What is SPEAKING IN TONGUES?

Just ran across this news report on a study of what happens in the brains of Christians while they are "speaking in tongues."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZbQBajYnEc

I've posted a link in the margin to the "Strange Fire Conference" which was held a few years ago to examine the claims of the charismatic movement in the Church that they are practicing the "gifts of the Spirit" described in the New Testament, speaking in tongues being one of them.  The conference convinced me that the phenomena being called the Gifts of the Spirit today are not the New Testament gifts.

I myself received the "gift of tongues" when I was a member of a charismatic church back in the 90s,  Whatt they are describing in the news report is what I also experienced:  we have no control over this, it just comes out.  I was praying out loud when these other sounds just started coming out instead of my English words.  I could repeat them at will but I could not control what sounds came out.  I could start and stop them but I couldn't control what was being "said."

People in the charismatic movement claim they are speaking by the Holy Spirit, that it is a prayer language, that the Holy Spirit is praying through them.  They claim to experience spiritual feelings as they exercise the gift.

My own experience did not feel spiritual or worshipful at all and that bothered me a great deal.  I would let the sounds continue as I went about my chores during the day.  They had a definite pattern to them, a pattern that would repeat itself, maybe about the length of a sentence.  The SAME sounds kept repeating in other words and I was not controlling them at all.  But nothing about it felt like prayer as so many charismatics claim it is.  None of it evoked God in my mind or heart in any way.  After some time I began singing the sounds, and when I recognized that the tunes were anything but spiritual I simply had to conclude that this has nothing to do with God.  The tunes that came out were "Three Blind Mice" and "Reuben Reuben."  There is nothing spiritual or prayerful or worshipful about those tunes, just as there was nothing spiritual or worshipful or prayerful as far as my own feelings went in connection with the "words" that I was speaking.

It took a while to convince myself to completely give it up though.  The pressure is strong in charismatic circles to embrace the "gifts of the Spirit."  I read studies that aimed to debunk the whole charismatic movement but couldn't be completely convinced of those arguments.  I remained in suspension about these things until the Strange Fire Conference which finally made the case I'd been needing to hear.

So what ARE these phenomena?  Certainly what the scientist in the news report says is true:  the people are not doing this on purpose, it just "happens" to them.  I experienced this personally.  It is in SOME sense "supernatural" therefore.

The most convincing explanation I've run across comes from Watchman Nee who wrote on the subject of "Soul Power."  These are capacities he understands to have been abilities God gave to Adam and Eve that were lost at the Fall, such as psychic abilities, the ability to read minds and other capacities.  These things are often discovered through various religious practices, particularly Hindu practices.  Sometimes they are intentionally cultivated, but what seem to be the higher forms of these religions discourage them as distractions.  In general they may be more or less akin to "siddhis" which include psychic powers.

Nee particularly identified spontaneous laughter of the sort that overtook a charismatic congregation in Toronto in the 90s and then spread to other charismatic congregations.  It occurred in some Chinese churches in Nee's time and he identified it as related to this "soul power" and something that should be discouraged rather than encouraged.  In Toronto it was strongly encouraged and became known as the Laughing Revival.

He said he himself had the power to read minds and thought it was a gift of the Holy Spirit until he realized it was not that and exerted himself to suppress it.

The Strange Fire Conference to my mind definitively proved that whatever these phenomena are they are not the Gifts of the Spirit that were given by God to the early Church:  the "healings" are nothing like those in the New Testament, the "prophecies" are more like fortune telling than the prophecies people gave in the New Testament, and the "tongues" that are spoken are not real languages as they were at Pentecost.  We may well wonder what they really are, if they have any qualities of language at all, and that I don't know.  The excuse that they are an angelic prayer language has to be doubted because none of the other "gifts" are those of the New Testament.

Watchman Nee's interpretation that they are a version of "soul power" seems the best to my mind, and in any case they should not be cultivated but abandoned.  God will restore to us whatever powers He gave Adam and Eve when His kingdom has fully come, but until then they are not to be practiced and it is even possible that they are subject to demonic manipulation in this still-fallen world.

Some of the Evidence for the Cessation of the Gifts of the Spirit, and the Devilish Nature of Today's Counterfeits of the Gifts

The Strange Fire Conference definitely did convince me that the supernatural gifts of the Spirit that were so evident in the early church stopped completely after the apostolic era.  I had read arguments along these lines before but none of it was convincing to me as is the evidence that was given at the Conference. 

