OpentheWord.org

In the summer of 2023, the New York Post reports that New York’s Suffolk County SPCA found the bodies of two headless goats behind an A & W. Authorities believed they had been part of a ritual sacrifice. Two other headless goats would be found later that summer. 

According to GLI news, this was part of a trend in recent years where the remains of several animals and birds used in ritual sacrifices have been discovered throughout New York State. 

In 2022, several headless chickens and a dove were found in a circle with a goat skull in the center in Long Island’s Union cemetery and in 2018, a kayaker discovered nearly a dozen decapitated goats along the banks of the Chattahoochee River. 

Meanwhile, TikTok has a section represented by the hashtag witchtok featuring videos on the occult and witchcraft, where people can learn how to perform hexes and other occult rituals. There are over 7.7 million videos in this section, which by October 2024 had been viewed 42 billion times. 

According to an article in the Financial Times entitled, WitchTok: how the occult became big online, the videos in the hashtag had only been viewed 11 billion times in 2021. 

This represents nearly a 400% increase in less than four years. 

These are subtle changes taking place in our Western culture and we saw it unveiled at the 2023 Grammy Awards.

In describing the annual musical awards, the headline in Britain’s Daily Mail read “’Literally a Tribute to Satan‘: Viewers Slam Sam Smith over ‘Demonic Grammy performance as Singer dons Devil Headgear on Fiery Stage.”

Though some labeled it as shocking, it revealed that the Demonic has slid out of the shadows and is becoming more main stream and accepted in society.

Hi my name is Dean Smith and in this podcast I want to talk about one major weakness that Christians need to fix in preparation for what may well be a coming time of intense spiritual conflict.

In an article for Charisma News, James Lasher wrote about a sermon that Derek Prince gave over a quarter century ago, in October 1989, where he warned about a coming spiritual attack.

Derek Prince was an internationally known Bible teacher before his death in 2003.

Prince’s sermon was based on Paul’s warning in 2 Timothy 3 about the appearance of people who would be like Jannes and Jambres, the two magicians who served as advisors to the Pharaoh of Egypt during Israel’s exodus. 

Using the dark arts, for a brief moment, these two magicians matched the power that God was demonstrating through the hands of Moses.

Though they ultimately failed, Prince makes an important point stating “the battle was not on the level of theology, but power.”

What happened in Egypt was a power encounter.

Prince then quotes verse 13 from this chapter, that reads “But evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.”

The Apostle Paul is suggesting as we enter the last days, believers will have similar power encounters that Prince says will coincide with quote “an explosion of the occult.”

Prince pointed out that the Greek word translated impostors in the New King James, refers to ‘enchanters’. 

Thayer’s Greek Dictionary describes the word this way “enchanter (because incantations used to be uttered in a kind of howl)” and Strong’s Dictionary of the New Testament says that the word means quote “a wizard (as muttering spells).”

Prince then asks this question: “Why do people enchant. What does that speak about?” Then he answers it with these words, “Magic, witchcraft, sorcery.”

Paul is saying similar to Jannes and Jambres of ancient Egypt, people at the end of the age will, perhaps secretly, embrace the occult in order to gain influence, culturally, politically and financially.

It’s a warning of a coming time of intense spiritual warfare and this means that as believers we need to check over our armor for any weaknesses that make us vulnerable to satanic attack.

In 2 Corinthians chapter 2, the Apostle Paul specifically addresses one of those vulnerabilities.

But to understand this warning, we have to turn back to 1 Corinthians and Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth, when he addressed a situation involving a man who was living with his father’s wife in Chapter 5 verse 1. 

This was probably not the man’s mother, but perhaps his step mother. Because the church was overlooking the sin, it suggests the man had friends in the Corinthian church.

Shocked by what was happening, Paul says that this type of behavior isn’t even acceptable among the gentiles and firmly tells the leaders of Corinth to deal with this situation.

When Paul writes his second letter to the Corinthian church, he seems to allude to this situation again in the second chapter. Now we can’t be absolutely sure, because he doesn’t explicitly say that it is, but most commentators believe it was. 

The situation seems to have been resolved and the man is no longer living with his dad’s wife. The Corinthian church has forgiven the man and Paul writes that he needs to forgive as well.

But notice what Paul says, we read:

But one whom you forgive anything, I forgive also; for indeed what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, I did it for your sakes in the presence of Christ, 11 so that no advantage would be taken of us by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his schemes. (2 Corinthians 2:10-11 NASV)

In this verse, Paul writes that like the Corinthians, he also needed to forgive this man so that Satan would not be able to take advantage of him.

The Greek word for advantage is a really long Greek word, like 15 letters long “pleonektethomen” and I won’t even try to pronounce it. 

It means to outwit and includes the idea of defrauding someone, taking advantage or exploiting, literally to steal something that rightfully belongs to another. 

This tells us that if we don’t forgive an offense, that we make ourselves vulnerable to satanic attack.

Then Paul zeroes in on the very area that will be attacked saying. He says we must not be ignorant of his “schemes” which is the Greek noemata and refers to our mind or thoughts.

Several years ago, a pastor translated this in a very unique way that really stuck with me. I wish I could remember his name, but he said if we don’t forgive then Satan has the right to attack us with ‘mind games.’

When we don’t forgive Satan has the legal right to play “mind games” with you. You are vulnerable to believing strange things about God and yourself. Maybe that God hates you, or God loves others more than you.

It means to convince a person that a lie is the truth and in the process robbing them — spiritually or otherwise.

You can become tormented by past mistakes and things you have done wrong. 

This is because there is a weakness in your armor, caused by unforgiveness, that Satan can take advantage of.

But we need to understand one more thing about this particular offense. This was not an incident that directly affected Paul. He was not personally attacked or stolen from. It was for all intents and purposes a second hand offense. 

How many of those type of offenses are floating around these days? 

Are we being offended by someone’s politics, as an example, even though it is not directly affecting us.

But these mind games or skewered thinking can quite literally become a trap. We can become stuck in stinking thinking as some call it, and no matter what anyone says we can’t break free from it. We can’t get free these thoughts.

Over the years, I have talked to people who are trapped in such negative destructive thinking and it is like banging your head against the wall trying to convince them to change. 

These individual, for lack of a better word, are in a mental prison.

This is exactly what Jesus warned about in the story of the servant who was managing the King’s account and ended up being short ten thousand talents in Matthew 18. 

When the servant begged for mercy after the king threatened to sell his family into slavery, the king completely forgave this debt. 

Now, you don’t lose millions of dollars without individuals taking advantage of you. People the servant had lent money to were suddenly not returning his phone calls.

Despite being completely forgiven, the servant started tracking down those who owed him money. and threw a man into debtor’s prison over a hundred denarii debt.

When the king heard about this, he was outraged and ordered the forgiven servant to be handed “over to the torturers until he would repay all that was owed him” (Matthew 18:34).

In other words this man was imprisoned. HIs liberty was taken away. He was trapped.

According to Thayer’s Greek Dictionary, the word torturers refers to “one who elicits the truth by the use of the rack. an inquisitor, torturer also used of a jailer.” Unquote

Jesus then ominously warns in the very next verse, “My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart.”

In other words, if we refuse to forgive we not only become vulnerable to satanic attacks, we will be imprisoned and tormented. 

We are not talking about a real physical brick and stone prison, but rather a spiritual one where our thinking becomes twisted. But this prison is as real as one made of metal bars. 

So if you are stuck in negative and damaging mindsets ask yourself the question: Is there someone you need to forgive?

It may be the key that unlocks the door of your prison cell.

Thanks for joining me on this podcast, and I will catch you again.

Hi my name is Dean Smith, and in this podcast, I want to talk about the gifts, yes that’s in the plural, gifts of healing. 

One thing that defined the early Church was Holy Spirit power. There were healings, deliverances and even on occasion angels stepping in to break people out prison and eliminate nasty political leaders. 

And in the midst of this Luke describes some of these miracles as extraordinary. 

It seems the early church had two classifications for miracles. There were the regular, everyday miracles, like the healing of a man who had.been lame from birth. 

Then there were the extraordinary ones when people were being healed and delivered from demons by handkerchiefs and aprons touched by the Apostle Paul while he was in Ephesus recorded in Acts 19. 

This was normal Christianity in the early church. 

Yet, it is certainly not happening today, at least in the West. I believe a large part of this is due to the rampant secularism and rationalism that has swept our culture that denies the miraculous. 

It’s not that we don’t see incredible miracles from time to time, but they don’t seem to happening to the same regularity as we see in the early church. There are two healing miracles that I have always found intriguing because they were not, I need to repeat this, they were not performed by some TV evangelist.

The Holy Spirit used everyday believers, like you and me.

The first is cited by Lee Stroebel in his book. The Case for Miracles. Stroebel was an investigative journalist and atheist when he decided to study Christianity after his wife became a Christian. That led to him, becoming a believer in 1981.

In his book, Stroebel discusses the healing of Barb Snyder who had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis by the Mayo clinic. Despite treatment, she ended up in respite care, with doctor’s orders not to resuscitate.

Barbara’s body was constricting as she lay in the hospice bed. She was nearly blind and needed tubing for breathing and nourishment.

She was waiting to die and at this point, a friend contacted a local Christian radio station being operated by Chicago’s Moody Bible Institute asking people to pray for Barbara.

According to Stroebel, at least 450 people prayed for Barb because that is how many letters were sent by people stating they were praying for her. 

But things took an unusual turn one Sunday afternoon, when friends decided to read some of these letters to Barb. 

Because as they were doing this, a voice from the corner of the room uttered these words,  “Get up, My child and walk.”

But Stroebel noted there was no one in the corner of the room where the voice came from. Immediately, upon hearing these words, Barbara ripped off her tubing and her atrophied legs filled out and she stood up completely healed.

