How Do I Tell The Difference Between Hallucinations from My Psychosis, God’s Communications, and Satan’s Deceptive Communications?

True vs. False Spiritual Gifts and Communications

One of the reasons I’m so motivated to rightly understand the spiritual gifts found in the scriptures like visions, miracles, and faith, is that during a psychotic break I had vivid dreams and communications that I thought were from God. I thought I was a prophet “fanning into flame” a powerful and important spiritual gift. In one of my dreams I was in Joseph’s sarcophagus in Egypt and it was as if God was telling me I was his chosen one for this generation. I was then told that being the chosen one involved decoding a series of dreams which conveyed important messages for God’s people, and eventually I was told that being the chosen one meant I had to piece together the spiritual and physical world that had been separated when Adam sinned and this is why we could not see or interact with the angels, and that doing so would result in bringing about the Second Coming of Christ. I was to piece together these two worlds by using the spiritual gift of faith, where I would believe, and then swipe my hand to the left, and the spiritual dimension would open up and let angels into our world and begin to connect the two worlds. During psychosis my brain stopped following the laws of logic and it was impossible to correctly deduce anything, even Bible truth. I was reading the Bible, but coming to strange conclusions that did not follow my denomination’s tenants of faith, or any denomination’s tenants of faith – a big red flag that I was in psychosis. Bizarre beliefs that don’t line up with any religion that is known in the world are one of the biggest ways that psychologists can tell a person is displaying a symptom known as religiosity which occurs during psychosis. The beliefs are bizarre because the person’s logical and cognitive abilities have been compromised. After coming out of psychosis with lithium it took me a while to process what had happened. I had many questions and much confusion. I looked back through my life and wondered how I could tell the true experiences I had had with God as a Christian apart from the psychosis I had developed.

When visions, and dreams, and voices are nonsensical, we can be sure they aren’t from God, because God is always rational, self-controlled, holy, and dignified, not irrational, out of control, confusing, unholy, and undignified. (More on this later).

Did I Have a Healing from God at Pathfinder’s?
When I was 12 years old I went to a Pathfinder camporee. Pathfinders is a club like boy scouts or girl scouts where you earn honors and learn skills, and it’s Christian so you also learn Bible texts and study the Word of God. In the middle of the night I developed a painful ear infection and my ear ached badly. In the past when I had ear aches I would take a very hot bath and the pressure created by the hot water would often cause the ear to release the fluid in it, and the pain would abate. But they only had showers here at the camporee and I didn’t think it would work, plus I didn’t want to wake everyone up by searching through my belongings to find a towel and clothes. I had grown up praying to God throughout the day, and also whenever I had a need, and I had a very close relationship with Him. I didn’t want to wake everyone up and disturb their sleep so I asked God what to do.

As I was laying there in the dark this text came to my mind: “Be still and know that I am God”, (Psalm 46:10) along with the impression that I should lie perfectly still and reflect on God’s greatness rather than on my predicament and the pain I was experiencing. In order to lie perfectly still I had to stop breathing, so I held my breath while I contemplated the greatness of God. This lifted my mood and brought me out of a state of panic to lose sight of myself and my problem and instead think about how Omnipotent and good God is. It did something else also, it created pressure in my ear and caused the liquid to drain from my ear, stopping the painful ear ache. I was able to sleep without pain and get up the next day and engage in camporee activities with everyone else.

This experience and a few others like it I’d experienced at different times in my life certainly seemed like God speaking to me. But since I had experienced a psychotic break and had had communications I knew didn’t align with God’s Word, I now began to question all of my past experiences and it was a time of much confusion.

Looking back I can now see how my brain, knowing pressure helped the problem, could have figured out that air pressure could do the same thing. I must have heard of people popping their ears on planes as I had traveled several times on planes and so this knowledge may have been in the back of my thoughts and I put two and two together and figured it out. The sense of God impressing me with the Bible text could have also come from my own mind. It’s not uncommon for people who later develop psychotic disorders to have some auditory hallucinations and impressions/messages leading up to the illness and getting much worse when they finally develop the illness.

So, it could have been my own brain, but it also could have been God, and it seems much more like God than the sarcophagus dream which didn’t follow correct Bible doctrine and was clearly not from God.

I needed to know how to stay away from false visions and dreams, and have a solid relationship with God. And I also needed to know how to recognize symptoms of my mental illness and work with doctors to stay sane and keep symptoms at bay.

Three Things Can Happen At The Same Time

Since I could now think logically, I could now study the scriptures and find many of my answers. I did an in depth and ongoing study on the spiritual gifts and the ways that God communicates, and how to tell true communications from God apart from false signs and wonders produced by Satan to deceive, and how to tell both of these apart from mental illness. So really there are three categories here, and I believe that demons and mental illness could potentially overlap at times as could God and mental illness. i.e.. One could have a very real experience reading God’s word and be convicted of sin and a need for a Savior (when we experience conviction and become aware of our need for God, it’s always the Holy Spirit doing this convicting), while simultaneously having a hallucination or hearing voices because of having schizophrenia. In my own experience, still having whispers and quiet voices and nudges from my psychotic disorder, even after treatment (which is very common), my voices will often repeat whatever Bible study I’ve had, and the doctrine I learned in the Bible study, and the conclusions I’ve come to, and sound like the voice of God, assuring me I’ve found truth. I know this voice is not always God, because there’s been times I’ve been incorrect about doctrine and came to a wrong conclusion, and figured this out later from talking with a pastor or having a small group Bible study, and the voice had told me my initial conclusion was correct. The voice follows my thoughts, and if I learn I was incorrect, the voice will just align and repeat the new conclusion I’ve learned and made. It just shifts with my thoughts and my conclusions, and errs when I do, something which God definitely would not do as He is infallible. So this is one big way I know this voice isn’t God’s voice, even though it claims to be God and sounds and feels like it’s divine.

I’ve spoken with people who have schizophrenia who were treated for their schizophrenia and are now mostly logical, who decided to become mediums and communicate with spirits. People with schizophrenia who have been successfully treated, and come back into reality, are just like anyone else – they have a choice to make about what religion they will follow, and some of them choose to follow religions like New Age, paganism, spiritualism, and channel spirits. They then hear actual demon voices and get demonic communications, and they have the voices from their mental illness going on at the same time.

The voices from psychotic illnesses, are like dreaming, and tend to be incoherent and not to make sense. They are usually constant, and can be loud (although medication and treatment often helps make them quieter), and they make it hard to sleep.

The voices from the demons are not nonsensical, and go directly against the scriptures and encourage the person in embracing sin and false religions. These voices are often comforting, and masquerade as an angel of light, pretending to have higher truth and to be friends from the other side who have your best interest in mind. If you google mediums in big cities in the USA, these people usually make a lot of money and lead what people in our country would consider to be successful and prosperous lives. The voices they hear often encourage them in greed and worldly success, and make crass jokes, but do not harass them personally, instead spurring them on to see more clients and do more communications between their clients and spirits, to lead people astray.

In Africa the demonic influence seems to be a lot more hostile, with demons harassing people and frightening them, and requiring them to do rituals to appease them.

I think Satan has different strategies for different parts of the world. In America there’s a huge atheist element that Satan is ensnaring a lot of people with. If every American who went to a medium was harassed by demons, the atheists in America would be convinced some kind of supernatural power existed, and wouldn’t be ensnared as easily in atheism.

Satan can lie in a myriad of ways, and he will choose the lie that he thinks has the highest chance of ensnaring a person or influencing a country in a wrong direction. Which is why it’s important we trust God’s Word above personal experience. We need to believe God’s Word that it’s dangerous to consult mediums, even if we don’t see that happening in an obvious or distressing way in America.

Not everyone with schizophrenia or a psychotic illness loses their ability to understand logic; some people with schizophrenia are logical and rational but also hear voices or have visual hallucinations, especially among those who have been medicated for their condition they may still have some auditory and visual hallucinations but can understand right and wrong, the Bible at the same time, while others who are deeper into psychosis lose rational thought. All three of these things: mental illness, the Holy Spirit, and demons are a part of life in this world. So it’s possible to have activity happening from all three sources at once, as was seen during Christ’s life when demons gave people mental symptoms, and Jesus cast the demons out, and sent the demons into swine. All three things were present here: mental symptoms (in this case caused directly by the demons possessing the demoniacs, causing them to be out of their mind and do violent and erratic things like attack people, so people tried to chain them), demonic activity as in the case of the possession of the men and later the swine, and Jesus’ power and His Holy Spirit casting the demons out and setting the men free.

I have seen cases where someone is successfully treated for a psychotic disorder, say schizophrenia, and mostly comes out of the psychosis, and has enough logic to understand right and wrong, and the tenants of the Christian faith and the difference between Christianity and paganism, but still hears some auditory voices and has some visual hallucinations (it’s very common after treatment for the voices to not be as loud or as frequent, but to still be there, and it’s very rare for the medication to completely take away the voices and visual hallucinations), but chooses to become a medium and a spiritualist and rejects Christianity, and then begins hearing from demon spirits impersonating loved ones and benevolent angelic entities or ascended masters who claim to be people who lived on earth and were great teachers, and have passed on to the other side.

I believe these people are experiencing hallucinations and real demons at the same time. You can often see a very real difference between the hallucinations and the actual demons. Their hallucinations and voices from their schizophrenia are usually about random things, or symbolic of life events that are occurring in their lives at the time, and tend to be mood congruent, so for instance, if they are having a lot of depression the voices will tend to be more negative and sad, and if they are having an elated mood the voices will tend to be hopeful and grandiose.

But the demon communications they get from their mediumship strike directly against Bible truth. They aren’t random things; they show a clear goal. For instance, the demons impersonating the person’s deceased father will have the father tell crass jokes like he did on earth, giving them the message that someone who was crass and unconverted on earth is alive and well on the other side, so that the medium will believe she doesn’t need to part with sin and believe in Jesus to be saved; everyone goes to heaven, or at least everyone except very immoral people like murderers and rapists.

The longer the person channels the spirits, the more entrenched she becomes in the false beliefs, and the more she hardens her heart against the Holy Spirit’s convicting voice. You may see the person for instance, receive messages from spirits that abortion is ok, and have an abortion, or that God approves of divorce if there’s tension in their marriage, and you see them get a divorce. The medium will then become an advocate for these false doctrines, spreading these lies to others, and the demons will assure the medium she’s making a positive difference in the world, spurring her on to continue this work that strikes directly against the law of God and the authority of God.

The demons lead away from the law of God, and the Word of God, giving the person a false hope that she can live in unrepentant sin, and get a free pass into the next life and live forever.

But God’s Word declares that the wages of sin is death. And that if we refuse to repent and hold onto any sin and make it an idol, there is no more sacrifice left for the sins of such people, because they refused to bring those sins to Jesus to be forgiven and for the strength to part with them.

When it comes to voices and hallucinations from a mental illness, it’s not the case that the person becomes more entrenched in false doctrine simply by hearing voices coming from their own brain. It’s more like dreaming where you get random, and often distressing symbols and emotions, as your brain tries to process the emotions of real-life events you’re going through. The brain is in a dreamlike state when in psychosis, and it’s very similar to dreaming while awake. For instance, the person may hear voices from their abuser from their past, because their brain is processing that memory, or they may see a monster running towards them that takes on many of the same properties as their mental illness, and which is a symbolic representation of their mental illness that their mind generated. They may also see demons or angels, but these demons and angels are often symbolic representations of people or events in their life that they perceive to be good or evil. In the case of my psychosis, demon voices were symbols my brain generated when I thought I was harboring an inner attitude or “spirit” of jealousy or unjust anger. When I thought I had a benevolent inner attitude or desire, my brain would generate voices of the Holy Spirit or angels, which were symbolic of the fact I had a good desire. So I had these “voices” which in my case were usually not loud and were more impressions and signals and whispers, all the time, whenever my attitudes shifted throughout the day. Thus I felt I was being harassed and attacked by demons, or loved and comforted by angels or the Holy Spirit, but it was just my mental illness doing this. The way these voices acted and the things they did and said did not fit in with the Bible’s accounts of what demons and angels and the Holy Spirit can do and what they are and how they operate in the world.

My experience didn’t line up with the Word, and this is how I can be sure they couldn’t have been actual demons and angels, as the Word is truth.

However, since coming out of psychosis, and regaining the ability to understand right and wrong, I’ve definitely been tempted by Satan and I’ve been convicted by the real Holy Spirit. And these temptations and convictions do align with what the Bible says about how Satan and the Holy Spirit operate. But the voices did not.

See my articled titled ‘What is Schizophrenia’ for more information about psychotic disorders.

Complete Clarity Not Always Possible This Side of Heaven
I don’t believe we can say with certainty which is which in every case. In heaven I expect to have God tell me that certain times I thought he was speaking to me it wasn’t actually him, and other times I got it right and it was him speaking to me like I thought it was. This side of heaven we can’t always know for sure.

There is much we do not know regarding demons, angels and the Holy Spirit, and the human mind. All of these things are far beyond our current human understanding. The Holy Spirit is a mystery we will never be able to fully comprehend. Therefore, all that we can know is what is actually revealed in the Word of God, and we can trust that our Heavenly Father revealed everything that it is vital for us to know. Whatever He did not reveal is something that it’s not necessary for us to know. Trust in God and reliance on Him is the foundation we need to work from. He will help us understand the scriptures and come to the knowledge we need to know. We can’t trust our experiences, feelings, or even our sight or hearing to be infallible; our only sure anchor is God’s word.

A common error that many people make is to interject tradition or cultural beliefs onto their understanding of demons, mental illness, and the ways the Holy Spirit communicates. This can lead to many variations of belief which are not found in the scriptures and cause confusion. There is no safety or enlightenment in purely human ideas. What we need is a better understanding of the Word of God, and sound doctrine on this difficult and complicated subject. Unlike angels we don’t get a behind the scenes look at what’s happening and it’s easy for Satan to deceive us. We’re not supernatural beings capable of doing the things Satan can do and we can’t do the science of healing like he can. He can easily give us a magic show that looks legitimate to us and is completely false and we can’t tell the difference from the real thing. Satan has been in heaven, knew God face-to-face and knew what it was like to be fully righteous and without sin. He can transform into an angel of light, give impressions or voices that sound loving and kind like God, and mimic much of what he saw and heard, with just enough error to deceive us. The love of God for one human soul is so great, and Satan hates God so much, that I don’t doubt Satan would do whatever it would take to keep one person out of heaven.

