What would your doctor say?

I believe you and most Christians experience stuff like that at one time or another, but the skeptic will find a way to discount it.I had an angel or heavenly being speak to me and wake me up, but didn't see the angel, and another time, I saw and touched an angel in a similar situation. That's been a long time back, and sometimes I wonder exactly why I was made aware of the angels then. Those were some special experiences as a new believer, and though my walk with the Lord and the Holy Spirit have grown, I wonder sometimes about the specific angels that were given a charge over me and wish I could see and talk with them, but I suppose that's not the sort of thing we are called to involve ourselves with.

Faith, ask yourself an honest question. If you came upon the Corinthian church and measured it by your standards, would it measure up as a real, Christian church and "move of the Spirit" or as something from the devil?That may be too harsh a way to put that question, but it serves a point. All churches have errors, both in morality and teaching. The first church of the apostles in Jerusalem had major errors, and Peter had to be rebuked by Paul for those errors, and yet these were the original apostles of Jesus Christ in a great move of the Spirit and revival.You have to be careful not to attribute to the Spirit of God the errors of man. I can take apart any Baptist, Presbyterian, Reformed or non-Reformed church, and put it under a microscope, and write books and do web-sites and make people think they are of a false spirit too. The errors are there, and if you look at the churches in the Bible, they had errors too, including at times false prophets, false apostles, false teachings, etc, etc,....Imo, there is absolutely no way the "discernment ministries" today would ever accept the Apostle Paul as anything but a deceiver and demonically inspired man, and they would be 100% wrong!Edited by randman, : No reason given.

You and I don't seem to agree on much generally, but here I will say I think you are right, and even if there are false signs and wonders, that doesn't mean the true moves of God are not happening. In fact, there are more miracles, signs and wonders today, imo, than ever before in history. of course, part of that is there are more people, but there are genuine miracles just as in Jesus' ministry occuring around the world today.But even Jesus could not do any mighty miracles in cities and with people that were filled with unbelief. There is something about faith that opens the present dimensions we live in to higher powers of change that enables miralces.

Look at my post count Randman I was wondering whether anything in what happened to me would strike a chord with "Doubtful Deerbrah". Like, I don't remember word-for-word thoughts from 5 minutes ago - let alone 5 years ago. Lots of striking thoughts strike us but how many can you remember word for word.(..watch the skeptics rise to that last sentence)On re-reading Deerbrahs account I notice that he used the word "startled" - as did I. Maybe I unconciously picked up that word from my first reading (watch the skeptics seeth in frustration at being headed off at the pass) - but it is the word I would have picked had he not used it - for that is what I was. Not shocked, nor surprised, nor uneasy, nor fearful. Just startled.And perhaps "quietly authoritative - like a stop sign" will hit home if that phrase (which he didn't use) is a perfect fit for him as it was for me. He would likely remember the experience as if it happened yesterday if it was from God. Anytime I have been touched by God in whatever way (pre/post conversion) I remember it as if it were yesterday.That, however is it in terms of "voices in my head". Other communing but not of that kind.Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Teresa of Avila was a 16th Century Spanish nun who had visions and ecstasies and other supernatural experiences. Do you agree with me that it couldn't have been the Lord who told her that Peter and Paul would protect her from deception?I read about the book you mentioned at Amazon.com and I'm afraid I have to agree with the critics among the reviewers there. It sounds to me exactly like all the stuff I heard in charismatic circles a dozen years ago. Nothing has changed. Same claims of global miracles and global revival, same hype, same excitement about supernatural phenomena, same questionable theology, same denial of the hard things of the Christian life, same walking by (supposed supernatural) sight rather than by faith. I too would love to see a real revival but this kind of thing isn't it. Sorry.

Faith, maybe you should try reading the book instead of just reading about the book?On the stuff about Peter and Paul, yea, that sounds too much like the whole veneration of the saints beyond what is warranted, but I don't know if that means all of her visions, etc,...are wrong.It could be though that if you are more open to visions from God, that you might be more open to the deception in the form of counterfeit things, but at the same time, before you go on about the dangers of that, remember that those less open to things like visions are also more likely to accept deception in the areas they are predisposed to, such as over-reliance on man's rationalism, etc,....All of us have strengths and weaknesses, and sometimes our strengths are our weaknesses.

