by Derek Prince.
Chapter 1
Signs
and Wonders Do Not Determine Truth
I want to make it plain that I have no
personal prejudice or anxiety concerning unusual manifestations. In actual
fact, I have in my own lifetime experienced quite a number of them. They do not
frighten me. I am not negative about them. As I recorded in my booklet Uproar
in the Church, my own personal encounter with Jesus in World War II began in a
very unconventional way. In the middle of the night, in a barrack room of the
British Army, I spent more than an hour on my back on the floor, with my body
first racked by convulsive sobs and then filled with a river of laughter which
grew continually louder.
Next morning, I found myself a completely
different person, changed not by any act of my will but by yielding to the
supernatural power that had flowed through me. I then looked up various
passages in the Bible that speak about laughter. To my surprise, I discovered
that - for God's people - laughter is not primarily, as we imagine, a reaction
to something comical, but rather an expression of triumph over our enemies.
In Psalm 2:4, David actually depicts God
Himself as laughing: He who sits in the heavens shall laugh: The Lord shall
hold them in derision, Here, God's laughter is not a reaction to some comedy
that is being enacted on earth. Rather, it is His response to the ridiculous
human midgets who have the effrontery to oppose His purposes. It is His
expression of triumph over all the forces of evil.
Sometimes, God fills us with His own laughter
that we may share in His triumph over those who are both His enemies and ours.
Later I pastored a fellowship in
I realized that something similar was
recorded of the early church in Acts 4:31: And when they had prayed, the place
where they were assembled together was shaken; and they were all filled with
the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God with boldness.
At that particular time, our fellowship was
conducting several evangelistic meetings each week in the streets of
But with regard to any kind of manifestation,
there are two questions that I always want to ask. Number one: Is it a
manifestation of the Holy Spirit of God? Or is it a manifestation from some
other source? And number two (and this is related to it): Is the manifestation
in question in harmony with Scripture? In 2 Timothy 3:16, Paul says, All
Scripture is given by inspiration of God. In other words, the Holy Spirit is
the author of all Scripture, and He never says or does anything to contradict
Himself. Every genuine manifestation of the Holy Spirit will, in some way.
harmonize with Scripture.
Now, I want to begin with some warnings of
Jesus, particularly related to the end time period in which I believe we are
living. These are warnings against deception. They are found in Matthew chapter
24, verses 4, 5, 11 and 24. In other words, four times in 21 verses, Jesus
specifically warns us against deception in this period of the close of the age.
The first thing Jesus said about the events leading up to His return, in
Matthew 24:4: "Take heed that no one deceives you." Verse 5:
"For many will come in My name, saying, 'I am the Messiah (Christ),' and
will deceive many." Verse 11: "Then many false prophets will rise up
and deceive many." And then in verse 24: "For false messiahs
(christs) and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to
deceive, if possible, even the elect." So, Jesus warns us four times
against deception. Anybody who shrugs off that warning or treats it lightly
does so at the risk of his own soul. The greatest single danger in this end time
is not sickness, nor poverty, nor persecution. It is deception. If anybody
says, "It could never happen to me," it has already happened to that
person, because that person is saying something could never happen that Jesus
said would happen. That is a sufficient indication that such a person is
deceived.
Next, I want to say something important about
signs and wonders. They do not determine truth. It is very essential to
understand that. Signs and wonders do not determine truth! Truth is already
determined and established, and it is the Word of God. In John 17:17, Jesus is
praying to the Father, and He says, "Your word is truth." And in
Psalm 119:89, the psalmist said, Forever, 0 Lord, Your word is settled in
heaven. Nothing that happens on earth can ever change the smallest little sign
or letter of the Word of God. It is forever settled in heaven.
Now, the Bible speaks about signs and
wonders. It says some things about them that are good, and some that are very
frightening. I want to turn to 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 and read a few verses
there, beginning at verse 9. The coming of the lawless one [that is the title
of the Antichrist] is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs,
and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish,
because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved.