While false spiritual gifts pose extreme danger, true spiritual gifts are a vital part of growing up the church to the full measure of Jesus Christ, in preparation for his soon coming. Ephesians 4:11-13 The truth is, we need the spiritual gifts. They are God’s way of spreading the gospel, organizing the church, and teaching us the sound doctrine Christ gave the first apostles.

How then do we tell the difference? The Bible gives us the answers.

Let’s first look at the primary way the Holy Spirit speaks. To know this, let’s look at texts that tell us his office and role in the Godhead.

But first, I want to explain two key realizations I’ve had the more time I spend in the Word of God and in prayer and reflection about this subject.

Key Realization:
The Truth About the Dynamic of the Word and The Spirit and How They Work Together is Eternal, and Never Changes

One thing I’ve really come to realize is that the relationship dynamic between the Holy Spirit and Christ is one of the Bible’s eternal truths. While the exact things they choose to do through human history may change, the nature of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, and the dynamic between them never changes.

Just as the exact choices a married couple may make when they raise children or engage in philanthropy in their community may change through the years, the nature of the institution of marriage and of what it means to be a husband or a wife and what each of these roles entails, and what their union is never changes, so the truth about the dynamic of the Godhead never changes.

One core thing I’ve realized that goes along with this is that anytime you engage with spiritual things or supernatural experiences in a way that goes against the biblical truth about the dynamic of how the Holy Spirit and Jesus, the Word interact, or goes against the truth of who they each are, you end up with a different religion that isn’t Christianity and you’re in danger of engaging with evil spirits, demons. You won’t get the Holy Spirit if you go against Bible truth about who the Holy Spirit is, what He does, and how He works with Jesus and their eternal dynamic.

In psychosis you’re not intentionally getting these truths wrong, and I believe God protects you, but you still won’t be getting supernatural manifestations that are the Holy Spirit if you aren’t relating to God in a way that aligns with the Bible.

There are many, many species of errors that the devil has created – countless counterfeits of the truth – to deceive not only people in the world but also Christians, and to bring in paganism and false religions into the Christian church.

Another example of this is like centering prayer, which goes against the Bible’s definition of prayer and its instruction on how we are to pray, and brings in eastern meditation into prayer, where you use repetitions or visualizations to work to get your mind into a state of no thoughts occurring in your brain. Jesus speaks out against vain repetitions and tells us that we are to fully engage our minds when in prayer, intelligently bringing to our Father our cares and concerns.

The counterfeits are too numerous to list; it’s impossible. Satan can create any false doctrine, and insert some elements of truth into it to deceive. So the potential here is great, and in order to avoid error and serve God in truth, it takes the help of God Himself. We need His wisdom and watch-care, and dependence on Him, and we need His Word, not our own ideas about things.

What is This Dynamic?

It was through the Word that God created the world. It’s also through the Word that God recreates our hearts and sanctifies us. It’s also through Christ’s sacrifice, and the promises in His Word that Christ forgives us.

“Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. “
Hebrews 11:3

“Sanctify them by the truth; Your word is truth.”
John 17:17

“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her
and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. “
Ephesians 5:26-27

“You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. “
John 15:3

According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue:
Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
2 Peter 1:3-4

You can see here with these Bible verses that the supernatural almighty power of the Holy Spirit does not do anything apart from the Word, the Bible, and Christ who is the living Word.

The world was created by the word of Christ, the Spirit then went and made the light, divided the day and night, created the animals, and everything Jesus’ Word brought into being.

Similarly, Christ lived a perfect life for us, then laid down His life to pay our debt, and now it’s through His Word – the Bible – that we claim His forgiveness and believe unto salvation.

We are forgiven because He’s given us His Word – Bible promises that declare us forgiven.

Similarly we are sanctified by claiming these promises and meeting the conditions of obedience laid out in them.

You can see that Christianity centers in the Word of God, not in the Spirit of God.

This is very unlike many other religions (and lies Satan seeks to infiltrate Christianity with) where the center of the religion is in the spiritualism, or supernatural manifestations.

Satan seeks to divorce the Spirit from the Word, to make the focus on supernatural manifestations that go against Bible principles and doctrine on how the Holy Spirit behaves and the kinds of things He does and how He operates in the world.

One of the biggest differences between Christianity and false religions is the focus on the Word and the authority of the scriptures.

And if you put the emphasis on the Spirit and begin to divorce the Spirit from the Word, you will end up with demon spirits and not the Holy Spirit. You will end up with a false religion that is not Christianity.

And it’s fallen human nature to want to do that. It appeals to the flesh and our fallen passions.

It’s the Word that should be the delight of every Christian, and the focus of the Christian experience and Christian faith. The Holy Spirit magnifies the Word, always; the Holy Spirit does not draw attention to Himself or magnify Himself. His role and proper place in the Godhead is the magnify Christ and the Bible, thus the focus must always be on the scriptures and they serve as the basis of the Christian faith.

Even our supernatural experiences as Christians are rooted in the Word and the Word is the focus. For instance, we claim those promises and this is how we know that we are being changed by the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit, to be recreated into the image of Christ. This is a deeply spiritual and fully supernatural experience that occurs in our hearts, but the whole focus is on the change that occurs in the character, a core Bible truth, not on superficial things like the way it feels or on visions of the Holy Spirit or anything that is not foundation to the Word of God.


One of Humanity’s Biggest Temptations
It’s important to understand that the temptation to take partial Bible truth when it comes to the Holy Spirit and what He does for us and how He operates, and add error to it appeals to our fallen flesh in a major way.

God is omnipotent. So false doctrines that make Him out to use His omnipotence to serve us and give us what our flesh wants constitutes some of humanity’s greatest temptations.

One need not have psychotic symptoms to begin seeing God in a false way where He will use His omnipotence to give them what they desire.

After I came out of psychosis, I could not tell that my prior experiences doing spells and rituals when I was out of my mind were wrong, and I stopped doing them. But I remember still having a strong fleshly desire to get into the occult again. Because I could see it was wrong, I now prayed to Jesus for strength and resisted this temptation and haven’t gotten back into the occult again since regaining sanity.

One thing that helped me was to understand that just as fornication or gluttony may be something we experience temptation with, but can say no to and do not have to give into these things, so the temptation of sorcery is a common human temptation.

I had been seeing the temptation to engage in spells and sorcery as something that was rare and only very rebellious people do it, but God’s word actually lists it under the common works of the flesh, that sinful people are tempted with.

“Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness,
Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,
Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.”
Galatians 5:19-21

The King James version uses the word “witchcraft” and other versions use “sorcery”.

I love how God’s Word gives us the truth and corrects our human preconceptions and opinions. The truth is, the desire to get involved in witchcraft and sorcery, is a common human temptation, it’s not rare, and looking around at all the devil’s false religions through history, and lying supernatural manifestations in the Christian church, and the millions of people who seek these things out and engage in meditation, yoga, witchcraft, praying to the saints, confessing to priests, the Word of Faith movement, and all these other acts of sorcery, it’s really clear just how big of a temptation this is to human beings and just how much it appeals to our selfish hearts.

The truth is we are sitting ducks for all these lies. Even converted people have some selfishness in us, and the desire to use supernatural power for our own ends is an almost overpowering one. We need Jesus or there is no hope for us. But He has pledged to give us the victory, and He is faithful and will do so. But let’s face it, this will not be easy and will require many battles on our knees.

Witchcraft and every species of sorcery is more common in our day and age than it was in the pagan nations of Bible times. There’s more mediums in the United States alone than have ever existed in the times of the Amorites or Hittites. The population of the whole earth is much larger, and Satan’s species of error are more numerous. He has increased in power since that time.

Not only do people attempt to summon pagan gods and goddesses, or their higher selves via meditation (which is a concept that doesn’t exist – we have no higher selves that are divine – and allows demons to gain control of them), but people even try to get God to answer prayers that are selfish.

Jesus addressed this issue and told the people plainly that He would not give them things to serve selfish and lustful purposes.

“Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.”
James 4:3

“If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened. “
Psalm 66:18

“Then they will call on me, but I will not answer; they will earnestly seek me, but will not find me. “
Proverbs 1:28

God’s Word makes it clear that God will say no to such prayers. He makes the conditions of answered prayer that we keep His commandments and walk in obedience to Him and pray for such things that are right and good and further His Name and His work on the earth.

“And this is the confidence that we have before Him: If we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. “
1 John 5:14

“and we will receive from Him whatever we ask, because we keep His commandments and do what is pleasing in His sight.”
1 John 3:22

We must ask according to His will in order to receive. This requires a knowledge of His will as revealed in the scriptures, and a submission to His Omniscience; like a child trusts a loving Father who knows better than the child does what is right and what that child needs.

What Satan does then is he creates false doctrines that foster greed and pride and all these fallen passions that God has said no to, telling people God will really say yes. The Word of Faith movement is one such false movement where people have experienced supernatural manifestations of healing, communications, dreams, seeming answers to prayer such as meeting someone who would become their spouse their an encounter that seemed to be orchestrated by God, getting a new job through a way that seemed almost miraculous.

Word of Faith at first seems like a subtle lie, and many of its beliefs have been mixed with true Christianity and its tentacles are everywhere even in churches with sincere believers who are subtly and usually unknowingly influenced by it.

But when you break it down at its root Word of Faith teaches that we can command God to do things using our words. That our words hold creative power. This makes people out to be divine, blurring the lines between us and God.

This is only one such false belief that can cause supernatural manifestations in your life that are demonic in origin and not from God. This false belief system sees greed as a virtue, teaching people God wants them to have success in every area of life in this world – monetarily, spiritually, and good physical health.

But in this world the Bible counsels us to use our money and talents to spread the gospel, care for the poor and widow, and build up the church. We are not supposed to hoard our wealth for ourselves, calling it the blessing of God.

This false movement appeals to people’s greed and pride. Telling them they are divine; that their words and prayers manifest what they desire, rather than that God alone is divine and He does His will; He doesn’t do ours.

Word of Faith teachings do not acknowledge that the Christian must carry their cross in this life, live simply and humbly, and the discipline of God that must occur here in order to sanctify us. These are core Bible doctrines they do not teach or believe in or acknowledge.

Rather they usually teach that the only suffering God won’t take away from His children is persecution. But that health is always a guarantee, money is always a guarantee.

How convenient to teach that persecution is the only suffering God allows at a time when there is little persecution of Christians in developed countries (though that is changing now and rapidly, I admit), and they know there is no chance of real persecution in their lifetime. Or at least there wasn’t until very recently when things have taken a decided shift.

The Role of the Holy Spirit and the Main Way He Communicates Daily


But when he, the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.
He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you.
John 16:13-14

And when he is come he will reprove the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment.
John 16:8 KJV

The Holy Spirit doesn’t speak his own words and neither does Christ. Christ came speaking the doctrine of the Father, and the Spirit glorifies Christ by making Christ’s teaching understood by human beings. He teaches us from God’s word.

I’ve thought a lot about this and studied the Word, and I believe that there is a foolproof way we can know the Holy Spirit is speaking to us. Did you know that? There is one tried and true foolproof way. But it’s not flashy or over the top exciting. It is however deeply important and deeply intimate. We can know the Holy Spirit is communing with us when we are convicted of wrongdoing, and when we are convicted of our need of a Savior, convicted to repent, to make wrongs right, and convinced of the divinity and sufficiency of Christ to meet our need.

We have examples of this in the scriptures. When Peter was convicted that Jesus was the Messiah Jesus said to him: Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my Father which is in heaven.
Matthew 16:17 KJV

The truth is the Holy Spirit speaks to us every day. Any time we need to make a moral decision and choose between right and wrong, the Holy Spirit is right there convicting us of truth and appealing to us to do the right thing. Conviction isn’t something that comes by human

study alone. It is the very voice of God speaking to the spirit; when we are convicted; it is God Himself. He never ceases speaking to us unless we completely grieve him away, which some have done, though it is not easy to do. Entire Old Testament groups of people have done so and we’re told that at the time of the end the whole world will wonder after the beast except a small remnant. There will come a time when everyone’s choice will be fixed and decided and Christ will say “Let he who is unjust be unjust still…let he who is holy be holy still.” Revelation 22:11 Solemn realities here. It’s important that we begin right now to make a practice of heeding the convicting voice of the Holy Spirit. The good news is that it’s completely up to us whether we will heed conviction or harden our hearts. If we choose to heed, Christ will give us strength through his Holy Spirit to do the right thing. We must come to him in prayer daily and rely on his strength.

When Jesus was alive on earth he often referred to object lessons, common things in nature which taught the people important truths. This is one way the Holy Spirit speaks also.

We see the same thing happening in the book of Jeremiah and even in Proverbs where Solomon observes the ant and other common things found in nature and learns wisdom.

“This is the Word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.

The Word of the Lord came to me. He said “Can I not do with you, Israel, as this potter does?” Like clay in the hand of the potter so are you in my hand Israel. Of at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if that nation that I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. And if at another time I annunce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it.”

Jeremiah 18:1-10

Can’t you hear Christ in these words? It is the pre-incarnate Christ, referring to object lessons in nature just as he did when he walked among the earth later on. 

“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”
James 1:17

God has done many different kinds of manifestations through his Spirit in both the Old and New Testaments. In fact, these manifestations are so varied that no one could guess what he would do next. Who could have guessed that the Holy Spirit would endow a man with superhuman strength in the case of Samson for instance? Or that God would part the Red Sea? When God created the world who could have guessed at all the different marine life, or the different microbiomes he would speak into existence? The world baffles us and we aren’t even close to fully understanding the handiwork of God; it’s beyond our capacity as human beings.

