as a ‘psycho-mystical’ or ‘Mesmeric’ experience — or even a Neo-Gnostic experience — but it is not an evidence of the new birth in the power of the Holy Spirit, as I will unequivocally demonstrate in Parts 3 and 4 of this paper..

Way back in 1784 — long before the present-day Charismatic Movement was even a twinkle in Satan’s eye — the King of France appointed a Commission to examine the claims of Franz Mesmer, consisting of reports from two reputable medical bodies: the Faculty of Medicine of the Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of Medicine. How perceptive it was for this Commission to come to the following conclusion:

“That man can act upon man at any time, and almost at will by striking his imagination; that the simplest gestures and signs can have the most powerful effects; and that the action of man upon the imagination may be reduced to an art, and conducted with method, upon subjects who have faith”.R.B. Ince, “Three Famous Occultists”, Gilbert Whitehead, 1939, pp.107-108

This is the essence of the ‘Crisis Experience’ being generated in Charismatic/Pentecostal circles today, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the experience of a genuine disciple of Christ but has everything to do with Shamanism, Mesmerism, hypnotic suggestion and mass psychogenic disorder. When Anton Mesmer discovered, in the late eighteenth century, the occult elements that shamans have known for millennia, the seeds of Western psychotherapy were sown — a fact which is confirmed by the claim of a prominent psychiatrist in an issue of the prestigious Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine:

“What is important is the impact and influence [Mesmer] had on the subsequent development of psychiatry. It would indeed be no exaggeration to say that he was one of the world’s first psychotherapists”.“Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine”, Vol.85, no.7, July 1992, p.383

And it is Mesmer’s crude form of manipulative hypnotherapy which is being practised by the ‘deliverance ministries’ and ‘healing’ crusades of the Pentecostal/Charismatic Movement, through which the strong suggestions of a powerful teacher can turn the lives of the gullible inside-out. One trainer of psychotherapists said that “most of the techniques in different types of psychotherapy are nothing more than hypnotic phenomena”. [Richard Bandler and John Grinder, “Frogs into Princes: Neuro Linguistic Programming”, Real People Press, 1979, p.100]. Like the Christian ‘visualisers’ of the ‘Health ’n Wealth’ / ‘Name it and Claim it’ style of Churchianity, the healers and deliverance pedlars have also not understood that there is a vast gulf between the work of the Son of God and the sorcery of the sundry shamans of this world.

Speaking of sundry shamans, here are a couple of examples of the way that “man can act upon man at any time, and almost at will by striking his imagination; that the simplest gestures and signs can have the most powerful effects” (as the King of France’s commission said above). In this first clip is the ‘Big Daddy’ charismatic pastor, Kenneth Hagin, causing some effects in his congregation: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/vnjx1nVGFYo . In this second clip, we see Kenneth Hagin ‘blow’ on Kenneth Copeland who immediately jumps to his feet and goes crazy, followed by the rest of the thousands in the hall going crazy too: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/IQgjKOBWPQ8 . That clip is entitled “Move of God” and “Explosion in the Holy Ghost”. Would this be blasphemy? These are megachurch congregations. These two men between them have probably been the most powerful influences on the Charismatic Movement. Does this kind of filth have anything whatsoever to do with the spirituality of Jesus Christ or the power of the Holy Spirit? Of course not. Someone said to me once that I was ‘quenching the Spirit’ by saying this kind of thing. My reply was that if that stuff is really what is meant by the spirituality of Jesus Christ or the power of the Holy Spirit, then I do not want any part in it, for purity and cleanliness are all I want to know.

A Dinner Date with Anton Mesmer

We have already seen how the Pentecostal/Charismatic induced ‘Baptism with the Holy Spirit’ or the so-called ‘slain in the spirit’ rigmarole and the resultant episode of ‘Tongues’-speaking is a Christianised version of the ‘Crisis Experience’ which was practised by Anton Mesmer. This is the case whoever is performing it. There are so many churches and organisations which engage in these kinds of activity. Let us take one example: The Full Gospel Businessmen’s Fellowship International (F.G.B.F.I.), which has specialised from its inception in the inducement of these experiences. It is nothing less than a dinner-date with Anton Mesmer. For those not familiar with the F.G.B.F.I., which has branches all over the world, it holds regular evangelistic dinners in a hired hall, to which people invite their neighbours, workmates, friends, etc. After the dinner has been eaten, people give emotive testimonies about what Jesus is alleged to have done for them (usually involving spectacular effects), followed by an invitation to come to the front of the room for ‘healing’ and ‘deliverance ministry’. Those who do so will find themselves in a queue known as a ‘prayer-line’, waiting for one of the leaders to ‘lay hands’ on them in order to induce the above-mentioned ‘Crisis Experience’.

This is a very common methodology used in the invoking of such mystical experiences and in the inducing of people to speak in the ecstatic-babble style of ‘Tongues’ used today. The use of the term “Full Gospel” refers to the fact that these folks regard a Christian who does not show evidence of the Holy Spirit through speaking in ‘Tongues’ as having not received the Gospel ‘in full’. In the view of these people, if you do not speak in what they call ‘tongues’, you are an inferior grade of Christian and may not even be saved. [For details of a complete F.G.B.F.I. session, read Don Basham’s checklist hypno-recommendations, “Spiritual Power: How to Get it – How to Give it!”, Whitaker House, 1976, 89pp]. As an example of the crude technique used to induce this experience in Christian circles, consider the following account in a popular Charismatic book:

“When people have asked for the Baptism in the Holy Spirit in prayer-lines in many countries of the world, I have simply instructed them to start repeating the word “Blood”, and within a matter of seconds they have begun to speak in ‘Tongues’. Usually I then call over another worker and suggest that he or she praise God with them so that they do not stop speaking in ‘Tongues’. They are now entering another spiritual dimension, and it is wonderfully strange! It is important that they do not begin to doubt at this point. I then go on to the next one in line and begin all over again”.H.A. Maxwell Whyte, “The Power of the Blood”, Whitaker House, 1973, p.83

That “another spiritual dimension” referred to there is the ‘altered state of consciousness’ to which I have been referring above. These folks seem to have no realisation that they are using the power of suggestion and the use of hypnotic techniques (or maybe some do!). Repeating the word “Blood” is the trigger there. In the introduction to Don Basham’s book “Spiritual Power: How To Get It – How To Give It!”, we are told that the kernel of his message involves a set of ‘simple instructions’ in the fifth chapter which is virtually guaranteed to induce the so-called ‘Spirit Baptism’ experience. If only spiritual growth was really that easy! Checklist conversion! What such an experience does is to hoodwink professing ‘Christians’ into a state of perpetual spiritual pride and confusion. This is why people who have received this so-called ‘Baptism’ spend so much of their time going round telling others about it and trying to get them to have it too. In this, the work of Satan is manifest. For the work of the Holy Spirit is to ‘testify of Jesus’, not to glorify Himself (cf. Gospel of John, chapter 15, verse 26; chapter 16:14-15).

The ‘Spirit-Baptism’ Tacky Formula in Action

As an example of how the ‘Baptism in the Holy Spirit’ is induced in people by suggestion and religious pressure, here is a YouTube video of a pastor who pitched up in the grounds outside the church where  the so-called “Asbury Revival” has been happening (which I will hopefully address in another article), because these suspect ‘revival’ episodes always attract all manner of snake-oil salespeople coming from around the world who are cashing in on the delusion, and he began trying to induce the secondary “Baptism in the Holy Spirit” in the little crowd around him using typical hypnotic techniques and a completely false translation of a verse in the Book of Acts, chapter 19 (about which there is more in Part 3 of this paper). The YouTube link is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOErYqGWstc . One should always be suspicious of those who keep prodding at you with a bible (especially when what he is trying to do is not even biblical!). You will see this pastor using all the classic methods of trying to induce this occult-hypnotic experience complete with the hapless folks swooning at the end, after much persuasion from him. Once you’ve learned to do it, you can repeat it again and again. It’s a cheap checkpoint technique. A tacky formula. Period.

One thing I will just say here about the Asbury so-called ‘revival’, as it is relevant to my overall message in this paper. A vast number of people have travelled to the spot in Kentucky where all this ‘revival’ is said to be happening. Someone then drew on a map (see below) some lines showing the countries from where all those who travelled there came (see map below). Why would people do that? Apparently, it is supposed to be in order to ‘plug in’ to the alleged ‘work of the Spirit’, as if it works like a virus or other contagion — which is very much like the New Age idea of ‘portals’. What crazy thinking. If God wants you for His own, He will come to you without fail. If you want to draw near to God and enjoy His Spirit, He will come to you without fail. In fact, He is already everywhere and anywhere. The thought that you have to travel to a particular geographical location to ‘grab some God’ or ‘get the Spirit’ is a ridiculous idea.

Why is it necessary to go across lands and oceans to bring the Holy Spirit to your church?  This is the Spirit of Almighty God of whom one is speaking — the One who “blows where He wishes” (Gospel of John, chapter 3, verse 8) and who already abides in every true disciple of Christ.  What kind of a ‘god’ is it that can be harnessed in such a way that we can infallibly bring some pyrotechnics to our churches by hopping on a plane? This ‘Aladdin’s Lamp’ idea of the Holy Spirit as some kind of ‘genie-in-a-bottle’ that one can transport across the world to bring some action into one’s own area or church is a most profane concept.  If the Lord wishes to fan the flames of genuine growth in your church, I can assure you that He will do so in His own way and in His own time.

I have known many New Age folks who would travel to a geographical location, such as the crossing point of alleged leylines, a circle of standing stones, or other purported ‘portal’, where they can ‘tune in to the energies’ and get some of it to bolster themselves spiritually, like taking a drug. But a devout disciple of Christ has no need for any of that nonsense. S/he knows that a heartfelt prayer is enough for the Spirit to be right there as the Paraclete — literally the ‘called-alongside-One’, ‘Helper’, ‘Advocate’, ‘Counsellor’ (as parakletos has been translated from the Greek; see the Gospel of John, chapter 16, verse 14). That is His nature — to be alongside — to be right there. In fact, He is there continually. But if you want to draw especially close, then that prayer is all that is necessary. No need to travel across the world to ‘get a fix’, as a junkie would say.

When you see phenomena like the inducement to speak in ‘Tongues’ or have a ‘Spirit-baptism’ experience (and this is also very clear from reading Don Basham’s transcript), you realise that people are being ‘psyched-up’ with a heady cocktail of suggestion and a massively exaggerated sense of expectancy and tension-building (often in a long queue), to undergo a mighty emotional experience of trance-ecstasy — an experience of tension-release to such an extent that there is a liberation of powerful forces which can manifest either as a feeling of great euphoria (often accompanied by yelps and laughter) or desperately uncomfortable hysteria (often accompanied by screams and convulsions). These same phenomena are repeated in many Pentecostal/Charismatic situations — all manufactured in the heavy hothouse atmosphere of emotional manipulation. Yet, and this is what they need to understand, it is all identical to what took place in Anton Mesmer’s ‘Salles des Crises’.

‘Slain in the Spirit’ = Hindu/Buddhist ‘Shaktipat’

Such special effects have been generated in pagan religions throughout history through the use of repetitive prayer (mantras), powerful suggestion from a dominant teacher (Shaman), dancing (for example, Dervishism), meditation (especially the Kundalini variety) and hallucinogenic drugs. I have seen the same technique (and the same results) occurring within the context of a meditation session led by the self-styled Indian guru Shree Bhagwan Rajneesh (aka OSHO, whose followers were aften known as the ‘Orange People’), in which he would touch devotees on the forehead with a Hindu and Buddhist gesture which is known in Sanskrit as ‘Shaktipat’, which supposedly involves an initiation via ‘energy transfer’ of so-called ‘god consciousness’ (though that is all based on hypnotic delusion). In Charismatic-Pentecostal circles, many similar methods to induce such an experience are used, although they are dressed up in ‘Christian’ clothing, e.g., repetitive, endless singing of trite choruses, invocation of the Spirit, powerful emotional suggestion from a dominant leader, the laying on of hands, etc. Whether it is Shaktipat or the Pentecostal/Charismatic ‘slain in the spirit’ routine, it is all pure Mesmerism — the generation of hypnosis and trance through powerful suggestion. Nowhere is this deception and manipulation more apparent today than in the theatrical ritual performed at Charismatic gatherings which is referred to as being ‘slain in the spirit’, in which a person will fall backwards to the floor in an induced swoon, often after being ‘touched’ (some would say pushed) by an influential teacher.

It is worth remembering that in the Bible it is only God’s enemies who fall backwards when confronted with His naked spiritual power (e.g., Gospel of John, chapter 18, verse 6; cf. Book of Isaiah, chapter 28, verse 13); whereas the Lord’s true people always fall forwards on their faces in awestruck adoration and worship (e.g., Book of Genesis, chapter 17, verse 3; Book of Joshua, chapter 5, verse 14; Book of Ezekiel, chapter 1, verse 28; Chapter 44, verse 4; Book of Daniel, chapter 8, verse 17; Gospel of Matthew, chapter 17, verses 5-6; Book of Revelation, chapter 7, verse 11; chapter 11, verse 16). But true spirituality is not something which can be sought out by simply going to a meeting and plugging into an experience. It is in this sense that the Charismatic Movement can be said to be very much a part of the New Gnosticism, with its mysticism, superstition, elitest ‘higher life’ teachings, disdain of the intellect and emphasis on the development of ‘extraordinary’ mind-powers.