And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should
believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth
but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
So, Paul says here there are such things as
lying signs and wonders. There are true signs and there are lying signs. True
signs attest the truth. Lying signs attest lies. Satan is fully capable of
supernatural signs and wonders. Unfortunately, many in the Charismatic movement
have the attitude that if something is supernatural, it must be from God. There
is no scriptural basis for that assumption. Satan is perfectly capable of
producing powerful signs and wonders to attest his lies, and the reason such
people are deceived is because they did not receive the love of the truth. On
such people God will send strong delusion. That is one of the most frightening
statements in the Bible. If God sends you strong delusion, you will be deluded.
I think that is one of the most severe judgments of God recorded in Scripture,
sending these people strong delusion. They will be condemned, these people,
because they did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
Therefore, signs and wonders are not a
guarantee that something is the truth. There is only one sure way to know the
truth. It is in the Word of God. Jesus said in John 8:32, "You shall know
the truth, and the truth shall make you free." There is no other way to be
sure that we can escape deception in these days except that we know and apply
the truth of God's Word, the Scripture.
In 1994, for the first time, I was brought
into fairly direct contact with one of the groups where those manifestations
were occurring. A group of leaders went to some of their meetings and returned
all excited, saying they had experienced something wonderful and we all needed
to experience it. They said, "Now, you don't test it. You don't try it
out. You don't examine it. You just open up to it and receive it." That
was the first time that I really began to be suspicious of some of these
things, because such a statement is directly contrary to Scripture.
In I Thessalonians 5:21, Paul says to
Christians, Test all things: hold fast what is good. So, if we do not test
things, we are disobeying Scripture, and anybody who tells us not to test
things is, himself, not in harmony with Scripture. Our hearts cannot be relied
upon to give us the truth. Proverbs 28:26 says, He who trusts in his own heart
is a fool. So do not be a fool. Do not trust your own heart. Do not rely upon
what your heart tells you, because it is not reliable. Again, in Jeremiah 17:9
the prophet says, The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately
wicked: who can know it?
That word deceitful in the Hebrew is a very
interesting word. In 1946, I was attending the
The professor gave a very vivid picture of
what it means to find out the truth about your own heart. He said it is like
someone peeling an onion. You peel off skin after skin, but you never know when
you have reached the last skin - and all the time your eyes are watering. So
that has remained with me now for 50 years - such a vivid, scriptural warning
against relying on my own heart to tell me the truth. There is only one source
of truth, and that is the Scripture.
Mixture Produces Confusion and Division
Now, I would like to give briefly my
summation of this whole phenomenon /movement/whatever-you-want-to-call-it,
based partly on personal observation and partly on what I believe to be reliable
reports. My summation is very simple: it is a mixture of spirits, both the Holy
Spirit and unholy spirits. They are mixed together.
In Leviticus 19:19, God warns us against
mixture. He is opposed to mixture. God says this, "You shall keep My statutes.
You shall not let your livestock breed with another kind. You shall not sow
your field with mixed seed. Nor shall a garment of mixed linen and wool come
upon you." So, God warns against three things: breeding mixed livestock,
sowing with mixed seed and wearing a mixed garment.
We could say that sowing with mixed seed
represents the message that we bring, when it is partly truth and partly error.
Wearing a mixed garment would be like a lifestyle that is partly scriptural and
partly of this world. And letting livestock breed with livestock of an
incompatible kind would be equivalent to a Christian ministry or group aligning
itself with a group or ministry that is non-Christian.
It is an interesting thing about such
breeding; its product is always sterile. For instance, you can mate a horse
with a donkey and the product is a mule. But a mule is always sterile; it
cannot reproduce. I think that is one reason why there are so many
"sterile" operations in Christendom - they are being bred with the
wrong mate.
Now, I have observed this carefully, and I
have had grievous experience of this condition of a mixture of spirits. I find
that it is something which the Scripture warns us against. For instance, there
is a character in the Bible, King Saul, who had a mixture of spirits. At one
time, he prophesied in the Holy Spirit; at another time, he prophesied in a
demon. His career is really a warning. He was a king who ruled for forty years.