THE BIBLICAL EVIDENCE:
The main evidence given for this was Biblical, and most of it was given at the Conference by pastor Tom Pennington: [A Case For Cessationism]    the Biblical fact is that ALL the miracle-working powers possessed by individuals throughout the Old Testament were clearly given by God to authenticate either His messenger or the message brought by him.  There were only two periods in Old Testament history when miracles were common, and each was only 65 years in duration:  the period of Moses and the period of Elijah and Elisha.  There were isolated instances in between but those two periods were when miracles were most prolific, and in between there were very long periods when no miracles were done at all.  There were over 700 years from the last Old Testament miracle in Hezekiah's time until Christ, during which no miracles were reported.

The third and last period of miraculous working was during the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ and the spread of the gospel.  There are various clues in the text that the miracles were given as God's authentication of His messenger, authenticating Christ as Messiah and the gospel message as God's.   Somehow we manage to overlook the implication of such clues as the fact that Jesus told John that if he doubted Him, at least he should believe the works He did, the works being His credentials from God [John 10:37, 38]; and He told Philip the same thing [14:11].  We also fail to grasp the implication of the fact that the Lord Jesus gave His disciples miraculous powers when He sent them out to preach the gospel, but the gospel WAS the message they were to preach:  He did not tell them to preach that miraculous powers are available to all believers as today's Charismatics teach.  Clearly He gave them those powers to authenticate the message they were to preach.  

R. C. Sproul answered the typical Charismatic claim that the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, in the form originally given at Pentecost where they all spoke in tongues, is an experience all believers in all times should expect to receive, showing that the instances of separate Spirit baptism in the New Testament occurred at the entry of specific groups of believers into the Church:  the Jews, the Gentiles, the Samaritans, and the "God fearers."  I'd have to listen again to the talk to be able to argue this case myself, but I found it convincing:  each separate group represented a specific extension of the gospel into the world and God gave a special authentication at the entry of each into the Church in the repetition of the events of Pentecost, Pentecost being THE sign of the inauguration of the gospel.  That initiation was never to be repeated except in those special instances, but those special instances were in reality the gospel being given to other parts of the Foundation of the Church and not representative of all believers since then.  Once the Foundation was established and ratified, believers since then are not to expect to receive the sign of Pentecost.

OTHER EVIDENCE:
There is secondary evidence as well, including the fact that apparently the miraculous powers were waning by the time Paul's ministry was drawing to a close, and that after the apostolic age they had ceased.  Charismatics try to rationalize this away on the basis of an assumed spiritual deadness in the post-apostolic churches, but that is nothing but assumption.  In fact it's just circular reasoning:  the "deadness" is proved by the cessation of the gifts.  Some of the early Church fathers as well as other Christian leaders down the centuries, declared the cessation of the gifts.  Pennington in his earlier talk quoted Calvin on that subject.

The fact that the "gifts" as practiced today are really nothing like the gifts practiced in the Apostolic era, is another piece of secondary evidence.  Today's "prophecy" is not required to be 100% accurate as biblical prophecy was required to be, although they claim it's based on the New Testament, and besides that a great many of the "prophecies" are either useless or just plain silly (I wrote about Jill Austin's "prophecies" here some time ago).   As for the gift of healing the evidence is just about nil for the thousands of claims, although in principle there is no reason God can't heal miraculously today and no doubt does from time to time;  and I'll get to the "gift of tongues" next:

TONGUES:
Tongues speaking ought to be discredited by the mere fact that Mormons and some practitioners of pagan religions may speak in tongues, plus the fact that they are not known languages but are used entirely differently than they were used in the early church.  By the way, I supposedly HAVE the gift of tongues.  I received it while praying out loud in my bedroom during the period I was involved in the Charismatic movement.  But from the very beginning it didn't FEEL right to me, and over the years I've struggled with understanding it, have prayed the Lord would take it away but I still have it and sometimes just blurt it out.  It may be what Nee calls "soul power" in which case simply working to deny it and suppress it may be the best I can do.

What was the original gift of tongues FOR?  To demonstrate God's plan to spread the gospel to all people groups of the world, that the Messiah was not simply the Messiah of the Jews but the Savior of the entire world understood to have been promised as far back as Adam and Eve.  Again, once God's new work was authenticated there was no further need of the authenticating signs.  To continue to expect them is to completely miss the point of what God was doing.

The conclusion from all this and more is that miracles were never in themselves to be part of the gospel message but were given to establish the gospel message as coming from God.   All the emphasis on miracles is a distraction from the gospel.  Not that God doesn't sometimes still give miracles for specific purposes, but that they were never intended to be normative in the life of the Church.

