Watchman Nee on Holy Laughter

“A great number of people desire to have joy in their feeling. The so-called holy laugh is an extreme case in point. It is taught that if a person is filled with the Holy Spirit he invariably will have this holy laugh. He who claims to have this kind of laughing cannot control himself. Without any reason he will laugh and laugh and laugh as if infected by a certain disease, and will appear to be partially insane.”

Once in a certain meeting, after the sermon was concluded, it was announced that everybody should seek for this holy laugh. All began to beat tables or chairs, jumping and leaping all around, until not long afterwards this so-called holy laughing came. People would merely look at one another and break out laughing. The more they thought about it the funnier it became. And so they could not contain themselves and kept on laughing. What is this? Can this possibly be the fullness of the Holy Spirit? Can this be His work? No, this is plainly one of the works of the soul.”

Watchman Nee,  The Latent Power of the Soul (1932).

See also http://endtimespropheticwords.wordpress.com/2007/12/17/godfrey-the-godly-giggler-a-case-of-holy-laughter/ and http://endtimespropheticwords.wordpress.com/2007/12/17/rodney-howard-browne-says-you-have-to-be-drunk/  and http://endtimespropheticwords.wordpress.com/2007/08/21/signs-wonders-bizarre-spiritual-manifestations/ and http://endtimespropheticwords.wordpress.com/2008/01/05/on-false-prophets-strange-fire-wolves-in-sheeps-clothing/ and http://endtimespropheticwords.wordpress.com/2008/03/30/modern-day-signs-and-wonders-hypnotism-and-trancework/ and http://endtimespropheticwords.wordpress.com/2007/08/04/the-toronto-blessingor-curse/ for other related articles.

Benny Hinn causes death from his antics on stage

In September 1986, Mrs. Ella Peppard, aged 85, died as a result of someone falling on top of her who had been ’slain in the spirit’ by Benny Hinn at one of his healing and miracle crusades. As a result of the person toppling on top of her, she fractured her hip and died in hospital 15 days later.

Hinn’s ushers quickly pulled Ella off the stage and sat her in a pew where she cried out in pain for about 20 minutes. The woman’s family alleged the ushers refused to call an ambulance because an ambulance would not look good at a miracle service. The attorney representing the deceased Ella’s family, Carl Hughes, said videotapes of the incident disclosed that Hinn’s ministry failed to quickly summon an ambulance, despite repeated requests to do so, and the woman howling in pain before them. 

The obvious question has to be asked here – why didn’t Benny Hinn’s staff ask Benny Hinn to pray to God to heal her? After all, he was right there at the time, just yards away! Perhaps, it is because his staff  know he can’t really heal and is only a charlatan, because they see the real Benny, the man behind the mask, with all his false testimony, the lies, the gross exagerations, the false prophecies, and the swanking it up in US$10,000 a night hotel rooms and goodness knows what else? Surely, if healing and miracles really were happening before them, that’s the first thing anyone  would do.

Don’t misunderstand me, I have nothing whatsoever against medical intervention BUT there is no reason why both remedies – human and spiritual – could not have been applied while the ambulance/medics were awaited that night. Does the ‘ministry’ really lack the integrity (not to mention love and basic human decency) to call out professional medical help when a human being is suffering terribly because of a terrible accident happening during a show – because it will make them look  bad? Is it because they really are, all about money making?

And of course, the other obvious question is, if  it really were the Holy Spirit operating on stage through Benny Hinn when the person fell on the victim that died as a consequence of the fall, the word of God, the Holy Spirit through whom all things were created – well, He’s rather careless if so and rather slapdash! Don’t you think He’d be a bit more careful and make the person topple over properly and safely, if He were really doing such a marvellous work? It is the enemy  that comes to steal, to rob, to kill, to destroy….not God. And being slain in the spirit is not scriptural anyway. None of Jesus’s flock were ever slain – they were just healed, or raised from the dead – far from falling to the ground backwards (classic hypnotic induction), they jumped up to their feet and shouted their praise or fell forwards as an act of will in praise and worship. Do you know why slain in the spirit exists in the modern day chuch? – because it is quackery, very easy to induce by either pushing (we’ve all  seen ministers pushing!), mispaced faith, high expectation (remove the catchers from the ministry line and people do not tend to fall) and mesmerism/hypnotism). Don’t believe me? Read the next few posts on this subject!