When I first started studying the gift of prophecy, I had the belief that the gift only came to those who had the office of prophet, but I quickly learned that this was not the case, and that the Holy Spirit gave the gift in a much more varied way than I had at first thought. Saul, the first king, prophesied, David prophesied through the psalms though he was a king and not in the office of prophet, Miriam was a prophetess but wrote no books of the Bible as the other prophets did, though she wrote a song that is recorded in scripture. Even Nebuchadnezzar, a non-Christian king at the time had a dream prophecy given by the Holy Spirit, and Pilate’s wife was given a dream.

I began to see that God could really do anything good. He could give any good gift and give it in any good way. And Satan could do anything bad, or a mixture of good and bad to deceive. God’s manifestations are always given righteously and in righteous ways; Satan’s false manifestations are always given deceptively and for evil purposes and in ways that cheapen God or make Him look bad.

The Holy Spirit’s Integrity

Unfortunately it’s often the case, even among Christians, that we have a tendency to see the Holy Spirit as a force, or supernatural powers and gifts we can be given from God, rather than as a Person.

It’s vital that we know from the scriptures who the Holy Spirit is. God hasn’t revealed everything about the Holy Spirit, and a complete knowledge of Him is beyond our ability as finite created beings to understand, but what God has revealed in His Word is vital to our Christian faith.

He is a Person.

The Bible calls God the “God of truth”.

so that he who blesses himself in the land shall bless himself by the God of truth, and he who takes an oath in the land shall swear by the God of truth; because the former troubles are forgotten and are hidden from my eyes.
Isaiah 65:16 ESV

He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.
Deuteronomy 32:4

Into Your hands I commit my spirit; You have redeemed me, O LORD, God of truth.
Psalm 31:5

Jesus calls Himself “The Truth”.

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
John 14:5

Jesus even goes so far as to say that His life work is to testify of the truth. Those who love and embrace the truth are called Christians, followers of Christ. Truth is the dividing line between Christians and non-Christians. All those who love the truth hear the voice of Christ and follow Him. The unrepentant, refuse to follow Him because they love not the truth.

“You are a king, then!” said Pilate. Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”
John 18:37 NIV

The Man of Evil will use every kind of evil to fool those who are lost. They are lost because they refused to love the truth and be saved.
1 Thessalonians 2:10 ERV

And then, the Holy Spirit is called the “Spirit of Truth.”

But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.
John 16:13

So you can see here from these passages, that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all the divine Source of truth. All truth stems from them, and because they are all The Truth, they are all united with one another in truth.

What does this mean? It means everything we call truth originates from them. It also means they can’t do anything that is not a truthful way of doing things. They can’t speak anything that is not true. They can’t deal with people in a way that is not truthful and right. They can’t act or behave in a way that goes against Bible truth. All of their choices, behaviors, words, and conduct are always in the truth 100% of the time.

But…are we holding the Holy Spirit up to this standard? Or, is it far too common that people accept cheap signs and communications that are not fitting for the holy God to do, and conclude God sent us those cheap messages?

This happens far too often. Since the Holy Spirit is a Person, we need to hold Him to a standard of integrity that we’d hold the Father to, or the Son. This standard is one of perfection. If you can’t imagine a perfect God giving you the sign or communication you’re wondering about, then it definitely wasn’t God who gave it. The Holy Spirit is held to the same standard as the Father and Jesus are.

If you look at the miracles of Jesus, they were always wonder-provoking. He healed people of leprosy, He gave sight to the blind. Even the miracle of the fish holding the coin Jesus needed to pay taxes to Ceasar taught an important doctrinal lesson about how we are to respect the secular governments God has put in place, and drew people back to this important Bible truth.

All His miracles inspired awe in God and reverence for His Word, and never painted God and His Word in a false light.

Through the Old Testament there’s miracles and wonders that are very out-of-the-box according to our human understanding, such as giving one man – Samson – super-human physical strength. But even with these very unique wonders, they were always wonder-provoking, and gave people a sense of awe in God. It was a marvel to see one man take on a rebellious and heathen army, and everyone knew no one could do that except by God’s power. Samson carried out God’s judgments in the earth, and this sent a holy fear into the hearts of the heathen, drawing people back to God. Of course, Samson wasn’t faithful to his trust as he should have been, and that’s unfortunate. But I won’t go into the whole story here. We’re discussing the gift itself and the different ways in which God worked by His Spirit.

Similarly the natural world invokes a sense of awe and wonder. When we study astrophysics or the laws of thermodynamics and how they affect the weather and create thunderstorms, the science is amazing and wonderful. It gives a sense of reverent joy towards the omnipotent God who made such wonders.

God’s Holy Spirit working through Jesus’ Word is what holds up the universe, all the laws of physics, and each day gives life to people and animals. God didn’t set these things in motion and now they operate on their own. They can’t do that. God’s power is what makes them hold up, and operate each and every second.

The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. 
Hebrews 1:3

in Him all things hold together.
Colossians 1:17

For in him we live and move and have our being.’
Acts 17:28

Both miracles and the scientific world reveal an awe-inspiring God of love, worthy of our worship and respect. Similarly any communications we were to receive from Him would paint Him in a dignified way and inspire reverence. So if we think God is trying to communicate by making a picture of Jesus appear in our cereal, or by giving us random letters that we see whenever we look at a clock, such as 12:34 and we believe this means we are to read Luke 12:34 as there is an important message from God in the verse for us – any of these types of communications cheapen God, and go against a right and truthful way of doing things.

Since the Holy Spirit is the God of truth, and not just the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit cannot use cheap, false ways of communicating with you either, just as the Father and Son cannot.

So, when evaluating whether a communication is from God or not, really ask the question about the Holy Spirit’s integrity. Does this communication match up with divine integrity, or is it impure, cheap, or false in some way? If it’s impure, cheap, or false, then a 100% holy God couldn’t be communicating in such a way.

His Name and His integrity matter, and He would never do something that goes against that holy Name or against the truth.

True vs. False Spiritual Gifts

“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”
James 1:17

It’s in our Father’s heart to give us gifts. Our Father only gives us perfect gifts, he does not give us defective or unholy or sinful gifts. Let’s say you’re a young Christian woman who is praying for a spouse. An attractive, intelligent, and deeply spiritual man comes into your life. At first you may wonder if he’s the man God intends for you, but then you find out he’s married. Your knowledge of the scriptures and your willingness to follow God’s will will make it clear at this point whether you’re going to believe he is the one for you or not. Those who know the Word of God will conclude that no matter how spiritual and kind he is, he’s married, and God recognizes the vow this man made before heaven to his wife, and so he cannot be the one God intends for you. He is not a perfect gift. Being with him would be sin.

Or let’s say you’re a young single Christian woman who meets a man who is interesting and attractive and whom you share many common interests with. But he’s not a Christian and is convinced and committed to atheist beliefs and lives an atheist lifestyle. He’s not a perfect gift either; being with him will cause you to compromise your faith. It would be sin to be unequally yoked, 2 Cor 6:14. It can’t be in the mind or heart of God for you to be with this person.

Anything that deviates from one man and one woman who are believers in Christ can’t be God’s will for the Christian.

You can see that there a variety of ways that a gift can be a bad, imperfect gift. There are as many variations as there are ways God’s law can be broken. And Satan, being the author of sin – or breaking God’s law – can and does break every category of the law of God, though he may not break every category at the same time. Because mixing truth with error is so effective, often he mixes good traits with evil traits. It’s not just the physically abusive boyfriend – the person that is obviously not God’s plan for you – that isn’t a perfect gift. It’s also the kind atheist, or the deeply spiritual married man.

False spiritual gifts work the same way. Satan invented both the fortune cookie, and the bright vivid vision of an angel with love in its eyes appearing to you but speaking contrary to the Bible. Cheap, confusing spiritual manifestations are just as much his domain as the visions that look real and feel loving but do not point to the Bible and the Bible only.

And I wouldn’t put it past Satan to give confusing manifestations to people who have a mental illness in order to take advantage of them. People do this exact thing, so why wouldn’t Satan?

You’ve probably heard of the Nigerian scam. It’s basically a chain-mail email that is sent to millions of people every year. It’s a numbers game for the people initiating the scam. They know there are a certain percentage of wealthy Americans who are in the middle stages of dimentia; still managing their own finances, not at a nursing home or anything, but their judgment is rapidly waning. They know that it’s these people who will get confused and respond to the scam and they form their business model around the numbers.

I saw a tv program recently where a mentally ill woman had a delusion that she was in a relationship with two famous rock stars. Scammers online picked up on her delusion and pretended to be the two rock stars, and wrote loving messages to her and then asked her for money. She sent them thousands of dollars. The poor woman had a delusion which is a fixed belief that your brain has lost the cognitive ability to analyze logically and see that it can’t be true, and these sharks took advantage of her. Schizophrenics make up 2% of the population and those with delusional disorders make up another 1% or so. These scammers are aware of the numbers and they even know more about how schizophrenia works than the average person does. They know if they write enough people 2 in 100 will be schizophrenic and they can scam them out of lots of money.

My Perfect Horse Gift

When I was a month away from turning twelve years old I received a perfect gift. I had been wanting a horse since I was very young, and one Sabbath at church we had a new member who worked at a horse farm join our church family. My mom and I went up to her and welcomed her and she asked if I wanted to visit the horse farm where she worked with her. Long story short she ended up arranging for me to be given a retired quarter horse broodmare as my very own horse. She had been a show horse in her day, winning medals in competitions called Western Pleasure. She was such a well-bred high quality horse that even at age 22 she still looked like a show horse in many ways. I remember brushing her mane and being awstruck by the many variety of gorgeous colors – blonde, red, dark brown, light brown. She was beautiful.

Her previous owners asked me to not go above a canter with her. A horse’s fastest gate is the gallop and I had wanted a younger horse that I could gallop around and jump over hedges. Despite my horse being wonderful, I caught myself wishing I could have had a younger horse. Looking back as an adult now who is old enough to have kids of her own, I can see the wisdom in giving me an older mare. I definitely could have gotten hurt galloping a younger horse. I was also hypomanic due to my developing mental illness and didn’t have the best judgment. Even with the older mare several times we had a couple injuries that in hindsight happened because of my lack of judgment.

My horse was in every way a perfect gift, even the things I wished I could have changed about the gift. Because we as human beings don’t know what’s best for us, and often want things which aren’t good for us, there is a tendency to be attracted to and desire imperfect gifts, things which are wrong for us. My desire to basically steeplechase a young fiery horse could have cost me my life had I gotten what I wanted. In the same way, Satan often supplies what our flesh wants in the form of false spiritual gifts which appeal to our fallen hearts, and which can be just as dangerous as my childhood horse dreams if we accept the counterfeit gift rather than humbling ourselves and taking the perfect gift.

Official vs. Counterfeit

If you received an official letter from the President of the United States, you would expect it to be free of errors in punctuation, to look impeccable. You’d also expect that nothing would be written in that letter which did not represent the exact views of the President. The letter would come with an official seal. There are high standards that the letter must meet, standards which distinguish it from a letter from a friend or a family member. If you were to receive a letter in the mail that claimed to be an official letter from the President, but it was written – not typed – with crayons, or it had multiple spelling errors and incorrect grammar, you’d know it couldn’t actually be a letter from the President after all. You’d conclude some kid must be playing a prank on you.

Successful companies work hard to build a brand that instills confidence in its customers. They want us to associated their brand with quality products made from the best substances and constituents, excellent customer service experiences, and fast delivery. So that when they stamp their brand on a product, it means something. We go out and buy it. We trust it. They are careful not to stamp their brand symbol onto defective or low quality products. This kind of mistake will lose customers and tank their company’s reputation.

Can we expect the Sovereign, holy God of the universe to be less careful with His Name, His image, and His reputation than the US President or a successful company?

Furthermore, as Christians, Christ tells us to put God, His Name, and His kingdom first, before ourselves. This is what it means to be a Christian. We are caught up in our Father’s work, his reputation and his cause, living for a higher purpose than just ourselves. This higher purpose gives us meaning and joy; without it we become nihilistic. Jesus told us to pray “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” before we pray “give us this day our daily bread,. And he says again, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things [food, shelter, clothing] shall be added unto you.” (Matthew 6:33) Christians are called witnesses that He is God (Isaiah 43:10) living epistles that testify of Him in a world of false gods and false ideologies (1 Corinthians 3:3). Lights in the world bearing the only true doctrine of salvation (Matthew 5:14-16). Early Christians willingly suffered and laid down their lives for the Name (Acts 5:41), the same Name of God (his character) which Satan had accused and slandered in heaven. Being a Christian means not taking God’s name in vain (Commandment 3), but being a true and not a lying witness. Those who lie and blaspheme the Name of God serve on Satan’s side, working to tear down God’s reputation and warring against him.


The Devil Always Has a Motive
The devil always has a motive behind what he does, even if this can’t always clearly be seen. His goal is to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10). The biggest way he wants to steal, kill, and destroy isn’t physical or mental, but spiritually. He wants to lead people into sin and harden their hearts in unrepentance, so they will forfeit the redemption Jesus died to give them, causing great grief and suffering to God, and keep their characters selfish and at war with God, so he can use them in his army to war with God. While the devil delights in physical suffering, mental suffering, and emotional suffering, his major aim is to get us to live in unrepentant sin. If there seems to be a motive behind the communications to lead a person away from Bible truth, and to tempt them to sin and establish them in error, this is the best indicator that the dreams and visions and communications are probably Satan, definitely not God, and probably not a mental illness.

If you look at the voices and communications that mediums hear and contrast them with the voices and communications that someone diagnosed with schizophrenia hears, you will see major differences. I once read a story of a medium who thought she was communicating with a man who had died who was a murderer. Everything about her interaction with this “man” was debased and sinful. He would cuss, had evil motives, and yet claimed to have passed on peacefully to the other side. It’s not uncommon for mediums to report that their voices cuss, are crude, and wicked like the people who live in our world are. What is the goal of all of this? The motive behind all of this is for Satan to convince the medium, and the people who hire the medium to contact dead loved ones, that everyone on earth when they die passes on peacefully to the other side. That you can live your life anyway you want in this life – live a very immoral life – and you will not die, but pass over to the next life. It’s the same lie he gave to Eve in Eden, that sinning and disobeying God, she would not surely die.