Of course that was from God. Scripture is the standard and those phenomena are in scripture. They had the gift of prophecy because there was not yet a New Testament. They had the gift of tongues because that was the sign of the New Covenant going out to the Gentiles. I find that a very plausible explanation anyway, and it makes it unnecessary for US to have those gifts.I do believe of course that God still may work supernaturally among us now, however, but I just don't believe the charismatic version of revival.Randman, believe me I asked myself a LOT of questions when I was involved in such things -- or really, when I was on the verge of leaving. I went through quite a struggle over the charismatic phenomena. I myself had experiences I still wonder about. Although I've prayed about them I'm still unsure about some of them. Other phenomena were clearly shown to me to be false when I prayed about them. If teaching outright contradicts scripture then it's false. There isn't any room for doubt there. If scripture says "Come boldly to the throne of grace" and someone claims to have been to the throne room of heaven and received a teaching about "Twelve Steps to the Throne of Grace," sorry, that person was not in the throne room of heaven. Where, one might ask, was she? I mean she gave a very detailed description of her experiences. There were many false teachings that I heard in the charismatic churches, that I let slide by at the time and only faced as false when I had my personal showdown with the whole thing. It's hard to judge mere phenomena, but false teaching nails it down. I'd be more open to such an idea if most of what I heard wasn't false teaching and if the false teachings weren't uniformly treated as the very words of God, and anyone who raised questions about them treated as a quencher of the Spirit. I'd also point out that Peter's error was not supposedly ratified by a supernatural move, as the charismatic errors seem to be, but in fact contradicted in one dramatic case by a supernatural move, the vision of the sheet lowered from heaven. The ones in the Bible were exposed as false, it's part of scripture, but whenever someone exposes a charismatic error the charismatics embrace the error all the more and rebuke the exposer. Also, errors that are ratified supposedly by the voice of God Himself through prophecies and so on are on a different level from the kinds of errors found in the noncharismatic churches. Well, Randman, you are a typical charismatic, accusing the critics. What can I say?{edit: If any of these new prophets and visionaries sounded anything like Paul I'd rethink it, but they don't.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Randman, I am not opposed in principle to visions from God, but they have to be tested and false teaching is the test.Also, interestingly enough I think, and something charismatics seem to be ignorant of or simply brush off, I don't know which, along with the supernatural phenomena often experienced in the history of the church, there was a lot of teaching by sober spiritual leaders against trusting the sensible phenomena such as visions and what they called "locutions," because those are easily counterfeited.{Edit: You know, I think the main problem with this stuff is that supernatural phenomena encourage people to trust in their experiences as their proof of God's favor, rather than having simple faith in God. And if those experiences ARE false, then they are trusting in a deception. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I don't like having this dispute with you, Randman, because I think you are a genuine Christian and I agree with most of what you say, but I can't just ignore these things when they come up.I suppose that people can be genuine Christians and still deceived in some areas, but it worries me when I see people celebrating experiences I KNOW are false.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

But Faith, weren't the original Christians including Peter duped by false teaching that the Jewish Christians should not eat with the Gentiles? It's a deeper issue than just the outward stuff, as you know. Paul considered it such a serious error, he states in incredibly strong language in Galatians that this deception was a major error, that "you are fallen from grace" if you accept it, etc, etc,....Well, does that mean James and John and Peter were false apostles? Does that mean Peter's vision that the Book of Acts records was false? After all, AFTER THE VISION, he fell into error and was rebuked of Paul.But the vision wasn't the error, and in fact, the vision agreed with Paul's view on the Gentiles being cleansed and needing not to obey the letter of the Law and be circumcised. I feel if Paul had taken the approach the heresy hunters, he'd of said the vision was of the devil because, you know, Peter was in error. He gave in to false teaching in this area, and you know, he said he was following a vision, etc, etc,,...

Faith, you are missing the point. No one is denying there are false prophecies and such, and false teaching. What I am trying to get you to realize is that such false things were particularly pronounced in the Corinthian church. I mean they were getting drunk and gorging out on food, during worship and not even sharing the food with the poorer believers present that had little to eat. They were getting up and speaking out of turn, showing off spiritual gifts, and giving heed to false apostles among them.You think you've seen errors and that means the whole shebang is of the devil, and if that is the case, then what's up with Paul? His churches were riddled with such errors at times.You accept Paul as a genuine apostle because of the Bible, but if you applied the same standards to him that you apply to men today, I think you'd say he was deceived by Satan because, just look, his churches are filled with error!!As far as criticizing the Hank Hanegraffs of this world, he may be genuine in his feelings, but we have to apply equal weights in judgement, and imo, the anti-charismatics do not, and I know what I am talking about. The errors of pride, humanism, etc,....are in all the church streams, and not so different as one might think. It is true that in both fundamentalist and charistmatic/pentecostal streams, there is often a serious error of authoritarianism leading to group-think and witchcraft, but that's something, once again, we see in the early churches founded by the apostles. There is no reason to reject gifts altogether just because they are often misused by people.Let me put it this way. Money is just as misused by people and the source of a lot of problems, but I don't see too many heresy hunters willing to make a vow of poverty so that they stay free of that error, but some seem to want us to stay poor in spiritual gifts and anointing out of fear of being misled.