Or take the case of Sharyn MacKay, a pastor’s wife in Newcastle, Northern Ireland who was healed of a rare form of kidney cancer. She was diagnosed with cancer in 2004, but despite treatment it spread to her lungs and the doctors stopped treatment and basically sent Barbara home to die. There was nothing more that could be done. 

According to an article in the Belfast Telegraph, entitled, Medics Baffled as Mum’s Killer Cancer Disappears, Barbara was given a year to live. 

But God had other ideas. 

Sharyn and her husband were aware of Jesus’ healing ministry and particularly the promise in Isaiah, where it reads, “And by His scourging we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:5 NASV)

Because of Christ’s death on the cross, divine healing was available to everyone. 

Based on this, Sharyn, her husband and members of their church congregation began praying for Sharyn’s healing.

In April 2004, Sharyn returned to the doctor for a further scan to determine how long she had to live. But this scan showed a startling change, it revealed that the cancer had completely disappeared. 

According to the Belfast Telegraph, the doctor showed Sharyn both scans one revealing the cancer, and the second one showing it was now all gone. 

In an interview with the Belfast Telegraph, Sharyn said:

“The doctors were astonished and said it could not have been due to anything they’d done.”

“Four radiographers studied the scans and none of them could quite believe it. The tumours had gone and I was told to leave the hospital and live a full life. The cancer has never come back and I have never felt better.”

When the Telegraph interviewed the doctors overseeing Sharyn’s care, they attributed her healing to a spontaneous reaction by her immune system.

Sharyn gave her side of the story stating, “The night before that scan I wrote in my journal: ‘Thank you God for healing me. I know I will get clear results tomorrow.’

As a I mentioned none of these healings were at the hands of TV evangelists, these were just ordinary everyday believers, like you and like me.

Now there is nothing wrong with faith healers, but this is not what God wants. God doesn’t want a handful of believers healing the sick, he wants an army of healers. 

We know this is true because of what the Apostle Paul wrote about the supernatural gifts the Holy Spirit hands out to believers in 1 Corinthians 12:4-11.

He says that every spirit-filled believer has been given at least one of these gifts which includes tongues, interpretation of tongues, discerning of spirits, prophecy, word of wisdom and word of knowledge, gift of faith, miracles and of course gifts of healing. 

This means that provided everything is proportional and I am not sure it is, then in a church of 300 people there should be at least 33 people with the gift of healing. The actual number is probably significantly higher because the Holy Spirit usually gives multiple gifts to people.

I have seen people with both the gift of prophecy and word of knowledge. They have two gifts working together.

So it goes without saying that the Holy Spirit has given many of you listening to this podcast the gift of healing, whether you realize it or not.

There may be some indications. Oddly enough one of the signs is that you are listening to this podcast. What I mean is that you have an interest in healing and seeing people healed miraculously? That interest may be sparked by the Holy Spirit residing inside you.

So what are my first steps? So what should I do if I think I have the gift of healing?

First you need to understand how the gift of healing works. In the story of the woman with the issue of the blood, we read how she pushed through a crowd of people congregating around Christ and touched the hem of the Lord’s garment and was instantly healed.

As soon as this happened Jesus asked who had touched Him, because, “I perceive that power has gone out from me” (Luke 8:46 ESV).

This woman’s healing didn’t drop down from heaven, it came from the Holy Spirit resident inside Christ. Since Jesus had set aside His deity and was functioning fully as a man at this point, He was demonstrating how healing works. This shows us that healing comes from the Holy Spirit resident inside you. The healing flows out of you when you pray for someone.

The Holy Spirit is the source of healing and you are just a conduit for this.

Secondly, we know that not everyone will be healed when we pray for them. John writes that Jesus received a full measure of the Holy Spirit in John 3:34. 

But even with this, we read that Christ could not heal many people in Nazareth because of their unbelief in Matthew 13:58. Many despised Jesus and looked down upon Him because He grew up there and they didn’t believe He could be anything significant.

Even the Apostle Paul, who Luke said performed extraordinary miracles, had to leave his traveling companion, Trophimus at Miletus in 2 Timothy 4:20 because he was sick. I and sure Paul prayed for Trophimus, but he wasn’t healed.

Though, I have never felt the Holy Spirit’s power leave me as Jesus did, I remember a similar thing happening when I laid hands and prayed for an individual. Suddenly, I felt a surge traveling back up my arm. 

This was so strange and I had no idea what was going on, but I felt the Holy Spirit say the word “backwash.” Backwash occurs when water is flowing in one direction and hits a cement wall as an example, causing it to bounce off and surges back in the opposite direction. As I was praying for this man, the Holy Spirit was flowing out of me, but there was something in that man’s heart that was blocking it, resulting in the flow bouncing back up my arm.

There can be blockages in people’s lives that prevents them from receiving healing. In Acts 7:51, Luke writes that there were people who were literally resisting the Holy Spirit. This still happens today.

But that may not be the only impediment. Since the healing virtue flows out of us, we can also create blockages that hinder or even prevent this from happening.

In 1 Thessalonians 5:19 and 20, Paul warns about not quenching the Holy Spirit, literally putting out the fire, which he connects to despising prophecy. In Ephesians 4:30, Paul adds that we can also grieve the Holy Spirit, which in the following two verses he explains can happen when we are unwilling to forgive others. 

Even though you have the gift of healing, you can restrict this healing power from flowing out of you.

Finally, it’s important to realize that healing can happen in a variety of ways. Jesus healed most often through laying on of hands as we read In Luke 4:40:

Now while the sun was setting, all those who had any who were sick with various diseases brought them to Him; and He was laying His hands on each one of them and healing them.

But there were other times, Jesus simply commanded a person’s healing or spit on mud and put it on a person’s eyes. So don’t become stuck on just one method.

Now as we read 1 Corinthians 12:9, Paul writes that the Holy Spirit gives, “to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit.”

Gifts is in the plural. In other words, there are multiple gifts of healing. Now Paul does not tell us how many gifts of healing there are or even explain exactly what this means.

But we may have an example of this when Philip was ministering in Samaria. We are told that, “many who were paralyzed or lame were healed” (Acts 8:7).

At the outset it doesn’t seem that unusual until you ask the question: Why was Philip only healing the lame and paralyzed?  Does this mean that there was no one in Samaria, who was sick, blind, mute, deaf or had an injured arm that needed healing?

Or does it suggest that Philip was having the most success healing those who were lame or paralyzed? I think the latter is the most probable explanation. It seems that Philip’s gift of healing specialized in those who were lame. 

We have specialists in physical healing such as cardiologists for the heart and oncologists for cancer. We may have the same thing when it comes to gifts of healing.

So in closing, we desperately need the power of God in the Western church today and I am convinced, that the Holy Spirit wants to release the gifts of healing. 

So I encourage you to start praying for the sick and don’t stop if the first person you pray for isn’t healed. One person said that you need to pray for at least 100 people to be healed before you can determine if you have the gift of healing or not. 

Remember, you are simply the conduit for the healing. The Holy Spirit is the one who heals. I was listening to one person who was talking about the gift of healing. He used a basketball analogy to describe it. He says if you are not taking any shots, you won’t make any baskets. 

You need to start praying for the sick. Thanks for joining me on this podcast and I will catch you again.

Hi, my name is Dean Smith and in this podcast, I want to give three pieces advice to those with the gift of prophecy.

A few weeks ago, I was sharing in a small home group about the nine spiritual gifts that Paul referred to in 1 Corinthians 12. This included such gifts as prophecy, healing, faith, words of knowledge and wisdom, gift of tongues, interpretation of tongues, working of miracles, and discerning of spirits.

Paul tells us that every believer has at least one of the spiritual gifts listed in this passage as he writes, “But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”

There were 17 people in attendance at this meeting so all things being equal and presuming the gifts were distributed evenly, based on simple math, at least two people in that meeting should have the gift of prophecy (1.88 to be exact).

But I suspect it was actually higher, because in many cases a person receives multiple gifts. I have seen people who function with the gift of prophecy also working with a word of Knowledge as they seem to be almost related gifts. Paul also said that anyone with the gift of tongues should pray to receive the gift of interpretation in 1 Corinthians 14:13. So in this instance Paul says we should pursue multiple gifts.

If multiple gifts are the norm, the number of people with the gift of prophecy in that group is probably even higher. What I am saying is that more people probably have the gift of prophecy in our local church than what we experience now.

As charismatic Christians, we believe that the Holy Spirit can give a person a word from God that is intended for an individual or to a church or group of believers. This is what we refer to as the gift of prophecy.

But as we begin to move in this gifting we face one major problem.

In 2020, two researchers from the Center for Neuroscience Studies at Queen’s University in Canada determined through a study of 184 participants that people have on average of 6,200 thoughts passing through their brain in a single day. This works out to 6.5 thoughts per minute, based on people being awake 16 hours a day.

So with that many thoughts passing through our mind how do we distinguish when the Holy Spirit is speaking to us from our own thoughts.

Now, the Holy Spirit will differentiate His voice from our own thoughts, but it takes time and practice for people to be able to consistently discern this.

I realize there are many people out there with a stronger prophetic gifting than myself and obviously more experience, but I want to provide three basic guidelines to help people who are starting to function in the gift of prophecy.

I believe having a strong emotional attachment to a person or a particular issue has the potential to be one of the biggest factors leading to a false prophecy.

Several years back, my wife and I attended a church pastored by one of the few full-blown prophets that I have met in my walk with God. His prophetic words were so specific and so accurate, he was either a complete fraud (passing off information he knows about you as prophecy) or he was a legitimate prophet.

While we were at his church, he had weekly sessions every Friday night where he trained people in the gift of prophecy. During these sessions, he had one cardinal rule, wives could not prophesy over their husbands and husbands could not prophesy over their wives.

This is because when you have a strong emotional attachment to an individual it is very difficult to separate your own personal feelings from a true word from God.

But this rule can apply to multiple areas other than just family.

We often have strong emotional attachments about our favorite sport’s team. You can wish or want something so much and so badly that you can confuse that with a true word from the Holy Spirit.