Perhaps, at this point, you will want to ask me this question: “If being ‘slain in the spirit’ in a Pentecostal or Charismatic church or undergoing similar pyrotechnics is not only a Christian experience, how come I had such a great sense of peace when it happened to me?” The fact that a person has a general sense of wellbeing after an experience in no way proves that it is from the Lord, or that it is conducive to spiritual growth and discipleship. The objective validity of an experience can never be measured by the subjective feelings associated with it. Psycho-religious activities often create what is known as an ‘alpha-wave’ brain state, or a major release of endorphins or oxytocin, in which a person will have an experience of great euphoria. But this in no way proves that one is ‘resting in the Holy Spirit’, as many would put it, because this same state can be reproduced in Yogic meditation, occult rituals, an opium den, or even a pub!

It is most unlikely that the pleasant sensations which occur in the wake of the Pentecostal-Charismatic ‘slain in the spirit’ experience have anything whatever to do with the Holy Spirit, because God does not bless disobedience. Such phenomena not only have no biblical pedigree, but they have been entirely absent in gatherings of genuine disciples down the ages, having only ever been practised among mystery religions, mystical orders, shamanistic cults, and pagan sects. It was not until the revivalist excesses of the so-called ‘Holiness Movement’ in the latter half of the 19^th century that such phenomena began to seduce professing Christians en masse into their powerful wake.

The fact that you feel so high after having indulged in antichristian psycho-religious experiences merely shows that Satan has performed a consummate work in your life. For that is his aim with the millions upon millions of gullible folks who claim to be ‘Christians’ in the world today: to give them a ‘hands-on feel-good’ experience while introducing them to a welter of ‘Christianised’ occult techniques and practices.  What so many today fail to understand is that when Satan determines to deceive professing ‘Christians’, he comes as an angel of light rather than the prince of darkness (see, e.g. Second Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 11, verse 14). When you understand how Satan really operates, you will realise that an occult or demonic experience need not be one of spine-tingling horror but is much more likely to fill you with feelings of joy and release. Satan is the master of the ‘buzz’ – the religious and psychological high; and he is exercising his craft today in the churches on a massive scale.

How easily bewitched professing ‘Christians’ are today!  It is not on any subjective physical or emotional experiences that a disciple should base his or her sense of peace but, rather, on the objective fact of his having been reconciled to God through Christ. There is a vast difference between ‘feelings’ of peace and actually knowing that peace has been made. The first is an artificial peace based on subjective experience, while the latter is a true peace rooted in the objective work of Christ. The world will offer you an earthbound peace which is either the space between two wars or the illusion of bliss (cf. Gospel of John, chapter 14, verse 27). But Christ will bring about an actual condition of peace which is permanent and spiritual — a state which persists, even in times of affliction, and regardless of how ‘good’ or ‘bad’ we may feel. As some wise words written in a former era well say:

“While we must fight together throughout this life under the cross, our condition is harsh and wretched…. For this reason we ought to know that the happiness promised us in Christ does not consist in outward advantages such as leading a joyous and peaceful life, having rich possessions, being safe from all harm, and abounding with delights such as the flesh commonly longs after. No, our happiness belongs to the heavenly life!”

Understanding this mighty fact is the key to true growth, which does not come through psychological catharsis, but through obedience to God’s word (First Letter of Peter, chapter 2, verses 1-3) and the hard road of suffering and adversity (Letter to the Romans, chapter 5, verses 3-4). Disciples of Christ are exiles in a hostile world, but their joy comes through knowing that they have an abundance of heavenly treasures. If your peace and joy comes from being ‘slain in the spirit’ — or undergoing any other psycho-religious experience — then you have no conception of the heavenly life, and are merely laying up for yourself vain treasures on earth.

Concluding Thoughts to Part 2

One should not lightly dismiss this connection between the Charismatic-Pentecostal Movement and the pagan/New Age/Eastern mystical scene. Despite the fact that many Charismatics strenuously oppose the New Age Movement and Eastern mysticism on paper, they have unquestioningly accepted many of its practices without realising the folly of their endeavour — as can be seen from our studies earlier in this chapter. We can also call it a Christianised form of Shamanism; for that is what is being pursued today by a number of the well-known teachers in the Charismatic-Pentecostal Movement. Central to all forms of Shamanism are the practices of “suggestion, hypnosis, [and] guided imagery”, which were used “for centuries before they were rediscovered by modern psychologists”. [Fritjof Capra, “The Turning Point: Science, Society and the Rising Culture”, Flamingo Collins, 1982, p.337]. Parallel to this is the fact that shamanistic religion involves “the belief in evil spirits peopling air, sea and earth, promoters of evil and authors of disease, and the respect paid to the shamans who control them”. [“Chambers’s Encyclopaedia”, George Newnes, 1963, Vol. VIII, p.258]. This controlling, sorcerous, superstitious, demon-obsessed Charismatic religion — with its phony ‘deliverance ministries’, its fake healing ministries, and its cult of the personality in its leaders — is nothing other than Westernised, Christianised Shamanism. When we add to this the fact that in all forms of magic “the methods adopted are usually quite simple and rely mainly on auto-suggestion for their results” [Ibid., p.792], we begin to piece together a startling explanation for so many developments in the increasingly apostate visible church of today.

In Parts 3 and 4, I will open all this up by examining in great detail the phenomenon of ‘Tongues’ and the ‘Baptism in the Holy Spirit’, comparing what is being practised within the Pentecostal/Charismatic movements with what the Bible clearly teaches.

PART 3:
The Gift of ‘Languages’ (not ‘Tongues’!)

The very word “Tongues” itself conjures up a highly-charged, almost mystical image in the minds of so many Christians today. But what does the Bible reveal? Here, in Part 3 of this paper, is an extended survey of the true meaning of ‘Tongues’ and its place in the life of the church and in that of the disciple of Christ.

The spiritual gift referred to in the New Testament which people refer to as ‘Tongues’ can be translated literally as “varieties of languages”. (As the central focus of this part of the paper is the speaking of ‘Tongues’, I will not be discussing in detail all of the spiritual gifts which are mentioned in the New Testament). In the time when the King James Version was written, the word “tongue” — the word which has come most to be associated with this gift — meant an identifiable human language. And an in-depth study of the Greek word glossa, strangely translated as the archaic word “tongue” in many Bible versions, shows that it must refer to an identifiable human language of actual ethnic origin (see, for example, Book of Revelation, chapter, 5, verse 9; chapter 7, verse 9; chapter 10, verse 11; chapter 11, verse 9; chapter 13, verse 7; chapter 14, verse 6; chapter 17, verse 15). It must surely be a sign of kowtowing cowardice so as not to offend the billion or so Pentecostals and Charismatics in the world that almost all the mainstream Bible translations (with the exception of the NET Bible, International Standard Version, and the Good News Bible) still use the obsolete English word “tongues” for the Greek word glōssais. If you substitute the phrase “varieties of languages” for “tongues” in your Bible, you will see that it opens up a wholly new dimension of what this gift was really all about and takes away the appalling ‘woo-woo’ which has come to be associated with the word ‘tongues’.

When we look for clear texts elsewhere in the New Testament which will provide us with examples of this gift in action, we see that it indeed functioned as the supernatural ability to speak in previously unlearned, identifiable human ethnic languages. It had nothing whatsoever to do with gobbledygook or a “private prayer language”, as is claimed today. In our search for such a text, we find that The Book of Acts, chapter 2, verses 1-13, for example, gives us a superb practical model of the biblical gift of “varieties of languages”.

However, there is not a scrap of evidence in Scripture which would support the notion that the biblical gift of ‘Tongues’ (or gift of ‘Languages’, as it should be known) involved the commonplace ecstatic babbling which one can witness across the world, in Christian and non-Christian circles alike. Such babbling has been a hallmark of heathen religion from the beginning of time. It is an intrinsic part of human psycho-physiology to be able to enter such a state of mind. Christians, as partakers in the same flesh, are not exempt from the ability to reproduce this experience. It is actually an incipient trance-like condition brought on through powerful suggestion or auto-suggestion, in which there is increased Alpha-Wave activity of the brain (which is why the modern form of ‘Tongues-speakers’ usually feel so good when they do it), coupled with a stimulation of the part of the brain which governs articulate speech, known as “Broca’s area”.

I am now going to show you a sample of the kind of ‘Tongues’-speaking lunacy one can witness in Charismatic gatherings. This is from the YouTube channel called Holy Koolaid, which is maintained by a sceptic and the sight of this type of people only makes his scepticism worse while bringing the faith into disrepute. The enormous size of the crowd laughing along with all this is also horrendous. Of course, this ‘Tongues’ banter between Rodney Howard-Browne and Kenneth Copeland will have been unintelligible to both of them, despite them pretending to understand each other. It is pure showmanship. But these are highly influential people. Believe it or not they have a following of countless millions across the world and have been at this for many decades. Click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdHnlGyF4IY . Now you may say that this is an extreme version of ‘Tongues’-speaking. But that is only because they are in Christian showbusiness that it seems like that. The same kind of gibberish is spoken by all other ‘Tongues’-speakers but not so ostentatiously. I saw a comment on a YouTube ‘tongues’ video today which said:

“I remember my parents tried out a Pentecostal church when I was young. People began ‘acting in the spirit’ by speaking in tongues and falling down etc and it terrified me so much I hid under a pew in tears. Watching adults, the people I was taught to trust and respect, all acting like lunatics with a shared delusion… was horrible for my psyche at the time”.

This is why I maintain that to take a family with children into a Pentecostal or Charismatic environment is child abuse. Speaking of child abuse, I saw another YouTube video of a woman who actually teaches children to speak this gobbledygook. You can see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZQ3IbQBAJY . She tries to answer the question, “How do I know if my tongues-speaking is real or fake?” I ask you honestly, is there anything remotely spiritual about this woman’s entire presentation? Let’s face it, it’s all fake! Truly, we have lost the way so much. Such a huge part of the church involving more than a billion people has gone ‘away with the fairies’. I believe this is all part of the great apostasy; and this is only the beginning.

Such an experience of speaking gibberish has been generated in pagan religions throughout history through the use of repetitive prayer or chanting (mantras), powerful suggestion from an influential teacher (Shamanism), wild dancing (Dervishism), meditation (varieties of Yoga) and psychotropic drugs (remember that the word “pharmacology” is actually derived from the Greek word for sorcerer, pharmakos). All that stuff is about entering an altered state of consciousness, which is entirely different from the phenomenon which is described in the Book of Acts, chapters 2, 8, 10, & 19, and bears no relation whatsoever to the spiritual gift of ‘languages’ mentioned in the First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 12.

I can just imagine these words being  spoken right now (as they have been to me on a number of occasions): “But weren’t the disciples ‘drunk in the spirit’ at Pentecost in the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles?” No, they most certainly were not! Moreover, to compare the behaviour of those who are so-called ‘slain in the spirit’ in Pentecostal/Charismatic churches today with the miraculous event recorded in the Book of Acts, chapter 2, shows a complete misunderstanding of what was taking place.

This was the inauguration of the New Testament Church. Is it at all feasible that God would have his disciples behave like a band of town drunks at a time when establishing the humour and integrity of the Church was all important? Those disciples were “declaring the wonders of God” (v. 11), not exhibiting the kind of religious phenomena which could be found in the many pagan and mystery religions abounding in the Mediterranean countries in those days. If the disciples at the gathering at Pentecost in the Book of Acts, chapter 2, had been behaving like the lunatics we see in many churches of today, then this would have made the Ekklesia indistinguishable from those fanatical pagan cults and would have brought the faith into disrepute.

It is true that some of the bystanders (and it was only some) said that the disciples seemed to be “drunk on new wine” (v. 13).  But this was purely by way of mockery and had no substance to it. They were simply trying to ridicule the disciples in a spirit of unbelief. For this reason, it would be most unreliable to base our understanding of the disciples’ behaviour on the taunts of such mockers. Their gibes about drunkenness cannot possibly have been because the disciples were falling to the floor, or laughing hysterically, or grinning inanely, or uttering gibberish, or crowing like cockerels, or roaring like lions, or waving their arms in the air, or holding their quaking hands out in front of them, such as happens to those stricken in Charismatic style gatherings. Such unruly and disreputable behaviour at that delicate moment of Church history would have undermined everything which was being founded and established.

The speaking of this variety of actual ethnic languages was a manifest reversal of the confounding judgment which took place at the Tower of Babel (Book of Genesis, chapter 11, verses 1-9), as I will show in a later section of this paper. It was sounding forth that great truth that there is neither ‘Jew nor Greek…in Christ Jesus’, and was a figurative representation of the ‘all nations’ composition of the New Jerusalem. To cite the God-honouring events of the Book of Acts, chapter 2, in support of quasi-drunken behaviour in church services of today is not only in defiance of Paul’s dictum that all things should be ‘done decently and in order’ (First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 14, verse 40), but it also makes a mockery of the fact that to be filled with the Spirit is diametrically opposed to the state of drunkenness (see Letter to the Ephesians, chapter 5, verse18).

So let us now really open this up by showing some essential elements in the spiritual gifts of the Holy Spirit, as it is the level of ignorance in this area which has given rise to the dysfunctional manifestations which we can observe today.

1)  Revelation and Sign-Gifts

Here it would be relevant to show that the spiritual gift of “varieties of languages” was given by God primarily to function as a “sign”. The epoch of Church history known as the Apostolic era was an extraordinary time of development. The Mosaic order was giving way to the age of the New Covenant; the God-ordained, theocratic nation-state of Israel was being wound up for the final time, as it would no longer be relevant to the needs of a maturing people of God; the Gentile nations were being opened up to the Gospel in an unprecedented fashion; and there was a need for fresh revelation after four hundred years of silence in the intertestamental period.