But God’s Word declares that the wages of sin is death.

When people see a medium, they leave thinking they were communicating with their dead loved one, who joked with them in a crass manner, and yet is alive and well in the spirit realm. This emboldens them in their own sin. If uncle Richard is alive and happy on the other side, and he was a womanizer, a drunk, and a gambler, well then my lies aren’t so bad, my greed and selfishness isn’t such of a big deal.

The very act of going to a medium is idolatry, according to the Bible, and is never safe, and will place someone under Satan’s power. The Bible tells us that the communications of gods and beings that occurs in false religions is really done with demons lying to you and masquerading as these deities or dead loved ones who have passed over.

“No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons.”
1 Corinthians 10:20

“They sacrificed to demons, not to God, to gods they had not known, to newly arrived gods, which your fathers did not fear.”
Deuteronomy 32:17

“They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons.”
Psalm 106:37

Galatians explains it this way…that demons are by nature not gods. Because they are created beings, angels who have fallen. They do not possess any attributes of divinity. So the false gods of Egypt, Greece, wicca, paganism, etc. were demons and their whole religion was created by Satan.

“Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods.”
Galatians 4:8

These verses are really profound. Paganism and spiritualism is not another religion. Rather Paganism is a facade Satan hides behind, an elaborate lie like the snake in the garden, where he steals people’s worship away from God and gets us to worship him instead. There’s only one true religion and that’s the religion of the Bible, worshipping the Creator and Savior. Everything else is false. But when the devil wants to steal our worship away from God, he doesn’t usually come out and say “worship me”, rather he lies and presents a facade to deceive us. If you look at the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness, Satan did not tell Jesus he was Satan, until the very last temptation. He disclosed his true identity only when it was advantageous for his evil schemes and aims for him to do so. For that last temptation he needed Jesus to know it was Satan tempting him so he could offer him the kingdoms of the world. Even this was deceptive though as if Jesus had bowed down and worshipped Satan it would not have resulted in Jesus gaining the kingdoms of the world, but rather Jesus would have lost the war and Satan would have won everything. But of course we know that didn’t happen and couldn’t happen because God and the principles of His kingdom by nature win out in a war of good vs. evil. But by disclosing his true identity Satan made the temptation stronger for Jesus and that’s why he did it. Not to be honest or for pure motives.

Now let’s contrast the clear motive behind the communications mediums receive and the false communications I received when in psychosis… 

My psychotic delusions seem confusing, irrational, illogical, not cohesive, and they don’t have a clear path that leads to a life of immorality. There isn’t a motive behind them to sin and get caught up in temptations. Rather they just seem incoherent. 

But the motive behind the communication mediums receive is very different. The communications are all given to lead a person to worship false gods and to stop looking to the Bible as their authority, to embrace sinful lifestyles and think one’s spirit will go to heaven and they won’t die. The aim is to get the person to live a life of rebellion against God, while believing they are saved in doing so.

Psychotic Delusions Not Safe
Now while psychotic delusions are from a brain malfunctioning and they aren’t from Satan, this doesn’t mean they are safe. While a person in psychosis who was a saved Christian prior to falling into psychosis cannot become demon-possessed or lose their soul from the psychotic things they may do when they have a complete loss of reason, this doesn’t mean their delusions won’t lead to behaviors and choices that are mentally and physically dangerous.

Someone in psychosis may believe they can fly, and they may jump off the roof. This could result in death or severe injury, even if they are saved and right with God because they served Him sincerely before their psychotic break occurred. 

This is a key reason why it’s important delusional people aren’t just passed by as being different and unique, and are given the help they need.

Sometimes a person hasn’t completely lost their reason and logic, but they have some delusions and hallucinations. This sometimes happens, and psychotic symptoms are on a spectrum. At the far end to the left, with the most mild cases, you have people who are eccentric and think outside of the box. They have very mild delusional thinking and are more creative than delusional, and then at the opposite end you have people in full-blown psychosis who never think a sane thought ever, until they are treated, and two thirds of people treated with anti-psychotic medication who are in this state will respond to medication and come out of the psychosis enough to know they have a psychotic illness and gain awareness. With nutrient therapy treatments (see links in back of book about Dr. Walsh, Dr. Hoffer and Dr. Pfeiffer for more information) recovery rates are even higher.

Usually after treatment a psychotic person still has some delusional thinking left, but the delusions aren’t as severe and they don’t have as many as before treatment. There’s a window of awareness where they can understand their condition, and interact in sane ways with family and friends and the world at large.

With nutrient therapy there’s usually even more improvement than this. And some people do recover completely and either no longer need medication or need just a small amount. Because psychotic disorders are epigenetic in nature and not purely genetic (you are not born with them; they develop over time) people can sometimes spontaneously recover when the stressors in their lives have been reduced, and treatments effect the epigenetic expression and there’s ways to reduce the stress load and lessen symptoms or bring the person back to full health using nutrients. For more information on this read the chapter titled What is Schizophrenia?

So there’s a lot of people on the psychotic spectrum, and for people who have some knowledge of right and wrong, that person remains right with God only if they do what they know to be right and resist what is wrong. Satan can still tempt them in areas where they can discern right from wrong. An example of this is someone who may hear a voice that says they need to jump off the balcony in order to prove they really have faith in God, but even though they are hearing voices, they have enough sanity and cognition to check the voice with the scriptures and realize it wouldn’t be genuine faith to jump; it would be presumption and would bring dishonor to God, not honor. They have a duty to take care of their body, out of love and reverence to Christ (1 Corinthians 6:19-20, 1 Corinthians 3:17).

The person must resist the voice and not jump. If they do jump it’s presumption and rebellion against God, and they will not be right with God if they jump. If they were to die from the impact of the jump, they would not die saved, but lost, the same way Jesus would have been in rebellion to have thrown himself off the temple as Satan suggested.

However, for people in full psychosis, who no longer have knowledge of right and wrong, and no longer have a conscience, and genuinely believe that they must jump off the roof in order to save the world or to please God or some other delusion, it’s not a sin for them to jump as they have no knowledge of right and wrong, and without knowledge of the moral law there is no sin. Such people may die and yet be innocent. Like a small baby who cannot reason to know not to eat deadly things and put them in their mouths, it’s the job of their families and of society to protect them from themselves. This is why it’s key that families and communities become educated about psychosis.

“…by the law is the knowledge of sin”
Romans 3:20


“…where there is no law, there is no transgression.”
Romans 4:15

“…I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.”
Romans 7:7

The same way that a baby Christian may know certain things are wrong, and not know other things are wrong, because they don’t yet have a solid enough knowledge of the scriptures, or the same way that people growing up in pagan societies such as ancient China can be saved if they follow all the truth they do know, even while ignorantly engaging in error, because what they don’t know isn’t sin for them, only going against what they do know would be sin, the psychotic person who loses their judgment and doesn’t know right from wrong, cannot be said to be sinning either when they do something the Bible says is wrong, if they’ve lost the capacity to understand God’s moral law.

“Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.”
James 4:17

How can the person growing up in a pagan society who has never heard the gospel be saved? How can the baby Christian who is still sinning in key ways be saved? Because they do not know they are in error. They lack that knowledge. They are living out all the truth they do know. In the same way, a psychotic person who went into psychosis and lost their reason and now no longer knows right from wrong, cannot be said to be sinning according to the Bible when they do wrong things without knowledge they are wrong.

It’s when we go against our conscience that we sin – the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking to the soul. A person in full psychosis does not have a conscience. 

“…for whatsoever is not of faith is sin.”
Romans 14:23

Looking back, I think the reason I was so obsessed with faith while in psychosis, and kept trying to will myself to have faith and sweep my hands to the left to open dimension portals, was that I had lost my ability to tell what true faith is. I’d lost my conscience. And I was trying to find it again, but it was buried deep beneath the toxins and inflammation in my brain, and the inflammation was rewiring my neural pathways so they were all off and I was not logical. I couldn’t understand Bible faith, faith as defined by the scriptures and what that is. The simple faith of believing in the authority of the scriptures and in walking in obedience to Christ with a clear conscience. I couldn’t grasp that concept as I no longer had a conscience. I was of course innocent. I was no longer a moral agent and this was painful to me.

“And this is our boast: Our conscience testifies that we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially in relation to you, in the holiness and sincerity that are from God–not in worldly wisdom, but in the grace of God.”
2 Corinthians 1:12

And coming out of psychosis and regaining the ability to tell right from wrong was so wonderful! I could again understand the great principles of righteousness of God’s government. I could again discern the beauty in His character and His truth. I realized in a new way how God and His truth is the most important thing in the universe, and could understand why the martyrs would rather lay down their lives than give up points of truth. All of God’s truth is one cohesive whole, operating by the same underlying principles of justice and mercy.

The Bible explains that it makes no sense to not commit adultery and yet to murder. The same God gave them both! The character of God is clearly seen in both. It’s clearly loving both to not commit adultery, and to not murder. The same underlying principle of benevolence and honoring the inherent human rights of people, inherent within their design as beings made in God’s image, and which God makes clear in His law as the right treatment for such beings, underlies both the commandment not to kill and not to commit adultery.

“For he who said, “You shall not commit adultery,” also said, “You shall not murder.” If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker.”
James 2:11

There is a cohesiveness in the law of God, the same principles of righteousness in all 10 points. The same motives, and attitudes, and goals. The same God with an unchanging character of benevolence who gave them all.


The Bible speaks of how strange it is that God’s people both bless and curse. That we do good actions and evil ones. The actions of human beings in this world is truly an anomaly in the universe. We have become like the tree of good and evil, doing good sometimes, and evil other times. It’s out of order in the cosmos. And God will solve the problem by sanctifying us and changing us into His image; we are not supposed to be this way.

“But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.

Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God.

Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be.

Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter?

Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olive berries? either a vine, figs? so can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh.”
James 3:10-12

Another similar verse tells us that “No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God.”
1 John 3:9

We will not continue producing both figs and olives. We will not continue to both curse and bless out of the same mouth. The life and death of Christ bought for us power to have dominion over sin so that it does not rule us, power to overcome. And the Holy Spirit living within us will give us daily victories over sin, if we will submit to the process of sanctification and commit to do our part, so that our fountain will spew sweet water and not bitter. It will be less and less bitter the longer we walk with God and a higher percentage of the water will be sweet.

Because sin can’t dwell with God and can’t hold a candle to His power. So God living in us and changing us will cast the sin out of our hearts and recreate us to be holy like Him.

“For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under the Law but under grace. “
Romans 6:14

“But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.
Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation, but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. ”
Romans 8:11-14

Through Christ we now have the power to put to death the deeds of the flesh.

Verses about the principles of this world, and how we have been set free from them to follow principles of goodness and love.

Truth – the simple and foundational and eternal truth of God’s Word – is more beautiful and wonderful than any fancy dream or vision. I had a lot of those when in psychosis. For many years I’ve never been a visual person, but the year I experienced my full psychotic break, and the months leading up to it I suddenly became very visual. My dreams were as vivid as blue-ray definition and were very visually stunning and elaborate. But none of it really meant anything without my reason, and my ability to discern truth.

When I came out of psychosis the simple and profound beauty of God’s moral truth was like taking a breath of air after being under water for far too long, or eating bread after being given cardboard for months. It was the thing that met my soul’s hunger, the only thing that makes life meaningful. Nothing else can do it.

True joy in life isn’t a nice meal or a beautiful sunset, or warm affection; it’s the beauty of knowing God and His truth, and walking in that truth. We are not dogs that can be satisfied with warmth and affection and comfort or play. We are moral beings who are utterly miserable without our moral perception as I was when in psychosis, or if we live in opposition to truth as the unsaved do. The quality of such a life is poor indeed. I love how God offers such a high quality of life! A high quality of life can only be made possible by exalting God’s law and never abrogating or diminishing it or taking away even one jot or one tittle. The cross magnifies the law. It shows it is wonderful, binding, indestructible, and eternal. To do away with the law would be to allow sin and take away from man the high quality of life that he needs as a moral agent. It wouldn’t be loving to people for God to do that.


Can Converted Christians Experience False Miracles and Communications?
It’s really important to understand that Satanic communications can come to those who aren’t involved in false religious practices. It’s not necessary to be channeling supposed dead loved ones in order for Satan to give someone a false dream or false miracle or communication. While it’s a sin to knowingly communicate with supposed dead loved ones and Satan will gain control over people who do so, and it’s not a sin on your part for Satan to give you a lying dream or false miracle that you didn’t seek out and weren’t involved in, it does happen to God’s people sometimes even though they are innocent and no wrong has been done on their part.

Jesus rebuked Peter who was at that time a faithful disciple and following Christ, telling him “get thee behind me Satan” (Matthew 16:23), and we’re told in the scriptures to test every spirit, and that many false signs and false miracles will be done, not only by the unsaved and wicked, but for the purpose of deceiving the very elect, meaning the elect – God’s children who are following Him – will come in contact with these false miracles and signs on some level.

It’s not the case that once you area Christian everything that looks like a miracle that happens to you is a true miracle, or every communication you think is from God is actually from God, or that every sign you could receive is always from God, and that you will never come in contact with false ones, otherwise the Bible would not have said to test every spirit.

“Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.”
1 John 4:1

It’s clear that even Christians need to test the spirits. That everything that happens to us – including supernatural manifestations –  isn’t automatically or necessarily God, and that we are in danger if we do not test all of these things.

How do we test them?

“To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.”
Isaiah 8:20

The law referred to here is God’s 10 Commandment moral law, the one that is bunding upon people of every age, whether Adam and Eve in the garden, Israelites at the time of Moses, or the people living today.

And the testimony referred to here is the Old Testament, which would later expand into the New Testament as God gave more of His Word. It’s the Bible, the Word of God.