Politics is another area that you should avoid. Again for the same reason, you can have strong feelings, good and bad, about a particular politician or a particular political party.

If you have a favorite Biblical pet peeve, it is probably wise to avoid prophesying in this area as well.

Avoid prophetic words in any area that you have strong feelings.

Only seasoned prophets can separate their personal feelings from a true prophetic word and based on all the false prophecies related to Donald Trump’s failed reelection in 2020, I would say even more seasoned prophets can find it difficult.

When we look at the prophetic gifting there are three basic levels. We have the spirit of prophecy, which when that is present everyone can prophesy, even a reprobate like King Saul. When the spirit of prophecy lifts, then that ability to prophesy does as well.

The second level is the gift of prophecy which the Holy Spirit hands out to individual believers. This gift is more permanent, and is what we are addressing in this podcast.

The third level is the office of Prophet who have a higher level of anointing and authority. This is ministry or office in the church. You can’t self appoint yourself to the office of the prophet. It is a ministry that is recognized by other members in the body of Christ.

Now if you have the gift of prophecy, Paul gives us some very clear guidelines in his teaching on the gifts in 1 Corinthians chapter 12 through chapter 14:

Yes I included the great love chapter in 1 Corinthians 13 as part of the gift teaching. You see, 1 Corinthians 13 was not intended to be read at weddings, though there is nothing wrong with that.

Because it is found smack in the middle of Paul’s discussion on the gifts in 1 Corinthians 12 and 1 Corinthians 14, it means that the great love chapter is intended to as the guiding force for the spiritual gifts.

When Paul says love does not envy, he is really saying that we are not to envy others if they have a stronger prophetic anointing, or to boast when we do. If you read chapter 13, in light of the spiritual gifts, it delivers a whole different perspective.

Then with that chapter, chapter 13, as the back drop, in 1 Corinthians 14:3, Paul gives us some very specific directions on the gift of prophecy.

He writes, “But the one who prophesies speaks to people for edification, exhortation, and consolation.” (1 Corinthians 14:3 NASV).

The Greek word for Edification refers to constructing a building and in the this context means to build a person up spiritually, to strengthen them in their faith.

The Greek word for exhortation speaks of persuasion, and speaks of encouraging people into moving forward in their faith.

The Greek word for consolation refers to comforting a person, helping them deal with the difficulties in life.

With this verse as our guide for the gift of prophecy, it means that you are not to give negative and judgmental words or prophetic words that expose people’s sin.

So why did Paul do this?

I think the answer if very simple. Paul knew that someone functioning in the gift of prophecy will make mistakes. But if we follow this guideline, and only give edifying, exhorting and consoling words, the damage will be limited.

But what about those prophets who judged and condemned people, like the prophet Nathan who exposed King David’s sin with Bathsheba and Isaiah who railed against kings and nations.

We need to realize that these type of words are reserved solely for the office of the prophet and is not intended for those with the gift of prophecy.

So what happens if you believe that God gave you a negative word. If the Holy Spirit did give you that, and that is a big if, then God is leading you to pray about it. You should not give it as a prophetic word or share it with anyone else.

But then you say, well all I get is negative words, then it’s possible that something else may be at play here. You may have root of bitterness, that is contaminating your spiritual gift.

The writer of Hebrews talks about a root of bitterness inside a person, which springs up causing trouble and defiling many in Hebrews 12:15. This root of bitterness can defile your prophetic gift. If you are getting a lot of negative words, it may be a sign that you have people in your life, including your parents, that you need to forgive.

If you have the gift of prophecy, then you need to stay in your prophetic lane.

The gift of prophecy differs from psychics, fortune tellers and others who use vague, probing statements to obtain information they can use to make canny guesses about someone.

If you have a gift of prophecy, you want to discern the unique thing that the Holy Spirit wants to say to a particular person or church body.

One of the most difficult challenges that I face is giving a word to some one I personally know. Because, it is a struggle to discern the Holy Spirit’s voice from the previous knowledge and even advice I have given that particular individual.

I remember years ago, my wife and I were praying for a woman who was having marital problems. While I would like to believe that all our counseling is God ordained, truthfully it isn’t and it would be wrong to try passing off my counsel as a prophetic word.

As we were praying for this woman I had all these thoughts passing through my mind that I had previously said to her, so I waited and waited. Finally, I received something so totally unrelated to what we had discussed in that past, that I was finally able to share.

And to large extent prophesying something based on previous knowledge can be a waste of time. A friend of mine who functions in prophecy was invited to a church in Colorado to give prophetic ministry to the congregation.

He had never been there before and knew no one other than the pastor and his wife.

During the service, he ended giving a word to a couple about how they lived in a log cabin on the side of the mountain, and that Satan was attacking them and trying to batter down their doors. But then he said that God was going to hold them up with Eagle’s wings and protect them.

As soon as he finished that word, the people in the congregation started clapping and shouting Amen. Later, he found out that this couple actually lived in a log cabin up in the mountain and that they had a deliverance ministry, called Eagle’s Wings, where they helped people deal with deep spiritual, often demonic, issues and of course as a result experienced personal demonic attacks.

This word revealed that God sovereignly saw them and was with them.

Now the pastor of that church could have given that exact same word, with the same Holy Spirit anointing, but it would have lost much of its impact, because everyone including the couple would have thought that it was based on what the pastor already knew.

To be effective with the gift of prophecy, we need to get a fresh word from God and if you are just starting out, avoid prophesying in areas of previous knowledge.

When I asked my friend who ministered to that couple in Colorado what the best advice he would give to those who have the gift of prophecy. He said be patient. Wait on the Holy Spirit as you are ministering. You don’t have to give the first thing that pops into your mind and if you are not sure, say nothing.

So these are just some basic guideline when it comes to moving in the gift of prophecy. Our goal in prophecy is to discern the Voice of Jesus, and these are some of the traps that can lead to mistakes.

I hope this helps.

Thanks for joining me on this podcast, and I will catch you again.

Hi my name is Dean Smith and in this podcast, I want to discuss the seer anointing.

Several years back, I had started a new job with a nonprofit organization when I was asked if I would be interested in moving and helping set it up an office in another province.

We were attending a church, that we had been at for twenty years. We had long time friends there and it was our community.

As we were wrestling with this decision, I had a dream one night that I believed was from the Holy Spirit. In a nutshell, the dream warned that if my wife and I didn’t move, we would experience some very negative consequences.

Though I do get dreams, I knew this one was different, and based partially on this my wife and I decided to move as it confirmed what we were already sensing.

I don’t know what would have happened if we had stayed, but the benefits we received from moving were huge. We ended up going to a church which was led by one of the few full-blown prophets that I have encountered in my walk with God. His ministry impacted my wife and I in a powerful spiritual way.

But that dream was an expression of what is referred to as a seer gifting or anointing.

When we study the Bible, we see that there are two basic ways that the Holy Spirit uses to communicate to prophets.

The first involves actual words or messages from the Holy Spirit that they deliver to individuals or a congregation.

The second method that the Holy Spirit communicates with is through what we refer to as a seer gifting, which is the oldest expression of the prophetic gift found in the Bible.

In 1 Samuel 9:9, we read:

“(Formerly in Israel, if someone went to inquire of God, they would say, “Come, let us go to the seer,” because the prophet of today used to be called a seer.)”

The Hebrew word ‘râ’âh,’ translated seer, in this verse refers to “the ability to see, perceive, have a vision.”

This means that God communicates to seers visually and we see examples of this in the book of Genesis.

In Genesis 17:1, we read that “the Lord appeared to Abram” and in that encounter God changed his name to Abraham, and stated that he would be the father of many nations. The Hebrew word for appear is ‘râ’âh,’ which means this vision was an expression of the seer anointing.

In Genesis 28, Jacob had a dream of a ladder and angels ascending and descending from heaven, as God told Jacob and the place where he was sleeping would be given as an inheritance to his seed. He named the place Bethel, literally the House of God.

Later prophets, such as Isaiah, Daniel, Ezekiel and Jeremiah, received both types of revelation. They not only received direct words or messages, from God but also visually as God spoke to them via images through such mediums as dreams and visions.

We see a clear example of a seer anointing in Jeremiah when in chapter 1 verses 11, God asks the prophet, “What do you see, Jeremiah?”

God did not ask what he was thinking or feeling, Jehovah specifically asked what Jeremiah was seeing.

When Jeremiah said he saw the the branch of an almond tree, God said he had seen correctly and then in verses 13-15, God explains what this vision or mental impression meant.

While some prophets received both messages and visuals expressions, we see that visual images were the primary method that God used to speak to prophets like Zechariah and Ezekiel.

So while we have some prophets functioning in both types of prophetic anointing, others were clearly seers and are designated as such:

We read in Chronicles for example:

“Now the acts of King David, from the first to the last, are written in the chronicles of Samuel the seer, in the chronicles of Nathan the prophet, and in the chronicles of Gad the seer,” (1 Chronicles 29:29 NASV)

In this verse, Samuel and Gad were referred to as seers and Nathan as a prophet, which defined the primary way that God communicated through them.

As I explained earlier, the Holy Spirit brings revelation to a seer visually and does it in four basic ways:

First they can come in the form of visual images that they receive in their mind about people or events.

I remember several years back, I was praying for a man, when in my mind I saw that he had video clips playing in his mind of negative incidents that happened between him and his dad.

In fact, I actually saw one of those video clips where his dad was standing over him yelling and screaming because of something he didn’t do. Unfortunately, it involved a situation, which because of his age, he simply wasn’t capable of doing it to his dad’s satisfaction.

These video clips that were rehearsing in his mind plagued this man and I felt the Holy Spirit was saying he needed to forgive his dad.

I suspect this is what Jesus had when the Lord told Nathaniel “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you” (John 1:48 NASV)

The second way that God speaks to seers is through dreams.