{Article one here http://endtimespropheticwords.wordpress.com/2008/03/30/modern-day-signs-and-wonders-hypnotism-and-trancework/ 

Article two here  http://endtimespropheticwords.wordpress.com/2008/03/29/watchman-nee-on-holy-laughter/ 

Article three here http://endtimespropheticwords.wordpress.com/2008/03/30/derren-brown-instant-conversion-and-slain-in-the-spirit/ }

Anyway, the woman’s family sued Hinn, pastor of the Orlando Christian Center, for US$5 million. Carl Hughes of Oklahoma City, attorney for the victim’s family, said Benny Hinn’s ministry recently awarded the family a large but undisclosed cash settlement a day before the trial was to begin.

In another incident, Evelyn Kuykendall of Marshville, North Carolina, won a $300,000 jury verdict from faith healers Charles and Frances Hunter after she broke her back when “catchers” were not able to catch her when she was (supposedly) slain in the Spirit.

See also http://endtimespropheticwords.wordpress.com/2008/03/27/benny-hinn-video-watch-this-if-you-have-not-already/ and  http://endtimespropheticwords.wordpress.com/2008/02/20/roll-up-for-benny-hinns-miracle-crusade/ 

Leaving the Episcopal Church

Further to my articles here, and the cry to come out of th Anglican church because if its heresy – see here http://endtimespropheticwords.wordpress.com/2008/03/29/more-church-of-england-apostasy-come-out-of-her-my-people/  and here http://endtimespropheticwords.wordpress.com/2008/03/27/progressive-christianity-or-a-step-backwards/   and even here http://endtimespropheticwords.wordpress.com/2008/03/29/rick-warrens-social-gospel/, it is refreshing to find some ministers refusing to compromise and identify themselves with an institution rife with spiritual adultery and compromise, and breaking their links. I found this article from the Washington Post (the Episcopalian Church and the Anglican/’Church of England’ church are very much tied together)-

Why we Left the Episcopal Church

‘When even President Gerald Ford’s funeral at Washington National Cathedral is not exempt from comment about the crisis in the Episcopal Church, we believe it is time to set the record straight as to why our church and so many others around the country have severed ties with the Episcopal Church.

Fundamental to a liberal view of freedom is the right of a person or group to define themselves, to speak for themselves and to not be dehumanized by the definitions and distortions of others. This right we request even of those who differ from us.

The core issue in why we left is not women’s leadership. It is not “Episcopalians against equality,” as the headline on a recent Post op-ed by Harold Meyerson put it. It is not a “leftward” drift in the church. It is not even primarily ethical — though the ordination of a practicing homosexual as bishop was the flash point that showed how far the repudiation of Christian orthodoxy had gone.

The core issue for us is theological: the intellectual integrity of faith in the modern world. It is thus a matter of faithfulness to the lordship of Jesus, whom we worship and follow. The American Episcopal Church no longer believes the historic, orthodox Christian faith common to all believers. Some leaders expressly deny the central articles of the faith — saying that traditional theism is “dead,” the incarnation is “nonsense,” the resurrection of Jesus is a fiction, the understanding of the cross is “a barbarous idea,” the Bible is “pure propaganda” and so on. Others simply say the creed as poetry or with their fingers crossed.

It would be easy to parody the “Alice in Wonderland” surrealism of Episcopal leaders openly denying what their faith once believed, celebrating what Christians have gone to the stake to resist — and still staying on as leaders. But this is a serious matter.

First, Episcopal revisionism abandons the fidelity of faith. The Hebrew scriptures link matters of truth to a relationship with God. They speak of apostasy as adultery — a form of betrayal as treacherous as a husband cheating on his wife.

Second, Episcopal revisionism negates the authority of faith. The “sola scriptura” (”by the scriptures alone”) doctrine of the Reformation church has been abandoned for the “sola cultura” (by the culture alone) way of the modern church. No longer under authority, the Episcopal Church today is either its own authority or finds its authority in the shifting winds of intellectual and social fashion — which is to say it has no authority.

Third, Episcopal revisionism severs the continuity of faith. Cutting itself off from the universal faith that spans the centuries and the continents, it becomes culturally captive to one culture and one time. While professing tolerance and inclusiveness, certain Episcopal attitudes toward fellow believers around the world, who make up a majority of the Anglican family, have been arrogant and even racist.

Fourth, Episcopal revisionism destroys the credibility of faith. There is so little that is distinctively Christian left in the theology of some Episcopal leaders, such as the former bishop of Newark, that a skeptic can say, as Oscar Wilde said to a cleric of his time, “I not only follow you, I precede you.” It is no accident that orthodox churches are growing and that almost all the great converts to the Christian faith in the past century, such as G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis, have been attracted to full-blooded orthodoxy, not to revisionism. The prospect for the Episcopal Church, already evident in many dioceses, is inevitable withering and decline.