He was a successful military commander. He had a lot of successes. But mixture
was his undoing, and his life closed with tragedy. On the last night of his
life, he went to consult a witch, and the next day he committed suicide on the
battlefield. Surely that offers no encouragement to any of us to cultivate any
kind of spiritual mixture in our lives.
I have observed that the result of mixture is
two things: first of all, confusion; and then division. For instance, we have
this mixed message, part of which is true, part of which is false. People can
respond in two ways. Some will see the good and focus on it, and therefore
accept the bad. Some will focus on the bad, and therefore reject the good. In
either case, it does not accomplish God's purposes.
Once upon a time I was a pastor, a long time
ago, but I remember that the most difficult kind of people to deal with were
people who were a mixture. I will give you a little imaginary example. We have
Sister Jones in our congregation. One Sunday she gives a beautiful, prophetic
message and everybody is uplifted, excited. But two Sundays later, she stands
up and gives a revelation which she had in a dream. The further she goes with
this revelation, the more confused and confusing it becomes. Eventually, as
pastor, I have to say to her, "Sister Jones, I thank you, but I really
don't believe that is from the Lord," and she sits down - but that is not
the end. After the meeting, Sister White comes to me and says, "Brother
Prince, how could you talk to Sister Jones like that? Don't you remember that
beautiful prophecy she gave two Sundays ago?" And when Sister White is
gone, Brother Black comes to me, and he says, "If that's the kind of
revelation she has, I won't listen to any more of her prophecies!"
So, you see what we have? Confusion, and out
of confusion, division. I believe that is exactly what is happening in the
church: confusion resulting in division. Certainly there is tremendous
division! I believe confusion will always produce division.
The Bible gives us no liberty to tolerate the
incursion of evil into the church. We are not to be passive; we are not to be
neutral. Proverbs 8:13 says, The fear of the Lord is to hate evil. It is sinful
to compromise with evil. It is sinful to be neutral toward evil. In John 10:10
Jesus spoke about the thief, the devil, who comes: to steal, to kill and to
destroy. We always need to remember, whether it is in an individual life or in
a congregation, the devil only comes with three objectives: to steal, to kill
and to destroy. I can remember many times I have been speaking with a person
who needed deliverance from an evil spirit, and I have said to that person,
"Remember, the devil has three reasons for being in your life: to steal,
to kill and to destroy. You need to take a stand against him, not be neutral -
you must drive him out." What is true of an individual is true of a
congregation. It is true for the body of Christ, worldwide.
Some of these unusual manifestations have
been compared with unusual manifestations that accompanied the ministry of John
Wesley, George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards and Charles Finney. Undoubtedly
there were unusual manifestations in the ministries of those four men, and I
have studied some of them myself, but I think the differences are greater than
the similarities with the present situation. Let me point out to you three
differences:
First of all, all those men majored on the
strong preaching of God's Word. They hardly did anything until they had
preached the Word of God, or apart from the preaching of the Word of God.
Finney, himself, commented somewhere about his ministry, "I usually spoke
an hour or two." I do not know how many contemporary Christians in the
West would listen to a two-hour sermon, but Finney gave the Word in its purity
and in its power.
Second difference: All those men made a
strong call for repentance. That was their primary demand on the people to whom
they ministered. Some people call what we are seeing today "a
refreshing," but in Acts 3:19 Peter says that refreshing must be preceded
by repentance. Any refreshing that bypasses repentance is not scriptural. The
third difference is that in the ministry of those men, there is no record as
far as I know that any of them laid hands on people. I am not saying that it is
unscriptural to lay hands on people, but there is a difference. There is a
situation in which people receive directly for themselves from the preached
Word and another situation in which people have hands laid on them by others.
If I could take a simple example. It is like rain. If you are out in the open
and the rain falls upon you, you have received your rain direct from heaven.