We see an example of this when the Apostle Paul received a dream of a Macedonian, who was on the other side of the sea, crying out to him, “Come over to Macedonia and help us!” (Acts 16:9 NASV).

The next morning Paul immediately started planning the group’s journey to Macedonia, which resulted in the creation of the church in Philippi.

The Patriarch Joseph, who functioned as a seer, not only received a dream that his older brothers would one day be bowing down to him in Genesis 37:5-9, but he also had the ability to interpret the dreams of others in Genesis 40:5-14.

Similar to what happened to me, dreams often served as warnings. They are used by the Holy Spirit to warn us.

King Abimilech was warned through a dream not to take Sarah, because she was Abraham’s wife in Genesis 20. The Pharaoh of Egypt was warned about a drought that would dramatically impact his country in Genesis 41. In the Christmas story, the magi were warned in a dream not to visit Herod after they had seen Jesus and then Joseph was warned in a dream to flee to Egypt with Mary and Jesus to escape Herod in Matthew 2.

The third method the Holy Spirit uses is visions, which differ from images in the mind, that I mentioned earlier.

We read in Acts 10 that while Peter was praying on the roof of a house in Joppa as supper was being prepared, he had a strange vision of a great sheet being lowered from heaven with all sorts of unclean animals inside it, which he was told to “kill and eat.”

But this was differentiated from a thought in our mind, because we are told in verse 10, that Peter had fallen into a trance.

I suspect God did this because of the big ask, the Lord was making of Peter to not only preach the Gospel to the gentiles, but to accept them as equals with the Jews.

The fourth way that God communicates with a seer visually is by pulling back the veil and letting them see what is actually taking place in the spiritual realm.

The prophet Zechariah received a series of visions, but one of them was a bit peculiar. In chapter 3, Zechariah saw, “Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right side to accuse him.”

In verse 3, Zechariah also noticed that Joshua was wearing ‘filthy clothes.’ The word filthy literally means excrement. Yes, Joshua’s clothes were covered in poop.

Now I suspect Joshua was in the Temple making a sacrifice to God and he would have been wearing his elaborate High Priest clothing.

Zechariah was seeing all this temple activity from the perspective of those inhabiting the spiritual realm. Joshua, of course, wouldn’t have seen any of this.

Zechariah saw that the angel of the Lord was standing before Joshua to receive the offering and Satan was standing at Joshua’s side condemning the Jewish High Priest.

There was no way Joshua would have been wearing clothes covered in excrement, but this is how he appeared to those in the spiritual realm as it revealed Joshua’s spiritual condition as he was being accused and condemned.

Zechariah saw God rebuke Satan and an angel putting new clothes on Joshua. The High Priest was totally unaware of what was taking place in the spiritual realm, but the condemnation would have lifted and Joshua’s spirit would have suddenly lightened and revived .

But this shows us that the seer anointing can play a role in spiritual warfare. As mentioned, Zechariah saw Satan condemning Joshua. In 2 Kings 6, when the Arameans surrounded the home of Elisha, he prayed for the eyes of his fearful servant to be opened so he could see the chariots and horses of fire, angelic beings, protecting them.

According to the prophet Joel, the seer anointing will become quite prominent as the Holy Spirit is poured out at the end of the age. He said, “Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams and your young men will see visions” (Joel 2:28).

Dreams and visions are expressions of the seer anointing and they will clearly become more prominent as we come into the end times and the Holy Spirit is poured out.

So maybe you are getting images in your mind, perhaps dreams or even visions, and wonder if these are from God and what you should do?

First we need to understand that the seer anointing is simply one of the ways the gift of prophecy is expressed which the Holy Spirit gives to the members of the Body of Christ mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12.

We need to realize that the same rules that the Apostle Paul laid out for the gift of prophecy apply to the seer anointing.

In 1 Corinthians 14:3, Paul writes, that, “the one who prophesies speaks to people for edification, exhortation, and consolation.”

In other words, you must not give negative words or judgmental words. I believe we are told to do this, because as we function and learn about the gift of prophecy, we will invariably make mistakes.

By limiting our words to those that edify, exhort or console, even if we are wrong, the damage will be limited.

Now we do see examples of prophets giving condemning and judgmental words such as the time Nathan exposed King David’s sin. However, these type of words are reserved solely for those in the office of a prophet, and no, you can’t self-proclaim yourself as a prophet. You have to be recognized by your local body for that ministry.

So what happens if you receive an image or dream that would seem to be negative or judgmental? The Bible is very clear that prophetic words are subject to the prophet, so in this instance if this is a true prophetic revelation and that is a big if, the Holy Spirit may simply be calling you to pray about it.

Secondly, when you receive an image in your mind, a dream or a vision if you are not clear on what you are seeing, you should ask the Holy Spirit for an interpretation.

Similar to the gift of tongues, seers need to have a gift of interpretation to understand the meaning behind the images that you are receiving.

We see how the Patriarch Joseph had the gift of interpretation which he used to interpret the dreams of the Pharaoh’s baker and cup bearer in Genesis 40. Daniel also interpreted the dreams of the Babylon’s King Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 2.

When Zechariah received a vision of gold lamp stand with a bowl on top of it, he simply asked, “What are these, my lord?” and the angel of the Lord told him.

When the Holy Spirit gives you a visual impression, He wants you to know what it means and there is nothing wrong with asking if you are uncertain. If you don’t receive an interpretation maybe you should hesitate in sharing it.

I have seen times, where people have shared a visual impression they received, but had not gone this second step and asked the Holy Spirit for an interpretation. They went ahead and shared it, but people had no idea what they were talking about.

As a general rule, if you get a vision or image don’t share it until the Holy Spirit gives you the interpretation.

However, sometimes these images, visions and dreams can also be prophetic and you are seeing things in the future that may not make sense until sometime later.

A friend of mine, who functions primarily in a seer anointing, had been invited along with other prophetic ministries to minster at a church. As they were traveling to their destination, he received an image of a young blond-haired man about 18 years of age, who played the drums. It was clear that he was supposed to minister to this person once they arrived.

But as they began ministering, he realized there was no one at the meeting who fit this description and began to think, he must have missed it.

But as he was praying for people, a 50-year-old blonde-haired man asked for prayer. Taking a bit of a gamble, my friend asked him if he played the drums?

When the man answered yes, my friend knew this was the man he saw in his vision, when he was just 18 years old. My friend also understood that the Holy Spirit wanted to minister to this 50 year old man about something that had happened to him as a young man.

In a recent podcast, author and speaker, John Bevere shared the time, he was at a meeting with Dr. Lester Sumrall 40 years ago.
Sumrall, who died in 1996, was an internationally renown speaker and evangelist and believed God gave him visions or images of things that would be taking place in the future.

At the meeting, that Bevere attended in the 1980s, Sumrall shared how he saw that people would be carrying around small boxes with them that “would control their life.”

When Sumrall shared this, Bevere thought, “Oh, bless his heart, he’s off his rocker.” Now four decades later, it was obvious that Sumrall had seen the rise of the smart phone. He just saw that people were becoming dependent on this box type thing in their hands, but he wasn’t completely sure what it was.

Similarly, the Book of Revelation is a vision that the Holy Spirit gave the Apostle John of events that would take place in the world leading up to the second coming of Christ. It was an expression of the seer anointing.

While people have spent years trying to interpret this vision, we probably won’t understand many of the events until they actually take place.

So in closing if you are praying for people or situations, and receive an image, don’t discount it, the Holy Spirit may be using it to communicate with you and through you.

Thanks for joining me on your podcast, and I will catch you again.

Hi my name is Dean Smith and in this podcast I will discuss prophecies given by a now deceased prophet Kim Clement in 2007 on the rise of American billionaire, Donald Trump, to be president of the United States. Not only did he seem to predict that, but Clement said Trump would serve two terms.

Trump won the presidency in 2016 to become the 45th US President, lost in 2020, and then was re-elected as the 47th President in 2024. It was a remarkable achievement, because it is only the second time in American history that a person has been elected as president in two non-consecutive terms.

Since 1951, the US Constitution only allows presidents to serve to two terms. Prior to that most presidents, except one, had limited themselves to just two terms which became the acceptable practice.

The Last time, a president was elected twice in nonconsecutive terms was Grover Cleveland who was elected president in 1885 and again in 1893 as the 22nd and 24th president.

Kim Clement was born in South Africa, but immigrated to the US where he started a church called House of Destiny. Because of his musical ability, he became known as the singing prophet.

Before we look at Clements two prophecies, we need to understand how prophecy works from a Biblical perspective.

Prophetic words are just partial revelations. As Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 12 verse 9, “we know in part and we prophesy in part”. Because of this, at times we need to piece these separate words together to get the fuller picture.

For example, we have our first vague reference to the coming of Christ in the garden of Eden where we read that the ‘seed of the woman will step on the head of the servant.” Later, we get a vivid description of how Jesus would die in Isaiah 53 and then Micah specifically states that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem.

Together these prophecies paint a fuller revelation of the coming Jewish Messiah.

So with that understanding, let’s take a look at the first prophetic word that Clement gave about a coming US President on February 10, 2007 in Scottsdale Arizona. These prophetic words were taken from a data base provided by Clement’s House of Destiny.

Here is what Clement prophesied:

“There will be a praying President, not a religious one, for I will fool the people, says the Lord. I will fool the people, yes I will. God says, the one that is chosen shall go in and they shall say, he has hot blood. For the Spirit God says, yes he may have hot blood, but he will bring the walls of protection on this country in a greater way and the economy of this country shall change rapidly, says the Lord of Hosts. God says, I will put at your helm for two terms a President that will pray but he will not be a praying President when he starts. I will put him in Office and then I will baptize him with the Holy Spirit and My power, says the Lord of Hosts.”

Now this prophetic word could be describing anyone, but it does provide some clues.

First the President is described as being hotblooded, which some suggest fits the description of Trump.

Secondly, he will not be looked upon as religious person, but will fool many because he would actually become a praying president.

