DEMONS DON’T KNOCK!

I recently watched a Youtube video about a man who apparently died and went to heaven. He spoke of meeting Jesus and being shown many glorious things there. He also was shown dark, foreboding places, and hideous, demonic creatures. Jesus showed him he had power resident in him by the Holy Spirit. He instructed him to speak out in tongues with a mental intent toward certain evil. This he did there in the spirit. He was given this tongues injunction, and returned to the land of the living. Now, that was his ministry message.

More than a measure of truth in this touched my heart. You see, like many people who make a profession of Christ, believing they are “born-again,” and then settling into a weekly Christian routine culminating in the gathering, the realm of the supernatural had never been part and parcel in my life. No visions, no dreams, no angelic meetings, nothing smacking of the unseen realm ever confronted me [I say this with one caveat: when I was dating, I kissed a girl on the second date, and cannot deny an inner, explosive moment took place, and the words were spoken more like an inner knowing: ‘this is the woman you will spend the rest of your life with!].

This all changed when my wife and I had a ‘post’ born again experience. It was in the late 70’s that we seemed drawn to a deeper spiritual walk with the Lord. There was a movement afoot that seemed to operate above the denominational separation. It was later termed the Charismatic Movement. Principally, we longed for to see the Word preached with signs and wonders following those who believed. The spiritual gifts spoken of in I Corinthians 12 were allowed for and welcomed. Little then did we know that a longstanding aversion toward such gifts had been raging within the organized church World. We understand more now the reasons why.

After embracing what is commonly termed the baptism in/of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in other tongues, life changed. I didn’t need confirmation regarding an unseen realm, I believed such existed. However, those unseen things had always been just that: illusory. One of the first spooky things to happen was I learned that unseen entities freely come into your home unawares and listen to your conversation.

You see I began the gift of tongues speaking slowly, like a child. A few words at a time until I was fluid in utterance. This took at least a week. Meanwhile, my wife cloistered herself in the bedroom, to develop her gift. After three days or so, I came to her to see how she was doing. Unlike my experience, she was having a vision, no utterances. Eyes shut she saw as it were a wall with strange writing, a script of some kind. So cool! I asked her if she could write it, for which she tried, unsuccessfully. Then I remembered the Gideon Bible has John 3:16 in about 26 World languages. Acquiring that, we discovered what was written on her wall wasn’t there. In time as she released her tongue to speaking syllables, the wall writing grew faint, and disappeared when she finally spoke more fluently! I felt only slightly perturbed, because her’s was a unique experience and mine seemed ho-hum, as expected [my fleshly response].

We understood from the teaching we were receiving that the 9 gifts of I Cor. 12 are given by the Holy Spirit dispensed to members for the building up of the congregation as a whole, and these are given out when and as the Spirit wills. However, speaking in tongues in a church setting is vastly different from the individual gift given to each believer to use daily as they will. [I have since written an ebooklet explaining this called: TAKING HOLD! SPEAKING IN OTHER TONGUES at Amazon.com]

The Apostle Paul gave an injunction to “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” Expecting God to move by his Holy Spirit in church was new information! Early on, I naively thought to help Him with that. One evening after my wife went to bed, I was praying out loud offering myself to be used of the Spirit to edify the church. I was asking for the Holy Spirit to flow through me with one or more of the aforementioned gifts! I even went so far as to list several that seemed interesting, one being the discerning of spirits.

Our bedroom was dark. I climbed into bed and no sooner pulled the covers up to my chin than a hideous vision of a slimy green, elfin-like fangy demon flashed before me. So surprising was this, my body jerked, actually ‘rebounding’ into the mattress as these words were spoken: “And you want to be involved with this?” The intonation was more than questioning.

Wow! I knew I was dealing with a demon an evil spirit of some kind, so I rolled over and under my breath spoke aloud commanding it to depart. Then I fell asleep. I didn’t think it necessary to share this experience with my wife, and didn’t. I should have in hindsight. The week went by without incident.

Then one night after we were in bed, Jean started yelling at something, swatting the air above her face. Reluctantly she described the same harassing spirit that had confronted me just the week before! In her case there was no audible voice. It was then we realized this thing was invading our home, and my 12 year-old daughter was upstairs! Together we cast that demon out of our house, forbade it from ever returning or bothering us again in Jesus name. It went. But what this demon-strated was these unseen entities creep into our lives and eavesdrop on our conversations and way of life! Think of all the information they have gathered about Christian behavior through the Centuries!

If you carefully parse the spread of the gospel in the Acts, and pay close attention to passages pertaining to the Apostle Paul, you will see that “taking hold” of the Holy Spirit [e.g. personal use speaking in other tongues] was very important to him. So much so, that over in I Cor. 14 he thanks God that he speaks in tongues more than the Corinthian Christians did! Given that, we might posit that every congregation Paul had a hand in raising up was a gifts-in-operation, tongues talking group!

In addition to corrupting the human DNA pool, Lucifer has been ever active attempting to emaciate the power of the Holy Spirit in the life of believers everywhere. May the remnant take hold!

Postscript

If you are not intrigued enough to dig out my ebook, I will be more than glad to email you a copy of the Appendix B which makes a case for tongues in the spiritual armament given to Christians, and what I believe to be a glossed over biblical idiom, en pneuma.