Re: Word of Faith: "Metaphysical" "Gnostic" "Cultic" "Not really Christian"-Justin Pe
i suppose i should expand on my last comment about the 'all weird stuff is demons' attitude i mentioned at the end of my last post...
while it doesn't really consume a whole lot of the sessions in terms of time spent addressing it...i think in actuality this notion is what provides most of the rhetorical force behind the conclusions and accusations in 'a call for discernment' and 'strange fire' and so on...
driven mostly by sensational footage...this mindset seems to have become common in certain circles...it has been said that you can recognize how much a person has been influenced by the macarthurites by how long it takes for them to bring up demons in a discussion about charismatic 'manifestations'...
i think the effectiveness of the 'freak show' approach...as posthuman just called it...ironically comes from its superficiality...
people look at these clips and think...wow that is like something out of 'the exorcist'...'the exorcist' being what most people have been trained to think of when they picture demonic activity...
but i for one have looked at many of these same kinds of clips and seen nothing more than lots of examples of -bad acting-
for example...there is a clip that gets shown in the bible study room every once in a while of benny hinn getting lots of people 'slain in the spirit' one after another... the fact is that this clip is full of telltale signs of -bad acting-...such as a person whose motor control has supposedly been taken over by a supernatural influence instinctively putting out his arms and -breaking his fall-
those in the 'it must be demons!' camp are simply allowing themselves to be manipulated by entirely human and quite honestly not very convincing trickery...
I was preaching at a camp earlier this year and we had the altar call. A believer came up for prayer and asked me to stand in agreement with him for his ongoing issue of Anger. He even told me the verse's he was standing on to renew this portion of his flesh. After we prayed I laid hands on him and down he went.
He fell straight back, hands to his side and his head hit the concrete floor of the outdoor tabernacle we held the service in. No blood, no wound, no nothing. After about 10 minutes he got up and went back to his seat and there was nothing said to him and he was fine the rest of the weekend.
Those are the times you know the Spirit of God is moving.
This is but one case of many I have witnessed the power of God moving through someone. I had another person that fell forward about 3 minutes after I prayed with them and laid hands on them. She fell face first and on her chin, hands to her side. No broken bones, no teeth through the lips, not cuts not one scratch....nothing and they laid exactly as they fell.
I was assisting a visiting Evangelist during a revival once and he laid hands on a man and the guy fell straight back and the very crown of his head hit the pew and his entire body weight was being held by his head against the pew and his heels. When he came to, he simply stood up.
There is lots of funny business surrounding The power of God moving through people, I very much dislike the term slain in the spirit.
As a traveling minister, I have had people do fake drops, etc.
There are those times though, when the power of God is moving and there are signs you know when its really the Holy Ghost. I am thankful that the Holy Ghost tells me who to minister with and who not to on prayer lines.