So the test for every communication, every thought and idea, every ideology, to know whether it’s in alignment with God or definitely not of God, is the 10 commandments and the Bible.

God’s Word alone is the only way we can know if a spirit is of God or not of God.

The following verse shows just how thoroughly God’s Word is capable of penetrating through the maze of lies Satan has created, to illuminate the truth to God’s people. God’s Word can bring someone out of the dark and confusing depths of paganism into the truth. It can point out which ideologies are of the world and which are biblical, keeping a Christian from the errors of their culture such as feminism and the black lives matter movement. Not only does God’s Word show the Christian which philosophies and ideologies are biblical and which ones aren’t and teach us Bible philosophy, but it also judges our own heart and unmasks our motives and attitudes to us. Through the Word (and the Spirit working through the Word as they always work together), God points out our sin and sanctifies us –  giving us knowledge of which thoughts and motives are holy and right, and which are unholy and selfish and need to be surrendered. We can then surrender the selfish ones each day and resolutely not live them out, and God will make a change in us.

“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”
2 Corinthians 10:5

“For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”
Hebrews 4:12



But when he, the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.
He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you.
John 16:13-14

And when he is come he will reprove the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment.
John 16:8 KJV

The Holy Spirit doesn’t speak his own words and neither does Christ. Christ came speaking the doctrine of the Father, and the Spirit glorifies Christ by making Christ’s teaching understood by human beings. He teaches us from God’s word.

I’ve thought a lot about this and studied the Word, and I believe that there is a foolproof way we can know the Holy Spirit is speaking to us. Did you know that? There is one tried and true foolproof way. But it’s not flashy or over the top exciting. It is however deeply important and deeply intimate. We can know the Holy Spirit is communing with us when we are convicted of wrongdoing, and when we are convicted of our need of a Savior, convicted to repent, to make wrongs right, and convinced of the divinity and sufficiency of Christ to meet our need.

We have examples of this in the scriptures. When Peter was convicted that Jesus was the Messiah Jesus said to him: Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my Father which is in heaven.
Matthew 16:17 KJV

The truth is the Holy Spirit speaks to us every day. Any time we need to make a moral decision and choose between right and wrong, the Holy Spirit is right there convicting us of truth and appealing to us to do the right thing. Conviction isn’t something that comes by human

study alone. It is the very voice of God speaking to the soul  (spirit; the Holy Spirit speaks Spirit to spirit, John 3:6: the soul is just a

human being) when we are convicted; it is God Himself. He never ceases speaking to us unless we completely grieve him away, which some have done, though it is not easy to do. Entire Old Testament groups of people have done so and we’re told that at the time of the end the whole world will wonder after the beast except a small remnant. There will come a time when everyone’s choice will be fixed and decided and Christ will say “Let he who is unjust be unjust still…let he who is holy be holy still.” Revelation 22:11 Solemn realities here. It’s important that we begin right now to make a practice of heeding the convicting voice of the Holy Spirit. The good news is that it’s completely up to us whether we will heed conviction or harden our hearts. If we choose to heed, Christ will give us strength through his Holy Spirit to do the right thing. We must come to him in prayer daily and rely on his strength.

When Jesus was alive on earth he often referred to object lessons, common things in nature which taught the people important truths. This is one way the Holy Spirit speaks also.

We see the same thing happening in the book of Jeremiah and even in Proverbs where Solomon observes the ant and other common things found in nature and learns wisdom.

“This is the Word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.

The Word of the Lord came to me. He said “Can I not do with you, Israel, as this potter does?” Like clay in the hand of the potter so are you in my hand Israel. Of at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if that nation that I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. And if at another time I annunce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it.”

Jeremiah 18:1-10

Can’t you hear Christ in these words? It is the pre-incarnate Christ, referring to object lessons in nature just as he did when he walked among the earth later on. 

“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”
James 1:17

God has done many different kinds of manifestations through his Spirit in both the Old and New Testaments. In fact, these manifestations are so varied that no one could guess what he would do next. Who could have guessed that the Holy Spirit would endow a man with superhuman strength in the case of Samson for instance? Or that God would part the Red Sea? When God created the world who could have guessed at all the different marine life, or the different microbiomes he would speak into existence? The world baffles us and we aren’t even close to fully understanding the handiwork of God; it’s beyond our capacity as human beings.

When I first started studying the gift of prophecy, I had the belief that the gift only came to those who had the office of prophet, but I quickly learned that this was not the case, and that the Holy Spirit gave the gift in a much more varied way than I had at first thought. Saul, the first king, prophesied, David prophesied through the psalms though he was a king and not in the office of prophet, Miriam was a prophetess but wrote no books of the Bible as the other prophets did, though she wrote a song that is recorded in scripture. Even Nebuchadnezzar, a non-Christian king at the time had a dream prophecy given by the Holy Spirit, and Pilate’s wife was given a dream.

I began to see that God could really do anything good. He could give any good gift and give it in any good way. And Satan could do anything bad, or a mixture of good and bad to deceive. God’s manifestations are always given righteously and in righteous ways; Satan’s false manifestations are always given deceptively and for evil purposes and in ways that cheapen God or make Him look bad.

True vs. False Spiritual Gifts

“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”
James 1:17

It’s in our Father’s heart to give us gifts. Our Father only gives us perfect gifts, he does not give us defective or unholy or sinful gifts. Let’s say you’re a young Christian woman who is praying for a spouse. An attractive, intelligent, and deeply spiritual man comes into your life. At first you may wonder if he’s the man God intends for you, but then you find out he’s married. Your knowledge of the scriptures and your willingness to follow God’s will will make it clear at this point whether you’re going to believe he is the one for you or not. Those who know the Word of God will conclude that no matter how spiritual and kind he is, he’s married, and God recognizes the vow this man made before heaven to his wife, and so he cannot be the one God intends for you. He is not a perfect gift. Being with him would be sin.

Or let’s say you’re a young single Christian woman who meets a man who is interesting and attractive and whom you share many common interests with. But he’s not a Christian and is convinced and committed to atheist beliefs and lives an atheist lifestyle. He’s not a perfect gift either; being with him will cause you to compromise your faith. It would be sin to be unequally yoked, 2 Cor 6:14. It can’t be in the mind or heart of God for you to be with this person.

Anything that deviates from one man and one woman who are believers in Christ can’t be God’s will for the Christian.

You can see that there a variety of ways that a gift can be a bad, imperfect gift. There are as many variations as there are ways God’s law can be broken. And Satan, being the author of sin – or breaking God’s law – can and does break every category of the law of God, though he may not break every category at the same time. Because mixing truth with error is so effective, often he mixes good traits with evil traits. It’s not just the physically abusive boyfriend – the person that is obviously not God’s plan for you – that isn’t a perfect gift. It’s also the kind atheist, or the deeply spiritual married man.

False spiritual gifts work the same way. Satan invented both the fortune cookie, and the bright vivid vision of an angel with love in its eyes appearing to you but speaking contrary to the Bible. Cheap, confusing spiritual manifestations are just as much his domain as the visions that look real and feel loving but do not point to the Bible and the Bible only.

And I wouldn’t put it past Satan to give confusing manifestations to people who have a mental illness in order to take advantage of them. People do this exact thing, so why wouldn’t Satan?

You’ve probably heard of the Nigerian scam. It’s basically a chain-mail email that is sent to millions of people every year. It’s a numbers game for the people initiating the scam. They know there are a certain percentage of wealthy Americans who are in the middle stages of dimentia; still managing their own finances, not at a nursing home or anything, but their judgment is rapidly waning. They know that it’s these people who will get confused and respond to the scam and they form their business model around the numbers.

I saw a tv program recently where a mentally ill woman had a delusion that she was in a relationship with two famous rock stars. Scammers online picked up on her delusion and pretended to be the two rock stars, and wrote loving messages to her and then asked her for money. She sent them thousands of dollars. The poor woman had a delusion which is a fixed belief that your brain has lost the cognitive ability to analyze logically and see that it can’t be true. and these sharks took advantage of her. Schizophrenics make up 2% of the population and those with delusional disorders make up another 1% or so. These scammers are aware of the numbers and they even know more about how schizophrenia works than the average person does. They know if they write enough people 2 in 100 will be schizophrenic and they can scam them out of lots of money.

My Perfect Horse Gift

When I was a month away from turning twelve years old I received a perfect gift. I had been wanting a horse since I was very young, and one Sabbath at church we had a new member who worked at a horse farm join our church family. My mom and I went up to her and welcomed her and she asked if I wanted to visit the horse farm where she worked with her. Long story short she ended up arranging for me to be given a retired quarter horse broodmare as my very own horse. She had been a show horse in her day, winning medals in competitions called Western Pleasure. She was such a well-bred high quality horse that even at age 22 she still looked like a show horse in many ways. I remember brushing her mane and being awstruck by the many variety of gorgeous colors – blonde, red, dark brown, light brown. She was beautiful.

Her previous owners asked me to not go above a canter with her. A horse’s fastest gate is the gallop and I had wanted a younger horse that I could gallop around and jump over hedges. Despite my horse being wonderful, I caught myself wishing I could have had a younger horse. Looking back as an adult now who is old enough to have kids of her own, I can see the wisdom in giving me an older mare. I definitely could have gotten hurt galloping a younger horse. I was also hypomanic due to my developing mental illness and didn’t have the best judgment. Even with the older mare several times we had a couple injuries that in hindsight happened because of my lack of judgment.

My horse was in every way a perfect gift, even the things I wished I could have changed about the gift. Because we as human beings don’t know what’s best for us, and often want things which aren’t good for us, there is a tendency to be attracted to and desire imperfect gifts, things which are wrong for us. My desire to basically steeplechase a young fiery horse could have cost me my life had I gotten what I wanted. In the same way, Satan often supplies what our flesh wants in the form of false spiritual gifts which appeal to our fallen hearts, and which can be just as dangerous as my childhood horse dreams if we accept the counterfeit gift rather than humbling ourselves and taking the perfect gift.

Official vs. Counterfeit

If you received an official letter from the President of the United States, you would expect it to be free of errors in punctuation, to look impeccable. You’d also expect that nothing would be written in that letter which did not represent the exact views of the President. The letter would come with an official seal. There are high standards that the letter must meet, standards which distinguish it from a letter from a friend or a family member. If you were to receive a letter in the mail that claimed to be an official letter from the President, but it was written – not typed – with crayons, or it had multiple spelling errors and incorrect grammar, you’d know it couldn’t actually be a letter from the President after all. You’d conclude some kid must be playing a prank on you.

Successful companies work hard to build a brand that instills confidence in its customers. They want us to associated their brand with quality products made from the best substances and constituents, excellent customer service experiences, and fast delivery. So that when they stamp their brand on a product, it means something. We go out and buy it. We trust it. They are careful not to stamp their brand symbol onto defective or low quality products. This kind of mistake will lose customers and tank their company’s reputation.

Can we expect the Sovereign, holy God of the universe to be less careful with His Name, His image, and His reputation than the US President or a successful company?

Furthermore, as Christians, Christ tells us to put God, His Name, and His kingdom first, before ourselves. This is what it means to be a Christian. We are caught up in our Father’s work, his reputation and his cause, living for a higher purpose than just ourselves. This higher purpose gives us meaning and joy; without it we become nihilistic. Jesus told us to pray “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” before we pray “give us this day our daily bread,. And he says again, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things [food, shelter, clothing] shall be added unto you.” (Matthew 6:33) Christians are called witnesses that He is God (Isaiah 43:10) living epistles that testify of Him in a world of false gods and false ideologies (1 Corinthians 3:3). Lights in the world bearing the only true doctrine of salvation (Matthew 5:14-16). Early Christians willingly suffered and laid down their lives for the Name (Acts 5:41), the same Name of God (his character) which Satan had accused and slandered in heaven. Being a Christian means not taking God’s name in vain (Commandment 3), but being a true and not a lying witness. Those who lie and blaspheme the Name of God serve on Satan’s side, working to tear down God’s reputation and warring against him.

I have noticed that false spiritual gifts and manifestations serve the person, and true spiritual gifts serve God.

Someone who believes in the Name it and Claim it false doctrine – that a person can pray things into existence, is using God to bring about their will, rather than surrendering themselves – their will and all they are – to Christ to serve Him. More on this later.


In short, as Christians how Christ is represented to the world should matter to us. How we present Christ to the world should matter to us and be something we’re very careful about. We must endeavor to show his holiness and his great self-sacrificial love accurately and not falsely. So spiritual manifestations which are common, which cheapen the name of God and mix the sacred with the uncommon or profane, we should care about steering away from, lest we embrace something that makes God look unholy.

Notice in Ezekiel, just before Jesus says he will give us a new heart and put a new spirit in us, notice the greater cause here, the underlying reason he will do this:

22 “Therefore say to the Israelites, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: It is not for your sake, people of Israel, that I am going to do these things, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you have gone. 23 I will show the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, the name you have profaned among them. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Sovereign Lord, when I am proved holy through you before their eyes.

24 “‘For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

Ezekiel 36:22-27

WOW. Notice the relationship here. God’s people can make his name appear holy in the eyes of the nations, or they can profane it. What we do as Christians matters. Like a wife whose conduct can bring respect to her husband, or cause suspicion and disrespect, so we as Christ’s bride affect his image in the world, and not just in the world but before the universe, because Satan first slandered God’s name before angels in heaven. We have a great and noble work that we are called to, and it’s important we understand the seriousness of this work. A truly converted Christian brings honor to God and brings others into the kingdom. We have a duty to remain connected to the Vine, Jesus, so that our light can shine. Notice also how when we have God’s spirit it moves us to keep God’s laws. No true Christian will walk against the moral law of God. ALSO NO TRUE CHRISTIAN WILL SIN INTENTIONALLY (BUT IF THEY DO THEY WILL IMMEDIATELY REPENT, CONFESS AND CLAIM THE FORGIVENESS OF Jesus.)

When God gave signs and wonders at the time of Christ and through the Apostles after Jesus had risen, these signs and wonders put the stamp on Christ’s ministry. They showed the Jewish leaders and the pagans and Greeks and the whole world even down to our time that Jesus had come and died, that he was the Christ, and the nature of his ministry was healing and restoration; they conveyed his character to us.