Thirdly, Clement adds that he would serve two terms. The two terms is specifically emphasized, which is a bit odd. But by emphasizing the two terms, the word suggests that this will be unusual, which it certainly was in Trump’s case.

Finally, Clement added that he would bring protection to this country and would transform the economy. Of course, these were Trump’s main platform as he promised to close the borders and restore the economy.

But still this does not necessarily mean this is referring to Trump.

But remember how prophecies in the Old Testament often need to be pieced together to get a fuller picture, let’s take a look at a prophecy that Clement gave six weeks later on April 4, 2007, as he was speaking at Bethel Church in Redding California. This prophecy seems to provide more details.

This second word seems connected to the first in two ways. Because again Clement talks about a a president who will be praying, but wouldn’t necessarily start off that way, and then also refers to him being filled with the Holy Spirit.

But Clement starts off the second prophecy with this:

“Where Time Magazine will have no choice but to say what I want them to say. Newsweek, what I want to say. The View, what I want to say. Trump shall become a trumpet, says the Lord! I will raise up the Trump to become a trumpet.“

Though there is initially no reference to the presidency in this second prophetic word, Clement refers to a Trump, which some say is reference to Donald Trump.

Whether that is the case, that is for you to decide.

It is interesting how this word starts off addressing the mainstream media who since Trump’s election in 2016 have opposed Trump at every step. They have even twisted their stories to fit their agenda.

Trump in response has bandied them as fake media..

This word says these media outlets would be forced to change. It is curious how The View, which is vehemently anti-Trump, was specifically mentioned, because with Trump’s re-election MSN recently published an article with this headline, “ABC Executives seek to add pro Trump voices to The View.”

Yes, the producers of The View are being forced to address its blatant bias.

Though the the LA Times was not mentioned, a headline reads: LA Times owner vows revamp of ‘very left’ editorial board.

Perhaps, it is all just a coincidence. Then Clement continues this second prophecy by stating:

“I am breathing upon the political powers that be. For God said, I will not forget 911. I will not forget what took place that day and I will not forget the gatekeeper that watched over New York who will once again stand and watch over this Nation, says the Spirit of God. It shall come to pass that the man that I place in the highest office shall go in whispering My name. But God said, when he enters into the office he will be shouting out by the power of the Spirit for I shall fill him with My Spirit when he goes into office and there will be a praying man in the highest seat in your land.“

At this point, the word talks about a person in New York City who will rise to America’s highest office, which is obviously president, and again emphasizes that there will be a dramatic spiritual shift in his life and will result in him being filled with the Holy Spirit.

Were these prophecies speaking about Donald Trump? I think there is certainly room to suggest they were but there is also room to think they weren’t.

But there is an odd coincidence associated with these prophecies. Kim Clement died on November 23, 2016, just two weeks after Trump was first elected US president.

If these prophetic words are about Trump, it tells us that when he first comes to office, he will not be all that religious, but that will change and he will be filled or baptized with the Holy Spirit.

But this baptism may not be referring to the Holy Spirit baptism as Pentecostals understand it. Throughout history God has anointed, yes I said anointed, secular and even pagan leaders to accomplish his purpose.

Perhaps the most famous of these was the idolatrous King of Persia, Cyrus the Great, who reigned between 559 BC and 530 BC.

While I am not inferring that President Trump should be compared to Cyrus the Great, others have. According to Israel365 News, an Orthodox Jewish news site based in Israel, when Trump moved the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem during his first term, Israel’s Jewish Sanhedrin produced a memorial coin that had the profile of Trump superimposed over an image of Cyrus the Great.

So obviously, they saw a connection.

All I am saying is that it would not be out of the question for God to specifically raise up people to leadership positions who is not necessarily the most spiritual guy in town.

Take a look at how God described the Persian king, Cyrus the Great, through the prophet Isaiah:

“It is I who says of Cyrus, ‘He is My shepherd!
And he will perform all My desire.’
 And he declares of Jerusalem, ‘She will be built,’
And of the temple, ‘Your foundation will be laid.’

“Thus says the Lord to Cyrus His anointed,
 Whom I have taken by the right hand,
To subdue nations before him.
 And to loose the loins of kings; To open doors before him so that gates will not be shut.” (Isaiah 44:28 – 45:1 NASV)

The prophetic word specifically said that Cyrus would pave the way for the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the Jewish Temple, which had been destroyed by Babylon in 586 BC.

In Isaiah 45:4, a few verses later, we see that God raised up Cyrus even though he did not know Jehovah.

Despite this, Cyrus is referred to as God’s anointed, which is the Hebrew word “mashiah,” and speaks of an anointing by the Holy Spirit.

The same word was used to describe a number of Israel’s kings such as King David in 2 Samuel 12:7, prophets in 1 Kings 19:16 and priests in Leviticus 4:3. All of them were called anointed.

God anointed people with the Holy Spirit to carry-out certain tasks from governmental to priestly.

So God had anointed this Persian king to fulfill a particular task, in this case to restore Jerusalem and rebuild the temple .

So when Clement prophesied that the president would be Baptized with the Holy Spirit, maybe we should looking at it in the same sense as Cyrus was anointed by God.

However, I certainly would not rule out the possibility that this is referring to a book of Acts, Holy Spirit baptism with power.

From archaeological records, we find that Cyrus was a very unusual king. He is described as being fair and treated his subjects well in comparison to other self-serving despots who ruled at the time.

Though he expanded his empire by invading and conquering other countries, Cyrus was often welcomed with open arms because the people were freed from the despots who ruled and abused them.

When he defeated Babylon, historians state that the Babylonians jubilantly welcomed Cyrus as their king, who then made some significant changes.

While the Babylonians forcibly removed people and sent them into captivity in other countries as they had done with Israel, Cyrus reversed that policy and allowed these people to return to their homelands.

He even provided financial help to those returning to help rebuild their devastated cities.

So when Cyrus gave the edict allowing the Israelis to return and rebuild Jerusalem and the temple as we read in 2 Chronicles 36:22-23 and Ezra 1:1-11 and this was completely in character with how he ruled.

Because of the generous way he treated his subjects, archaeologist and author Patrick Hunt describes Cyrus as one of the greatest kings in history.

So yes, God can and will raise up leaders to accomplish His will.

So while it could be argued that Kim Clement’s prophecies seem to be referring to Donald Trump, I want to deal with the elephant in the room — what about all those prophecies that said Trump would be re-elected as President in 2020.

Having just seen Trump elected to a second term in 2024, is it possible that these prophets were actually right. They were if they prophesied in the same way as Clement and just said he would serve two terms, without specifically saying they were consecutive.

Unfortunately, most were not like that. They prophesied specifically that Trump would be re-elected in 2020 and when that didn’t happen, some dug down and predicted that Trump would be restored the presidency by December that year.

When that didn’t happen, they predicted it would take place by the inauguration day in January, 2021. When that didn’t happen they stated Trump would be restored to the presidency in a few weeks in the spring, April and May.

When that didn’t happen, I saw one try to explain away his mistake by stating that Trump was actually God’s president and the true president, and Biden was man’s choice. Another said it was believer’s fault because they didn’t pray. It wasn’t his fault that the prophecy was wrong.

We can’t get around the simple fact, that they were simply wrong. They had given false prophecies. So why did so many people, some of whom seem to have a legitimate prophetic gifting, get is so wrong?

There may be a simple explanation.

Within the gift of prophecy there are three different levels of prophetic anointing.

First we have what is often referred to as the spirit of prophecy. When a spirit of prophecy is manifesting anyone is capable of prophecy as King Saul did when he encountered a company of prophets in 1 Samuel 10. When the Spirit of Prophecy lifts, so does that ability.

The second is the gift of prophecy which is a more permanent gift that the Holy Spirit gives to a particular individual. However, there are limits put on the expression of this gift, as they are limited to words that edify, exhort and console in 1 Corinthians 14:3.

The third level is the Office of the Prophet. They have a higher level of prophetic authority and anointing, and can set people into ministry, provide direction, and even bring words to secular governments and political leaders.

Even within the prophetic office, the office of the prophet, there are different levels.

For example, we read how Jeremiah was called as a prophet to the nations (plural) in Jeremiah 1:5. Why would he specifically be called as a prophet to the nations if every prophet had this authority?

Obviously, not all did.

Not all holding the office of the prophet are called to the nations.

Which leads to a second controversy that has just erupted when a prophet in Britain stated that God was going to punch Donald Trump in the face, and knock out his teeth and then remove him from office , because he was not.

This resulted in an American organization called Apostolic Council of Prophetic Elders composed of senior prophetic voices in America coming out with a judgment stating that the prophecy was false. They did not say the person giving this word was a false prophet, only that her word was false.

Now, I am not going to give her name, but only suggest this. She is from Britain, and for her to give this type of a prophetic warning to America, means she must be called as a prophet to the nations.

After her prophecy was judged as false, she responded in a recent podcast and quoted Revelation 10:11 where God told the Apostle John he was called to prophesy to nations and kings and said she believed prophets are called to the nations.

However, that word was given specifically to the Apostle John, and I don’t think you can just claim it and apply it to yourself.

This may be the root of the problem. As I mentioned earlier, I don’t believe every prophet is called to the nations and to kings, only some are.

The Holy Spirit put limits on a person’s prophetic authority and people make mistakes when they exceed their gifting and calling.

In 2020, I believe we saw many people who had a legitimate prophetic gifting, they have the gift of prophecy, but they were stepping beyond their gift of prophecy into an area reserved for the office of the prophet and they made mistakes.

In the most recent prophecy regarding Trump being punched in the mouth, we have an instance, where a person believes she is called as a prophet to the nations. That is very specific prophetic calling and if this isn’t the case, she has stepped outside her lane and area of anointing.

Anyway, I hope this provides some clarity on what is becoming a very confusing time for the prophetic gifting. Thanks for joining me on my podcast, and I will catch you again.