SOUL POWER:
There is probably more than the above evidence that I'm forgetting but I'd like to add what I wrote about in the previous post from Watchman Nee's warnings about "soul power" being mistaken for the work of the Holy Spirit. 

This isn't evidence but I find it a compelling way of understanding some of the Charismatic phenomena that is clearly not just human imagination but has a supernatural element to it, without always having to invoke demons as their author (although probably demons are behind the expression of these things in one way or another anyway.)  It's the fact that the Charismatic phenomena occur through unusual channels and are NOT something normal human abilities could produce that misleads people into thinking they are from God, figuring that Well, we're Christians so where else could such things come from?  Cessationists who think only in terms of ordinary human powers or some sort of trickery completely miss the point that the phenomena just "happen" to people and can be quite astonishing.

Nee took most of his thinking on this subject from Jessie Penn-Lewis who was involved in the Welsh revival of the early twentieth century, specifically her book, Soul and Spirit.  The writings of both of them are rather quaint as they make much of the early twentieth century "scientific" studies of parapsychology in their discussion.

And they both affirm the continuation of the supernatural gifts of the Spirit.  After the Strange Fire Conference I'm now convinced that both of them were deceived about that.  They are at great pains to distinguish genuine manifestations of the God-given gifts from the counterfeits that both were acutely aware of.  Whatever miraculous events were genuinely given from God that either of them witnessed would have been done through God's sovereign will and not as a continuation of the gifts, but unfortunately many of those may also have been counterfeits. 

Penn-Lewis wrote extensively about the activity of evil spirits in connection with the revival.  It is most likely that the confusion of God's gifts with counterfeits gave place to the devil to do his work, and there is every reason to think that the devil is working among Charismatics today who have fallen into the same mistake.

Lord, set us free from the devil's deceptions.

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October 30:
Now they're saying, well, Michael Brown is, that the Biblical arguments for the cessation of the spiritual gifts prove nothing. 

He also dismissed the fact that Kundalini yoga brings about the same jerkings that were so evident on videos of the Brownsville "revival."  He said if they're the result of preaching Jesus then it means nothing.  However, ALL we see on the videos is that sort of phenomena, we do not see Jesus being preached.  It is clear that those who made the video think the strange body movements are of major importance and the preaching of Jesus not so important. 

And Michael Brown doesn't seem to know that he can't just SAY Brownsville was all about preaching Jesus if there is no evidence for it, which there isn't.  But there IS evidence for all those jerkings and falling down.  Also the whole atmosphere of the "revival" on those videos is giddy rather than appropriate to a true Christian revival.

Soul Power Counterfeits the Holy Spirit: Predicting the Future

It was while listening to Friday's radio show by Dr. Michael Brown, Dr. Brown Answers Your E-Questions that I decided to post again on the subject of Soul Power, even perhaps at some length, because I believe it may explain a great deal of what is experienced in Charismatic circles as the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, although in reality it may be nothing but heightened natural human powers.

On that radio show Dr. Brown goes into some detail about the Charismatic claim that New Testament prophecy is different from Old Testament prophecy in that the prophet is not required to be 100% accurate.  He also tries to answer the accusation that it is new extrabiblical revelation, and I have to say I agree with him about that:  that is, most of the "prophecy" in question is focused on strictly personal individual concerns, which is an entirely different thing from the Old Testament prophecies which were given to God's People for revelation of the ways of God, which are instructions for the edification of all of us in all times and places.

But this amounts to a denial that anything like biblical prophecy is being exercised at all.  As someone at the Strange Fire Conference quipped, this denial, along with the denial that healings on the level of the New Testament are occurring today, and the denial that today's "gift of tongues" is  the same as the New Testament gift of tongues, makes closet Cessationists of Charismatics. 

There is truth in that observation.  The claimed gifts are really not like the supernatural gifts that were exercised by the Apostles and many believers in that era.

Brown gave two examples of what he means by "New Testament" style prophecy that is not like Old Testament prophecy: 

When he was teaching part time but had been privately told he would soon replace a full-time teacher on the staff, someone in his class received this knowledge in his mind and spoke it out loud.  It was true, Brown knew it was true, and he considered it to be a prophetic speaking.

Another example was given of a woman missionary to China who was told by a Charismatic prophet that he "saw" her working in Palestine although such an idea had never occurred to her.  Over some time other similar words of "prophecy" were brought to her and finally it was also confirmed in her own understanding as God's will for her, and she did eventually go as a missionary to Palestine.