But, on the other hand, if rain is caught and stored in some kind of a cistern,
then you are not receiving that rain direct from heaven. You have to take into
account the cistern and the pipes through which you receive the rain. This is
very vivid for me, because my first wife,
Recently some ministers have moved from
actually laying on hands to some other action of the hands - such as waving or
pointing. However, this does not change the fact that something is being
transmitted through the hands. Otherwise, there is no reason to use the hands
at all. The important question still remains: Are those hands pure channels
through which only the Holy Spirit can flow?
For instance, Ruth and I were in a meeting
fairly recently where ministers deeply involved in the current move were
speaking. We were sitting about two rows behind a woman who was having a
terrible experience. She was like somebody continually trying to burp or trying
to vomit, and she just went on and on and on. Eventually, I said to Ruth,
"I think we ought to try to help her." So, although it was not a
meeting for which we were responsible, we went over quietly and started to talk
to her. We discovered very quickly that she was speaking in a tongue, but for
both of us it was evident that it was a false tongue; it was not a Holy Spirit
tongue. We challenged her to confess that Jesus is Lord, and she was not
willing or able to say that. So I conclude that she had a false spirit.
Later on, the people who were with her came
over and talked to us and asked us what they should do about it. I asked them,
"How did it happen?" And they said, "Well, she went to a church
that's involved in this move and somebody laid hands on her and this is the way
she has been since then. But," they said, "she's convinced it's from
God. We can't help her." That is just an example of "rain" that
came through a "cistern" that was not pure.
Also, in the present move, there is a great
deal of emphasis on love. I agree that love is the greatest thing. But the
trouble is that people are not always clear about the nature of love as it is
described in the New Testament. First of all, love in us is expressed by
obedience to the Lord. Any kind of love that does not result in obedience is
unscriptural love.
In John 14:15, Jesus said to His disciples,
"If you love Me, keep My commandments," or, in a perhaps better text,
"You will keep My commandments." In other words, what is the evidence
that you love Him? The evidence is keeping His commandments. Then in verse 21a.
Jesus says, "He who has My commandments and keeps them. it is he who loves
Me." And in 1 John 5:3, it says, For this is the love of God, that we keep
His commandments. Therefore, any kind of love that does not result in obedience
to the will of God revealed in His Word is not scriptural love. It is a
counterfeit, a substitute for the real thing. Then, we need to consider the way
that God expresses His love toward us. True, God is our Father, and He loves
us. But as a Father, if necessary, He is prepared to discipline us. In the
messages to the seven churches depicted in Revelation, I would say that
So, God's love is not sloppy. It is not
sentimental. It is right down-to- earth. If we are straying from His ways and
if we are disobedient, His love is expressed in rebuking us and chastening us,
and He commands us to repent. Once again we have the problem of trying to get
what God promises, but bypassing the basic condition of repentance - which is a
deception.
I recently read the following comment by a
British Bible teacher: Some Christians take the text "God is love"
and turn it around to mean "Love is God." In other words, nothing can
be wrong if it is rooted in love. However, any love that comes between us and
God is an illegitimate love ... Likewise any love that diverts us from
obedience to God's Word is illegitimate.
The Identity of the Holy Spirit
In all of this that we are speaking about.
this worldwide phenomenon, I believe there is one, central, underlying issue,
which is often obscured. In fact, very seldom do we come really to grips with
this issue.This issue is the identity of the Holy Spirit. How do we recognize
the Holy Spirit? How do we know what the Holy Spirit is like? And how do we
distinguish the Holy Spirit from other spirits? I read a statement recently by
some New-Ager in which she said about the "New Age," "When the
holy spirit comes, then the New Age will be here." Of course I am sure
most of you would understand that when she talks about the holy spirit, she is
not talking about the same Holy Spirit that the Bible speaks about. This is one
of various indications that there is a counterfeit holy spirit. It is nothing
new for Satan to produce a religious counterfeit. Since the time of Jesus,
history records a whole series of counterfeit messiahs who have risen among the
Jewish people. All of them had a following. Some like Sabbetai Zvi, had a
widespread and enduring influence. The latest of them died in 1994.