In 2008, Dr. Richard Gallagher, a certified psychiatrist, and professor of psychiatry at the New York Medical College, wrote an article for the New Oxford Review entitled, A Case of Demonic Possession: Among the many counterfeits.

It ended up being the most-read article in the review’s history and over the next few years, there were follow up articles on several news sites include the Washington Post and CNN.

In the article Gallagher discussed a case of demonic possession that he encountered in his psychiatric practice. It involved a woman, who he gave the pseudonym Juia, who was a high priestess in a satanic cult.

During the sessions that followed, Julia displayed many of the classic signs of demonic possession that were witnessed not only by Gallagher, but by several other mental health professionals, nurses, lay people and as well priests.

These included times when Julia would go into trances and begin uttering threats and scatological phrases such as ‘leave her alone’ and ‘she is ours.’ Gallagher noted her voice often changed and would go lower taking on more man like qualities.

She also had a contempt for the sacred or religious such as crosses.

Julia also had what Gallagher described as paranormal awareness and knew things about people and situations, of which she had no previous knowledge. She was receiving information about people from other sources.

On the first day, Gallagher met Julia, she asked, “How did you like those cats last night?” Gallagher said he had told no one what had happened to him and his wife the previous night. They were awakened around 2 am by a horrible screeching sound as their two cats were involved in a brutal brawl. It was so bad they had to grab the cats and put them in separate rooms. Gallagher said they never fought, but something had stirred them up and somehow Julia knew about this.

As a certified board psychiatrist, Gallagher acknowledged that the majority of the cases he deals with involve physical and mental health issues that require medical treatment. But there are rare instances of what he describes as demonic oppression and possession.

In his article, Gallagher wrote:

“Possession is only one and not the most common type of demonic attack. Possession is very rare, though not exceedingly so as many imagine. So-called ‘oppression’ or ‘infestation’ is less rare, though hardly frequent either, sometimes more difficult to discern accurately.’

Hi my name is Dean Smith, and in this podcast, I want to discuss a somewhat curious topic: why do we see so many examples of people being possessed or oppressed and then delivered from evil spirits in the New Testament, but rarely see these type of things happening in the Old Testament?

First, we do see examples of what could be described as demonic possessions in the Old Testament.

In Ezekiel 28, the prophet delivered a word against the King of Tyre. However, about halfway through, this word takes a curious turn.

In verse 11, Ezekiel who is still addressing the king of Tyre says:

“You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God.”

Then in verse 14, the prophet adds, “you were anointed as a guardian Cherub.“

The king of Tyre was never created perfect. He was born a fallen man. The King was never in the Garden of Eden. He was never an anointed Cherub.

But Satan fills those qualifications, and it’s obvious the focus of Ezekiel’s prophecy had shifted and the prophet was now addressing Satan.

This meant speaking to the King of Tyre was the equivalent of speaking to the devil, which suggests some type of demonic possession was in play here.

The same thing happened with the prophetic word given to the King of Babylon by the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 14.

Again it starts off in much the same way as a tirade against the Babylonian King, but in verse 12, the word takes a turn.

We read:

“How you have fallen from heaven, you star of the morning sun of dawn. You have been cut down to the earth.”

The King of Babylon did not fall from heaven. He was born on earth and died on earth. So similar to Ezekiel, the word was now addressing a being from the demonic realm.

We see another example of possession involving an Israeli King.

King Saul became violent and tried to kill David when an evil spirit tormented him in 1 Samuel 16:15 and we see what could be deemed a partial deliverance when David played his lyre.

We read:

“David would take the harp and play it with his hand; and Saul would feel relieved and become well, and the evil spirit would leave him.” (1 Samuel 16:23)

So it suggests at least a partial deliverance, but ultimately the evil spirit returned and possessed Saul.

While we have what seem to be example of demonic possession in the three cases I mentioned, I suspect there were other cases including Jezebel, who in turned King Ahab towards wickedness.

But in all these examples, the possessions appear strategic, involving kings or their close associates in order to manipulate and control human affairs.

But as we move into the New Testament, there is a dramatic change. We see Jesus delivering countless people from demons and evil spirits.

Luke writes, “Demons were also coming out of many, shouting you are the Son of God.” and Mark adds, “And He healed many who were ill with various diseases and cast out many demons.”

We even see an example of one deranged man being delivered of a legion of demons in Mark 5 and Luke writes that Mary Magdalene had seven demons cast out of her (Luke 8:2).

It is such a sharp contrast between what we see in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament we saw strategic possessions, with political importance, while the New Testament we see examples of average everyday people dealing with demons and evil spirits and we also see it on such a larger scale.

So why the difference?

I believe there could be several reasons for this.

First, the Old Testament deals largely with the nation of Israel as a political entity. The emphasis was on religious and political leaders.

I can explain the difference this way. A few years back, someone challenged me on why the Old Testament spoke of an eye for eye and tooth for tooth justice, while Jesus emphasized forgiving those who offended us.

Those seem to be such contradictory messages.

However, we need to understand that the Old Testament was speaking to government and political leaders, while the New Testament was aimed at a personal level. So while an individual has to forgive someone who murdered a loved one, the government still has the responsibility of handing out justice.

As a result of this different emphasis, we don’t examples of everyday people dealing with the demonic in the Old Testament.

The second explanation for the difference is the arrival of Jesus. Having defeated Satan in the wilderness, Jesus demonstrated personal authority over the demonic realm. This had never happened before in the history of the world, so Christ’s arrival forced demons to reveal themselves such as happened when Jesus spoke at a synagogue in Capernaum.

We read:

“An evil spirit inside a man sitting in the congregation suddenly shouted out, “Leave us alone. What business do you have with us, Jesus of Nazareth.” (Luke 4:34)

Jesus quickly rebuked it and cast it out of the man. Now it’s true there were Jewish exorcists at that time, which Jesus even alluded to, but there success rate was very poor compared to Christ.

For the first time, people who were being plagued by demons and evil spirits, had someone who could legitimately help them, so they showed up in droves.

Now this would suggest that evil spirits and demons were possessing people in the Old Testament to the same extent as the New, but it just wasn’t as obvious, but this may not actually be the case.

There may be a third reason for the increased number of possessions in the New Testament, and this was due to a dramatic shift in the spiritual climate that took place between the Old and New Testament periods.

To better understand the significance of this change, we need to look at the time the pharisees accused Jesus of casting out demons by the power of Beelzebub a more powerful demonic spirit in Luke 11.

Jesus had just cast an evil spirit out of a man and the people were amazed, and the pharisees were trying to discredit Christ.

Jesus responded that the demonic kingdom is not divided and then talked about how evils spirits actually work together in verses 23 and 24.

Jesus says “If an evil spirit is driven out of a person, it will seek the help of seven more powerful evil spirits in order to return inside the individual.”

But then Jesus describes the state of the evil spirit after it has been cast out of a person. Christ says, “it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and not finding any, it then says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’”

Once cast outside the human body, the evil spirit finds itself in a waterless place, where it can find no rest, which is why it wants to return.

Since the demons are spiritual and exist in a spiritual realm, I am uncertain what it means that they are now in a waterless place.

At the very least, the evil spirit finds itself in a very uncomfortable state. But since water is necessary for life, Jesus seems to imply that the evil spirit can’t live in this state for an extended period.

If this is true, then the same would be the case in the Old Testament period. Demons and evil spirits would need to inhabit people in order to survive.

But things were different in the Old Testament.

We know godly angels exist and they don’t inhabit humans, which means they must have access to a realm where they can find water and rest, whatever that means in a spiritual sense.

This is what we refer to as the heavenly realm.

And oddly enough the same seems to be true for those who we would classify as demonic. In Job 1 verses 6 and 7, we read how Satan came before a gathering of the sons of God, or the angels, in the heavenly realm.

This means that Satan also had access to the heavenly realm where he could find the equivalent of water and rest.

Again in a similar gathering of angelic beings, a lying spirit volunteered to deceive the prophets who were advising the evil Israeli king, Ahab in 1 Kings 22:19-23.

Again, if this lying spirit was an evil spirit, it was in the presence of God and other angelic beings. In other words, it was in the same heavenly realm where Godly angels find water and rest.

So it seems that these fallen angels were operating in and out of this heavenly realm. From time to time, they possessed kings, but it was done strategically to influence the course of history.

But something dramatic happened at the birth of Christ.

In his vision of the end times in the Book of Revelation, the Apostle John describes what happened:

“And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she gave birth he might devour her Child” (Revelation 12:4 NASV)

We read how Satan tried to kill Jesus at his birth and as he had done in the past, Satan manipulated a government leader, King Herod, to accomplish this task, but Herod failed.

But because of this failed assassination attempt on Jesus, Satan had crossed the line.

John explains what happened next:

7 And there was war in heaven, Michael and his angels waging war with the dragon. The dragon and his angels waged war, 8 and they did not prevail, and there was no longer a place found for them in heaven. 9 And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. (Revelation 12:7 NASV)

Satan and those fallen angels who sided with him, were driven out of the heavenly realm and forced to inhabit earth. This again shows us that up to this point, these demons still had access to the heavenly realm where they found water and rest.

Now the only respite they was inhabiting human bodies. Their need to possess people was no longer strategic, but rather a necessity, and that is why see more of it in the New Testament.

And this may even explain why when Jesus drove the legion of evil spirits out of the demonic man, the demons asked if they could inhabit a nearby herd of pigs in Mark 5:13.

Though obviously a third rate habitation it was better than the alternative.

So I hope these three explanations provide a Biblical understanding of the dramatic changes in the spiritual realm that took place between the Old and New Testament periods.

While there was a spiritual shift between the Old and New Testament periods that extends to our day, the facts remains the same. Jesus was given all authority over heaven and earth and the demonic realm and the Lord has given that authority and power to everyone who believes in Him.

Thanks for joining me on this podcast, and I will catch you again.