If we just accept these as true reports, and I have no reason to doubt them, the question I'd have is whether either of them describes prophecy in the biblical sense at all.  And I'd answer, No.

Consider something about these two examples:  Don't they strike you as peculiarly empty and useless?  Even if true what good is there in either case of such a prediction being given?  Did either Brown or the missionary need to know about it, did it serve any purpose in their lives?  Wouldn't Brown have taken over the other teacher's job in any case, and the missionary have gone to Palestine in any case, and what good purpose did it serve for either of them to have it revealed in advance?  Isn't it obvious the answer is None?

Well, what is it then?   Is it demonic?  Not necessarily.

My guess is that it's what Watchman Nee identified as "soul power."  There can be demonic influence involved but it's nevertheless a human power, which he explains as built into human nature at the Creation but suppressed as a result of the Fall.  Although such powers are suppressed in us, it is possible to release them to expression through various disciplines such as are practiced in many of the world's religions, including Buddhism, Hinduism and Taoism.  Nee discusses the ability to foretell the future as one of these "supernatural" but fallen human powers on pages 22 and 24 of his little book, The Latent Power of the Soul. 

He also mentions healings as one of the powers, and sees Christian Science as the practice of controlling the mind in order to bring about certain kinds of healings.  He regards such phenomena as often successful, which may or may not be borne out in reality, but his idea of how it works is interesting and compelling it seems to me.  It explains for one things the strenuous disciplines, the ascetic practices, the breathings and meditations, that many go through in Eastern religions to acquire the ability to control the mind and body.  Books written by many practitioners of Hinduism, such as Paramahansa Yogananda, often describe strange phenomena and powers that its adepts are capable of, from telepathy to telekinesis to clairvoyance and so on.  I've tended to think of these abilities as demonically inspired, but now I think this explanation is better. 

The simple repetition of a mantra or even a prayer such as the Jesus Prayer practiced by Russian mystics, can release such abilities in a person.  But such practices and disciplines aren't the only means of releasing the latent soul powers, as many Christians today have come to experience some of them from a sort of contagion, especially in a highly emotionally charged atmosphere as can occur in some "revivals."   The jerkings and shakings and falling down may include demonic involvement, or they could merely be the effect on the human frame of a heightened "religious" frame of mind that can trigger the release of the powers in question.  Again I'd recommend watching the video presentation by Andrew Strom about false spirits in the Church, which I've posted at the upper right of this blog.  It is abundantly clear that the same jerkings that occurred in the Brownsville "revival" are part of Hindu Kundalini practices as well.  How gullible we are, and so eager to embrace anything out of the ordinary that seems supernatural.

Could genuinely born-again Christians experience these things and mistake them for the Holy Spirit?  Contrary to John MacArthur who seems to believe that being born again should protect us from all such counterfeits, I don't know for sure but I'd hesitate to say they couldn't.  In any case these are NOT the biblical Gifts of the Spirit, they ARE counterfeit.  And Nee (who himself had a psychic power he at first attributed to God but then learned to renounce as contrary to Christian life) teaches that rather than allowing their expression we should die to them and deny them expression because as powers of the human soul they interfere with the genuine workings of God through the Holy Spirit.

"My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge" can apply to this subject.  If we don't know we are being deceived by a counterfeit we can fall into all kinds of error and miss the Holy Spirit altogether.

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Just want to add here that Nee sees human nature as made up of three parts, body, soul and spirit, which is found in one place in the Bible, though others such as John MacArthur believe in only two parts, body and soul.

Did Jan Hus hear personally from God? Prophecy, Discernment, spiritual gifts etc.

Was recently watching Chris Pinto's film A Lamp in the Dark again, and noted that Jan Huss, one of the pre-Reformation Reformers, burned at the stake for his commitment to the Bible as the ultimate authority for a believer,* claimed to have had a private revelation from God that sounds to me like it should be called a prophecy. Wondered how that sits with all those Protestants out there who deny that such things have occurred since New Testament times. Jan Huss is one of our heroes, after all, originally a Catholic Priest, as were most of the Reformers, who saw that the Bible contradicted the teachings of Rome. He became a recognized leader in the movement that finally deposed Rome from its dominance of Europe and established the word of God as the "light unto the path" of the believer.

So here's the prophecy: In the film the narrator says:

Before he died he claimed that God had given him a promise. The name "Hus" means "goose" in the Czech language and so the Lord had told him:

They will silence the goose, but in one hundred years I will raise a swan from your ashes that no one will be able to silence. [Source: Jan Hus: The Goose of Bohemia, by William P. Farley --about 32:38 into the film]

So, all you cessationists out there: Do you deny that this was a special revelation, even a prophecy, given to Jan Hus personally by God?

