Let's do a little dance...a party with you

“Smokin', snortin', shootin', suckin', tokin', poppin', droppin'. Let's do a little dance...party with you" -Mike (Chris Farley) in Black Sheep

With the recent Florida Outpouring revival news and various other in your face examples of Toronto-Brownsville-Vineyardish manifestations being claimed as a work of God, I desire to share a few things. I have been down this road in the past both personally and as part of a house church network I was connected with in the 90's. I have seen and experienced the gifts of the real Holy Spirit and the authentic move of God and also the questionable and the down right un-holy spirit.

It's a tough world to swim within and discerning what is really God and isn’t, is often a real challenge. But more than anything I learned during those seasons of renewal, revival? and wild services, was that ignoring “red flags’ in my gut...was not spiritual. Looking back I see that the Lord spoke to my heart through the scriptures and the warnings of the Spirit more times than I was willing to trust.

We experienced great movings of God in a season of visitation that both refreshed, renewed, revealed and unveiled and exposed. As a result we saw God, flesh, satan and human frailty, insecurity and dysfunction in those visitations. In the end some people grew up, some got divorced, others left the church or the dream of real church life. Some got jaded, others pressed through and became a little wiser. When people pray for a visitation from God, they really have no clue what they are asking for...its like lighting a stick of dynamite...things will change, some for the good and some for the bad. Below is an example of the at least irresponsible and probably heretical presentation of the Holy Spirit and or the very counterfeit work of the enemy.


I see the same stirrings again...here are some of the red flags I see swirling around in the conversation, reports and publications via the web or print.

There are now post-denominational, neo-Pentecostal, half-modern in a post-modern suit, "new charismatics"; with their "new" wine & new wine skin-post-church or post-something mantras leading churches, meetings and movements. There are unaccountable, unhinged, loose cannon emerging "from something, but falling into something else" prophets and apostles out of the woods now.

The messengers and the messages must be dealt with. Here is some “signs” of the version of a gospel they are spreading:

-Overt and public displaying of power, that grand stands, is pompish and popeish, pushy, aggressive and always seems to be loud, shouting and grips your forehead with conquering force.  

-An ooey-gooey, pubescent like, syrupy, jesus is my lover, romance novelish, pseudo-spiritual-sexual intimacy focus.

-The odd, overcoming, drunken, sloshed, off in a distance stare, teenie bopperish giggling, jerking-tweeking-lurching and now whacked drug-like induced trances and supposed anointing'.

-The generally unsubstantiated, un-recorded, easily faked, supposed miracles; always seem like the elusive big-foot and alien appearance videos...always claiming and never quite proving the events.

-Their unquestioned, never challenged, hard to argue with always private and personal God-Spirit-Angel voices, and the over the top, super spiritual, God told me, God said...24-7 God talk.

-The out right strange, above and beyond, non or slightly biblical visitations.

-A host of other oddities are sweeping some parts of the church....Angel feathers, gems from heaven, gold dust, spirit fog, bread/manna showing up, spiritual oil dripping from hands, a heavenly dentist appearing and filling or capping teeth with gold, people dropping pounds in a service and on and on it goes...the only things I have not seen or heard of yet, is snake handling and drinking poison, but I am sure we will get some new and improved version soon.

More later...

Confusion, doubt and....false teaching.

So, then just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in Him, rooted and built up in Him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught...see to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ." -Colossians 2:6-8
I am currently engaged in a ongoing sermon series dealing with doubt's about the truth of Christianity and the Bible. After watching this video clip, I am reenergized about the necessity of helping seekers & believers understand the truth of God's word even more. I am not a fan of the "left behindish" flavor of the this clip, its melodramatic and painfully reminiscent of the old "Mark of the Beast" movies in the 80's. But even still, the false teaching the Oprah is presenting is alarming. Scripture warns of being led astray from Christ through men and women who reframe, reinvent, redress and repackage age old lies:
"Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you for the prize. Such a person goes into great detail about what he has seen and his unspiritual mind puffs him up with idle notions. He has lost his connection with the Head (Christ)." -Colossians 2:18-19a