Paul says it this way:

I persevered in demonstrating among you the marks of a true apostle, including signs, wonders and miracles.
2 Corinthians 12:12 NIV

From his text we can see that it’s important that true apostles produce these marks, or signs (the Greek word is actually signs). God wanted to let the world know Jesus is real. Christianity is real, and salvation is open to all who will repent of their sins and follow Him.

The truth is, anything that does not paint an accurate picture of God, that does not glorify him, takes his name in vain, and is not from God. This includes not just the message of a dream or a vision, but the method or way in which the communication is given. God’s methods along with his message, do not give an appearance of evil. They reveal that God is good.

Ask yourself: Could God put his stamp on this spiritual gift? Or is the gift something he can’t endorse because it would make him look unholy or unloving?

The Bible gives us some general guidelines of criteria which reveal something is not godly.

Let all things be done decently and in order.
1 Corinthians 14:40

For God is not a God of disorder, but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints.
1 Corinthians 14:33

Anything that is disorderly and causes confusion – not just the message but also the method – is not of God.

For I am afraid that when I come, I may not find you as I wish, and you may not find me as you wish. I fear that there may be quarreling, jealousy, rage, rivalry, slander, gossip, arrogance, and disorder.

2 Corinthians 12:20

Notice how disorder is in this text alongside jealousy, rage, and slander. Disorder is ungodly just as these other things are. Disorder is not a morally-neutral concept; it’s bad.

Again and again Paul tells us when referring to the spiritual gifts, let them be done in an orderly way, and to edify and build up the church.

But he who prophesies speaks to men for their edification, encouragement, and comfort.
1 Corinthians 14:3

What then shall we say, brothers? When you come together, everyone has a psalm or a teaching, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. All of these must be done to build up the church.
1 Corinthians 14:26

Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying.

But if the unbeliever leaves, let it be so. The brother or the sister is not bound in such circumstances; God has called us to live in peace.
1 Corinthians 7:15

Any spiritual gift that is chaotic, displays itself like drunkenness or irrationality (for God has given us a Spirit of power, of love, and a sound mind 2 Timothy 1:7), and which does not build up or edify the church is a false spiritual gift. How do we know this? Because God’s Word is clear about what the purpose of the spiritual gifts are – the reason they are given. It’s to build up the church, to bring people into a knowledge of sound doctrine and receive salvation from Christ and develop holy characters.

You must distinguish between the holy and the common, between the clean and the unclean.
Leviticus 10:10

Anything that mixes sacred things with common things is a false spiritual gift. Seeing the picture of Jesus on the cross form in your bowl of cereal, for instance, would be an example of this. Anything that takes a sacred truth and cheapens it down to the common level breaks this Biblical rule. Satan breaks this rule often. He is always inventing things like telling the future – a divine ability that only God can do – through fortune cookies and stars and other created things which are far from divine.

Why would these things be the criteria? The criteria is not arbitrary. I think you can see why Satan is ok with mixing the common with the sacred and why God would never do it. Satan is impure and evil; God is righteous and good. Therefore the methods and inventions of Satan will often be impure and cheap. But God who never changes will never use those methods or invent those things. He always stands for what is right. And the Holy Spirit can only do moral things, loving things, and use moral, loving methods. The Holy Spirit can’t make a person a puppet and take away their free will for instance, or do anything else disrespectful. God who created man in the image of God, respects him as a rational being, a child of God. God will not do anything disrespectful to us.

The real key to understanding what gifts the Spirit will give and how he will give them, lies in understanding God Himself. He will not go against His own nature of love (see my other article called ‘Can God Do Anything Because He’s Sovereign?)

God who says “reject every kind of evil” 1 Thessalonians 5:22 will certainly reject all forms of evil himself.

I had to ask myself this question with the dreams and visions I thought I received. Did they edify me? Were they confusing? Did they make God look good as he really is? Or would I be ashamed to share them with unbelievers? The truth was that they were cryptic, coded dreams with hidden messages I had to decipher, a symptom common in bipolar disorder. They were confusing. And the biggest way I knew they weren’t from God is that when I did finally get back my sanity with lithium, they made no logical sense. The Holy Spirit is not nonsensical. Mental illness is.


It’s interesting to note that after Jesus did many signs and wonders, the Pharisees still asked him for a sign.

Jesus first sign was turning water into wine. His second sign was healing the royal official’s son. Read below:

46 Once more he visited Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. And there was a certain royal official whose son lay sick at Capernaum. 47 When this man heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and begged him to come and heal his son, who was close to death.

48 “Unless you people see signs and wonders,” Jesus told him, “you will never believe.”

49 The royal official said, “Sir, come down before my child dies.”

50 “Go,” Jesus replied, “your son will live.”

The man took Jesus at his word and departed. 51 While he was still on the way, his servants met him with the news that his boy was living. 52 When he inquired as to the time when his son got better, they said to him, “Yesterday, at one in the afternoon, the fever left him.”

53 Then the father realized that this was the exact time at which Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” So he and his whole household believed.

54 This was the second sign Jesus performed after coming from Judea to Galilee.

John 4:46-54

Jesus was performing signs and doing miracles. Yet after Jesus had done many signs, the Pharisees asked Jesus for a sign.

Then some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law said to him, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from you.”
Matthew 12:38

Why were they asking Jesus for a sign when he was already performing signs and miracles?

He answered, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
Matthew 12:39-40

The key to the answer here is in the words “a wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign” and then in the following line “NO SIGN will be given it except the sign of Jonah.” Let’s break this down…It’s clear they were asking for a sign that was different from the sign of Jonah. They didn’t want the sign of Jonah.

It’s important that Jesus’ motives are correctly represented here. Jesus wasn’t withholding from his people signs and wonders, believe it or not. If we think that Jesus withholds and scolds us for wanting good things, this is not his nature at all. In fact the first lie Satan gave Eve in Eden was that Christ was withholding something good from her for selfish and arbitrary reasons. Any position or belief that tells us God is arbitrary or selfish and withholds from us is of Satan and a lie. God loves us enough to give us his own Son; he has withheld nothing from us. Except when it’s in our best interest to do so and with the motive of protecting us and loving us, like a kind Father does for their young inexperienced child who needs his protective care.

However the scriptures do seem to indicate that Jesus prefers people to have faith even without any signs or wonders. Jesus told Thomas “Because though hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they who have not seen and yet believe.” John 20:29 KJV

The apostle Paul tells us that all people have evidence of God through his created works. (Romans 1:20) So all men have what they need to believe. Yet there is the human tendency to ask for signs even on top of already having evidence, and it seems to sadden Jesus when people do this and disappoint Him, and there is a special blessing for those who have not seen and yet believe. It makes me wonder: Shouldn’t we aim for being those who take the evidence we’ve already been given and believe? Wouldn’t this please the heart of Jesus more than praying for signs and spiritual manifestations would? But in many Christian circles signs and spiritual gifts are seen as evidence that the person’s faith is strong. Do we have it backwards? I believe this is incorrect theology.

What is the sign of Jonah? It’s the only real sign that distinguishes Christ as God. It’s the sign on which all other signs like healings and raising people from the dead are based. The sign of Jonah is Jesus being crucified, laid in the grave for 3 days and then being resurrected – the sign of Jonah is God’s self-sacrificial character. It’s this character that distinguishes Him as the Son of God.

The Pharisees were not content with signs and wonders like healings and raising the dead – powerful and wonderful manifestations of love. They didn’t want love or a God of love. They were wicked, as Jesus tells us, proud, and elitist. They wanted a Messiah who had a character like theirs which is why they rejected the true Messiah – and they wanted signs that bore a proud, elitist sign, one that fed into their lust for power and prestige in the world.

Ye ask and receive not, because ye ask amiss, the ye may consume it upon your lusts.
James 4:3

What sign was God willing to give us? The sign of the death of his own son. Jesus gave us HIMSELF. There is no greater gift that can be given to us. God Himself? Isn’t that unfathomable? Jesus did not say no sign would be given this generation. He doesn’t withhold things from us. His death on the cross shows his attitude for us, that no good thing will he withhold; even to the point of his own life. No sign shall be given them – except the sign of Jonah, the only one that really matters. Jesus himself. Jesus was giving himself yet because the Jewish leaders were adulterous, God’s church, did not want her own husband.

He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all–how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?
Romans 8:32

No good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.
Psalm 84:11

So then, no more boasting about human leaders! All things are yours,
Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours;

1 Corinthians 3:21-22

Look at this text! The world is yours, things present are yours, things to come are yours – God does not withhold giving us dominion of the new earth, making us kings and priests who reign forever possessing eternal youth. This is a weighty reality. But this kingdom will only be given to those who have characters of self-sacrifice. Who love the sign of Jonah, and who take up their own cross and practice self-sacrifice in this life. Christ will not give the kingdom to those who are selfish and proud.

Notice the cost. Notice what the Bridegroom asks of his bride.

“Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”
Matthew 10:37-38

The Bridegroom asks for “no other gods before me” for spiritual faithfulness as opposed to adultery. Even our own family members cannot be made into gods. Did they die the second death for us on the cross? No, but God possesses infinite love for us and simply asks we give our whole hearts to him.

When Abraham was willing to offer Isaac on the altar for God, notice the language God uses:

Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him; for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.
Genesis 22:12

This is the voice of a lover to his bride; it’s the voice of someone who is moved by the one they love. It shows we have power over God’ that what we choose to do affects him. Our faithfulness brings him great joy like when a man proposes and the woman he loves says “yes”. “No” has the power to cause God great personal pain. He is caught up in his desire and love for us. This is deeper language than you see with family or even a spouse. It’s a deeper relationship which is why it is good and right for God to ask for our affections first, above our love for anyone or anything else.

The song of Solomon depicts this love that is deeper than a husband’s love for his wife. For it’s Christ saying these words to us, in metaphor.

Turn your eyes from me; they overwhelm me.
Song of Solomon 6:5

You have stolen my heart, my sister my bride; you have stolen my heart with one glance of your eyes, with one jewel of your necklace.
Song of Solomon 4:9

When he saw the multitudes he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd.
Matthew 9:36

In all their affliction he was afflicted…
Isaiah 63:9

He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.
Isaiah 53:5

The verdict is in: we can move the heart of God and he wants this faithfulness on our part. To give up all idols and be a faithful bride to our husband.

A love like this calls on us to love him back with our whole heart, soul, strength, and mind. Matthew 22:37 No other person is worthy of all our heart, soul, or mind but Christ. And is we won’t give him such love, we aren’t worthy of him.

 
It is possible to desire spiritual things with a proud, selfish desire. The Pharisees show us this fact. Even Satan himself desired something that is technically spiritual – to be god – and yet wholly selfish and immoral. False religions are spiritual, but not true or edifying. So the fact that spiritual manifestations are going on, or are desired by an individual is no evidence that God is present or that Godly desires are present in an individual. Satan can cause fire to come down out of heaven and there are false signs and false wonders. These false signs and false wonders are characterized by a spirit of selfishness.

Indeed, as people with fallen natures who have not yet “arrived” we’re capable of wanting to use spiritual things for our own glory rather than God’s glory. Paul was given a thorn in his flesh to keep him from becoming conceited when he received great visions from God. (2 Corinthians 12:17).

And the Bible calls witchcraft (or sorcery) one of the works of the flesh, showing that it’s a common temptation, a pull human beings often feel.

The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, and debauchery;
idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissentions, factions
and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Galatians 5:19-21

False miracles, false signs and wonders are performed by Satan, especially during the end times of this earth’s history.

Who can read the text ” For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.”   Note:  Mountain(s) are symbolic for trials and tribulations
Marl 11:23

With a completely pure heart; an eye single to the glory of God? We have fallen natures and when we see opportunities for glorifying ourselves our flesh is severely tempted. We look at that text with both good and evil in our hearts; love and selfishness. And therein lies the danger. It’s a danger we’re all prone to, a common temptation of the flesh. And one of the strongest pulls that exists – to want to use God’s power for our own glory or selfish interest.

It’s spiritual adultery to do so. But adultery is something many are tempted with and one can be tempted with adultery and yet love their spouse. Being tempted is not itself a sin. Acting on the temptation is sin.

It’s interesting that of all the things Paul could have chosen in 1 Corinthians 13 he picked the spiritual gifts as his illustration. “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels…” “If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge…” “If I have a faith that can move mountains…but have not love, I am nothing.” All three of these things – tongues, prophecy and faith – are spiritual gifts which the Bible mentions in multiple places. Could it be the he chose the spiritual gifts here because there is such temptation with these gifts to try to use them for selfish purposes? What does Paul say? Love is greater than all these things. The sign of Jonah is the true sign.

But, if spiritual gifts are conducted out of love, and in accordance with the spirit of the sign of Jonah, they can be powerful signs that bring unbelievers into the church and which edify the body of Christ. Indeed through history God has endowed his church with wonderful spiritual gifts. God is not saying no to us when it comes to spiritual gifts. Yet there is always a danger in seeking to use the gift for self. Solomon had one of the most powerful and wonderful spiritual gifts of the Old Testament – the gift of wisdom. And he rebelled hard against God as a result of his prosperity and many wives leading his heart astray. He rebelled so badly that he was offering Israelite children as sacrifices to heathen gods. And this was a man who in his youth had such a good heart that he unselfishly asked for wisdom to rule when God asked him what he wanted.

Solomon was given the great desire of basically every person alive. God himself came to him and asked him “what should I give you?” But rather than seeing God like a genie which is the temptation of the flesh that many of us face, Solomon asked for something unselfish, wanting what was best for his people. And yet even he eventually became proud and murdered Israelite children.

If it could happen to him, it could happen to us. Our motives we need to always check with the Bible and surrender to Christ if we discover they are not pure. This is an ongoing thing, something that must be done daily.