At this point in history, God gave four spiritual gifts which served a unique purpose during a time of great change in the foundation of the Ekklesia. First, there was the gift of prophecy, by which Divine revelation was given “piecemeal” to the primitive Church at a time when the written New Testament revelation was still incomplete. Then there were “gifts of healings”, “workings of miracles”, and “varieties of languages” — all of which are said to have functioned as “signs”.

The word “sign” in Scripture is a translation of the Greek word semeion , from which our English words semeiology (study of symptoms) and semaphore (signalling apparatus) are derived. A “sign” in Scripture refers to something which is signalling a matter of great significance to whoever witnesses it. For example, in the course of the Gospel of John, the Apostle presents to his readers seven “signs” which were performed by Jesus (Gospel of John, chapter 2, verses 1-11; chapter 4, verses 46-54; chapter 5, verses 1-18; chapter 6, verses 1-14; chapter 6, verses 15-25; chapter 9, verses 1-41; chapter 11, verses 1-46) and “many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book” to convince them “so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name” (Gospel of John, chapter 20, verses 30-31).

Signs always have a vital function. In the Apostolic era, “signs” were either for the purposes of authentication of the fact that the Messiah had come, or they were judicial in character — a fact which I will develop more fully below in relation to the use of the gift of ‘Languages’ (‘Tongues’). Such “signs” were predominantly directed at the Jews, whose nation-state, together with its ceremonial and legal system, was about to be wound up — the final hammer-blow being the complete destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in AD 70. (To understand more about the final significance of that event and to show how the Israel of the Bible was very different to the counterfeit nation-state of Israel today, please read my free-to-download eBook “Abraham our Father: Jerusalem our Mother”).

The nature and purpose of the “sign-gifts”, as we can call them, can be gleaned from a number of places in the sacred texts. One such passage is the Gospel of Mark, chapter 16, verses 17-18. Some expositors, in a well-meaning bid to negate the common Pentecostal teaching that all professing ‘Christians’ will speak in ‘Languages’ (‘Tongues’), cast out demons and practise healing, have held that this final passage of Mark’s Gospel is not authentic. But there is no need at all to resort to such radical surgery with God’s word in order to prove this point. Almost every available Greek manuscript contains this passage, whereas it is lacking only in the more suspect codices of Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. Furthermore, John Burgon has adequately proven the authenticity of this passage in a work that has never been answered since it first appeared in the nineteenth century [see Jay P. Green (ed.), John W. Burgon: The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to Mark , Vol. I of “Unholy Hands on the Bible” (Sovereign Grace Trust Fund, 1990; first published in 1871), pp.C1-C177].

The main problem with that entire section of the Gospel of Mark has always been its consistent mistranslation and the misinterpretation which then results from that (as is very often the case in matters like this). When the majority of translations say, “And these signs will follow those who believe…” (Gospel of Mark, chapter 16, verse 17), we are led to assume that the verse is referring to all those who believe of whatever era. But the tense of the verb ”believe” here is actually aorist, which indicates that the phrase is really saying, “these signs will follow those who have already believed” — in this context, that refers to the Apostles. This verse looks back to earlier verses, where reference is made to a contrasting unbelief on the part of the Apostles (see verses 11,13,14 in that chapter 16). Verses 15 and 16 are a parenthetical statement of the Great Commission. In any case, the signs referred to here cannot possibly be applicable to everyone who has believed as there is a reference to an immunity from normally-fatal snake bites and the ability to drink poison unharmed — qualities which are hardly universal in their ecclesiastical application! We do know for certain of at least one instance where a genuine Apostle of Christ was unharmed by the bite of a deadly snake (Book of Acts, chapter 28, verses 3-6). This brings us to an important aspect of any discussion on the gift of ‘Languages’ (‘Tongues’); and it is this…

2)  The Signs of an Apostle

In fact, the signs being referred to in the passage in Mark are some of the “signs of an Apostle” to which Paul refers in his Second Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 12, verse 12. Just as God had set out certain infallible ways in Old Testament times for testing whether or not a prophet was true or false (Book of Deuteronomy, chapter 13, verses 1-3; chapter 18, verses 20-22), so He also declared certain “signs” which would enable New Testament disciples of Christ to distinguish between a true and a false apostle. These signs of an Apostle of Christ consisted of those things listed in the Gospel of Mark, chapter 3, verses 14-15 and chapter 16, verses 17-18 (healing, ‘Tongues’-speaking, casting out of demons, etc.), plus the working of miracles (Second Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 12, verse 12; Letter to the Romans, chapter 15, verse 19), prophecy (Gospel of Matthew, chapter 10, verses 40-41; Book of Acts, chapter 5, verses 3-9; chapter 13, verses 6-12; chapter 14, verses 8-10) and, most important to our present study, the unique ability to distribute these revelation and sign gifts to others (Letter to the Hebrews, chapter 2, verse 4).

The only means that God has used for distributing the “revelation” or “sign” gifts to others in the New Testament era is through the mediation of the unique Apostles of Jesus Christ who were the foundation of the Church (Book of Revelation, chapter 21, verse 14). These gifts and abilities — ‘Languages’ (‘Tongues’), prophecy, the casting out of demons, healing and miracle-working — were imparted to disciples by the laying on of hands of the Apostles. There is no account in Scripture of anyone receiving a ‘revelation/sign’ gift other than through the distribution of one of the original Apostles. (The Gentile, Cornelius, was a special case — although an Apostle was certainly present, having been specially sent to preach the Gospel to him. Some also cite Timothy as an exception, in the First Letter to Timothy, chapter 4, verse 14. However, this does not refer to Timothy himself receiving the gift of prophecy, but to the office of Pastor being conferred upon him by the laying on of hands of the eldership, as the result of a prophetic revelation).

A number of people are spoken of as having received these gifts through this unique imparting by Apostolic ministry. Stephen and Philip both had Apostolic hands laid on them and thereby were given the gift of miracle-working (Book of Acts, chapter 6, verses 5-8; chapter 8, verse 6). Barnabas, who had been renamed by Apostolic decree (Book of Acts, chapter 4, verse 36) and probably had Apostolic hands laid on him when he was sent to Antioch (Book of Acts, chapter 11, verse 22), and was given the gift of prophecy (Book of Acts, chapter 13, verse 1). Furthermore, Paul spent eighteen months establishing the Corinthian church (Book of Acts, chapter 18, verse 11), during which he authenticated his Apostleship with signs and wonders (First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 2, verses 4-5; Second Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 12, verse 12), and distributed gifts to others there as part of his Apostolic office, so that they lacked none of them (First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 1, verses 5-7). So it is hardly surprising that there was such a broad manifestation of these gifts in Corinth.

There is a particular proof that these gifts could only be received through the agency of an Apostle of Christ. When we are shown that Paul authenticated his Apostleship to the Corinthians by appealing to his “signs and wonders and mighty deeds” (Second Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 12, verse 12), we can also deduce that none in the Corinthian church could have received any of the revelatory/sign gifts other than by the distribution of an Apostle. For, if they had the ability to prophesy, to execute miracles or healings, or to speak in Tongues, without Apostolic mediation, then the performance of such signs and wonders and mighty works would be no proof of Apostleship!

That such gifts were distributed by the exclusive mediation of the Apostles was certainly not lost on Simon the Sorcerer. This was why he preferred to “buy” that Apostolic ability to impart the revelatory/sign gifts of the Spirit to others rather than have the mere capacity to work miracles (see the Book of Acts, chapter 8, verses 17-19). To be a false apostle would amass far more power and authority than merely being a false miracle-worker! It is precisely for this reason that a right understanding of the unique nature of the Apostleship is fundamental to “getting it right” about the claims of many regarding healings, prophecies, miracle-working and so-called ‘Tongues’.

There is considerable confusion today on this question of the Apostleship. When, as a pastor, I heard a young woman asked what she was hoping to do when she completed her studies at a Bible College, she said: “I haven’t made up my mind yet whether to be an Apostle or a composer” . In the face of such grave widespread ignorance, a right understanding of these matters is of the utmost importance. Many Bible Colleges have much to answer for in terms of the spawning of false teaching and superficial ‘Christian’ thought among impressionable young people throughout the evangelical churches. How on earth could anyone leave a Bible College with the idea that they could choose to be an Apostle, if they so wished? Really, the mind boggles.

In view of the fact that the spiritual gift of ‘Languages’ depended so much on Apostolic ministry, let us see how the New Testament identifies the qualifications of an apostle. What are the distinguishing marks of an apostle? If we can identify these, then we will see if they can be applied to anyone alive today, such as that aspiring young woman.

3)  The Qualifications of an Apostle

The word apostle comes from the Greek word, apostolos, which means, literally, one who is sent. Our word “posted” is derived from it. So, very loosely speaking, the word “apostle” can apply to anyone given a special commission or posting in the Church in any era of its existence. Occasionally, in the New Testament, the word is used in this broader sense to refer to those who have been specially commissioned for missionary work by the churches (e.g. Second Letter to the  Corinthians, chapter 8, verse 23; Letter to the Philippians, chapter 2, verse 25). But such general, church-commissioned, sent-ones were not the same as those entrusted with the unique spiritual gift of Apostleship, who were referred to as “Apostles of Jesus Christ” (see Letter to the Galatians, chapter 1, verse 1) — sent personally by Him, and who had unique qualifications for receiving that gift and distributing spiritual gifts to others. The sole qualifications which the Bible gives for being a spiritually-gifted Apostle are as follows:

1) He must have accompanied Jesus during His earthly ministry, which was from His baptism until His Ascension (Book of Acts, chapter 1, verses 21-23).

2) He must have been a personal witness of the resurrected Lord Jesus (First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 15, verse 7; chapter 9, verse 1; Book of Acts, chapter 1, verse 22; chapter 4, verse 33; chapter 10, verses 39-42).

3) He must have received a personal call from Christ to Apostleship and a commission to fulfil its duties (Gospel of Luke, chapter 6, verse 13; Gospel of Mark, chapter 3, verses 14-15).

4) He must have had, as his field of labour, the whole world, rather than a local church or group of churches (Gospel of Matthew, chapter 28, verse 19; Gospel of Mark, chapter 16, verse 15).

On this basis, and in the power of Jesus Christ (i.e. “in His name”, Gospel of Mark, chapter 9, verses 38-41), such a one was given a commission (Gospel of Matthew, chapter 28, verses 18-20) to herald out the kerygma, the essential message of the Gospel on which the Church was founded — the proclamation of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Paul refers directly to this special apostolic commission in his Letter to Titus, chapter 1, verses 1-3. Furthermore, there were distinctive “signs of an Apostle” of Jesus Christ. When certain people in the church at Corinth suggested that Paul was not really an Apostle, he answered by referring specifically to these signs as proof of his Apostleship (Second Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 12, verse 12; cf. Letter to the Hebrews, chapter 2, verses 3-4).

In carrying out this personal commission from the Lord Jesus Christ, these Apostles (along with the New Testament Prophets) were in the process of laying the foundations of the Church — a historical architectural procedure which is a once-for-all exercise and which cannot be repeated throughout every era of Church history (read Letter to the Ephesians, chapter 2, verse 20; Book of Revelation, chapter 21, verse 14).

This is precisely the context in which the Lord Jesus told the Apostle Peter that he and his testimony to the Messiahship of Christ were the rock upon which He would build His Church (Gospel of Matthew, chapter 16, verse 18). This is a further confirmation that one of the prime characteristics of genuine Apostles was that they (and their teachings) were the foundations of the Church — the solid bedrock — and we are the building that rests upon that which they established. Once a foundation is laid, the proper building begins. That foundation consisted of the setting up of the primitive Church on a correct footing of healthy teaching and practice (“Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ”… “Remember me…keep the traditions” , First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 11 verses 1-2; cf. Second Letter to Timothy, chapter 1, verses 13-14; Letter to Titus, chapter 1, verse 9), authenticating the Messianic coming with miraculous works (Letter to the Hebrews, chapter 2, verses 3-4; Book of Acts, chapter 2, verse 43; chapter 5, verse 12), and writing the Scriptures for a testimony of these things to later generations of disciples of Christ (Letter to the Ephesians, chapter 3, verses 3-5). The gifts are given for the “edification” of the Church as a whole. Edification means building up. The Apostles’ primary contribution to the building up of the Church was to lay the solid rock on which it would be built.

These unique Apostles — God’s foundation gift to the church (First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 12, verse 28) — were also directly commissioned and personally sent by Jesus Christ, the Head of the Church. That is why they are called “Apostles of Christ ” and “Apostles of Jesus Christ” (see the first verse of  each of these letters: First and second Letters to the Corinthians, Letter to the Ephesians., Letter to the Colossians, First and Second Letters to Timothy, Letter to Titus, First and Second Letters of Peter, and especially the first verse of the Letter to the Galatians, First Letter to the Thessalonians, chapter 2, verse 6; Letter of Jude, verse 17). This is why false apostles are those who transform themselves into the Apostles of Christ (Second Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 11, verse 13). A further aspect of the foundation-laying of the Apostles of Christ is that they laid down the New Testament Scriptures on which the truth of the Gospel is grounded and authenticated (Gospel of John, chapter 17, verse 20; Letter to the Ephesians, chapter 3, verses 3-5; cf. Gospel of John, chapter 20, verses 30-31).

