End Times Prophetic, Prophecy, Visions, Dreams, Revelation, Christian Blog

For all those going to Todd Bentley’s healing revival, or otherwise experiencing the spiritual manifestations associated with his ministry and/or the ministry of others like him, please, please, please,  if you do nothing else, please read about a man called John Lacy and learn from his experiences here: http://endtimespropheticwords.wordpress.com/2008/01/05/on-false-prophets-strange-fire-wolves-in-sheeps-clothing/    This is quite a long post, but it contains vital information about a sincere and passionate man after God who was sincerely and passionately led astray.

John Lacy was a man after God who had amazing spiritual experiences which knock spots off even the likes of Todd Bentley’s alleged experiences, but it was no doubt that Satan was behind many of Lacy’s experiences as we see the fruit of them by seeing just how far John Lacy and some of the associated French Prophets with him were led astray.

People advocating the third wave are proclaiming the things that are happening at Todd Bentley’s meetings as broadcast on God TV are brand new - too early to judge the fruit from, some claim - but these ’spiritual’ things are not new at all. Apart from the associated Toronto Blessing just fourteen years ago, and the Pensacola Revival a year or so after that, these things have happened for centuries. But the reason why most  charismatics or Pentecostals have not heard about these experiences, these signs and wonders and these spiritual gifts pre the well known Azusa Street Revival last century (apart from some casual references to John Wesley, George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards in a twisted, distorted and selective potted church history from the likes of Rodney Howard Browne) is that they are part of a church history that pentecostals are desperate to suppress. The reason being is that these prophecies, manifestations and experiences were exclusively associated with false teaching, with cults and heresies - some with disastrous consequences (eg the episode around John of Leiden, King of Munster).  If one looks at the history of these bizarre manifestations with an open mind, all one sees are bad fruit - heresies and blasphemies and elitism and unfulfilled prophecy and disappointment. But one sees some very passionate and sincere people nonetheless in these movements, so hungry for God, so hungry for the supernatural, so running after experience they did not stop to test the spirit behind their experiences. So hungry they will get led astray and dine at wolves’ tables.

If history teaches us anything, it teaches us that the lukewarm Christian is not so much at danger in times of heresies but the passionate one is. Just as it is usually the sincere and intelligent and spiritual seeker who is more in danger from a cult than an apathetic unspiritual wordly man. Nobody knowingly joins a cult - they join what they think is the way and the truth. As A W Towzer said: ‘Strange as it may seem, the danger today is greater for the fervent Christian than for the lukewarm and the self-satisfied. The seeker after God’s best things is eager to hear anyone who offers a way by which he can obtain them. He longs for some new experience, some elevated view of truth, some operation of the Spirit that will raise him above the dead level of religious mediocrity he sees all around him, and for this reason he is ready to give a sympathetic ear to the new and the wonderful in religion, particularly if it is presented by someone with an attractive personality and a reputation for superior godliness.’ (The rest of the article on testing the spirits is here http://endtimespropheticwords.wordpress.com/2008/04/23/how-to-try-the-spirits/ )

John Lacy wrote in his journals, that how could all the wonderful things he experienced (the jerkings, the twitchings, the ecstasies, the tongues, the prophecy, the other things) be wrong, be of the flesh or the devil, when it made him so passionately intense for God so he lived and breathed spiritual things almost 24/7. For almost three months he was good for nothing and constantly manifesting. John Lacy did not realise the true nature of deception, as likewise nor do many of today’s Christians. If he had tested the Spirit behind his manifestations, as I urge the followers of Todd Bentley et al to do today, John Lacy could have been greatly used by God instead of becoming a tool for the devil and laughing stock and a disgrace to the church.

John Lacy, by the way, apart from being led by the ‘Holy Spirit’ to leave his wife and children destitute and to elope with an actress who liked to preach and prophesy stripped naked in public in London (Bob Jones of Kansas City would have liked her), was famed for some books and tracts of false prophecies about the immenent coming millenium (in the early 1700s) with destruction on London and the established church in the process. He also helped pave the way for ‘Mother’ Ann Lee of the Shakers who was believed to be the female incarnation of Christ and frequently got drunk to get her spiritual jollies and had all sorts of bizarre angelic encounters. (One of the funniest things from Shaker history is when Thomas Brown mentions in his diary of the Shakers faking angel’s footsteps and angels singing on ther communal house roof to keep him entranced in the cult). I have read several books on shakerism and there is no doubt of the passionate sincerity of the majority of its adherents, many of whom came out of the so-called First Great Awakening with all its bizarre things that accompanied it and were hungry for more. Read about Thomas Brown: a good title is ‘Thomas Brown and the Angels’ by John Symonds.) But Passion for God and deep sincerity and commitment has never   been a sign of a true prophet, a true teacher or a true follower. The plumbline always has been, and always been, measuring up against the word of God.