Please be careful. Some Charismatic Christians are so thirsty for supernatural experiences that they will gulp down anything and everything — including stuff forbidden in the Bible.
Those of you who are older will remember the Jonestown mass-suicide/massacre that took place in the 70s. Jim Jones, a Pentecostal minister who had been heavily influenced by William Branham, became the leader of a cult. He eventually moved his followers from the U. S. to a compound in Guyana and named it Jonestown after himself. He finally deceived his 900+ followers into drinking a red beverage laced with cyanide. Those who refused were forcibly injected with cyanide. It’s a tragic story, from which we get the phrase, “Don’t drink the Kool-Aid,” meaning, “Don’t let someone bamboozle you into swallowing deception.”
So, here are some things we absolutely must not believe or take part in, if we don’t want to be deceived:
Interacting with departed believers:
First of all, trying to contact or otherwise interact with the dead is forbidden in the Bible. Deuteronomy 18:10-12 gives a list of various types of witchcraft which the Lord calls abominations. Among the list is necromancy — communicating with the dead.
The most obvious way this has been practiced by deceived Christians through the ages is by asking departed saints or loved ones to pray for them or guide them. We are encouraged often in Scripture to pray for one another here on earth, but never to go beyond that. 1 Timothy 2:5 tells us there is only “one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”
As part of their grieving process, some Christians go to the gravesides of departed loved ones to talk with them. I don’t think this is appropriate, but nevertheless, it is common. If we better understood that the real person is not in that grave, merely the body they left behind, I doubt if we would be so quick to do this. Where it gets even more inappropriate is when we ask that departed loved one for guidance. Out-and-out necromancy. This did not go well for King Saul, did it. We can ask for counsel from living people, but ultimately, we should receive our guidance from the Holy Spirit.
Increasingly, we see prophetic people claiming to have received heavenly messages from a Christian who has died. Some say they’ve been caught up into heaven and talked with the person there. Or they’ve had a dream or vision where they were given a prophetic word by them.
There have been several reports of deceased believers showing up at conferences, sitting on the platform or in attendance in the audience. An article appeared in a Pentecostal magazine years ago, where the author said he had been the speaker at a large gathering to honor the widow of a much-loved missionary. He claimed he saw the departed minister hovering over the sanctuary. He heard the dead man say, “Tell [my wife] that the Lord says this for you….” He then gave a supposed prophetic word from the dead husband for her and her ministry. The crowd went wild. I am sorry, but this is gross error. Either it was his imagination or, worse yet, a deceiving spirit.
A few years ago, “grave soaking” (also called “grave sucking”) became a thing. This involves visiting the graves of famous evangelists or healers of the past. The idea is that you can “soak up” their “anointing” from their graves and then carry that power in your own person to do the kinds of signs and wonders they once did.
While there is evidence in the Bible that living people can lay hands on us and impart spiritual gifts to us (see 1 Timothy 4:14 and 2 Timothy 1:6), there is no encouragement in the Bible that we can receive impartation from dead bodies. Do you want anointing? Get it from the Lord firsthand by spending time with Him.
Not discerning or measuring revelation by Scripture
Many are accepting every vision or dream as coming from the Lord. This is how we ended up with Mormonism, which is not Christian. Just because Prophet So-and-So says he or she was taken up into heaven and saw something does not mean it is so. Check the prophet’s, apostle’s, or teacher’s doctrine on their website. There will often be a clue there that things are off-kilter. Check whether what they claim to have seen or heard in heaven agrees with the Bible.
Some of the people saying “The Lord told me,” or “An angel appeared to me and said…,” or “I saw in a vision…” are real believers who love the Lord. Yet, because they value supernatural experience on the same level as the Bible, they are not discerning their own revelation. Because they saw or heard it, they think it must be truth. They forget the apostle Paul’s warning in 2 Corinthians 11:14, “… for Satan himself takes the disguise of an angel of light.”
In 2 Peter 1:16-21, Peter mentions being an eye witness to Jesus’ glorification when He was transfigured on the mount. However, after describing this wonderful experience, he comments in verses 19-21, “We also have a more sure word of prophecy which you would do well to heed … knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is from any [prophet’s] private interpretation. For prophecy did not come in olden times by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.” In other words, Peter regarded what the Old Testament prophets had said as being more certain than his own experience (even though his experience was genuine), because he knew the Scriptures those prophets had written were God-breathed.
We need to discern who (and what) is genuine — or not genuine. We must learn to test all prophetic claims, and the Bible is our gold standard for doing that.
We’ll continue with more in the next post.
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Out of the Fire 