This is exactly what I was addressing. And this was corrected by Paul and corrected by Peter's vision both, as I said. It was not allowed to stand uncorrected, as too many charismatic teachings are today. Exactly. Why don't we hear charismatics similarly calling their own followers on false teaching? There's a lot of it. I could name quite a bit from my own experience and show how it contradicts scripture. The throne of grace example ought to be pretty obvious for starters. But nobody called the teachers of these things on their errors, and when I brought them up I was the one repudiated, not the errors. And his error was noted in scripture so that we can learn from it. Would that the charismatics would be so careful about the errors among them. Paul rebuked Peter quite soundly, and the Judaizers even more harshly. His example is not followed by present-day charismatics. Maybe I didn't say it clearly, but that's exactly what I said or meant to say. The vision was a true vision from God which corrected Peter's mistake. That's the thing about scripture, mistakes are identified and corrected. In that case the vision was definitely from God. But some charismatics may present false teachings supposedly derived from some vision they had that they believe to have been of the Lord himself, so in that case it's the visions that are false. And again, they are not challenged, they are accepted uncritically as part of this supposed great move of the Spirit. Paul was very much a heresy hunter as this very situation attests, along with all his disputes with the Judaizers, where he exposed the error and rebuked it in no uncertain terms. In that case the vision was from God. What I'm pointing out is the false teaching that identifies some visions as not from God.Again: In scripture all false teachings are identified whether supported by supernatural phenomena or contradicted by it. This should be the rule among the charismatics, too, but instead there seems to be a tacit agreement just to leave errors alone (assuming any are even recognized) and not challenge them, and even suggest that people like me who raise questions about them are simply quenching the Spirit or are false "heresy hunters."Some charismatic groups have also challenged these things, however. The Assembly of God church organization has challenged many such odd phenomena as not from God. David Wilkerson, an Assembly of God preacher, has repudiated the Toronto Blessing and other such phenomena. This is the only way to keep the movement genuine, but instead there seems to be almost a conspiracy in the movement in general to cover up the mistakes and demonize the critics.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

And Paul rebuked them for it! Why are you making excuses for charismatic error instead of rebuking it yourself?

Again, if Paul's teachings mean anything, and I've learned anything from him, it would be to discriminate rightly between truth and error. And they should all be identified and rebuked!!! What you aren't getting is that the charismatics DON'T do this with their own errors, although scripture makes it clear that is the right thing to do. I don't think the errors are even recognized! And all you are doing is finding fault with the critic just as they do.And again, a false teaching that is arrived at by normal means is far less problematic than a false teaching that is promoted as having come straight from the mouth of the Lord. And again, such errors were identified, not left to poison the body of Christ as current charismatic errors are. Again, REBUKE the errors! Then you'll maybe have some credibility.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

It was not allowed to stand uncorrected in Antioch, but it seemed to persist quite thoroughly in Jerusalem. Maybe you aren't listening because I hear leaders calling people and each other on errors all the time. Once again, I have to disagree. Of course, we live in a free soceity and a fractured church so calling others on their error doesn't seem to do as much as far as the people as we think it did then, but then again, judging by Paul's comments that all the churches in Asia (Asia Minor) turned against him, maybe it was the same back then. Yea, but when Paul rebuked the Corinthians on their abuse of spiritual gifts, he never rebuked the spiritual gifts themselves or said they should be wary of them, etc, etc,...Instead he taught them to "covet earnestly" those gifts. I don't think that's the case. There isn't a tacit agreement to leave the errors alone, though there could be some of that in certain circles. I think some can get grouped by their errors.But here is where I am coming from. I KNOW spiritual gifts are for today and there is no scripture anywhere stating they have passed, and quite a bit saying they will not pass until we see Jesus face to face. God healed in the Old Testament and did signs and wonders, and He did in the New, and He does so now.So if a heresy hunter wants to tell us how the gifts of healing or whatever are being misused, let him be like Paul and demonstrate his understanding of the issue. Standing on the sidelines and pointing fingers on the excesses of the Charismatic movement when you couldn't cast out a devil from an oppressed human being if your life depended on it; are too afraid to lift your hands in worship much less lay hands on the sick, etc, etc,...isn't going to cut it.There are genuine criticisms even among the spiritually ignorant, and heck, even the lost have some genuine criticisms at times, but the error of standing against the Spirit of God in imparting gifts is also an error, and a big one at that.Edited by randman, : No reason given.