There were just two exceptions to the above qualifications for the Apostleship. One was Matthias, who had not been directly commissioned by Christ but was chosen as a replacement for Judas Iscariot (Book of Acts, chapter 1, verses 21ff.). The other was Saul of Tarsus, who became Paul. Although Paul had not been with Jesus during His earthly ministry, he received an extraordinary manifestation of the resurrected Jesus on the road to Damascus and was given a special commission to minister to the Gentiles (First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 9, verse 1; chapter 15, verse 8; Book of Acts, chapter 26, verses 15-18). Thus, the hallowed Twelve Apostles became thirteen — one having been “of untimely birth” (First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 15, verse 8). There is a remarkable touch of typology here in the way that the twelve tribes of Israel (of which the twelve Apostles were a New Testament echo, as shown in the Book of Revelation, chapter 21, verses 12-14) also became thirteen with the elevation of two of Joseph’s sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, to the rank of tribal heads (Book of Genesis, chapter 48, verse 5).

What significance does all this have for us in the twenty-first century? Can anyone alive now make the bold claim that they have the spiritual gift of Apostleship — that they are therefore an Apostle of Jesus Christ, as many claim to be today? A consideration of the above facts must surely lead one to give a negative answer, for the following reasons:

• None of us alive today has spent any time with the Lord Jesus during His earthly ministry.
• None of us has ever been material witnesses of His Resurrection. In fact, our evidence for the Resurrection rests solely on the foundation which was laid by the true Apostles, who were commissioned to write these things down for us in the Scriptures (First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 15, verses 1-9).
• None of us today has been personally commissioned by Christ to be witnesses to the fact of His Resurrection in the way in which the original Apostles were.
• None of us can possibly be called the founders of the Church.
• Neither have we ever been personally commissioned by Christ to perform those signs which were exclusively those of an Apostle of His (Gospel of Matthew, chapter 10, verses 1-4; Gospel of Mark, chapter 3, verses 13-15; chapter 16, verses 17-18; Second Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 12, verse 12).

For these compelling reasons, there can be no genuine Apostles of Jesus Christ today. The spiritual gift of Apostleship lasted only for the infancy of the Church, during its foundation-laying period, for the duration of the lives of the Apostles, and has no functional relevance today. Anyone claiming to be an Apostle now is a false apostle — of which there were many even in the early church (Book of Acts, chapter 15; Letter to the Galatians, chapter 1, verses 7-9; Second Letter to the Corinthians, chapters 10 & 11; Letter to the Colossians, chapter 2), whose end shall be according to their works (Second Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 11, verses 13-15; cf. Book of Revelation, chapter 2, verse 2).

It represents an attempt to move the goalposts to say, as many do today, that the Spiritual gift of Apostleship is a secondary form of apostleship, lacking the authority that we see exercised by the Apostles in Scripture. The whole notion of spiritually-gifted “secondary” apostles and prophets has only served to create fear, confusion and false authority in the churches, while giving Satan a supreme foothold in a place where he should really fear to tread.

Since it is plain that there can be no genuine Apostles of Jesus Christ today, we must conclude that there can be no one around to distribute the revelatory/sign-gifts. Not only is there no one to impart them, but they have served their purpose in the development of the Church — a fact which I will now prove in relation to the gift of ‘Tongues’.

Once the New Testament canon was completed and all the Apostles were dead, the gifts which served for a sign and for revelation were finished. There was no further need for piecemeal prophetic revelation to be given now that God’s Word was complete. There was no further need for signs to be given to Israel for authenticating or judicial reasons, as that national state had been wound up by the Lord, utterly completely in AD 70. Neither was there anyone available to impart or distribute these gifts, because the original divinely-ordained Apostolate was no longer in existence.

These sign-gifts were specifically intended to aid the establishment of the Church through the ministry of the Apostles. The pattern is clearly shown in the Letter to the Hebrews, chapter 2, verses 3-4. Read those verses through. First came the word of the Gospel spoken by the Lord Jesus (v.3b), which is then confirmed to “us” (disciples of Christ  in general, v.3c) as a result of the special ministry of “those who heard Him” (i.e. the Apostles, v.3c). This special Apostolic ministry is spoken of as “God also bearing witness both with signs and wonders, with various miracles and distributions of the Holy Spirit” (i.e., spiritual gifts, v.4). This use of the word “distributions” is especially significant, because it shows that the gifts of the Spirit which were the special province of Apostolic ministry — i.e., those which involved revelation (prophecy) and authentication (signs) — were distributed by the Apostles. The need for such revelation and authentication was a hallmark of the foundation-laying period of church history; but, as we shall see, there was no further need for such “signs” after the conclusion of the Apostolic era.

It should give us pause for thought to know that the Scriptures give a clear indication that as the Gospel Age progresses there will be an increasing manifestation of “revelation” and “signs” which are the special work of false christs and false prophets (Gospel of Matthew, chapter 24, verse 24; Gospel of Mark, chapter 13, verse 22). The biblical teaching on “signs and wonders” is that the beginning of this Age was characterised by the signs of the Apostles of Christ and genuine wonders worked by those empowered by them; whereas the end of the Age will be characterised by the signs of Antichrist and “lying wonders” worked by those empowered by Satan (Second Letter to the Thessalonians, chapter 2, verse 9; Book of Revelation, chapter 13, verses 13-14; cf. First Letter to Timothy, chapter 4, verse 1).

Having now established the true identity of an Apostle of Jesus Christ and ascertained the essential nature of those gifts which were given to the Church for a sign and for revelation, let us now return to consider the true purposes of the spiritual gift of ‘Languages’ (‘Tongues’).

4)  The Purposes of the Gift of Languages (‘Tongues’)

There were three fundamental purposes of the gift of ‘Languages’ (‘Tongues’):

1) The Gift of ‘Languages’ Demonstrated the Universal Nature of the Gospel

Having been mainly (though not exclusively, see e.g. Letter to the Hebrews, chapter 11, verse 31, concerning the Canaanite prostitute Rahab’s faith) confined to those of the nation Israel in former times, the Gospel of God, as manifested in the finished work of Christ, would now be sent throughout the whole world. The manifestation of that variety of languages at Pentecost, so that “each one heard them speaking his own language” (Book of Acts, chapter 2, verse 6), was designed to show the universal nature of the Gospel drawing people of EVERY tribe, nation and “tongue” (cf. Gospel of John, chapter 10, verses 15-16; Book of Revelation, chapter 5; chapter 7, verses 9-10; chapter 14, verses 6-7). Plus we can see there that they were real languages which were able to be miraculously spoken and not pagan gibberish.

2)  The Gift of ‘Languages’ Demonstrated a Reversal of the Judgement on Babel

All those people hearing the wonderful works of God proclaimed in his or her own language at Pentecost heralded a reversal of the judgement at Babel, when there was a confounding of human language from being just one common language to being many languages. It was a sounding forth of that great truth that there is neither “Jew nor Greek…in Christ Jesus”. It is only in Christ Jesus that people can become one.

There was a third, even deeper, purpose to the gift of ‘Languages’ (‘Tongues’) being given to the early Church:

3)  The Gift of ‘Languages’ Showed that Judgement was Falling on Israel

A primary hallmark of the biblical gift of ‘Languages’ (‘Tongues’)       is that it was practised either spontaneously by the Apostles of Christ, or by those who had received the gift through the laying on of hands by these self-same Apostles (e.g., Book of Acts, chapter 19, verse 6). As with the other revelatory/sign-gifts, it is impossible for anyone to exhibit the genuine version of this gift unless they have had Apostolic hands laid on them.

The only exception to this was the “mini-Pentecost” at Caesarea, when Cornelius and his household were empowered by God to demonstrate definitely to the Jewish believers present that the Gentiles had been grafted into the Church as the people of God (Acts 10). Here, the gift of ‘Languages’ (‘Tongues’) was being used in its biblical manifestation; for when the Gentiles were admitted into the People of God, this would truly be a “sign” to unbelieving Jews that the judgement of the Lord was falling on Israel. And this brings us to the fundamental purpose behind the gift of ‘Languages’ (‘Tongues’).

There is an undergirding purpose for the biblical gift of ‘Languages’ (‘Tongues’) which seems to have escaped the attention of many disciples of Christ today: Namely, its original function as a “sign”. There were two kinds of “signs” in Early Church phenomena: authenticating signs and judicial signs. Miracles, healings, the casting out of demons, and prophecy all fall into the former category. Their purpose was to be a witness to the presence of the promised Messiah. This can be proven from the fact that, when John the Baptist sent some of his disciples to Jesus to ask the question: “Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?” , the Scripture explicitly states:

“At that very hour He cured many people of their infirmities, afflictions, and evil spirits; and to many who were blind He gave sight. Then Jesus answered and said to them: ‘Go and tell John the things you have seen and heard: That the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have the gospel preached to them’”.Gospel of Luke, chapter 7, verses 20-22

All this was a clear reference back to the prophecy given in the Book of Isaiah, chapter 35, verses 5-6, so that they would authenticate the “signs” being performed. However, the gift of ‘Languages’ (‘Tongues’) is unique among the gifts in that it was given primarily as a judicial sign rather than an authenticating one. Let me expand this concept, which is vital to our understanding of the use of this gift, and whether or not its alleged manifestations today are compatible with the sacred texts.

From the beginning of the Lord’s relationship with the children of Israel, His primary way of judgement was to bring a foreign language-speaking nation down upon them. This was the ultimate penalty for breaking the Covenant with Him. This was clearly spelled out to them, along with other curses, in the Book of Deuteronomy, chapter 28, verses 33 & 36. Here, God told them that if they break the Covenant: “The Lord will bring a nation against you from afar, from the ends of the earth, to swoop down upon you like an eagle, a nation whose language you will not understand ” (Book of Deuteronomy, chapter 28, verse 49). [emphasis added]. The essential element of this Covenant curse is that it comes through a Gentile nation speaking in a language which is not understood by the People of God. This is one of the curses which would ensue if they broke the covenant, and is specifically referred to as a “sign” of God’s judgement in the passage concerned (see Book of Deuteronomy, chapter 28, verse 46). Further on in time, this judgemental “sign” did indeed fall upon the rebellious nation of Israel under their idolatrous (but later repentant) king, Manasseh (Second Book of Chronicles, chapter 33, verses 10-13). The prophet Isaiah predicted this with the words: “For with mocking speech and foreign languages He will speak to this people… yet they would not hear” (Book of Isaiah, chapter 28, verses 11-12). That was the “sign” of God’s judgement: An invading Gentile nation (in this case, the Assyrians) speaking in a foreign language. The same incident is referred to by Isaiah elsewhere, when he describes these Assyrians as “a people whose speech is unintelligible, who stammer in a language that you cannot understand” (Isa.33:19). The prophet Jeremiah also shows that same “sign” of the covenantal curse on rebellious Israel as being fulfilled in the fact that the Babylonians would destroy Jerusalem and carry away its people:

“‘Behold, I am bringing a distant nation against you, O house of Israel,’ declares the LORD. ‘It is an established nation, an ancient nation, a nation whose language you do not know and whose speech you do not understand’ ”. [emphasis added]Book of Jeremiah, chapter 5, verse 15

And when we come to Paul speaking about the gift of ‘Languages’ (‘Tongues’) to the Church in his first Letter to the Corinthians, he quotes a couple of the verses from Isaiah that I have given above (First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 14, verse 21; cf. Isaiah, chapter 28, verses 11-12) and then concludes: “Therefore [the gift of varieties of] languages are for a sign, not to those who believe but to unbelievers” (First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 14, verse 22). Here he shows the Corinthians (and us) the undergirding purpose of the gift of ‘Languages’ (‘Tongues’). It was given to the Church by God in order to function primarily as a judicial “sign” to unbelievers – but not just any unbelievers: for the context plainly shows that Paul meant unbelieving Jews.

A number of elements can be shown from this sequence of passages. First, it shows that the gift of what people call ‘Tongues’ consisted of real human languages — the languages of the Gentile nations — rather than the gobbledygook that is spoken by professing ‘Christians’ today. Second, it shows that the gift of ‘Languages’ (‘Tongues’) discussed in the First Letter to the Corinthians, chapters 12-14, was given primarily to act as a “sign” to unbelieving Jews that, because of their rejection of the Messiah who had been sent to them by God, they would shortly be coming under the Covenant curse, through which a Gentile nation who spoke a foreign language (the Romans) would destroy Jerusalem and the Temple — an event which actually came to pass in AD 70, sixteen years after writing that letter. Therefore, no matter how the miraculous ability to speak in foreign languages manifested itself — whether as revelation, teaching, or just simply praising and glorifying God — its underlying purpose was to function as the final manifestation of the original Covenant curse on the people of Israel.

That being the case, there can no longer be any purpose in the practice of the gift of ‘Languages’ since the Fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. Any alleged manifestations of the gift since that time are entirely spurious and are manifestations of mysticism and paganism. This does not “limit God in His works”, as some would claim I am doing. Of course, God can do whatever He wants to do whenever He chooses to do it. But that is hardly the point in the case of this gift. When God has clearly stated the purpose of something, if that purpose no longer exists, then we must count it as finished.

There are actually a great many similarities between the function of ‘Languages’ (‘Tongues’) and that of the parables of Jesus (read carefully the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 13, verses 9-17; Gospel of Mark, chapter 4, verses 9-13, 33-34). It is in this respect that we can speak of the gift of ‘Languages’ (‘Tongues’) as being a judicial rather than an authenticating sign. “Those who have ears to hear, let them hear”. Just as it was with the Parables of Jesus, the specific purpose of the Holy Spirit gifting Christians to speaking in unlearned languages was to “signal” God’s alienation from Israel.