He was prophesying of course of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation which God would bring to Europe a hundred years after Hus's time. One might wonder if calling Luther a "swan" reflects God's sense of humor of course (or if a swan has characteristics that do fit Luther that I'm not aware of.) The Popes don't say much that I agree with but the Pope who referred to Luther as a "wild boar" got it right in my estimation. You could say that we needed a wild boar at the time of course. But anyway, as far as the Reformation goes Luther could be regarded as the beautiful swan that brought it all to fruition.

I haven't particularly thought of what I do with my blogs as a "discernment ministry" but maybe I should, as that does happen to be a big part of it. I have prayed for discernment many times, and in my experience God answers that sort of prayer -- prayers for understanding, prayers for wisdom -- much more readily than other kinds of prayers (such as for healing of my extremely painful bone-on-bone arthritis of the hips.) No, I'm certainly not claiming that my prayers guarantee I'm going to be right in my judgments, of course not, only that I have many times found myself understanding something after prayer that before had been confusing and I thank God for that. Happening to watch this film again and happening to notice that quote from Hus is very likely God's answering a prayer for understanding about the gifts for today although I don't remember a specific recent prayer about this.

I just got another comment on my "Heaven" blog, certainly a discernment issue and the one topic that really brings them in -- most to denounce me for daring to suggest that the heaven experiences are counterfeits.

They often fault me for not having read the books, but they also never succeed in showing that what I've learned from other sources about the books is false. In most cases of course a reviewer should read the book or see the movie or whatever, but there really are cases where that is not necessary, where the public knowledge of their content is sufficient to make a judgment. Remember The Last Temptation of Christ? There was no need to see the movie if your concern was Bible truth because its main story line was well known and clearly in contradiction with the Bible. Same with the DaVinci Code. On the other hand, the book The Harbinger needs to be read because there are many different ideas floating around about what it says and many misunderstandings out there to mislead people about it.

So, you could say that whether or not you always need firsthand knowledge in order to render a judgment is also a matter of discernment.

Discernment implies careful sorting of truth from lies or deception, in the light of the Holy Spirit of course. Discernment is needed first of all in reading the Bible or "rightly dividing" the Word of Truth.

If you believe that God's supernatural gifting of the Church stopped after New Testament times then you'll automatically understand all claims to supernatural experiences today to be false. No discernment is required. But if you believe otherwise then rightly judging a particular case requires you to spend time carefully comparing the Biblical standard with the claim to supernatural experience.

Does the quote from Jan Hus prove anything or not?

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Follow-up thought: It could be argued that cessationist doctrine itself, the doctrine that all supernatural experiences ceased after apostolic times, is a CAUSE of the discernment problems we're encountering so much today, the false signs and wonders, the New Apostolic Reformation and the like. Hidebound intellectualism interferes with true spiritual growth and experience, and interferes with the exercise of true spiritual discernment.

It also promotes a cynical mindset in those who have experienced something they can only call supernatural, leaving its understanding up to their own wildest imaginations. No wonder they fall for fleshly and demonic tricks since they know they are real at least and all the critics do is denounce what they haven't themselves experienced. No wonder if they get the source of such phenomena wrong because true supernatural spiritual discernment is not being encouraged, because it's not considered to be needed any more. In fact discerning of spirits is one of those spiritual gifts that supposedly stopped after the apostolic generation. We're supposed to rely only on intellectual understanding of the Bible, in a time when if we ever needed a God-inspired gift of discernment it's now. Proposition for a future blog topic if nothing else, the Lord willing I should live so long.

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*OK, specifically he was burned at the stake for denying the Roman doctrine of transubstantiation.

Spiritual Deception and The Harbinger --Shouldn't we be trying to learn/show the way out of deception instead of just pointing the finger?

I don't know what Jonathan Cahn thinks of the phenomena associated with people like Rick Joyner and Todd Bentley, signs-and-wonders gurus you could call them, who represent the charismatic NAR (New Apostolic Reformation) that Brannon Howse spends much time exposing (and rightly so). This movement promotes the idea that apostles and prophets on the model of the New Testament church are now in operation again. Because of the Prophet character in The Harbinger this is one of the tangents criticism of the book takes (just one of them, there's also the supposed hermeneutic problem which is really the critics' problem and not Cahn's, and the supposed "mysticism" problem that is somewhat different from the NAR problem). Cahn says he hasn't investigated these things enough to have an opinion and I have no reason to doubt him. He also says he wasn't aware of this whole "discernment" arena of controversy before his book came out, and I believe him about that too. It's hit him like a rock from outer space. Or something like that. Unanticipated anyway.