Hi, my name is Wayne Johnston. In this podcast, I am talking about one of my heroes from the Old Testament, Shammah.

He was one of the three main leaders in David’s army, when he was fighting the Philistines and running from a paranoid, demented King Saul.

There are only a few verses, that talk about Shammah, but what they say is interesting, and I believe is relevant to us today.

The Hebrews author may have had Shammah in mind when he wrote:

“Out of weakness were made strong, became valiant in battle, turned to flight the armies of the aliens.” (Hebrews 11:34 NKJV)

Now I have a sword at home, that I mad myself. You might say, ‘Ok, I’ve got this sword, that represents my hero’, but it is more complicated than that.

The sword I made at home was made from a broken truck spring. Something that had been ruined and devastated and that is the key to understanding this Bible hero.

In 1 Samuel, it says:

David left Gath and escaped to the cave of Adullam. When his brothers and his father’s household heard about it, they went down to him there. 2 All those who were in distress or in debt or discontented gathered around him, and he became their commander. About four hundred men were with him.. (1 Samuel 22:1-2 NIV)

Like the my sword, Shammah was in a place of brokeness, because of King Saul and the poor choices in the land. The oppression in there own land, not only from their enemies, but King Saul.

And this shepherd King David gathered broken people to himself. David was a person who got this right. He raised up others in their giftings, whether it was musicians or warriors (giant killers).

David was a rare Bible leader who was able to put the broken back together and make them better than himself.

The name of this hero, Shammah, must mean something great, right, something macho.

No, Shammah actually means ‘ruin, desolate, or waste.’

What is wrong with some parents?

Can you imagine mom yelling out the door of their home, “Waste, supper time!”

It also says that Shammah was a Hororite. Ok, that must mean something good, right. Well, Hororite means, ‘mountain man’, ‘miner’ or even ‘cave-dweller.’

This was a great start for one of David’s best, “Waste, the cave dweller.”

So, the back story of this is after killing Goliath, David served King Saul and had to eventually flee because of Saul’s paranoia.

Samuel, the prophet, had declared David the next king in Israel, which put him in King Saul’s cross-hairs. God’s choice versus man’s choice.

David running and hiding in caves gathered to himself 400 t0 600 of society’s castoffs or broken swords.

David’s small guerrilla band was hiding from Saul’s army and spies. They would fight the Philistines and they would also protect the Jewish towns for a fee. They had to live.

It was sort of the original 3Ds. These men who gathered to David were ‘distressed’. They were in ‘debt’ and they were ‘discontented.’ They weren’t happy with how life was in Israel under King Saul. They didn’t like the status quo.

In 2 Samuel, we read about an interesting incident in Shammah’s life:

Next to him was Shammah son of Agee the Hararite. When the Philistines banded together at a place where there was a field full of lentils, Israel’s troops fled from them. 12 But Shammah took his stand in the middle of the field. He defended it and struck the Philistines down, and the Lord brought about a great victory. (2 Samuel 23:11-12 NIV)

At harvest time, David’s forces were busy and spread very thin. The enemy wants the harvest. He’ll patiently let you tend the fields, pull the weeds.

The Philistines were masters at that with raiding parties. They would let the Jews plant. They would let the Jews water. They would let the Jews pull the weeds and then just at harvest time, the Philistines would come in and steal their food.

It’s just a lentil patch. Imagine the Jews, send David an SOS and they ask him to send a bunch of men to protect the village.

David who has a lot of villages to protect, sends one man who looks a little like a cave man.

I wonder what the response would have been, ‘Thanks David.’

But harvest time is critical. Shammah on orders from the king was sent to protect not just the people, but the crop as well.

Lentils, even then, were cheap, healthy food to feed families. Our enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy.

Protecting this crop was not about having a good year on the farm, but it was about survival and protecting the next generation, our children.

Shammah had a vision. It wasn’t just about protecting the people, it was to protect the future, the next generation. They can’t have our lentils.

Now my kids would be the first to give ‘my famous lentil soup’ to the Philistines. They would love to give it to the Philistines.

But not Shammah.

The Bible says that the Philistines gathered into a troop.

The Hebrew word here for troop gives no indication of the numbers. But the definition of troop means ‘alive, fresh, strong company, congregation, fast, running, springing troop.’

It doesn’t sound like something I would want to face alone.

But one man stood in their way. We are not sure of his orders from David. We are not sure if he had a weapon as it doesn’t really say.

A good soldier would have warned the people to make a hasty retreat and then Shammah does the unthinkable.

The Philistine troop marches to the field, the Jews, the harvester all run in terror and Shammah does something strange.

He positions himself in the middle of the lentil patch. He is making a statement. He is not on the edge where he could quickly escape, he is right in the middle, saying to the Philistines ‘if you want the lentils, you have to come through me.’

Shammah’s position told the Philistines everything about his character.

He defended the food, not just the people. He had long range vision. He killed the enemy, but its said that God brought out a great victory.

He trusted God, just like David his boss did.

I guess he never heard the phrase, ‘is this hill worth dying for?’ or ‘live to fight another day.’

I don’t think these were in Shammah’s vocabulary.

There are two keys to this story.

First, Shammah was sent by the king to protect the people, the crops and the future. Heroes run towards the bullets. Remember David ran towards Goliath, not from him.

Secondly, details are important. Shammah places himself in the center of the problem and the danger. You want our food you have to go through this cave man first.

Shammah was a hero because he stood alone in the center of trouble. We need men and women today, who will come and stand in the middle of trouble and not give the enemy an inch.

We decide what our kids eat, not the world. Hope I am not in trouble with that with you parents.

We read in Ephesians 6:12, says, ‘For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but dark forces.”

In a time, when so many seem to support everything, yet stand for nothing, we need heroes who will stand in the center of the harvest field. That’s a hero.

ESPAÑOL: ¿Por qué Jesús comparó el Reino de Dios con una mala hierba invasora?

Every spring as the snow melts away in our backyard, I see the brown dead grass emerging along with the annoying green leaves of dandelions that have already sprung to life and started to grow.

In my perpetual battle with the dandelion, my dreaded foe already has the advantage and no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to completely eliminate them.

Hi, my name is Dean Smith and in this podcast, I want to discuss the time that Jesus compared the Kingdom of God to one of the Middle East’s most dreaded weeds.

Yes, I said a weed.

But before I discuss why Jesus did this, let’s look at the curious statement that Pliny the Younger made about Christians in his letter to the Roman Emperor Trajan around 112 AD.

Pliny the Younger, who was the governor of Bithynea et Pontus, located in modern Turkey, was asking for advice on how to deal with those embracing the Christian faith that was rapidly spreading across the Roman Empire.

This was one of the earliest mentions of Christianity from a secular source.

In his letter, Pliny wrote that not only were Christians refusing to worship the emperor as a god, but added that the temples had been emptied and the markets selling meat sacrificed to idols were suffering because nobody was buying it.

Pliny said he was pressuring Christians to recant their faith but wasn’t sure what he should to because many of them were refusing to do so.

Then Pliny the Younger added this curious statement, he said, ‘For the contagion of this superstition (Christianity) has spread not only through the free cities, but into the villages and the rural districts, and yet it seems to me it can be checked and set right.”

Pliny the Younger was comparing Christianity to a fast-spreading plague, nevertheless, he was confident of his ability to stamp out this Christian contagion as he called it.

But this underlying confidence reveals that Pliny the Younger was unfamiliar with both the teachings of Christ and a book written by his uncle and adoptive father, Pliny the Elder. Had he been familiar, Pliny the Younger may not have been so reckless in predicting he could stop the Christian contagion.

You see Jesus compared the Kingdom of God to one particular weed.

We read:

“He presented another parable to them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field; and this is smaller than all other seeds, but when it is full grown, it is larger than the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches.” (Matthew 13:31-32 NASV)

The weed that Jesus was talking about was the mustard plant.

Like today, the ancients valued the ground-up mustard seed as a seasoning for meat and its oil. The leaves are also edible and used in stews and salads.

But aside from the benefits, the ancients considered the mustard plant as an intrusive and aggressive weed because it can quickly overrun a field or garden.

Christ’s reference to the large size of the mustard plant means the Lord was talking about the Black Mustard that can grow up to 10′ tall (and higher in ideal conditions) in a matter of a few weeks from a seed that was less than one millimeter in size making it the smallest of Israel’s crop and herb seeds.

So what was Jesus implying when He compared the Kingdom of God to a mustard plant?

Jesus was subtly hinting about how quickly and large the Kingdom of God would grow, once He sent the Holy Spirit to empower the church.

And if Pliny the Younger was familiar with Christ’s comparison of the church to a mustard plant, it should have been a warning flag. Because his adoptive father, Pliny the Elder, talked about the mustard plant in his book, Natural History, written around 78 AD.

In this book which historians describe as the world’s first encyclopedia, Pliny the Elder discusses the mustard plant’s benefits and then warns of its weed-like qualities.

Pliny the Elder describes it this way:

“[the mustard] is extremely beneficial for the health. It grows entirely wild, though it is improved by being transplanted: but on the other hand when it has once been sown it is scarcely possible to get the place free of it, as the seed when it falls germinates at once.”

So despite all the benefits that mustard provides, the ancients found it difficult to control. If it got a toehold in a field or garden, it would quickly overrun it, as the plant was almost impossible to eradicate.

The Jewish Pharisees similarly did not think highly of the mustard plant for the very same reason. The Talmud, an ancient Jewish commentary of the Old Testament, actually prohibited planting mustard in a Jewish garden because of this.

They based this on their interpretation of Deuteronomy 22 that prohibited mixture — such as mixing different forms of cloth. They applied this principle to the mustard plant and labeled it unclean because it would quickly spread through the garden mixing with other plants and because it was almost impossible to get rid of.

Even today, agricultural specialists, such as those at the University of California in Davis include mustard in their weed reports telling farmers how to eradicate the plant if it gets into their fields.