Every occurrence of ‘Languages’ (‘Tongues’) recorded in the Book of Acts was clearly working in this way as a pointed “signal” to the Jews that, as a nation, they would be coming under the judgement of God. In fact, the Book of Acts, chapter, 2, verses 4-11, corroborates this, where they are shown to function as a sign, which could then be followed by successful evangelism in a language they could understand! The other examples also show the gift of ‘Languages’ (‘Tongues’) functioning as a “sign” to Israel (Book of Acts, chapter 8, verses 14-17; chapter 10, verses 44-47; chapter 19, verses 1-6). The very fact that there was the sound of ‘a massive rushing wind’ and the appearance of ‘tongues of fire’ would only serve to emphasise the divinely judicial nature of the event in the Book of Acts, chapter 2, for a tongue or tongues of fire and a mighty rushing wind were clear symbols of God’s judgement in the Old Testament. Here are but a few examples

“Therefore, as a tongue of fire consumes the straw, and as dry grass shrivels in the flame, so their roots will decay and their blossoms will blow away like dust; for they have rejected the instruction of the LORD of Hosts and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel”.Book of Isaiah, chapter 5, verse 24

“Behold, the Name of the LORD comes from afar, with burning anger and dense smoke. His lips are full of fury, and His tongue is like a consuming fire”.Book of Isaiah, chapter 30, verse 27

“The LORD will devote to destruction the gulf of the Sea of Egypt; with a mighty wind He will sweep His hand over the Euphrates. He will split it into seven streams for men to cross with dry sandals”.Book of Isaiah, chapter 11, verse 15

“I warned you when you were secure. You said, ‘I will not listen.’ This has been your way from youth, that you have not obeyed My voice. The wind will drive away all your shepherds, and your lovers will go into captivity. Then you will be ashamed and humiliated because of all your wickedness”.Book of Jeremiah, chapter 22, verse 22

“Ephraim [the Northern kingdom of Israel] is joined to idols; leave him alone! When their liquor is gone, they turn to prostitution; their rulers dearly love disgrace. The whirlwind has wrapped them in its wings, and their sacrifices will bring them shame”.Book of Hosea, chapter 4, verses 17-19

“Although he flourishes among his brothers, an east wind will come—a wind from the LORD rising up from the desert. His fountain will fail, and his spring will run dry. The wind will plunder his treasury of every precious article”.Book of Hosea, chapter 13, verse 15

At that Pentecost in Jerusalem, Divine judgement was shown in symbols to be coming upon Israel once and for all. The meaning of the ‘tongues of fire’ and ‘mighty rushing wind’ in the Book of Acts, chapter 2 would not be lost on the Jews who were present.

4)  The Abuses of the Gift of ‘Languages’ in the Corinthian Church

A common assertion in Christian literature about the spiritual gift of ‘Languages’ (‘Tongues’) is that it is given to be used for personal communication with God and is for the benefit of the individual rather than the whole church. [See, for example, “The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible”, Zondervan, 1975-6, Vol.V, p.508]. This has led many professing ‘Christians’ into the false notion that this gift is for devotional prayer or for the purposes of engaging in spiritual warfare. But these notions are based on a misinterpretation of Paul’s words in his First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 14, verses 1-5. In these few verses, Paul is not delivering a lecture on ‘how-to-speak-in-tongues’. In common with the rest of this letter, he is addressing severe pastoral problems which needed the input of Apostolic authority.

In chapters 12-14, Paul is actually chiding the Corinthians for the way that they were misusing spiritual gifts — especially the gift of ‘Languages’ (‘Tongues’), which they performed in their own strength when the Holy Spirit had not given the necessary gift of interpretation to the hearers. The pivotal verse concerning ‘Languages’ (‘Tongues’) is when the Apostle makes the statement, “he who speaks in another language builds himself up, but he who prophesies builds up the church” (First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 14,  verse 4). That is not a statement about the true nature of the gift of ‘Languages’ (‘Tongues’); it is Paul’s criticism of the Corinthians for the way that they abused the gift. Paul cannot be saying that the normative use of ‘Languages’ is for personal edification, for that would be to contradict his statements in this letter regarding the general purpose of all the gifts — which is for the enhancement of the whole Church rather than just oneself (First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 12, verses 7, 24-25; chapter 14, verses 4-5, 12) — and the specific purpose of the gift of ‘Languages’ (‘Tongues’, see the First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 14, verse 22).

It seems highly likely that Paul is using the words “builds himself up” in the First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 14, verse 4 in a derogatory sense. For there is not a single instance elsewhere of Paul using the term to refer to somebody building themselves up. The whole concept of “edification” in Scripture refers to something one does for others . When he says: “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up” (First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 8, verse 1), he does not mean that love edifies the one doing the loving! It edifies others. Thus, in his First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 14, it is as if Paul was saying:

“When you speak in languages as you do, without anyone knowing what you are saying, you are simply making yourself feel good — it is just for yourself; whereas prophecy can never be used in this way because others benefit from it”.

All the gifts are for service and ministry to others, therefore there can be no purpose whatsoever in speaking gobbledegook or mindless babble, other than for the enhancement of oneself. You would just be building yourself up, puffing up yourself. Furthermore, the First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13, verse 1, completely confounds the idea of what people call “devotional tongues”. First, if I speak in ‘Languages’ (‘Tongues’) outside of the context of love (Greek, agape , caring for others), I am merely making a worthless noise. Second, if ‘Languages’ (‘Tongues’) are to be exercised in the context of such love for others, then they cannot be for personal use. This is why Paul says that there must be a purpose to ‘Languages’ (‘Tongues’)-speaking which brings it into the realm of service to others (First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 14, verses 5-6). It is more than likely that the Corinthians were speaking ‘tongues’ in the same manner as that of the heathen religions — ecstatic babbling without any of the necessary interpretation — for that certainly appears to fit the information we can glean from Paul’s criticisms (First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 14, verses 2, 4, 12-19). Such bogus “tongues-speaking” was the norm among the mystery-cults which thrived in the Mediterranean countries at that time, and it accounts for all the babbling tongues-speaking of today, which may give people a nice “buzz” and generate a sense of piety or spiritual pride, but it is not the biblical gift of “Languages”.

This entire section of the First Letter to the Corinthians is actually a very complex passage, and we cannot fully understand all that Paul is saying here. This is why we must be so careful in our analysis of what he is asserting. For instance, a number of misunderstandings have arisen because many disciples of Christ overlook the fact that every time the word ”spirit” is used in the First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 14, verses 2, 14-16, it is not referring to the Holy Spirit but to the person’s own spirit (as used in the Gospel of John, chapter 4, verse 24). It is not my purpose to give a detailed exegesis of this passage, but once it is realised that Paul is not writing a “How-To” manual on ‘Languages’ (‘Tongues’)-speaking, but is very graciously criticising the Corinthians for their misuse of this gift for personal selfish means, then things will begin to fall into place.

The sole purpose of brothers and sisters in Christ receiving the spiritual gifts is for the building up of the Ekklesia in history at the time of its foundation. ‘Languages’ (‘Tongues’) were never given as a “private prayer language” — a standard phrase in most Christians’ thinking today. Since we can easily deduce from Scripture that not all disciples of Christ  would have the gift of ‘Languages’ (First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 12, verses 10, 28-31), then if this gift was to provide a special devotional “hotline” to God solely for a limited, privileged elite, it would go entirely against the many places in Scripture where we are told that all disciples of Christ have a full personal channel of direct communication to God which is always open (e.g., Letter to the Hebrews, chapter 4, verses 14-16; Letter of James, chapter 5, verse 16b). True prayer is discursive and is based on intelligent and intelligible two-way communication between God and His people. The idea of “tuning-in” to the Divine Being through ecstatic babbling which is not understood by the one doing the babbling belongs instead to the realms of mysticism and occult meditation.

Yet another misunderstanding about the gift of Languages is that it was given as an aid to Christians in their mission work to foreign-language speaking cultures. But there is no biblical justification for this either. At Pentecost, in the best biblical example of the gift in action, the actual evangelising was done in the native Aramaic (Book of Acts, chapter 2, verses 14-39), whereas the ‘Languages’ (‘Tongues’)-speaking solely functioned as a preliminary “sign” to the unbelieving Jews, exactly as described in First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 14, verse 22. These inconvenient facts are so important to grasp; but very few want to listen and would far rather continue with their cultish comportment in case they ‘miss out’ on everything they imagine that God is sending them. Once the forces of darkness have got a hold on people, they do not let their prey go easily. The prey has to want to be free. And if there is no volition to be set free, such folk will just bask in the insanity of it all, imagining they are the ones who have the Holy Spirit, while claiming to be on the higher moral and spiritual ground. I have seen all this so many times. The sad yet comforting reality is that only those who are genuine disciples of Christ will break free and move on.

Concluding Thoughts to Part 3

Having established that the ‘Tongues’ which people are speaking today cannot be squared with the biblical gift of ‘Languages’, the discussion should surely be lifted entirely out of the area of “the gifts of the Spirit” and taken into the realm of the Bible’s own testimony concerning how God loves us to pray. It should give all would-be tongues-speakers today pause for thought to know that Jesus specifically forbade using unintelligible speech in one’s prayers to God . He told His disciples: “when you pray, do not babble on like the pagans,” (Mt.6:7). The Greek verb translated here as “babble on” (battalogeo ) means literally to “babble” or to “speak without thinking”, and this is the only occasion that it is used in the New Testament. [W. Bauer, W.F. Arndt & F.W. Gingrich, “A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament”, University of Chicago, 1979, p.137]. Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance defines battalogeo as “to blubber nonsensically”. So it is doubly significant that Jesus, after telling people not to blubber on nonsensically, immediately went on to recommend the ultimate in intelligible speech, the Lord’s Prayer, in opposition to the meaningless babble of heathen devotions. That is a lesson right there for all those who practice this ludicrous blather known as “Tongues”.

Sadly, the gift that so many people claim is ‘Tongues’ today is precisely the same phenomenon which one can find in many other religious and non-religious groups in the world. It is really a work of the occult mind-sciences — having far more in common with hypnosis and mysticism than with the spirituality desired from disciples of Christ. Yet, in many circles, such phoney ‘tongues’-speaking is counted as a sure sign of having received the Holy Spirit. Does that border on blasphemy (cf. Gospel of Matthew, chapter 12, verse 31). What a hideous travesty of truth it all is! There are even church workshops which one can attend concerning how to speak in this blasphemous babbling ‘tongues’, in which one is told to open one’s mouth and make a noise to see what gibberish comes out!

Surely, the widespread nature of such falsehood is only creating a fertile bed for further deception and confusion; for falling for one deception always paves the way to be deceived by others. It is precisely such deception and confusion which is said in Scripture to characterise the build-up to the time of the end. This is searingly ironic when one considers that the very giving of the ability to speak in many languages at the inauguration of the New Testament church at Pentecost was a sign of the reversal of the confusion of languages at Babel and the resultant sowing of certainty and hope through the Gospel. May we be the sowers of that certainty and hope in these darkening days of deception and confusion.

So far, in Parts 1, 2 and 3, we have covered the background to these pagan practices in the visible church, what lies behind the cultic ‘Crisis Experience’ induced in Pentecostal/Charismatic circles, and an in-depth examination of the widespread Christian practice of ‘Tongues’-Speaking, in which we have come to the only conclusions possible: That the biblical gift of ‘Languages’ (‘Tongues’) consisted of real ethnic languages which needed interpretation and that it was primarily meant as a judicial sign to the Jews that the covenant curse was falling upon them for their refusal to accept their Messiah. Now, in Part 4, we turn to examine the Pentecostal/Charismatic experience known as the ‘Baptism with the Holy Spirit’ — an induced incident which supposedly gives evidence that one has received the ‘full gospel’ through speaking in gibberish ‘Tongues’ and which often issues in falling down or other incongruous effects.

PART 4:
Spirit-Baptism and Unholy Fire

If we are serious about discovering the true meaning of ‘Baptism with the Holy Spirit’, what do we find? We discover the remarkable fact that it is in reality an experience that is applied to all disciples of Christ at the time of their regeneration, without exception. This is the clear and unequivocal teaching of Scripture on the Baptism with the Holy Spirit. Even before the Lord Jesus began His earthly ministry, John the Baptist was preaching in advance:

“After me will come One more powerful than I, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptize you with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit” [emphasis added]Gospel of Mark, chapter 1, verses 7-8; cf. Gospel of Matthew, chapter 3, verse 11; Gospel of Luke, chapter 3, verse 16; Gospel of John, chapter 1, verse 33

Was the Baptist saying here that Jesus would merely baptise a few with the Holy Spirit? Not at all. The Baptism with the Holy Spirit was to be for all those who come to Him in repentance and faith. Even in the Old Testament prophecies of the outpouring of the Spirit on the Church, this Baptism with the Holy Spirit is shown to be for all those who come to Christ. As the Lord prophesied through His servant prophet, Isaiah:

‘Now listen, O Jacob My servant, Israel, whom I have chosen… I will pour water on the thirsty land, and currents on the dry ground. I will pour out My Spirit on your descendants, and My blessing on your offspring”. [emphasis added]Book of Isaiah, chapter 44, verses 1, 3 ,4

Who are the thirsty ‘descendants’ and ‘offspring’ of Israel that Isaiah was speaking of in these verses? Are they an elite group who happen to have attended highly-charged, emotional meetings and followed to the letter the checklist instructions and powerful suggestions of their religious leaders? Of course not! The descendants and offspring of ancient Israel referred to in this passage are the spiritual seed of Abraham, the Church, the body of Christ, the children of God by adoption on whom the Spirit has been poured out in these last days (see Letter to the Galatians, chapter 3, verse 14; chapter 4, verses 5-7; Letter to the Romans, chapter 8, verses 9, 14-17). The water in these verses of Isaiah is symbolic of Holy Spirit baptism which is said to be for all those who are thirsty, i.e. all those who hunger and thirst after righteousness and are then filled with the Holy Spirit (see Gospel of Matthew, chapter 5, verse 6; Gospel of John, chapter 7, verses 37-39).