Another religious counterfiet is the being
titled the "blessed virgin Mary." With all the claims that have been
made for her and all the titles that have been ascribed to her, she bears no
resemblance to the humble Jewish maiden who became the mother of Jesus, and
later of His brothers and sisters. Yet over the centuries this counterfeit has
claimed the devotion of millions of sincere Christians. We need to be on our
guard, therefore, that we do not entertain a counterfeit "holy
spirit." I want to suggest to you three ways to identify the Holy Spirit,
to recognize who the Holy Spirit is.
The first way I refer to in my little booklet
Uproar in the Church, which I wrote about two years ago. I will just quote a
few paragraphs: Another danger that threatens those who minister in the
supernatural realm is the temptation to use spiritual gifts to manipulate or
exploit or dominate people. At one period in my ministry I found myself casting
spirits of witchcraft out of church-going people. Eventually, I asked the Lord
to show me the true nature of witchcraft. I believe the Lord gave me the
following definition: Witchcraft is the attempt to control people and get them
to do what you want by the use of any spirit that is not the Holy Spirit. After
I had digested this, the Lord added: And if anyone has a spirit that he can
use, it is not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God, and no one uses God.
That is very important. The Holy Spirit is God, and no one uses God. Then I
went on to say, Today I tremble inwardly when I see or hear of a person who
claims that he has spiritual gifts which he is free to use just as he pleases.
It is surely no accident that some of those who have made such claims have
ended in serious doctrinal error.
It is important to see that there is a difference
between the Holy Spirit Himself, as a Person, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
In Romans 11:29, Paul tells us that the gifts ... of God are irrevocable. In
other words, once God has given us a gift, He never takes it back. We are free
to use it, not to use it, or to misuse it. But even if we misuse it, God does
not take it back. Otherwise it would not be a genuine gift, it would only be a
conditional loan.
It is a fact that people do misuse gifts of
the Holy Spirit. Paul provides a clear example in I Corinthians 13:1: Though I
speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become
as sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. Obviously the Holy Spirit Himself does
not become a clanging cymbal. But the gift of speaking in tongues - when
misused - can become an empty, discordant noise. Unfortunately this often
happens in Pentecostal and Charismatic circles.
I believe it is possible to misuse other
spiritual gifts - such as a word of knowledge or a gift of healing. This can
happen when a person uses a spiritual gift to achieve a result or promote a
movement which is not in harmony with the will of God. One obvious misuse would
be for personal gain. In such a situation, our safeguard is to be able to
recognize the Holy Spirit as a Person and to distinguish between Him and His
gifts. This, then, is the first and most important fact about the Holy Spirit:
HE IS GOD. And we need to relate to Him and treat Him always as God.
The second fact about the Holy Spirit is that
He is the servant of God the Father and God the Son. This is an exciting
revelation because it gives such a high value to servanthood. Many people today
despise the idea of being a servant. They feel it is demeaning and undignified
to be a servant. But I think it is wonderful that servanthood did not begin on
earth. It began in eternity and it began in God. God the Holy Spirit is the
Servant of the Father and the Son. This does not demean Him or make Him less
than God. But it is a fact that we have to recognize about Him, which directs
His activities and the things He does. In John 16:13-14 Jesus gives us a
glimpse of the Holy Spirit's ministry and activity: "However, when He, the
Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth: for He will not
speak on His own authority [literally: from Himself] but whatever He hears He
will speak: and He will tell you things to come. He will glorify Me, for He
will take of what is Mine and declare it to you." So we see: the Holy
Spirit does not speak from Himself; He has no message of His own. Isn't that
remarkable? He only reports to us what He is hearing from the Father and the
Son. Secondly, His aim is not to glorify Himself, nor to attract attention to
Himself, but always He glorifies and focuses attention on Jesus. That is the second
important way to identify the Holy Spirit.