Sid Roth, who was shown by Howse recently to endorse Todd Bentley's demonic carryings-on, is a friend of Cahn's and a strong Messianic supporter, and the criticism of Roth may put Cahn in the uncomfortable position of now possibly having to think about some of Roth's opinions that he'd not thought about before. Which have nothing to do with The Harbinger and come as an unwelcome intrusion on his efforts to get that message to the public.

They DON'T have anything to do with the message of The Harbinger, they ARE an intrusion, but they do highlight a theological division among Christians, and specifically between Jonathan Cahn and his critics, that could use some investigation from outside both camps.

I did a few blog posts fairly recently with the aim of trying to sort out some of the confusions of the signs-and-wonders phenomena we're seeing so much of these days -- I got three posts done on the subject and then was drawn again to address the criticisms of The Harbinger, but this post may get me back to it.

Because I was in a charismatic church as well as a parachurch group in the early 90s I have some feeling for how hard it can be to discern the source of the phenomena experienced in those groups, even despite much inner alarm about it. I agree completely with Brannon Howse about the NAR -- NOW, but when you are among people who accept such phenomena unquestioningly it is not so easy to sort the true from the false. It's easy enough for those on the outside, however, who take the blanket position that NO "supernatural" phenomena are biblically supportable today, to simply denounce the whole thing -- little discernment is involved in that case. But there are some who are convinced that God MAY work supernaturally today, believe they've seen it in operation, and are more concerned not to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Some of the writings of Watchman Nee and Jessie Penn-Lewis are to my mind a source of standards that may help to discriminate among these things. Both are strongly convinced that they've witnessed God's supernatural workings among Christians (supernatural gifts such as tongues, prophecies, visions, even sometimes miraculous events, and so on), and yet both have written strong warnings against spiritual deception by "signs and wonders."

While I find their writings persuasive I also feel I have to say that it's possible that they are too credulous themselves about the phenomena they attribute to God, but I'm not anywhere near a position to make a judgment about this, it's just a provisional caveat.

I believe their concept of "soul power" helps to identify some "supernatural" phenomena as clearly NOT of the Holy Spirit, such as Rick Joyner's strange "worship services" shown in videos linked in earlier posts, in which emotion is being worked up by drums and physical exertions like jumping up and down, much the way the shamans of many tribal religions work it up. Joyner's congregation just need to decorate themselves with paint and beads and feathers and get their moves more coordinated and the similarity would become apparent.

As I discussed in the earlier posts on this subject, intensified emotion can be a releaser of "soul power," aided and abetted by demonic powers, which is the aim of the tribal religions and all they have to work with, but in Christians it interferes with and easily supplants the working of the Holy Spirit. Repetitive singing of simple choruses, or chanting or "prayer" -- such as the endlessly repeated "Jesus prayer" of the Russian "holy man" or Starets -- is also a releaser of "soul power."

Soul power can be the source of visions, "prophecies," supernatural knowledge, some of it even true, "tongues," clairvoyance, "remote viewing," psychokinetic effects and other phenomena known well to the practitioners of religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism as well as tribal religions. There may also be and usually is demonic influence involved as well.

The critics of The Harbinger are trying to attribute this sort of thing to Jonathan Cahn, and since he has apparently not spent time investigating these things he hasn't been in a position to answer them. Really, the answer is that they have nothing to do with The Harbinger that anyone has demonstrated; the message of the book speaks for itself IF the reader will take the time to think it through. I don't see ANY way the "harbingers" could have been counterfeited by soul power or demonic spirits or ordinary deceptive reasoning, but this is what the critics would have to show if their harping on these themes has any foundation at all.

Meanwhile, IF Jonathan Cahn has been accepting of some charismatic phenomena he shouldn't be accepting, he might find Nee and Penn-Lewis' standards illuminating. So might Rick Joyner for that matter, who seems to simply assume anything supernatural is from God as so many charismatics do. Or Sid Roth who apparently is too easily taken in by supernatural claims and has apparently been dazzled by Todd Bentley's demonic carryings-on.

That is, SOME of these things may simply be naively attributed to God among the signs-and-wonders people. In other words, perhaps SOME who are caught up in charismatic phenomena could be helped to discern what is of God from what isn't by this sort of knowledge.