Solomon showed us that God is not a genie, and he desires to answer prayers that stem from love, not selfish desire. Also that he honors and often grants such requests. Yet a Christian is never to assume God will grant his exact request in the way we specify it. We know that God will hear our prayer and we know he will answer it, but If we believe that if we have faith that God will do the exact thing we ask, we’re making ourselves out to be God, failing to submit to Him, and are no longer practicing Christianity. Because Christianity teaches the Sovereignty and worship of God, not us. His will be done, his kingdom come, not our will or our kingdom. And while he gives us a kingdom – it’s one under Him. We are kings and priests under God and his rule and his law. When Eve sought to be her own god this is what caused the fall of man. We aren’t Sovereign and we can’t serve our own wills; even worse to try to make God obey us.

Look at how deception takes place. The Bible shows us the science of deception, how it occurs.

“The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works.” How does Satan work? Let’s read the next text and find out. “He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perished because they refused to love the truth and be saved.”For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.”
2 Thessalonians 2:8-12

This text tells us how to avoid falling for false signs and wonders produced by Satan. If we have some fleshly desire in us, Satan’s false miracles will appeal to this fleshly desire. We then have a choice. If we surrender the selfish desire to Christ, he will change our heart and give us a love of the truth. This love of the truth will bring us out of the deception because by choosing truth Jesus will guard us against delusion. If however we really want to believe the lie and we refuse to surrender our selfish desire, Jesus will allow us to be deceived by Satan because we’re using our free will to love evil rather than righteousness.

We all have selfish desires, so we’re all capable of being deluded if we do not surrender to Christ daily. We cannot stand in our own strength, only Christ’s strength can make us overcomers. Any hope in self is futile but hope in God is our safety.  We must desire the behavior and character of Jesus as found in Galatians 5:22-23, which is the Fruit of the Spirit.

We all want to feel God’s love and we long to be in his presence. During our loneliest or most physically or mentally painful life experiences we feel this desire even more keenly, and Satan often preys upon this natural and good desire, turning it into an idol by offering feelings of comfort or ecstasy through false spiritual manifestations. It’s common for people who have experienced a phenomenon known as being slain in the spirit to feel great peace or even euphoria. Remember that Satan has been in the presence of God, and he knows the brain waves produced by being in God’s presence. He knows the physical changes that a person experiences when being truly at peace, and he could through his power work on the body to bring it to those same patterns and give the person a feeling of deep peace.

I know someone with bipolar who has constant stress and anxiety. She really suffers from her mental illness daily. And she has gotten involved in the charismatic movement. It’s unclear exactly why – whether her impaired judgment is behind it or whether the fascination with the occult, a very common symptom of bipolar is behind it, or both, or something else. I’m not sure and I don’t want to judge her motives as I’m not God. What I do know is that recently she experienced being slain in the spirit and she told me that she felt more peace than she has ever felt in her entire life. This is someone who needs to feel calm. She is overly inflamed and in ill health. Satan is taking advantage of her need for health like he often does with drug addicts who have unhealthy biochemistries and use drugs to numb the pain or give them feelings of ecstasy that their brains can’t create on their own.

It pains me to see Satan take advantage of her in such a way. I know it will be hard for her to do the right thing, because, unless she has a complete cognitive delusion in this area (this is not uncommon in people with bipolar so it could be the case) Satan is hooking her through her flesh. He’s offering an easy way to self-medicate. The natural tendency in most of us would be to go this easy way and accept the delusion. Rather than surrender to Christ and tell him “If this is not of you, then even if it makes me feel good feelings that I can’t feel at all otherwise, I’m willing to give it up. Just show me the truth, Jesus and give me the strength to align myself with the truth.” This is the prayer she needs to pray, and which will result in Christ breaking the delusion off from her, but the natural tendency is to keep believing the delusion.

And then only use methods God can approve of to feel better and balance brain biochemistry. Such as seeing a mental health care professional. Nutrient therapy for mental illness, something I’ve been on since 2013 and which was a game changer for me. You might want to direct for help in this regard?

You can see how spiritual delusions are different from cognitive delusions brought on by mental illness. A spiritual delusion is something one must be rational in order to fall into because the person uses their rational mind to make a choice to believe a lie because the lie appeals to a wrong, selfish desire in them. A cognitive delusion is when the brain is unable to see the truth; even if the person fully surrenders to God and asks for the truth they are unable to see it because their brain is malfunctioning.

Which would you rather have – a feeling of peace, or actual peace? Christ’s peace is not a feeling, but a living reality. It is actually having your sins canceled out in the books of heaven, actually being in right standing with God, actually being filled with his Holy Spirit, actually walking with him day-by-day and having a real experience with him, whether you can feel it or perceive it or not. Your character is changed, you experience healing and being restored. As guilty criminals under the death penalty, feeling forgiven won’t do us any good. We need to actually be forgiven. Jesus is our Great Physician who restores our soul. If we had terminal cancer would we thank a doctor who made us feel at peace with our terminal illness but didn’t treat us? Wouldn’t we think he was the worst doctor in the world? The doctor who puts us through the necessary treatments, though often painful, and restores us to health is the one that represents Jesus’ attitude, objective, and character towards us.

It’s important to keep in mind why we are not in God’s presence. The answer is sin. The separation from God and the longing for him is a constant testament to our need to part with sin in our life, so that we can be holy and stand once again in his presence. It’s meant to remind us every day to continue the upward path of sanctification, to be pilgrims on earth and commit to the hard process of becoming more like Christ. This being the case, spiritual manifestations that make you feel like you’re in the presence of God already and do not point you to the need for surrendering and overcoming your sins, not only are dangerous because a person could become possessed by invoking such spirits, but also feed into our natural tendency towards complacency and not progressing in our walk with God.

When Bible prophets stood before God in vision they declared “woe is me for I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.” Isaiah 6:5

It was not a pleasant experience to be taken into vision to see the Lord, because of the prophet’s sinfulness. The truth is the same for us. We have a very real sin problem that separates us from being in the presence of God, and God is asking us to part with more and more sin each day, until we are made holy and ready to stand in his presence. False visions and dreams can lie to us and make us feel that we are ready when we still have a long way to go. They preach peace and safety often at the very time when we most need repentance and humility of heart.

Some in Charismatic churches teach that if you haven’t spoken in the gift of tongues, you aren’t saved. If we believe that unless we manifest a spiritual gift our salvation or our relationship with God is lacking in some way, we’re going to be compelled to seek out that spiritual gift, and devastated if we don’t receive it. There is nothing more important than having a relationship with God. The Bible does not teach that any spiritual gift is linked to salvation. In fact, John the Baptist whom Jesus called the greatest man who ever lived because he was most like Christ in character, did no miracles and lived a simple life. We’re also told that he was filled with the Holy Spirit in great measure his entire life, starting before he was even born when he was in the womb. This shows us that being filled with the Holy Spirit is not connected with manifesting any specific spiritual gift. The most important thing for us to pray for, is to be like Christ in character. The Bible over and over again emphasizes character as being superior to any spiritual gift, and as being what we are to seek after. It’s also the sign that we’re saved. Our good works which stem from a changed heart are the sign someone is a converted Christian. God of course is ultimately the only one who can read the heart to know for sure.

The truth is, it’s a bigger deal to have Christ’s character than it is to do miracles or to see visions. And it wasn’t always the people with the characters most like Christ who received the greatest spiritual gifts. Samson had a powerful spiritual gift, but his heart was worldly and selfish. King Saul was given the office of King of Israel, but he turned jealous and murderous a short time after becoming king. We can’t look to rank or gifts to determine our character or standing with God. If we are daily surrendering our hearts and lives to Jesus and believing in Him as the only atonement for our sins, then we can have assurance that we are right with God and filled with His Holy Spirit.

The spiritual gifts are not really for the individual. They don’t bring a person closer to God, although the right management and use of them could bring a person closer to God, because exercising good stewardship always results in this. The gifts are for the upbuilding of the church.

1 Corinthians 12:7 tells us that each gift is given for the “common good”. Not for the individual. After my in-depth study of the spiritual gifts, I now conclude that I likely have the spiritual gift of teaching. I don’t have the spiritual gift of prophecy as I believed when I was in psychosis. I’m able to explain the things that I know and break them down in an easy to understand manner. I didn’t used to understand why I could explain spiritual things much better than my mother could, and I always prayed for her to get to the point where she could explain things clearly because I thought it was something everyone eventually learned. My study of the spiritual gifts revealed that she has very different gifts from me and since I have the gift of teaching, she’s actually been given complementary gifts so that we minister together effectively. We’re both writing a book together about my experiences with bipolar disorder and the treatments that helped me regain my mind, and I teach and explain in the book and she is a researcher who lists the treatments and gives background on which doctors developed them and how they came to their findings. These gifts together are much more effective and meet practical needs better than my gifts alone, or her gifts alone. This is the way the gifts are meant to work, with the body for the common good of preparing the saints for Christ’s second coming. The gifts are not meant to be personal markers that show you you have reached a certain level of spirituality. It’s not like when you become very spiritual or righteous you will be given the gift of prophecy or the office of prophet. The office of prophet would be given if the church needs it, for the common good. If it’s not given, it’s because the church does not need it at this time. God has given the gift of prophecy and there have been true prophets throughout history, but not constantly. I believe God gave his church a true prophet in the year 1844 in the ministry of Ellen G. White. She was given the office of prophet. A man named Hiram Edson who briefly saw a vision of Christ entering the Most Holy Place in heaven, was given the gift of prophecy also, but he was not given the office of prophet. More on this later. What the individual should seek is character. To be made into Christ’s loving image. This is the greatest thing the individual can have and the mark of a true Christian.


The Holy Spirit is Rational

For God hath not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind.
2 Timothy 1:7

One of the ways God brought good out of evil in my life is that I have a special appreciation for rationality. I understand it’s importance in a deeper way than I ever did before my psychosis, and how it’s extremely important that we use it as God’s witnesses and don’t deviate from it and make God look bad. I lost my rationality and lived apart from God’s law for quite some time. This symptom is by far the worst mental illness symptom of them all. I’d rather have any other symptom than this, I’d even rather have every other possible symptom combined than have this one. I say this from principle. According to the Word of God the worst thing that can happen to a human being is to be a sinner and lost, and the second worst thing is to be as if you were an animal, without rational thought. I experienced what it was like to no longer be a morally autonomous being. It was not an enjoyable experience to live without knowledge of God’s law. It felt like being an animal or a plant or something – alive, but without higher brain function. Some who are unconverted might think that it meant I could do whatever I wanted without being morally responsible and think it would be a ticket to happiness. It wasn’t. It was a ticket to nihilism. Life seemed meaningless – I searched everywhere for meaning, looking for signs and visions, and all kinds of things because I could no longer experience the joy of truths like that we are made in the image of God and what that means, and the joy of choosing to do right eluded me. Nothing met my most basic need to see the wonderful moral law of God and have joy in living right. There is no substitute. No flashy vision or feeling of euphoria (both of which I experienced and are common symptoms of bipolar) came anywhere close to meeting my deep need for the law of God and the cross. I had odd beliefs such as that lying was nor immoral and I lied frequently during that time. There was no evil motive behind my lying. I’ve always been interested in psychology and I would lie online when I talked to people anonymously in order to gather information about people in various scenarios. I couldn’t experience the peace of choosing to live uprightly and knowing I was living in a way that pleased God, and I couldn’t experience the guilt of sin. I also could not be convicted. I would pray and try to study the Word of God, but no conviction about my lying or other sins ever came. Instead I thought God supported me in it. That’s how out of it I was.

After I came out of psychosis with lithium, conviction resumed. I suddenly could understand right from wrong, stopped lying, talked to people openly on Facebook and not anonymously on message boards, so I could encourage myself to be transparent, and apologized to those I had lied to during my psychosis and made things right as best I could. It’s been a joy to find the parts of me that aren’t in alignment with God and surrender them to him, and to have the conviction that today I am right with God. The sanctification process brings true peace, though it is difficult, and due to my experience of living without the law I find myself extra appreciative of this difficult process and eager to keep advancing to be more like Christ in character and have my sinful nature hewed away. It’s deeply satisfying. It’s the purpose of being human, to walk with God uprightly and according to his commands. All of that I lost when I was no longer a morally autonomous being.

You can imagine how upsetting it is for me now when I hear of movements and spiritual manifestations that basically claim the Holy Spirit can do irrational things. I’ve been irrational, and it’s definitely the work of Satan. Satan is the originator of all illness, including psychosis. How could a God who created people to be rational be Himself irrational? It’s disrespectful to say such things about him or to imply that he uses such methods. Definitely the people who say such things are being deluded by Satan. and he is an evil slave master; he treats us like animals and degrades human beings and blasphemes God.

Let me share some examples. I’ve heard people claim to have the gift of discernment. When asked what the gift looks like and how it works they say that when they have a dream or vision that they will get a feeling indicating whether it is of God or of Satan. I’ve also heard that they say God will open their eyes so that they can see into the spiritual realm and they will see demons and angels and will be able to tell which influence is exerting itself over a person. But the word ‘discernment’ means judgment and judgment is a rational function of the mind, it’s not a feeling, it’s not a button lighting up. For Christ to give us a gift that is a button lighting up or a feeling coming over us is basically the opposite of what discernment means. It treats us like animals – like how I felt when I was in psychosis – and doesn’t call on us to study the Word of God to show ourselves approved. 1 Timothy 2:15

I don’t claim to be an expert but I can tell you that the true gift of discernment would have to be something that enables the person to judge by the Word of God which spirit is in operation. Because the Word of God is the only true standard.

When Solomon received a spiritual gift of good judgment to rule God’s people it manifested as an increased ability to understand the principles in God’s Word and to execute fairness that resembled Christ. He didn’t see a button light up or receive a feeling that indicated how to judge. This would treat him like he was a machine and not a king.

God has done many different kinds of manifestations through his Spirit in both the Old and New Testaments.

Though each of these things are very different they share some traits in common. All of these manifestations awaken awe and worship. They testify that God is the Creator. They reveal genius, not chaos. They are true miracles, truly good, they awaken true wonder. They tell us something about God’s character of love.