There are numerous other Scriptures which make it abundantly clear that all disciples of Christ receive the fullness of the Holy Spirit from the moment of their new birth in Christ Jesus. Paul the apostle tells all the disciples at Ephesus that, “having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise” (Letter to the Ephesians, chapter 1, verse 13). To the foolish Galatians who had become fascinated with false teachings, he poses the question, “Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?” (Letter to the Galatians, chapter 3, verse 2), followed by an assertion “that the blessing promised to Abraham would come to the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit” (v.14). And Jesus Himself said that the Holy Spirit would come and take up residence within the person who has salvation through Jesus Christ (Gospel of John, chapter 14, verses 16-17).

This receiving of the Holy Spirit at the instant of the new birth is the true Baptism with the Holy Spirit. However, Pentecostal/Charismatic teachers claim that there is a difference between ‘receiving’ the Holy Spirit at the new birth and subsequently being ‘baptised’ with the Holy Spirit. But to teach such a difference is contrary to the evidence of the Scriptures which, instead, show that the two are exactly synonymous. Let us demonstrate this with a real example.

When Peter saw that the Gentile Cornelius and his household had been saved by the power of God, he said: “Can anyone withhold the water to baptize these people? They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have!” (Book of Acts, chapter 10, verse 47). Then, a few verses later, when accurately recounting this exact episode to the brethren in Jerusalem, Peter said that he

“Then I remembered the word of the Lord, as He used to say, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ So if God gave them the same gift He gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to hinder the work of God?”Book of Acts, chapter 11, verses 16-17

It is clear from a close comparison of these two verses that Peter precisely equated ‘receiving’ the Holy Spirit (Book of Acts, chapter 10, verse 47) with the ‘baptism’ with the Holy Spirit (Book of Acts, chapter 11, verses 16). This proves without a doubt that in the apostolic way of thinking, there never was a post-conversion ‘Baptism with the Holy Spirit’ — especially one which had to be manipulated with loads of suggestion and hypnotic technics à la Anton Mesmer. Moreover, the Scripture expressly says that Cornelius “repented” in response to Peter’s evangelism (Book of Acts, chapter 11, verse 18b) — a clear reference to his spiritual transformation. Spirit-baptism is therefore contemporaneous with repentance and regeneration, rather than being an optional module of progressive sanctification after conversion.

At this stage, a cry is usually raised by Pentecostals and Charismatics that we are ignoring the other cases in the Book of Acts, chapters 2, 8, 10 and 19 which appear to prove conclusively that there is a post-conversion experience of the Holy Spirit which is separate from the receiving of the indwelling Holy Spirit, and which is normative for all disciples of Christ. However, if we apply sound rules for biblical interpretation and exercise discernment before immediately rushing into imitating an example given to us in the Book of Acts, we will learn that the support offered by these passages is merely superficial. A deeper examination of their immediate contextual meaning and relevance, coupled with an application of what we are taught elsewhere in Scripture about Holy Spirit Baptism, gives an entirely different understanding, not only of these passages but also of the wonderful ministry of the Holy Spirit in the inauguration of the Ekklesia at its foundation.

It is the complete failure and wilful refusal to enter into a more profound understanding of these passages which has led to the rise of the Pentecostal/Charismatic Movements in recent decades. Indeed, this combined movement, which has led to so much heartache and division in the Church this century (at a time when unity between genuine disciples of Christ against secular humanism and Neo-Gnosticism is absolutely vital), would never have come into being had there been a willingness to get beyond a merely superficial understanding of the history of the Early Church recorded in the Book of Acts.

So, what are we to make of the four passages in Acts which appear to show that one can be ‘baptised’ with the Holy Spirit as a post-conversion experience? No single event recorded in the Book of Acts can be taken as an isolated event. For this book is tracing the carefully purposed work of the Holy Spirit in the establishment of the Ekklesia. Right at the outset, the agenda is set when the Lord Jesus Christ tells His Apostles:

“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth”.Book of Acts, chapter 1, verse 8

In this verse the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the Church recorded in the Book of Acts is compressed into a brief précis: From Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria, and from there to the ends of the earth. Do you see the significance of these words? This is what the Book of Acts encompasses: The Spirit-inspired spread of the Gospel begins in the place that was the heartland of the Old Covenant nation, Israel, and then spreads out through Judea and the land of the Samaritans (despised by the Jews) and thence to the Gentile nations of the world, to places such as Ephesus, Corinth, Macedonia, etc. (also despised by the Jews) — an event which finds its ultimate fulfilment in Paul’s arrival in Rome (the very apex of Gentile culture at that time) at the close of the Book of Acts. In other words, in this book we see the authoritative cataloguing of the historically unique and necessary development from Judaism to the Ekklesia, which encompasses both believing Jews and Gentiles.

Take note of this extraordinary fact: Of the four extraordinary occurrences of the Holy Spirit which are cited by Pentecostals and Charismatics as being normative for the Christian, three of these (Book of Acts, chapters 2, 8 and 10) occur in places corresponding exactly with these target zones of the Holy Spirit’s rapidly spreading Gospel ministry. In the Book of Acts, chapter 2, we have the initial outpouring of the Spirit on the Church in Jerusalem. In the Book of Acts, chapter 8, because of the persecution of Christians in Jerusalem, the work of the Spirit moves to Judea and Samaria. In the Book of Acts, chapter 10, the Gentile centurion, Cornelius of Caesarea (the ‘capital’ of Judea, according to the Roman historian Tacitus), becomes the focus of the Spirit’s attentions. The fourth extraordinary occurrence of the Holy Spirit carried an important message for all remaining disciples of the last of the Old Testament prophets, John the Baptist (Book of Acts, chapter 19). We shall now examine briefly each of these four events in turn, so that we can appreciate their significance to the movement of the Spirit in and well beyond the confines of Jerusalem and understand the context of speaking in ‘Languages’ (‘Tongues’).

1)  First Relevant Event: Book of Acts, chapter 2:1-21, ‘Beginning at Jerusalem’

This passage is claimed as proof of a post-conversion religious experience because, it is argued, the disciples were already converted when they were “filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other languages” (Book of Acts, chapter 2, verse 4). However, the once-for-all-time nature of this event must surely exclude it from being normative for all Christians throughout every era of the Church. The idea that we can reproduce today what was a unique event in Church History is facile, to say the least. Just as Luke had recorded the unique coming of the Holy Spirit upon the Lord Jesus as the beginning of His ministry (His baptism by John in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 3, verses 21-22 is followed by the words, “Now Jesus Himself began [His ministry at] about thirty years of age”), so the coming of the Holy Spirit on the Church at Pentecost was the beginning of the Gospel ministry of the Church. “For John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now” (Book of Acts, chapter 1, verse 5).

One must also bear in mind here that, although there have been the people of God saved by the power of Christ in all ages (for the Cross is retrospective in its effects as well as prospective), the Holy Spirit had not yet been given in fullness as a permanently-indwelling reality in the life of the Lord’s people as individuals (cf. Gospel of John, chapter 7, verses 37-39). So when the Spirit was given to the Church at Pentecost, the disciples were brought into a new relationship with the Lord and were given a new commission. It was the powerful fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy.

Furthermore, the ‘Tongues’ which were spoken here, when the gift was given, were real human languages rather than the ecstatic babble spoken by professing ‘Christians’ today (Book of Acts, chapter 2, verses 5-11), and they were also functioning as a judicial ‘sign’ to unbelieving Jews, exactly as Paul had shown was the true purpose of the gift (First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 14, verse 22), as we shall later see. The sign-nature of this happening can be seen in the response of those present. Some were “amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, ‘Whatever could this mean?’, whereas ‘others mocking said, ‘They are full of new wine’” (Acts 2:12-13). To some, the fragrance of Christ is the aroma of death to death, to others the aroma of life to life (Second Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 2, verses 15-16). Those who have ears to hear let them hear. To those who have, more will be given; to those who have not, even what they have will be taken away from them. After the giving of the ‘sign’ in ‘Languages’ (‘Tongues’), the way was then paved for Peter’s evangelistic sermon in the native Aramaic which resulted in about three thousand souls being added to the number of the redeemed (Book of Acts, chapter 2, verse 41).

All this is a far cry from the ecstatic babbling which is spoken by people in the churches today, which does not function as a sign to anyone, and is not in a known language which can be interpreted, and which is used mainly as a supposed devotional aid to personal prayer or for the effecting of trance-inducement. Similarly, the ‘Tarrying Meetings’ held in Pentecostal churches while people wait to receive a ‘Baptism with the Holy Spirit’ are a vain attempt to bring on what people imagine to have happened at Pentecost. Anyone who thinks that they can replicate that original Pentecostal phenomenon has misunderstood entirely the unique work of the Holy Spirit in the initiation and foundation of the Church.

2)  Second Relevant Event: Book of Acts, chapter 8:14-17, ‘In All Samaria’

This event in Samaria is also extraordinary, and was a unique event in God’s redemptive timetable. The Samaritans were despised by the Jews and the feeling was mutual — a state of affairs which went back a thousand years to the time when ten of the tribes of Israel had set up their own state, with Samaria as the capital, and practised a syncretised mixture of true religion and heathen idolatry (First Book of Kings, chapter 16, verses 21-24; Second Book of Kings, chapter 17, verses 24-41). At one time the Apostles had been forbidden by Jesus to enter any Samaritan city (Gospel of Matthew, chapter 10, verse 5), while James and John had once wished to call down fire from heaven on a Samaritan community (Gospel of Luke, chapter 9, verse 54).

The movement of the preaching of the Gospel away from Jerusalem really began when the persecution of the Church by Saul of Tarsus (later Paul the Apostle) providentially scattered converts around the world (Book of Acts, chapter 8, verses 1-4). Phillip the evangelist was very bold in going to Samaria to preach the Gospel, because of the history of hostility. The fact that he was successful should not surprise us too much, as the Samaritans were waiting for the Messiah as much as the Jews (cf. Gospel of John, chapter 4, verse 29). But the problem at this point in Church history, was the special need to convince the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem that the Samaritans really were being admitted into the Ekklesia. It is no wonder that when the authoritative Apostles who were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria (of all places!) had actually received the word of God, they sent the Apostles Peter and John down to them (Book of Acts, chapter 8, verse 14). It was most vital that Apostolic authority should be brought to determine whether or not the reception of the Gospel in these formerly-hated Gentile domains was genuine — not to mention the need for the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem to be convinced that these were indeed movements of God. Do you see now how these events are not normative for all time but were spiritually and historically unique during the delicate founding and building of the Ekklesia?

It is no coincidence that it was Phillip the Hellenist who had gone to Samaria to evangelise. This was a shrewd move. The Jewish converts from Jerusalem might have resisted carrying out such an action themselves, and the Samaritans would have been far less likely to accept the Gospel if some Apostles of Jewish origin turned up at the outset. So once the job had been successfully done by Phillip, who would be accepted, the way was paved for the Apostles to come to Samaria and authenticate the events of recent days.

The only explanation which can account for what was happening here in Samaria was that it was a ‘Mini-Pentecost’, in which the giving of the Spirit was delayed until Apostolic authority had ratified that the Gospel had genuinely been received there. Added to this was the necessity for the Samaritans to feel that they had truly been accepted back into the household of God. All this was an act of grace on God’s part. For if things had not been done this way, it is possible that the Samaritan reception of the Gospel would never have been accepted in Jerusalem and a split would have befallen the Church at a delicate point in redemptive history.

There is no reason to believe that the coming of the Spirit on the Samaritans was anything other than an isolated event which is not to be imitated in every era of the Church. It was part of God’s providence in the initial extension of the Great Commission in the Apostolic era, and, as such, was a one-off occasion applicable only to that situation.

3)  Third Relevant Event: Book of Acts, chapter 10:1 to chapter 11:18, ‘In All Judea’

The events surrounding the conversion of Cornelius in Acts 10 and 11 are commonly used as a proof text for the post-conversion Baptism with the Holy Spirit. The stress is on the word ‘post-conversion’ here, because some brethren claim that Cornelius was already converted before he was baptised with the Holy Spirit. However, this could not be the case, for the Scripture observes that the Jewish Christians who were present when Cornelius spoke in ‘Languages’ (‘Tongues’) said: “Then God has also granted even to the Gentiles repentance unto life” (Book of Acts, chapter 11, verse 18), a clear reference to the fact that what was involved in the scene between Peter and Cornelius was that the latter and his household repented there and then in response to Peter’s openly evangelistic sermon in the Book of Acts, chapter 10, verses 34-43.