Now, I want you to listen to this carefully,
because it is revolutionary. Any spirit that focuses on the Holy Spirit and
glorifies the Holy Spirit is not the Holy Spirit. It is contrary to His whole
nature and purpose. Once you have grasped that, it will open your eyes to many
things which are going on in the church that are otherwise difficult to
understand. For example, we have a very beautiful chorus that we sing about the
Father, the Son and the Spirit. The first verse says to the Father,
"Glorify Thy name in all the earth." The second verse says to Jesus
the Son, "Glorify Thy name in all the earth." The third verse says to
the Spirit, "Glorify Thy name in all the earth." I love to sing the
first two verses, but I decline to sing the third verse, because I do not
believe it is scriptural. The Holy Spirit never does glorify His own name. His
purpose is to glorify the One who sent Him.
Let me make another statement which may
surprise you. I have not found in the Scripture anywhere an example of a prayer
addressed to the Holy Spirit. So far as I can understand, no one in the
Scripture ever prayed to the Holy Spirit. You probably would do well to check
that for yourself, but I have looked carefully and have not found one example.
You might ask, "Why so?" And I would give you this answer: It is a
question of heavenly "protocol." There is so little respect nowadays
for protocol on earth that we sometimes do not realize that there is protocol in
heaven. It is protocol relating to a master-servant relationship. In such a
relationship, when you are dealing with a servant, you do not speak to the
servant, but to the master. You ask the master to tell his servant what to do.
It is wrong to directly address a servant when his master is available for you
to speak to. I believe that is heaven's protocol. When you recognize the
relationship of the Holy Spirit to God the Father and God the Son, you
understand that we never give orders to the Holy Spirit. When we want the Holy Spirit
to do something, we address our request to the Father or to the Son.
When I was looking through this, I found a
passage in Ezekiel chapter 37 which I thought, at first, was an exception. It
is part of Ezekiel's well-known vision of the valley full of dry bones with no
life in them. First of all, he prophesied and the bones came together, but they
were still lifeless corpses. Then, in verses 9 and 10: Also He said to me,
"Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, 'Thus
says the Lord GOD: "Come from the four winds, 0 breath, and breathe on
these slain, that they may live."'" So I prophesied as He commanded
me, and breath came into them, and they lived, and stood upon their feet, an
exceedingly great army.
So, I thought that the "breath" is
really a picture of the wind - or the Holy Spirit - and so Ezekiel was praying
to the wind. But he was not praying. He was prophesying. And it did not come
from himself. He merely passed on to the wind a command that he had received
from God Himself. Therefore, as far as I have been able to discover, there is
not a single example anywhere in the Scripture of praying to the Holy Spirit.
Now, I am not seeking to make a big issue out of that. On the other hand, I
think it is very important as we try to discern the nature and the ministry of
the Holy Spirit. You would say to me, "Well, doesn't God hear our prayer
when we pray to the Holy Spirit?" I think He does. But we are not praying
in full accord with heaven's protocol. If we really want to please the Lord and
show respect for Him, we will show respect for His protocol.
The third important fact about the Holy
Spirit is what is indicated in His name: He is Holy. This is His primary title:
the Holy Spirit. In Hebrew it is the Spirit of Holiness. He has many other
titles: for instance, the Spirit of Grace, the Spirit of Truth, the Spirit of
Power, and so on, But they are all subsidiary. His name and His primary title
is the Holy Spirit. Anything that is unholy does not proceed from the Holy Spirit.
The Scripture also speaks of the beauty of
holiness. There is a beauty in holiness when it proceeds from the Holy Spirit.
It is not necessarily external. It may be internal beauty. For instance, in I
Peter 3:4, Peter speaks about the hidden person of the heart, and he speaks
about the adornment of a meek and quiet spirit, which in the sight of God is of
great price. This is not external beauty. It is internal beauty, which comes
from the Holy Spirit. I want to say, however, with the utmost emphasis: Anything
unholy or ugly does not proceed from the Holy Spirit.