Fifth, Episcopal revisionism obliterates the very identity of faith. When the great truths of the Bible and the creeds are abandoned and there is no limit to what can be believed in their place, then the point is reached when there is little identifiably Christian in Episcopal revisionism. Would that Episcopal leaders showed the same zeal for their faith that they do for their property. If the present decline continues, all that will remain of a once strong church will be empty buildings, kept going by the finances, though not the faith, of the fathers.

These are the outrages we protest. These are the infidelities that drive us to separate. These are the real issues to be debated. We remain Anglicans but leave the Episcopal Church because the Episcopal Church first left the historic faith. Like our spiritual forebears in the Reformation, “Here we stand. So help us God. We can do no other.”

The Rev. John Yates is rector and Os Guinness is a parishioner of The Falls Church, one of several Virginia churches that voted last month to sever ties with the Episcopal Church.’

Article by Rev. John Yates and Os Guinness, The Washington Post, January 8th 2007

Rick Warren’s social gospel

Rick Warren, a megachurch pastor and philanthropist who is courted by political leaders worldwide, says he thinks Christianity needs a “second Reformation” that would steer the church away from divisive politics and be “about deeds, not creeds.”  (endtimes note – eg humanist based religion leaving Christ out of it)

Speaking today to a group of Washington Post reporters and editors, the evangelical author said he had an “epiphany” in recent years due to his wife’s battle with cancer and the success of his book, “The Purpose Driven Life,” which has sold more than 25 million copies. Humbled and scared, he said he decided to focus on helping the needy and the sick, particularly those with AIDS…

“I just think we’re becoming too rude,” he said. “You have no right to demonize someone just because you disagree with them.” … (endtimes note – so you can no longer boldly say Christ is the only way to heaven with confidence as all religions could be right?)

“People are so worried churches are going to be about conversion,”  (endtimes note - that used to be a given!)  he said, “but everyone has a motive. Everyone has a world view. Christianity is a world view. . . . I don’t care why you do good as long as you do good.”  (endtimes note – but doing good is not the gospel, it is only part of it. If you do not have Christ at the centre, you have nothing.)

Article from Washington Post, 5th February 2008, with comments bolded and my comments added in italics…

Please read this article if you have not yet already on Rick Warren… http://endtimespropheticwords.wordpress.com/2008/03/20/prophecy-re-rick-warren-purpose-driven-life-purpose-driven-churches/

More Church of England apostasy – come out of her, my people!

‘A diocese of the Church of England is giving an unprecedented £250,000 towards a multi-faith building in which the largest amount of worship space will be reserved for Muslims.

The Guildford diocese is one of the wealthiest in the UK. The Bishop of Guildford, the Right Rev Christopher Hill, today handed over the £250,000 cheque to Surrey University for the first multi-faith building of its kind in Britain.

The £6.5 million building will contain separate worship spaces for the Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Sikh communities, along with a further shared space for Buddhists and Hindus.

All faiths will share the cafe in the basement, with a shared staircase down from the upper floors.

Converting each other will be strictly forbidden, an insider said, but it is hoped that the different faith members will form friendships, learn to respect each other and enhance each other’s understanding.

Muslim chaplain Dr Abdul Mateen Sansom, said: “As well as being a sorely needed practical solution to student needs, I believe the design and underpinning ethos of this project have potential for notable impact nationally and internationally.”

Lesley Scordellis, lead fundraiser for the centre and development manager at Surrey University, defended the Muslim advantage in the space allocation.

“It isn’t about giving greater provision for Muslims, it is about likely numbers using it. We certainly have a strong demand for worship space from the Muslim community,” she said.

“We do sit right beside Guildford Cathedral so the relative provision in the locality is very different.”

She continued: “We think it is the first of its kind. It breaks with the tradition of having a shared space for each faith. It is all in the same building but each has a completely separate space. The Jewish space has a kosher kitchen exclusively for them to use. The Muslim space has an ablutions facility exclusively for them. The design of the building is to facilitate the feeling that they are in one building about faith.”

Professor Christopher Snowden, the university’s vice-chancellor, said he was “delighted” by the support from the diocese. “Local support of this nature is crucial to our fundraising.”

Bishop Hill said: “We are proud to participate in this significant venture toward world understanding here in Surrey.”

A fundraising campaign has begun to raise the rest of the cash. The mutli-faith centre is due for completion in 2010.’

Article by Ruth Gledhill from The Times, UK, Feb. 21st 2008

About the same time this article came out, the Bishop of Oxford complained  in the press about all the flack he is getting because of his support  for the Moslem Call to prayer to resound loudly over Oxford.

The Anglican Church gets worse and worse by the day – and interfaith New Ager Prince Charles is not even its official head yet. God help us should that ever happen.