I'll have to look it up but as I recall, one prominent leader in the Welsh revival (1904-5), Evan Roberts, who was a friend of Jessie Penn-Lewis, discovered that he was being deceived by demon spirits, which brought about a crisis of discernment and spiritual confusion in his life. It's a sad story, but the point is that well-meaning true Christians who preach the true gospel CAN be deceived by these things, and in fact it is often those who are MOST zealous for the things of God who are most susceptible to this sort of deception -- because their emotions are easily engaged and they are likely to be particularly intense in their pursuit of knowledge of God -- such intensity being a possible trigger of counterfeits. It isn't helpful just to throw accusations at them from a position of complete ignorance of such phenomena. The aim should be to learn and inform and try to help them discern if at all possible. Those who reject all supernatural phenomena really aren't in a position to do this but at least they could learn that maybe their total rejection needs to be modified.

But back to basics: As both Nee and Penn-Lewis emphasize -- and for that matter most of the "mystics" of the past too, including some who have gone off the deep end -- even supernatural phenomena that DO come from God are best not clung to, best not made much of. The Christian method is DYING TO SELF, not trying to work up ANYTHING. Working-things-up, trying to make things happen, seeking experiences, whether by special actions, movements, chantings, "prayers," whatever, is probably the first thing Christians should learn to avoid. Instead there is obviously a trend in the opposite direction these days. God MAY come to us with special spiritual experiences or He may not. Forcing it will certainly only bring about counterfeits, either through human soulish powers or demonic spirits. Any tinge of trying to force God ought to be repented of in fear and trembling and fled like the plague it is.

However, AGAIN, The Harbinger, as far as I can see, HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ANY OF THIS.

Spiritual Deception: Soul Power. Dangers of seeking experiences or "gifts" in the wrong way

On his June 12th radio program Brannon Howse directed listeners to google "manifestations at Rick Joyner's Morningstar Ministries" which takes you to You Tube for a "church service" that is quite a spectacle of bizarre charismatic "worship." It has the flavor of some kind of pagan ceremony, or tribal celebration, with heavy drumbeat, people jumping up and down and at least one woman apparently emotionally unstrung up on the stage giving an incoherent "testimony" of some sort. Here's one and here's another video of Rick Joyner's "church."

I also watched part of an interview Sid Roth (It's Supernatural) did with Joyner at the beginning of 2011 about a dream he had had about America under God's judgment. In the interview he sounds like a sincere Christian who sees judgment coming to America, though you might wonder why a dream would be necessary to inform us that the nation is under judgment. He comes off as sincere in the other videos too -- it's the raucous carryings-on around him that he apparently accepts and promotes as the right way to "do church," as valid worship, that make it clear there's something deeply amiss spiritually. This is beyond anything I ever saw in charismania, into heavy spiritual darkness. But Rick Joyner stands up there talking in a pastorly sort of way, albeit in charismospeak, as if it's all quite normal.

Brannon Howse surprised me by referring to Watchman Nee's Latent Power of the Soul as a source of insight into such phenomena. I think he was quoting Jerry Vines. I was surprised because it's a book that I've found is often treated as beyond the pale of orthodoxy.

So I got out my copy and reread it. It's all about the powers of the soul that Adam supposedly possessed originally, that were lost -- or hidden rather than lost, according to Nee, buried in the flesh as it were -- at the Fall. The only way this could be known, or inferred, is from exhibitions of such powers now. There is no Biblical clue to them that I know of. Nee says they can be released now, and that's what many of the practices of the fallen religions are aimed at, and sometimes they occur spontaneously in Christian settings as well under certain conditions.

Hindus describe many powers that their practices are aimed to develop, practices such as meditations to control the mind, breath control exercises, postural exercises and so on. Walking on burning coals and lying on a bed of nails without pain are a couple of the Hindu versions of soul power. Not just Hinduism but Buddhism and Jainism as well promote such practices and powers. Look up "siddhis" for lists and discussions of various powers. I always thought of these things as demonically produced but according to Nee they are normally latent human powers that can be cultivated or released, though they are usually instigated demonically. Sometimes powers can be manifested that approach the miraculous, including healing of the body.

There are also involuntary movements of the body that are released in some of the practices, called "kriyas." Some of these things happen spontaneously even in Christian settings. I did a post about the Brownsville "revival" a while back in which at least two people were manifesting odd bodily movements that they couldn't control, jerking movements or flailing and thrashing movements -- and attributing them to being under the power of God. I posted the videos there or you can find them at You Tube.

