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I was trying to figure out how many times that I had preached at my former church and I think that I have over 1,000 times not counting revivals and mission trips plus the Monday nights in Tuscaloosa. In addition to that, I also have attended hundreds of charismatic church services and sat in class every day for two years in a Charismatic seminary.

I have a tremendous amount of experience in the Charismatic Movement which is based on the Gifts of the Holy Ghost. In the Charismatic church you have the running, dancing, falling out, tongues messages, mail readings, supposed faith healings, words from God, personal prophecies, words of wisdom and on and on. It is a common experience in the Charismatic church to have someone come up to you and speak into your life. I have had this happen to me so many times that I cannot remember. I have had dozens of church members and ministers come up to me and say, “God told me to tell you…………….” or “Thus saith the Lord………..”.

Think about it. Joe the plumber comes up to you at church and tells you that Almighty God Lord Jehovah has personally spoken to him about your personal life. Or you walk into a meeting and the prophet calls you to the front and starts telling you, in front of everyone, your junk. I have had more than one prophet “read my mail”. It use to fascinate me how these people were able to hear from God.

Trouble is that I became close and intimate friends with several people that moved in the gifts. One person told me that they could “read people’s mail” even before they were saved. My wife Coni can do it. That’s one reason why I could never cheat on her. She would know. She knows everything it seems.

But is she hearing from the Holy Spirit or a familiar spirit? I had another popular minister tell me that his ministry was partly “Mental” which was his way of saying he manipulated people. Often in the prayer line he would grab people by their head and scream JESUS. It would scare the crap out of them. The adrenalin rush would over ride the symptom, and he knew it. He had a routine, of putting pressure on people by standing them up and asking if they had been healed. Of course, peer pressure and manipulation would influence them to testify that they had been healed. I have been to this ministers meetings many, many times and have never seen a single real healing outside of a stomach ache.

I have had other minister friends look me right in the eye and tell me exactly what was going on in my life. In each case, I can debunk what happened. My personal life is all over the Internet. I have been on TV and in the papers. I always shared my heart from the pulpit, and my Cd’s are all over the world. It would be very easy to read my mail.

I firmly believe that much of what happens in the Charismatic church is emotion, learned behavior, peer pressure, mass hysteria and fearfully, Familiar Spirits.

I did a word study on Familiar Spirits. You can Google it and read many articles. Familiar comes from a Latin word that means family. It was thought that certain sorcerers, witches and wizards could have a household spirit to help them with charms, healings and knowing mysteries. This is in the Bible too. Familiar comes from the Hebrew word “OB” which means: a leather vessel, like a wine pouch. They believed that people could be vessels to spirits.

I believe that many people in the Charismatic Church have opened themselves up unto demonic deception and activity by seeking words from Prophets and such. I believe that it is a dangerous thing, to have a mere man tell you that he is speaking on the behalf of God with personal information about your life. These situations are almost always in a public setting.

I wonder, if I have the Written Word of God and the Holy Spirit living inside of me, why should I listen to what some yahoo has to say to me? I will not receive any “word” from anyone. I will receive biblical preaching, biblical counseling, biblical teaching, but I will never ever again subject myself to the mutterings of so called and self anointed prophets.

I know many people who are wasting their time holding on to some word some preacher gave them about something. I met one minister that pastors 30 people in a country church. He has had 30 people for like 30 years.

Nothing wrong with that, but he got up in front of us and said that God told him he would have a thousand people in his church. Well, he is getting on up there in years, so I hope it happens in a hurry. I have seen so much abuse and manipulation in this movement. Oh I wish I had a dollar for everyone that has told me that God has spoken out loud to them. I would build a mega church in Sudan! I could write about this subject all night long. more later.

http://faithpreacher.blogspot.com/2008/10/familiar-spirits.html

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