I will give you a list of 12 adjectives, all
of which I believe cannot be applied to the Holy Spirit or to anything that is
the product of the Holy Spirit. As I go through the list, I suggest you check
mentally and see if you agree with me. Here, then, are words that would never
apply to the Holy Spirit:
self-exalting
self-assertive
degrading
flippant
rude
sham
vulgar
indecent
insensitive
stupid
silly
degraded
I have in my heart, if God wills and I live,
to write a book at some time of which I have already chosen the title. The
title is this: Holiness Is Not Optional. Only God knows whether I will ever
succeed in writing the book, but I want to say, in any case, that the title
states the exact truth. In the Christian life, holiness is not optional. Many
Christians seem to think about holiness as if it is like something added to a
car, such as fancy leather upholstery instead of the normal kind of plastic.
But that is not true. Holiness is an essential part of salvation. In Hebrews
12:14 the writer says, Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without
which no man will see the Lord. What salvation do we have that does not bring
us to see the Lord? But without holiness, no one will see the Lord.
We have in our contemporary Western
Christianity a very incomplete picture of salvation. "If I get saved and
born again, and then I want to go on and be holy. I can do it - but it is an
option." I want to tell you that your salvation depends on your being
holy. And holiness comes only from the Holy Spirit.
There are many features of purported moves of
the Holy Spirit that I could pick out and hold up as examples of things that
are not holy. But I will only deal with one, and that is: animal behavior in
human beings attributed to the Holy Spirit. There are many such examples, some
I have witnessed and some have been reported.
First of all, there is no passage in
Scripture that I know of where the Holy Spirit causes any human being to behave
like an animal. There is the example of Balaam, but that is a strong contrast.
God caused Balaam's donkey to speak like a man - but He never caused Balaam to
bray like a donkey!
There was one man whom God caused to behave
like an animal: Nebuchadnezzar. He was driven from men and ate grass like oxen;
his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair had grown like eagles'
feathers and his nails like birds' claws. (Daniel 4:33) But that was God's
judgment, not His blessing! Revelation 4:6-8 depicts four living creatures that
surround the throne of God. Three are there as representatives of the
"animal" kingdom: a lion, a calf and an eagle. But none of them make
noises that express their "animal" nature. All of them alike proclaim
the holiness of God in pure and beautiful speech. It is important to understand
that there is an order in God's creation.
Man was created in the image and likeness of
God to exercise authority over the animal kingdom (see Genesis 1:26). Man is,
in fact, the highest order of the creation described in the opening chapters of
Genesis. This has a bearing on the way the Holy Spirit blesses us. He uplifts
those whom He blesses. He will at times cause an animal to act in some ways
like a human being. But He will never degrade a human being by causing him to
act like an animal.
I have a certain amount of experience in this
area because I have encountered animal spirits many times in
There are many others. We dealt with spirits
of wild boars that caused people to burrow in the earth with their noses like a
wild boar rooting for something. Then there were many snake spirits. These were
mainly in women, and when they were manifested, the women were flat on their
bellies slithering around like snakes. All these I actually witnessed myself.
There was one other spirit that I did not
witness, but heard about from the missionary couple who organized the meeting.
Later I met the lady concerned. She was a very sweet Christian lady - a school
teacher - but her husband was an elephant hunter. When she came to the
missionary couple for deliverance, they commanded the elephant spirit to come
out. Immediately she dropped on her hands and knees, crawled out through an
open door, put her forehead up against a small tree, and began to try to push
it down. Wasn't that remarkable? Perhaps some well-meaning Western Christian
might have said, "Our sister is pushing a tree down for Jesus," but
that was not the explanation. The elephant spirit in her was causing her to do
what elephants regularly do, which is push down trees with their foreheads. As
soon as she was delivered from that spirit, she no longer had any urge to push
trees down with her forehead. In the West, we sometimes tend to speak about the
people in
Another example of which various reports have
been given is people behaving like dogs. I am a dog lover, but I think dogs
should be kept in their rightful place. I do not believe that the Holy Spirit
ever causes anybody to bark or to run around like a dog.