In Christian settings what may bring them about is SEEKING manifestations of one sort or another, mistaking these things for gifts of the Holy Spirit or expressions of God's power. Anything that stirs up and concentrates emotions can also bring them about, such as repetitious singing.

What Christians need to know that most don't know is that these things have nothing whatever to do with God but come from the human soul usually under instigation by demon spirits. Intense emotion can release them. They are unusual, often involuntary and sometimes "miraculous" and that's why people assume they are from God. (To compound the problem, sometimes SOME manifestations MAY be from God, but let's not get hung up on this point yet).

"My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge" says scripture. It would seem to apply here, because in churches where the "gifts of the Spirit" are avidly sought and supposedly practiced it is very easy for people to be exercising a power of their own soul or even a demonically imparted power and not something that comes from God and not know the difference. Clairvoyance is a power of the soul that can be mistaken for a gift of the spirit. Nee says he himself had the ability to know what was in other people's minds and at first he thought this was a good thing that served God until he came to realize that it was something God didn't want him to use and learned to deny it. (Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow Me).

There are soul powers that can mimic prophecy. These "prophets" in the charismatic movement are most likely experiencing this power of the soul and missing God completely.

According to Nee the soul powers can produce even a false salvation, a false repentance, a false regeneration, false revivals --such as Toronto and Brownsville -- but this book was written in 1933!) ...and "false joy."

False joy: Again, this book was written in 1933 and he talks about the "holy laugh." The "Toronto Blessing" of the 90s was all about Holy Laughter and at the time I had no idea there were ever such manifestations in churches before that. Nee describes a meeting -- this would have been in China in the 20s or 30s -- at which

...it was announced that everybody should seek for this holy laugh. All began to beat tables or chairs, jumping and leaping all around until not long afterwards this so-called holy laughing came...

Can this possibly be the fullness of the Holy Spirit? Can this be His work? No, this is plainily one of the works of the soul. [p. 71]

SEEKING it and doing things to work up an artificial state of mind or emotion seem to be the prerequisites.

How do people get this laugh? What procedure do they follow?or what condition must they fulfill? It is nothing but simply the asking to laugh... Are they seeking to be filled with the Holy Spirit? Their lips may indeed utter such words as 'O God, fill me with Your Spirit.' Nevertheless, that is merely a procedure; the aim of asking to be filled with the Spirit is something else than to be so filled...their heart desire is elsewhere.

God must be the object of our seeking if we are not to be deceived, and there must be a willingness to do without any sort of experience if He so wills. If you seek an experience you may get it but it won't be from Him.

Nee reports [p. 74] that one young man

pleaded fervently with God, and vowed that he would npt get up from prayer that evening if God did not give [the holy laughter] to him.

Eventually he did get the laughter. Did he get God or anything from God or of God? That's the question, and the answer is Probably not.

As a side note, I've read of people who have made this vow not to get up until God grants this or that, and it's always struck me as questionable that God would honor such an attitude. Isn't this tempting God? Isn't it trying to force God to accede to YOUR will instead of submitting to His will? Charles Finney did this and it began his career as a very powerful evangelist in the middle 19th century. Is it possible he was operating on soul power instead of spiritual power? During and following that period a great many of today's cults got started. Christian Science, for instance, is completely a matter of cultivating and practicing soul power. Could there be a connection?

Seems to me today's churches are in need of knowledge about these things. There are many deceived into thinking they are following God when they are following only their own heightened powers and they are deceiving others who treat them as prophets and seers. This is dangerous, obviously. They may be listening to demons at times too, that can impart some kinds of knowledge, just as they do to mediums and witches, as well as dreams and visions.

There is a remedy, there is a preventative. What did Jesus preach? Taking up your cross, dying to self. Think of it as dying to soul power, dying to your own abilities -- any abilities, natural abilities, natural talents, asking God to keep you from depending on your natural abilities so that you can depend completely on Him instead. If you truly want God your attitude needs to be bearing the cross, crucifying or mortifying the flesh and the self.

"My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge."

The knowledge that is lacked is knowledge of God, according to the context and at least one commentary I consulted (JF&B). This applies here as the knowledge pursued in seeking experiences and gifts is not knowledge of God. And in context, also, the lack of knowledge is sin, not mere helpless ignorance. True knowledge is not sought.

Hsa 4:6 My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children.

So maybe they won't listen. But shouldn't these things be taught in the churches these days? It's a very serious and dangerous mistake to stir up soul powers and mistake them for the Holy Spirit. It's not necessarily easy to learn these things but sincerely wanting to is a first step.