A major thread in this event was the necessity to convince the Jewish believers from Jerusalem that the Holy Spirit had been poured out on believing Gentiles as well; and that was the purpose behind this entire episode with Cornelius (see Book of Acts, chapter 11, verses 1-18). After thousands of years of God carrying out His redemptive dealings almost exclusively with the single nation, Israel, one can have some sympathy with this. It was necessary that Cornelius and his household should undergo this ‘mini-Pentecost’ — this replication of the original Pentecost in Jerusalem — in order to authenticate the inclusion of the Gentiles in the new body of the Lord’s people. The Lord does not automatically ‘zap’ information into our brains: He uses means, agents, channels and intermediaries to persuade us of things about which we need convincing (e.g., Gospel of John, chapter 2, verse 11). Added to this is the fact that the gift of ‘Languages’ (‘Tongues’) given to Cornelius and his household was functioning as a true ‘sign’. Any unbelieving Jews who heard about this history-making event would be astounded to learn that God had granted repentance to the Gentiles!

There is a further lesson to be gained from the record of this event. Contrary to those who imagine that there were continuous tongue-speaking sessions and post-conversion Holy Spirit baptisms in every corner of the church, Peter tells us that when Cornelius was baptised with the Holy Spirit, it was a carbon copy of the original outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost (Book of Acts, chapter 11, verse 15) — thereby also proving that it was genuine languages which were spoken here rather than any imagined ecstatic babbling. How significant it is that the only event used by Peter for comparison with what took place in the household of Cornelius was a unique occasion which had taken place some eight years earlier! Such an event was clearly something really special — a complete rarity — not one that can be worked up at any time by bringing an emotionally-manipulative evangelist into town who can give out some crude checklist instructions on how to plug into a pseudo-spiritual experience. In common with the other Spirit baptisms in the Book of Acts, this conversion of the Gentile Cornelius is a uniquely important milestone in the Holy Spirit’s gradually-spreading, post-Pentecost ministry, and is not to be used as a normative example for all Christians in every era.

4)  Fourth Relevant Event: Book of Acts, chapter 19:1-7, ‘Beyond the Baptism of John’

This event in the Book of Acts, chapter 19 is cited by many Charismatics and Pentecostals as being supportive of a post-conversion Baptism with the Holy Spirit; but this is based on an incorrect translation of the original Greek by the authors of the King James Version, which reads, “Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?” (verse 2). But a correct translation does not warrant the use of the word “since”. Instead, the literal translation of the Greek reads: “Having believed, did you receive the Holy Spirit?”, or “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” And this is the translation given by all other versions of the Bible today. As readers will notice, this genuine translation actually works against the Pentecostal belief in a post-conversion second-blessing baptism with the Holy Spirit, and shows that the normative reception of the Holy Spirit is contemporaneous with believing. (If you remember earlier in this paper I provided a YouTube video of a pastor using exactly this erroneous King James Version translation in order to seduce his hapless audience (which probably consisted of a number who’d had a previous experience in the church outside which they were standing) into believing that they now needed to undergo another follow-up experience to get them ‘baptised in the Holy Spirit’ so as to speak in the phony kind of ‘tongues’).

A further consideration hinges on whether or not the disciples of John the Baptist in this passage of Scripture were already regenerated at the time that Paul came to them. Surely they were not. It was only when Paul showed them the One to whom John’s baptism pointed that they really believed (verses 4-5). Even Anglican Charismatic minister and theologian, Michael Green, admits that it is “crystal clear that these disciples were in no sense Christians”. [Michael Green, “I Believe in the Holy Spirit” (Hodder & Stoughton, 1985), p.135]. So this example cannot be used to support the notion of a post-conversion Baptism with the Holy Spirit for they were not yet converted! It was another ‘Mini-Pentecost’ designed to bring the blessings of the original Pentecost to yet another special group which had not yet come into the fullness of Christian blessing. It traced the movement of the Gospel from Jerusalem to Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth.

Concluding Thoughts to Part 4

Surely, in the light of the above discussion in this section, it is clear that none of these four passages supports a post-conversion “Baptism with the Holy Spirit” — a mystical experience which is falsely claimed to be normative for all Christians in every era of the Church. The laying-on of Apostolic hands, conferring the spiritual gifts of ‘Languages’ (‘Tongues’) and prophecy, was unique to these few events to show categorically that certain groupings were now incorporated into the body of Christ through the Spirit. Firstly, the Holy Spirit does not need to be poured out on the Church a second time — once, at Pentecost was quite enough. Secondly, there are no Samaritans left in the world today. Thirdly, we do not now need convincing that the Gentiles have been grafted into the people of God. Fourthly, there are no disciples of John the Baptist alive today. The above four passages portray extraordinary circumstances which are intimately tied in with the giving of the Spirit to the Church at Pentecost. The original Pentecost comes in the Book of Acts, chapter 2, while the other three instances were ‘mini-Pentecosts’, in which the Spirit was poured out on Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth — the line of progress of the Gospel from its onset in Jerusalem. The laying on of hands by genuine Apostles which led to the receiving of the Holy Spirit, as manifested in ‘Languages’ (‘Tongues’)-speaking and prophesying, were distinctive to the situations in Samaria and Ephesus, to give a visible demonstration to all sceptics (especially the brethren in Jerusalem) that the Holy Spirit was given to those outside the nation of Israel, as well as fulfilling the function of being a sign to unbelieving Jews. There were many thousands of people added to the Church in the Book of Acts, yet there is no mention of them manifesting extraordinary phenomena.

Lest anyone should still be in doubt as to whether or not all disciples of Christ are baptised with the Holy Spirit, rather than this being confined to those who have a dramatic post-conversion experience, consider the sheer force of truth in the First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 12, verse 13 which states incontrovertibly: “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free, and we were all given one Spirit to drink”.

This verse turns on its head what is being advocated in highly-charged Pentecostal and Charismatic meetings around the world, where gullible people are told to expect a religious experience called ‘Baptism with the Holy Spirit’. The division which this bogus experience brings into the churches is in stark opposition to the statement in that verse above, which asserts the fact that Baptism with the Holy Spirit is an immediate, conversion-effecting event which brings unity among the brethren rather than division. I have often wondered if it is possible that the global development of the Charismatic phenomenon in the past few decades has been brought into being primarily through the work of the Vatican as part of its bid to unite all professing Christians under the Pope. And what better vehicle for this than a purported ‘Baptism with the Holy Spirit’ manifested in the ecstatic ‘tongues-speaking’ of the Mystery Religions — an experience which can be induced in anyone gullible enough to receive it, Catholic or Protestant, liberal or orthodox, believer or unbeliever. Thus, an international, ecumenical body is built up which rests on mysticism rather than on the Gospel — subjective experience rather than objective truth. In a major speech in Notre Dame Cathedral in 1972, Father Kevin Ranaghan made the revealing claim that ‘The charismatic renewal is not an end in itself, nor can it have an existence separate from that of the Church.  Rather, the Charismatic renewal is part of the Church’. [“New Covenant”, edition: July 1972.] Bear in mind that when a Roman Catholic priest uses the term ‘The Church’, he is not referring to the universal Body of Christ but to all those who are under the power of the Vatican and its Pontiff. The hypnotic, compelling power of this ‘Baptism in the Holy Spirit’ which so many are seeking has an inescapable future eschatological dimension which will one day be revealed for all to see. We need great discernment if we are not to be sucked into its powerful wake.

It is certainly true that disciples of Christ can have an overwhelming spiritual experience in the course of their lives which is a part of genuine Christian experience. However, this should not be confused with the manufactured ‘Spirit Baptism’ so common in Charismatic-Pentecostal circles. It would be foolish to deny that there are real and profound inward spiritual experiences which can happen to any Christian believer. However, these are isolated occurrences — what we can call spiritual peak-experiences — which can happen occasionally (or never at all) at any stage in one’s Christian development. And they are marked by certain infallible hallmarks: They do not happen to order, they can never be predicted, they are not to be used as a form of elitist spiritual pride, and they tend to happen out of the public eye — often in the deep privacy of personal communion with the Lord or while meditating on the wonders of His work in creation and redemption.

When disciples of Christ do have a brief but overwhelming experience of the ineffability, beauty, majesty and glory of God and all that He has done for us through Jesus Christ, these are precious, faith-enhancing experiences which one should only share with others under extraordinary circumstances. They are certainly not to be sought after; neither are they to be paraded or prostituted before the world — least of all should they be institutionalised into the distinguishing mark of a tendentious ‘movement’ — a spiritual elite who regard as inferior those who have not yet shared such bounties. The true work of the Spirit is actually very inobtrusive (Book of Ecclesiastes, chapter 11, verse 5), is usually invisible to the eye (Gospel of John, chapter 3, verse 8), and always glorifies Christ rather than Himself (Gospel of John, chapter 16, verses 14-15). Paul the apostle had the ultimate Christian interior experience (Second Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 12, verses 1-6), yet it was not lawful for him even to speak about it — let alone boast about it or encourage others to seek after it. In fact, the Lord Himself ensured that Paul would not turn his experience into an opportunity for pride by using Satan to give him that famous thorn in the flesh (Second Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 12, verses 7-10).

EPILOGUE TO THIS PAPER

It is tragic that the satanic realm has stepped in and packaged what should be uniquely-lovely spiritual moments into a universal religious experience which one can plug into by following a few clockwork instructions from spiritual con-men who know how to bend gullible people’s minds. When one sees a book with a cover which says, “Spiritual Power: How to get it – how to give it!”, listing what are claimed to be infallible techniques for the inducement of a mystico-religious experience, one cannot help being overwhelmed by its crass materialism, gross superficiality and sheer lack of biblical support. What is being advocated and practiced in such circles is not the genuine experience of Divine communion — an exclusively Christian experience — but a form of self-hypnosis through powerful suggestion techniques that are far more in the realm of the satanic and demonic rather than an inner experience of the Holy Spirit.

You may want to say to me, “But surely God would not allow His churches to fall into deception on such a vast scale!” God certainly keeps His true people from the powers of evil, and those disciples and gatherings of disciples which are faithful to Him He honours with His protecting love (e.g. Book of Revelation, chapter 3, verses 8-10). But the visible Church is now in the throes of a major time of sifting as a result of Divine judgment, in which there is a visible separation into two distinct kinds of gatherings — one true, the other false. I will have more to say about this ‘major time of sifting’ further below.

The true Ekklesia consists of disciples who are obedient to the teachings of Christ and the Apostles, who establish their gatherings through healthy teaching, who base their salvation on what Christ did, and who are willing to die in order to defend the truth. The false church, on the other hand, consists of those whose ‘Christianity’ is based on personal revelations, fashionable ideas, and cleverly manipulated religious experiences.  The one is obedient to the revealed will of God, the other is manipulated by the powers of darkness.

Also, we cannot ignore the fact that the visible church is a hotbed of infiltrators and even spooks (as I demonstrated in my book “Discerning the Signs of the Times”), who have crept in to distract people from the simplicity which is in Christ and what should truly constitute the genuine regeneration of a human being. What we have now representing ‘the Church’ in the world is a total hotch-potch of crazy ideas creating movements, megachurches and ministries influencing millions upon millions of gullible folks with fantasies and fallacies that beggar belief.

Divine Judgement Begins with the Church

While the final judgement on the corrupt world and its untransformed participants has been deferred to the end of this age, an integral part of the ongoing outworking of this age has been a continual Divine judgement on the Ekklesia. This is something which is very much overlooked in many of today’s churches.

What many (maybe even most) people who profess to be Christians do not realize is that “judgement begins at God’s household” (First Letter of Peter, chapter 4, Verse 17) in this world and visible church of apostate madness. But that judgment is not a judgement of condemnation such as will happen to the rest of the world at the end of this age at Christ’s return. When disciples of Christ are judged by God, “we are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned with the world” (First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 11, verse 32). The judgement on the Church involves undergoing “grief in various trials so that the proven character of your faith—more precious than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (First Letter of Peter, chapter 1, verses 6-7).

Genuine disciples of Christ are not here to have “total health and prosperity in the abundant life” or to be “raptured” away from affliction (two nonsenses which are falsely claimed as true in so many churches today), or to be continually immersed in a euphoric ‘happy-clappy’ fog of spaced-out elation. But we are intended to suffer such affliction on one level or another. Our faith is continually being tested and it is designed to be, as that is vital for our growth and maturation and is part of the process of sanctification through the work of the Holy Spirit.

So Divine judgement has not yet fallen on those outside “the household of God”. That will come at the end of this age. They can still go about their business, obliviously “filling up their cup of evil” (Book of Genesis, chapter 15, verse 16), “heaping up their sins to the limit” (First Letter to the Thessalonians, chapter 2, verse 16), “filling up the measure of their guilt” (Gospel of Matthew, chapter 23, verse 32) and not yet be judged for it — although the level of evil is under some restraint until the time that restraint will be taken out of the way by God, thus allowing it to come to its full climax and to be ripe for full judgement at the end of the age. But judgement on the Church has existed throughout this age, for from the beginning of the age it has been the subject of God’s chastening hand. This is for the purposes of individual refining and to prove who are genuine disciples and who are not, or even to damn a whole assembly if they are propagating untruth, as is already the case with many churches and has been throughout this age.

This judgement on the household of God comes in many different ways. It may be through temptation to some kind of moral failure (personal sin). It may be through some kind of permitted demonic oppression. It may be through an affliction of some kind. It may be through a chronic or acute period of ill-health. It may be through persecution. It may be through the attraction to some false teaching which has been placed by design on your pathway to test your fidelity to truth — and surely this one is most relevant to this paper. It may involve a megachurch being given over completely to the extremes of its madness after propagating falsehood and irreverence for years. It may be through some spiritual doubts and inner turmoil. Whatever it is, all the facets of this judgement on the household of God are designed on the one hand to expose those false disciples who have no place in the Church and are impostors and, on the other hand, to refine the hearts of those who are genuine disciples of Christ.