There are many reasons why the mustard plant is so invasive, so aggressive and so successful. A typical mustard plant produces thousands of seeds that sprout earlier than other plants giving it a significant advantage in early competition for water and nutrients.

It also needs less water for its seed to start germinating.

The mustard plant also produces seeds earlier than most plants. By the time other plants are entering their flowering stage, the mustard is already dropping mature seeds.

If that is not bad enough, mustard plants can even chemically alter the soil making it difficult for other plants to germinate and grown.

Rains also cause the mustard seed’s outer coat to become sticky allowing it to cling to birds and animals resulting in wide distribution.

Along with this, mustard seeds can lie dormant in the soil for up to 11 years and after times of drought, the mustard plant is usually the first to recover and can quickly dominate the ground after the rains return.

Because of these characteristics, the mustard seed was unstoppable in ancient Palestine.

So Jesus was making a subtle point about how quickly the kingdom of God or church would spread from that founding group of 120 believers in the Upper Room in Acts chapter one.

Powered by the Holy Spirit, the church would rapidly take root and grow. It would be unrelenting and unstoppable.

By the time Rome’s first Christian emperor, Constantine, arrived in 306 AD, some estimate that over 55% of Rome’s population was already Christian.

The mustard seed that had been planted around 33 AD had exploded and was now spread across the Roman Empire.

Thanks for joining me on the podcast. I will catch you again.

RELATED: Mustard Weed Report: University of California, Davis

Hi my name is Dean Smith and welcome back to the second of my two-part series discussing the eight reasons why I believe the spiritual gifts are for today.

In my previous podcast, I provided my first five reasons. This included Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost where the Apostle said that the gift of the Holy Spirit that fell on the Day of Pentecost was intended for everyone who believed including those who were afar off.

In this second series, I will discuss my final three reasons,

With that, I start with my sixth reason. Incredibly it seems that the Holy Spirit is releasing His spiritual gifts among those who don’t believe in them.

The Holy Spirit is doing this because He loves us and wants to help cessationists and continuationists alike to build the Kingdom of God. And if this means sneaking in a spiritual gift from time to time, so be it.

The 13 million-member Southern Baptist Church is probably the largest denomination that holds to the cessationists views. They don’t believe in tongues or any of the revelatory gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Yet in 2005, the missionary board of the Southern Baptist Church passed a bizarre rule stating that no-one was allowed to apply to be a missionary if they spoke in tongues privately. In fact, they were asked if they spoke in tongues on the application.

So why did they feel the need to ask this question?

Obviously, people who were applying including graduates from their own Bible schools were speaking in tongues. In 2016, the missionary board reversed this decision.

Which begs the question, why did they reverse it?

Todd Friel of YouTube’s Wretched radio program is a convinced cessationist, but in a recent program entitled, An Earnest Challenge to Our Charismatic Friends, where he expresses his opposition to speaking in tongues, Friel admitted there have been credible reports from the mission field of people “receiving the gift of foreign languages.”

Friel continues, “We can reasonably conclude that while God may give someone the ability to speak in a foreign language that can be understood by a native or one with the gift of interpretation, there never was nor should be a gift of ecstatic language that doesn’t edify the body.”

While Friel insists that speaking in tongues must benefit the body, the Apostle Paul kind of disagrees with him and tells us in 1 Corinthians 14:4 that tongues also has a personal benefit, building us up in our faith, when we are spiritually down.

Or take what happened to R.C. Sproul, now deceased, a reformed theologian and major defender of the cessationist argument. Several years back, he had a teaching position at his Aalma mater Westminster College in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. Because it was only temporary he applied for a permanent position at a school in Boston and was offered the job.1

But when Westminister offered him a full-time position shortly after that, Sproul needed to know where God wanted him to be. Even though, he wanted to stay at Westminster, Sproul and his wife, along with several students, decided to pray about this decision every night for a week.

By the seventh day, Sproul hadn’t received any direction from God that he should leave so he announced to the prayer group he would be staying. But a student challenged Sproul asking if he was genuinely open to doing God’s will even, if meant moving to Boston.

Sproul replied, “Well, I am trying to be,” but said he had seen nothing suggesting he should move, and Sproul and his wife went to bed that night excited that they had made the decision to stay.

But at three in the morning, a childhood friend that Sproul hadn’t seen for 15 years phoned. He was an airline pilot and after he arrived at his hotel room late at night, he was suddenly overcome with this urge that he had to urgently phone Sproul and tell him that he needed to take a job in Boston. It took the man an hour to track down Sproul’s phone number.

When Sproul asked why he needed to go to Boston, his friend said, “I don’t know, all I know is that I had to call you and tell you that you have to go to Boston. I am not drunk. I don’t know why this is. You do with it what you want.”

Sproul and his wife knew they needed to move to Boston and though the two years he spent there were among the worst years of his life, Sproul admitted the moved changed the trajectory of his ministry.

Or how about Billy Graham, the famed evangelist Billy Graham. Though he worked with Charismatics during his evangelistic crusades, he was a member of the Southern Baptist Church.

In his book, Just As I Am, Graham tells of the time he tried to contact then-US President John F. Kennedy, through a mutual friend, Senator Smathers, in November 1963. Graham wanted to warn Kennedy not to go on a planned trip to Dallas Texas.

Graham writes what happened next, “Instead, he (Smathers) sent me a telegram that the President would get in touch with me directly. He thought I wanted to talk about the President’s invitation to another golf game in Florida that weekend; the game was off, he said, and would have to be rescheduled. But all I wanted to tell him and the President was one thing: “Don’t go to Texas!”

Kennedy did go to Dallas and was assassinated on November 22, 1963

Maybe it is all semantics, because what Friel described was the gift of tongues, what Sproul received was a word of knowledge, and what Billy Graham got was a prophetic word.

So if the Holy Spirit is releasing His gifts among those who don’t believe in them, why is it wrong for the Holy Spirit to release the spiritual gifts to those who do believe in them and earnestly desire them as the Apostle Paul encouraged us to do?

As I mentioned in my first podcast, this was the main point of one person who commented on my articles on the spiritual gifts and the Holy Spirit.

He said, “They are signs of the apostles. When they died, those times and signs died with them.” He went on to say that quote “Today’s unknown tongue is either rehearse and fake, or they come from an unclean spirit.”

However, when we study the early church, it’s clear the gifts of the Holy Spirit were not limited to the 12 or 13 Apostles if you include Paul.

There are several examples of regular people moving in the spiritual gifts.

When the Holy Spirit fell on the Day of Pentecost, at least 108 of those 120 in attendance were not apostles. Other non- apostolic miracle workers included Philip in Samaria in Acts 8, Stephen in Acts 6:8-9 and Ananias, a regular Joe, when he laid hands on Paul and filled him with the Holy Spirit in Acts 9:17.

From what Paul wrote in his epistles, it’s obvious that the church members in Corinth were functioning in all the gifts, as were the believers in Rome according to Romans 12:6-8, Thessalonica (1 Thessalonians 5:19-20), and Galatians (Galatians 3:5).

The Holy Spirit released His gifts to all believers, so they weren’t simply functioning as just signs of the apostles. As Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 14 verses 4, 5 and 12, the gifts were intended to edify or build up believers and the church.

This argument is based on Ephesians 2:20 where Paul writes about the church, “having been built on the foundation of the Apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone.”

Because the foundation ‘having been built by the Apostles and prophets’ is in the past tense, cessationists argue that their ministries are no longer necessary and of course lump in the spiritual gifts with this.

But, using this same logic it could be argued that Jesus is no longer involved in building His church because He was, past tense, the chief cornerstone of this foundation built by the apostles and prophets.

Even the cessationists would admit that Jesus is still actively involved in the construction of the church and if this is the case why couldn’t the same be true for apostles and prophets?

Sam Storm, who is currently pastor emeritus of Bridgeway Church in Oklahoma City, is a strong continuationist. He believes the gifts are for today and he responded to the cessationists usage of Ephesians 2:20 by pointing to verses 21 and 22, which talks about the structure being built on top of the foundation, where we read, “in whom the whole building, being fitted together is growing into a holy temple in the Lord.”

As Sam explains:

“The cessationist argument fails to take note of vv. 21-22 where Paul refers to the superstructure of the church as under construction, so to speak, as he speaks/writes (note the consistent use of the present tenses in vv. 21-22). In other words, the apostles and prophets of v. 20, among whom was Paul, were also contributing to the superstructure, of which the Ephesians were a contemporary part.“

It’s obvious from other verses that apostolic and prophetic ministries have vital roles in the church other than just building the foundation.

In Ephesians 4:11-12, Paul writes that when Christ ascended He gave gift ministries to the church. We read:

“He gave some as apostles, some as prophets, some as evangelists, some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ.”

In addition to building the foundation, the apostles and prophets were actively involved in building the superstructure above which included equipping the saints to do the work of the ministry.

And we know there were several others serving as apostles in the early church aside from the 12 or 13 super-apostles.

This included Barnabus mentioned in Acts 14:14, James the brother of Jesus in 1 Corinthians 15:7 and Galatians 1:18-19, along with Andronicus and Junia (Romans 16:7).

With the arrival of apostle other than the just the 12, it is obvious that the apostolic ministers was expected to continue and continues even today.

While some groups have people they refer to as actual apostles, other groups don’t but even they have people who essentially perform the same function. They function as apostles, but under a different title such as missionaries, who are going out and establishing new works and new churches.

And we see, even according to Friel, some of these missionaries that are building these new works, who are going into areas of the world where the Gospel hasn’t been preached, that the Gift of Tongues is being manifest.

While cessationists have philosophical arguments opposing the spiritual gifts, it’s obvious from the Bible that they are intended to be used till Christ’s return and will be a critical part of the believer’s arsenal as we enter the end times.

Thanks for joining me in this two-part series on why the Gifts of the Holy Spirit are for today and I will catch you again.

1. RC Sproul is a cessationist, but listen to this story: Think Honestly Youtube ︎