Where such manifestations of animal spirits
have occurred, there are certain steps that we need to take. We cannot tolerate
or encourage such manifestations. Nor can we merely sweep all this under the
carpet and go on as if nothing had happened.
In Matthew 12:33, Jesus instructs us:
"Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or else make the tree bad
and its fruit bad; for a tree is known by its fruit." Wherever there is
bad fruit, it comes from a bad tree. It is not enough to get rid of the bad
fruit. We must also cut down the bad tree that produced it. If we fail to do
this, the bad tree will go on producing more bad fruit. Undoubtedly the tree
that produces animal behavior of this kind is some form of occult or pagan
practice. For instance, there are frequent manifestations of animal behavior in
some parts of Africa and
To cut down the tree requires that the
leaders responsible identify the problem, confess it as sin and repent of it.
Nowhere in the Bible is there any ground to suppose that God will forgive sins
that we are not willing to confess. Somebody has said, "The confession
must be as wide as the transgression." If leaders have tolerated these
things in the presence of their people, then in the presence of their people
they need to confess it as a sin and cancel it. Otherwise, if the bad tree is
not cut down, it will go on producing bad fruit.
In closing, I want to give a little
"parable" of my own construction, which is about my relationship with
my wife. In this parable my wife represents the Holy Spirit and I represent
God. Now please understand, this is a very simple little parable and I am fully
aware that the Holy Spirit is not the wife of God. But with those cautions, let
me relate the parable.
A friend comes to me and says, "I saw
you and your wife together on the platform the other evening and she looked so
beautiful, so fresh, so full of the Holy Spirit." So I say, "Thank
you. That's really how she is." Then, a little later, the same man comes
to me and says, "You know, yesterday I saw your wife in a bar with a man
drinking." And I say, "That was not my wife! My wife is a pure and
godly woman. She does not go to bars and she does not drink with strangers. My
wife was right here with me all day yesterday. Don't speak that way about my
wife!"
But a little later, he comes to me and says,
"You know, I saw your wife yesterday sunbathing topless on the
beach." Then I get really angry. I say to him, "My wife was nowhere
near the beach yesterday, and she would never expose herself like that! If you
want to remain my friend, you've got to come to the place where you don't
identify that loose, immoral woman as my wife, because that's an insult to her
and to me, If you want to remain my friend, you've got to change the way you
speak about my wife."
The application, of course, is this: if you
want to remain a friend of God, you cannot afford to identify His Holy Spirit
as something that is loose or immoral or ugly or unholy, because that angers
God intensely.
Now we come to one final Scripture, which is
in Matthew 12:31-32. Jesus says, "Therefore I say to you, every sin and
blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not
be forgiven men. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be
forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit it will not be
forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come."
That is a very solemn and frightening
warning. We are warned by Jesus Himself to be very, very careful how we speak
about the Holy Spirit, how we represent the Holy Spirit.
Jesus uses the word blasphemy, and I decided
to look it up in my big Greek lexicon. The primary meaning of to blaspheme is
given in the lexicon as this: to speak lightly or amiss of sacred things. So
when you speak lightly or amiss concerning the Holy Spirit, or misrepresent the
character of the Holy Spirit, by definition you are close to blaspheming.
If you have ever done that, or been prone to
do it, or been associated with those who do it, I want to offer you some
sincere advice: You need to repent. You need to settle that matter once and for
all with God and never again be guilty of misrepresenting God's Holy Spirit.
For the Holy Spirit is holy and He is God.
-------------------
[The above is
Chapter One of a 3-chapter book put out by Derek Prince Ministries.
Used by permission. Web-site- http://www.derekprince.com/ - other articles
& books, etc].
copyright ©
Derek Prince Ministries
Originally published July 1996
Revised and expanded November 1996.
Derek Prince
Ministries - International
DPMI Web Site- http://www.derekprince.com/