This judgement which “begins at God’s household” is an agelong process. Those who are exposed as false disciples will eventually be “condemned along with the world”. Those who are proven to be genuine disciples, and who thus “persevere to the end” (Gospel of Matthew, chapter 24, verse 13), will escape the condemnation which will fall like a hammerblow on the world, while those genuine, persevering disciples will thus go on to form the population of the new creation in the age to come. The many apostatising ‘churches’ that we can see today, and which I have dealt with in this paper are symptomatic of judgement falling on the church, by which falsehood is being revealed and truth must be revered.

Some Facts About Peak Experiences

Today, we have an entire generation of professing Christians who are deeply ignorant of healthy teaching and have no understanding of the lessons of history. Having fallen prey to the ‘trickery of men’, they are being “carried around by every wind of teaching, and by the clever cunning of men in their deceitful scheming” (Letter to the Ephesians, chapter 4, verse 14).  Instead of being allowed to dictate the agenda of the Ekklesia, they need to be awakened to the fullness of their deception.

What needs to be pressed home to Pentecostals and Charismatics is that the ‘peak-experiences’ in which they wallow are not the sole province of the Christian. Those who do not profess to be ‘Christians’ are also subject to such things — although within the parameters of their own particular belief-system. The capacity for such experience is built into the psycho-physical nature of all human beings. In fact, such experiences are what mysticism and much of pagan religion as a whole are all about. Take this example from the recent experience of a famous psychiatrist:

“Then I had one of the strangest and most amazing experiences in my life, an experience which resulted in a radical shift in my belief system. After sitting quietly for five minutes, my body began to quiver and shake in an indescribable manner. Beautiful colors appeared all around me, and it seemed as though I had stepped out of my body and was looking down at it… I began to talk in tongues — a phenomenon I had heard about but discredited. A beautiful beam of light came into the room and I decided at that moment to stop evaluating what was happening and simply be one with the experience, to join it completely”.[ Gerald G. Jampolsky, “Teach Only Love: Seven Principles of Attitudinal Healing” (Bantam, 1983), p.12].

This experience did not happen during a Charismatic revival meeting or as the result of one of Richard Foster’s visualisation exercises, but in the inner rooms of an Indian guru known as Swami Muktananda! This psychiatrist — a friend of Crystal Cathedral founder and ‘Possibility Thinking’ teacher Robert Schuller — went on to found a Centre which propagates ‘New Thought’ occult teachings of ‘visualisation’ and ‘affirmation’. It is precisely for this reason that those who profess to be ‘Christians’ — if they do undergo a ‘peak-experience’ — must not automatically assume that it is of Divine origin. In fact, Satan is very good at manufacturing such experiences in order to confirm his own teachings, whereas the Lord God would generally use ordinary means to engender assurance in His people.

If you do undergo such an experience, you should ask yourself a number of questions:

• Does this experience make me believe in the truths of the Bible more fully than before?
• Do I have a greater desire to read the Bible as God’s word to the world?
• Is the Lord Jesus Christ more of a focus in my life than before?
• Do I begin to appreciate His deity as never before?
• Am I committed to keeping silent about this experience before others?
• Do I understand the importance of not attempting to reproduce the experience?
• Have I grasped the fact that this experience does not make me a better disciple than others who have never been through it?
• Have I realised that undergoing such an experience is not what being a disciple of Christ is really all about?
• Can I accept the fact that it is just a kind of one-time ‘icing on the cake’, a little gift which was appropriate for that moment but which may never come again?

If you cannot answer ‘yes’ to all these questions, then it is very unlikely that your experience was from the Holy Spirit of God. Unfortunately, this is the case with a great many experiences which professing ‘Christians’ claim to be having today. And ‘experience’ is the keyword here; for so many base their theology almost entirely on their subjective experience rather than on the objective word of God.

The Nuts and Bolts of a Hybrid Religion

This is precisely what has led to the Charismatic phenomenon today. It is a significant fact that Charismatic-Pentecostal religion has been most successful in certain predictable situations:

• In countries where there is already a high degree of shamanistic, spiritistic religion.
• In denominations and churches where there has been little or no expository biblical teaching.
• In those circles where there is already an avid acceptance of man-centred rather than God-honouring theology.
• In those churches where the authentication of religious truth is rooted in emotional expression and experience.
• In highly ecumenical circles where there is a naive desire to base the whole of the faith on some superficial creed.
• In those fellowships where dead ‘orthodoxy’ has prevailed for some decades.

The Charismatic Movement pulls all these strands together and creates a hybrid religion which destroys dependence on biblical revelation and grounds the truth in the illusions of sensory experience. And the stark upshot of all this is that you don’t have to be a Christian to be a Charismatic. Thus existentialism, mysticism, theological liberalism and superstition are commingled to form the basic ingredients of one of the most distinguished counterfeits to hit the Church since its Founder walked the earth.

A religion which seeks to “claim the victory” and wallow in mindless triumphalism is a religion which has forsaken the need to take up its cross daily, and to follow Jesus. Such a religion has failed to understand that it is in creature-weakness that Creator-strength is shown. A religion which would rather manufacture false ‘miracles’ and ‘healings’ than preach the Gospel of spiritual salvation has far more in common with pagan Shamanism than with the genuine spirituality of the Bible. A religion which rests its laurels on the ability to induce ‘ecstatic utterances’ in its adherents has forfeited the right to the ‘crown of life’. There is a burning need to demonstrate the startling fact that the Charismatic religion of today is not the same as the spirituality recorded in the Bible. There is an analogy here with Roman Catholicism, in the sense that it has enough in common with genuine elements of the faith to render it an air of biblical respectability to the untaught and unstable; but once a little research is carried out into its theology and practice, the differences between it and the breadth of biblical truth gape like yawning chasms.

If This is Christianity, then I’m a Banana!

As we draw to the close of this examination of the distinctive teachings of the Pentecostal/Charismatic Movement and their effects on the visible church in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, I feel heavy of heart that there should be so much division on these matters. I am always open to being convinced by truth. But the trouble is that the more I learn about these movements, the more I keep thinking, ‘If this is Christianity, then I’m a banana!’ I am sorry to put it so banally but that is what I have often thought as I have worked my way through a massive amount of visual and literary material over the last few decades.

Maybe you will say to me at this point, “If this is not a genuine Christian experience, why do those who undergo it feel a sense of renewed faith and zeal for God? Aren’t we to judge things ‘by their fruits’?” It may come as a complete surprise to learn that a seeming increased devotion, or reform of one’s personal life, or an apparent dedication to the faith and zeal for one’s Lord are not necessarily sure signs that the experience which produced them is of a pure origin. All the world’s religions and cults can produce exactly the same results, and the well-known Parable of the Sower shows that a professing “Christian” can have a very great apparent zeal that only lasts until the going gets rough (Gospel of Matthew, chapter 13, verses 5-6, 20-21).

Zeal for God, if it is not accompanied by right knowledge, actually results in a self-centredness which ignores the will of God (Letter to the Romans, chapter 10, verses 2-3, cf. Book of Proverbs, chapter 19, verse 2).  On the Day of Judgment there will be many such people who will claim to have regarded Jesus as their Lord, to have prophesied, cast out demons, and worked miracles in His name (and probably also spoken in so-called ‘Tongues’!). They will no doubt have been very enthusiastic people who will have imagined themselves to have been devoted to Christ and to the pathway of the disciple, but they will have been deluding themselves, and will be rejected by Him as those who ‘practice lawlessness’ (Gospel of Matthew, chapter 7, verses 21-23).  Bear in mind that these folks imagined that they were ‘super-Christians’ yet in reality they were so steeped in folly and rebellion that they are excluded by Christ from heaven. How had this come about? Surely, it was because they derived their understanding of God’s will from their subjective experience — ‘It works and I feel great!’ — instead of from His objective truth (something about which the Lord Jesus warned His disciples in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 10, verse 20). And that is the primary problem in so many churches today, which makes life hell for anyone trying to find a pure and faithful group of disciples to be part of, especially if one also does not want to be part of the opposite kind of group in the spectrum — a formalistic, authoritarian, nit-picking bunch of judgemental zealots.

People who have been so-called ‘slain in the spirit’ will often make the claim that they have an increased hunger for God’s Word. But if that is the case, why do they indulge in the use of ‘worship aids’ and religious rituals which do not reflect reverence and awe due to the Divine Godhead? If they truly hunger after God’s word, why do they continue to speak or pray in pagan gibberish, imagining it to be the biblical gift of ‘Languages’? If they claim a desire to be faithful to God and His word, why do they give out and soak up the most outlandish and banal statements as prophecies and ‘words of knowledge’? How is it that in spite of their desire to study God’s word they don’t perceive their disobedience to it and incongruity of behaviour in relation to it? The questions could go on and on.

However zealously people may regard Jesus as their ‘Lord’, it is not necessarily the result of being filled with the Holy Spirit. As Jesus Himself said: “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven” (Gospel of Matthew, chapter 7, verse 21). The only sure sign that there has been a true work of the Holy Spirit in a person is if there is a desire for complete obedience and discipleship to the will of God and a hunger for truth which is all-consuming. In the final analysis, that is the only fruit by which these phenomena can be put under the spotlight of human judgement.

The Three Things in the Church Which Satan Seeks to Undermine

There are three things which Satan desperately seeks to undermine in the Church during the present Gospel Age: 1) The deliverance of the believer from the power of darkness into the kingdom of Christ (the true deliverance, cf. Letter to the Colossians, chapter 1, verse 13), 2) the forgiveness of the sins of the one who truly believes and becomes a disciple of Christ (the true healing, cf. Gospel of Mark, chapter 2, verses 10-11,17) and 3) the gift of the indwelling Spirit to each and every one who believes in the Lord Christ (the true Baptism with the Holy Spirit, cf. Letter to the Romans, chapter 8, verses 15-16). To this end, the old serpent has induced teachers in the churches to offer teaching on those three areas in order to undermine them by providing pseudo-deliverance, pseudo-healing and a pseudo-Baptism with the Holy Spirit to people en masse through a vast plethora of pseudo-prophets, pseudo-teachers performing pseudo-signs and wonders capable of deceiving the very children of God (if that were possible).

Not Worldwide Revival but Global Apostasy

Many teachers in the Charismatic/Pentecostal Movement claim that the ‘Endtimes’ will be characterised by signs and wonders from God coupled with a ‘worldwide revival’; and they interpret their present-day ministry in this way. One such example is the Anglican Bishop, David Pytches, who has been popular among charismatics for decades [see his book “Some Said it Thundered: A Personal Encounter with the Kansas City Prophets”, Hodder & Stoughton, 1990, p.49. (Incidentally, the Kansas City Prophets of the 1980s have since been shown to have been false ones and just another Charismatic chimera)]. However, the Bible does not support this wayward notion of ‘worldwide revival’, but instead shows that the ‘Endtimes’ will be marked by ‘lying wonders’ from the Devil and his human agents (Second Letter to the Thessalonians, chapter 2, verse 9; Book of Revelation, chapter 13, verses 13-14), riding on the back of a global apostasy (Second Letter to the Thessalonians, chapter 2, verses 3ff; Gospel of Matthew, chapter 24, verses 24ff). The knowledge of these facts has forced me to take the uncompromising stand that I have in the pages of this paper. I have read through it many times but see nothing that I would hesitate about or would want to retract. (Though if I can be proven wrong about anything that I have ever written, I would immediately retract it). Despite my disdain for Charismatic practices, I only have love and an outstretched hand for those who have been the deceived victims of this subterfuge. If you, dear reader, are one of those deceived victims and you are now beginning to doubt it all, please feel free to contact me at the email address below if you want to talk to a friendly ear and one who understands where you are at.

Unloosing the Demoniacal Bond

I fully recognise that it is very difficult for those who have been deceived by Charismatic shenanigans to disentangle themselves from the hold it has over them, for there is a demoniacal bond. But nothing is too difficult for God. He has already brought many disciples of Christ  through that hellhole and beyond, and He will no doubt bring many more. It is my hope and prayer that everyone who names the precious name of Christ in that Movement will test the spirits which have attracted them to it, and that they will be honest enough to cast them to one side and seek the fullness of faith and fellowship outside of the madness to which they have subscribed. It all comes down to a straight choice between religious sensuality and biblical spirituality. The one merely makes you feel good for the moment, but the other one actually does you good… for eternity.

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Here you can download a PDF format file of this paper:

Parallel Psychic Power Games in the World and in the Church (v.1.0)Download

© 2023, Alan Morrison / The Diakrisis Project. All Rights Reserved. 
 
[The copyright on my works is merely to protect them from any wanton plagiarism which could result in undesirable changes (as has actually happened!). Readers are free to reproduce my work, so long as it is in the same format and with the exact same content and its origin is acknowledged]

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Published by The Diakrisis Project

The Diakrisis Project provides a written commentary on a wide range of topical, spiritual, social and pastoral issues, holding out a hand of rescue to those who suffer psychological, emotional or spiritual manipulation and abuse in the religious scene, while providing counsel and encouragement for the spiritually-confused. Thank you so much for visiting this website! I give you my blessings and best wishes and hope that you will find the content interesting. View all posts by The Diakrisis project