There are different gifts, but the same Spirit.
1 Corinthians 12:4

Read through some of these texts below.

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
2 Timothy 1:7

The Spirit of the LORD will rest on Him–the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and strength, the Spirit of knowledge and fear of the LORD.
Isiah 11:2 – This text speaks of Christ.

But truly I am filled with power by the spirit of the Lord, and of judgment, and of might, to declare unto Jacob his transgression, and to Israel his sin.
Micah 3:8

Counsel is mine, and sound wisdom: I am understanding, I have strength.
Proverbs 8:14


Now Joshua son of Nun was filled with the spirit of wisdom because Moses had laid his hands on him. So the Israelites obeyed him and did as the LORD had commanded Moses.
Deuteronomy 34:9

The Spirit of the Lord GOD is on Me, because the LORD has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent Me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and freedom to the prisoners,
Isaiah 61:1

The Spirit of the LORD will rest on Him–the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and strength, the Spirit of knowledge and fear of the LORD.
Isaiah 11:2

And I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship,
Exodus 31:3

Give therefore thy servant an understanding heart to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and bad: for who is able to judge this thy so great a people?
1 Kings 3:9

The Spirit of the LORD came upon him, and he became Israel’s judge and went out to war. And the LORD delivered Cushan-rishathaim king of Aram into the hand of Othniel, who prevailed against him.
Judges 3:10

So the Spirit of the LORD came upon Gideon, who blew the ram’s horn and rallied the Abiezrites behind him.
Judges 6:34

So Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers, and the Spirit of the LORD rushed upon David from that day forward. Then Samuel set out and went to Ramah.
1 Samuel 16:13

These texts tell us what kind of Spirit the Holy Spirit is. They show what the Holy Spirit moves people to do when he comes upon them. He moves them to do justice in the world, to stand up for what’s right, to keep God’s law both to God and man.


The Heart of the Matter: The Law of God

Jeremiah 23 is an entire chapter rebuking and pointing out the dangers of false prophesies. It contains gems of crucial information.

Notice the purpose of the false prophecies. There is an intent, an objective, and a motive. False prophecies are not neutral, except perhaps in the case of someone with mental illness who sees hallucinations and vivid dreams and thinks they are from God, and has no ulterior motive; it’s just a symptom of their illness.  However, even in this case, it’s possible to see dreams stemming from one’s own mind and one’s own fallen desires. Believing the false vision can lead to real problems, and Satan could take advantage of the situation and get the person to place dreams and visions above the word of God and lead them away from truth.

The motive behind false prophecies is to “make my people forget my Name.” (seen in verse 27) and to strengthen the hands of evil-doers, so that the people will not turn away from sin.

God’s name in the Bible means character. When Moses said “show me your glory” God said I will cause all my goodness to pass before you and I will declare my Name.

And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness,
maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.”
Exodus 34:6-7

Notice how God’s Name is his character of love, think of it like a coin consisting of two sides – mercy and justice. Love is not love without mercy – it becomes vindictive rather than loving without mercy being present, the person is looking for a chance to catch you in sin and punish you, and it’s not love without justice – it becomes permissive of sin, accepting of wrongdoing and an ennabler of evil without justice being present.

The false prophets were strengthening the carnal, fallen desires in the people, and making them forget and cease to pursue love and truth as it is found in God.
They told people they could sin and have peace and favor with God while sinning, and much evil resulted.

To put it succintly. the false prophecies told the people they could throw out God’s law. These prophecies are an attack on the 10 Commandment eternal moral law of God, which is a transcript of his own character of love. These prophets, like Lucifer, were warring against God.

Notice that they prophesied from their evil hearts and imaginations. This tells us that it is possible to conjure up dreams and visions to some extent simply by the power of the mind. This is something we need to be aware of and always check our desires and motives with the Bible,

“Search me and try me and see if there be any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting” must be our prayer.
Psalm 139:23-24

Notice that true prophecies turn people from their evil fallen ways towards repentance and truth. This is perhaps the one main, crucial difference between true prophecies and false prophecies. True prophecies aren’t easy to hear. They cut to the heart and expose our sin. If you’re having prophecies that always feel good and are always easy to hear I can tell you right now you’re not getting true prophecies from God. True prophecies always address the sin problem. I’ve seen a rise in charismatic circles of what they call the gift of prophecy. I used to live in South West Florida and the prophecies these prophets speak is always things like “I saw in vision that God is going to move powerfully to convert people in South West Florida.” Or “This is the year of increase. The Lord showed me plants springing up ready for the harvest. 2021 is the year of increase.”

Do you notice a problem with the prophecies above? They do not include sin. They don’t point out the areas we need to surrender to God. They leave out God’s law entirely. The whole reason Christ came to die was to uphold the Father’s law and pay our fine so that we could once again be in right relation to the law if we repent and forsake sin. Without a doctrine of the law of God and sin the transgression of the law, there is no Christian religion. There is no need for a Savior and there is no final end of sin.

These false prophesies mirror the Pharisees who thought that were entitled to prominence in this world, and to eternal life simply because they were descendants of Abraham. They didn’t understand that they must repent from and turn from sin and it’s then that they would be given the new heart and be followers of Christ, heirs of heaven.

These charismatic churches teach that all we need do is take on the name of Christian and then all these uplifting prophecies apply to us – we will have success and be accepted of our Father in heaven, without the need of repentance of sin, and continuing the sanctification process throughout life. Many of these churches believe Christ’s law has been nailed to the cross and that we are no longer under any obligation to obey it.

In throwing out the law, they end up encouraging people to live in sin, and they open themselves up to receive dangerous false prophecies that lull them to sleep thinking they are safe when really they are lost.


Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.
2 Timothy 4:2 KJV

Notice how this text tells us that God’s Word encourages us, or exhorts as some translations say, but it also rebukes us, and it does so with sound doctrine. When we encourage others it must be done with truth and the truth is encouraging, but it’s only encouraging through repentance. We have to part with sin in order to partake of Christ’s salvation. False prophecies encourage a person with a lie – they give false encouragement that a person can remain in sin and be saved and blessed of God – and they do not rebuke.

Read the texts below and note the truths I’ve pointed out above:



And among the prophets of Jerusalem
    I have seen something horrible:
    They commit adultery and live a lie.

They strengthen the hands of evildoers,
so that not one of them turns from their wickedness.
    

because from the prophets of Jerusalem
ungodliness has spread throughout the land.”
    

16 This is what the Lord Almighty says:

“Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you;
    they fill you with false hopes.
They speak visions from their own minds,

  not from the mouth of the Lord.

They keep saying to those who despise me,
    ‘The Lord says: You will have peace.’
And to all who follow the stubbornness of their hearts
  they say, ‘No harm will come to you.’
    

I did not send these prophets,
    yet they have run with their message;
I did not speak to them,
    yet they have prophesied.
22 But if they had stood in my council,
    they would have proclaimed my words to my people
and would have turned them from their evil ways
    and from their evil deeds.

25 “I have heard what the prophets say who prophesy lies in my name. They say, ‘I had a dream! I had a dream!’ 26 How long will this continue in the hearts of these lying prophets, who prophesy the delusions of their own minds?

27 They think the dreams they tell one another will make my people forget my name, just as their ancestors forgot my name, just as their ancestors forgot my name through Baal worship. 28 Let the prophet who has a dream recount the dream, but let the one who has my word speak it faithfully. For what has straw to do with grain?” declares the Lord. 29 “Is not my word like fire,” declares the Lord, “and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?

30 “Therefore,” declares the Lord, “I am against the prophets who steal from one another words supposedly from me. 31 Yes,” declares the Lord, “I am against the prophets who wag their own tongues and yet declare, ‘The Lord declares.’ 32 Indeed, I am against those who prophesy false dreams,” declares the Lord. “They tell them and lead my people astray with their reckless lies, yet I did not send or appoint them. They do not benefit these people in the least,” declares the Lord.

Notice what the Lord says in the following text:

 28 Let the prophet who has a dream recount the dream, but let the one who has my word speak it faithfully. For what has straw to do with grain?” declares the Lord.

The Lord here is comparing false prophecies to His Word. And he calls the false prophecies chaff or straw, and he calls his Word grain. In other passages throughout scripture the Lord refers to chaff as worthless and grain as valuable and able to feed the flock and meet the needs of the soul.

These false prophecies do NOT meet the true needs of a person. They don’t solve our very human crisis of being sinners in need of forgiveness.

But each one should build with care. 11 For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12 If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, 13 their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work.
1 Corinthians 9:13

Notice this text in 1 Corinthians. Notice how Paul tells us that no one can lay any other foundation than Jesus Christ. Anything else is straw, wood, and hay. The person who is receiving prophecies that throw out God’s law and therefore throw out the whole concept and need for a Savior – Jesus Christ Himself – is buillding with wood, hay, and straw.

Those who exalt and uphold the Bible are building with gold, silver, and costly stones. Let the “prophets” and pastors who focus on prophecies and visions take heed to remember that there is no other foundation other than Jesus Christ and God’s Word the Bible and turn away from seeking after flashy displays and visions and cleave to the Word of God instead, lest they work against Jesus himself.

2 Corinthians 11:4 is a powerful, eye-opening text that I believe is crucial to understanding this issue:

4 For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the Spirit you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough.

Notice that a different gospel means a different Christ than the Bible Christ, and if a person accepts a different Christ than the Bible Christ what accompanies this is a different Spirit than the Holy Spirit.
As pointed out above, many churches have thrown out God’s moral law, declaring it was abolished at the cross, and the result is that they have a different gospel – one that does not believe in sin and where there is no need for a Savior. This “Christ” merely saves a person from eternal death, not from sin and wrongdoing, and the Spirit that accompanies this false teaching – the Spirit that is giving these false prophecies is a false, lying Spirit.

The Word is clear that some of these prophecies and manifestations originate in our stubborn hearts and imaginations, and some of them come from Satan who is seeking to deceive us.

4 There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
Ephesians 4:4-6

The Christian faith is congruent. There is only one doctrine of belief and we all become Christ’s children born into his body, receiving the same Holy Spirit. We all have one Father. It’s a congruent faith where all parts make sense and fit together and there is harmony. If you see another belief added to our foundational doctrine, or you see confusing manifestations and dreams – anything of this nature is not of our faith or from our God. Anything that contradicts or confuses or causes us to look away from the Bible to flashy manifestations and tempts and lures the fallen nature is not of God.

7 But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. 8 This is why it

says:

“When he ascended on high,
    he took many captives
    and gave gifts to his people.”

It’s clear that this faith, this gospel, this Father, this doctrine, involves spiritual gifts. God speaks clearly that he gave us spiritual gifts.
The question and focus is “of what nature will these spiritual gifts be?”
They will be of the same nature as our doctrine, our God, and his character. They will harmonize with our one faith.
Any spirit or prophecy that does not harmonize with our God’s character or our doctrine, is a false spirit and false prophecy.

Our faith has a form, if you want to call it that, a profile. Just as you can recognize the face of a friend because of their unique features. so you can recognize the features of our faith and the features that come from the enemy. The character traits that are out of alignment with truth.

One very key feature of our faith is that it’s healthy and rooted in grain that feeds the flock. It’s humble. It requires faith and a relationship with God to maintain , as one would maintain a garden. Our faith doesn’t puff up or have flashy display, though sometimes through history God has done awe-inspiring things, the glory goes to him alone. People involved in his work are honored, but never worshiped. The flesh naturally desires these artificial things, but we must surrender the wrong desires of our flesh and only do what is healthy and right.

I think prophecies, miracles, and communications can be likened to a marriage relationship. God is always comparing his relationship with his church to a bride and her husband so this is a good analogy. Within a marriage relationship there is sexual intimacy, but this sexual intimacy while pleasurable and exciting is for a very real purpose rooted in an important truth: it bonds the husband and wife as one flesh which is an expression of love, but it also causes them to be united not just when they are alone together but as they fullfil their rles together in the world at large, and in the church. They are a team doing justice and mercy on the earth, representing Christ to the world. They become a unit, two parts welded together. Sexual intimacy is also for procreation and so the couple can understand something of the love of Christ for his church as he is our bridegroom.

There are some people though for whom the sex act is the focus of the relationship, not just the glue of the relationship but the whole purpose, until they reach a point where they don’t really care about the other aspects and they just want to have their “fix”. These people are drawn out after other partners and they commit adultery in their pursuit of pleasure.

This is similar to the person who craves visions, dreams, and miracles and isn’t satisfied with these things being given in context of our relationship with God. This type of person can’t read about the wonderful miracles of Christ on the earth and understand that they are written in the Word of God for us to be convinced he is the Messiah and to believe in Him today. They can’t appreciate the history of God’s dealings with men and rejoice that they have inherited that history and all those wonderful dealings of God with man. No, they have to see a miracle themseleves or receive a vision or Christianity is not exciting enough for them.

John the Baptist was declared to be the greatest man on earth – meaning he was the most like Christ in character, but these people wouldn’t be content to be like him, choosing to focus instead on Elijah and Jabez, a little known character who God blessed with material wealth and possessions and influence, because they want a flashy Christian experience.

This naturally leads them to other gods because this character flaw of emphasizing excitement and miracles is not a trait the true God possesses. They combine gods, following false prophecies and also going to church and hearing the Word of God. They are spiritual adulterers.

The only way back for them is to learn to love God, not displays or visions. They have to love his character, his truth, and what he did for them on Calvary – and really delve into all that it means. His love is an infinite ocean. But they can’t see how vast and how fullfilling and wonderful his love is, until they surrender the part of themselves that is shallow and superficial to God and allow him to recreate their heart.

19 Quench not the Spirit.

20 Despise not prophesyings.

21 Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.

22 Abstain from all appearance of evil.
1 Thessalonians 5:19-22

If there is mental illness present, particularly psychosis, the person will be drawn to grandiose spiritual manifestations, and will be unable to appreciate the true grandeur of the love of God found on Calvary. I remember when I was in this state I could not understand the scriptures. I had lost my ability to reason and therefore could not “Come and reason” with God. But strangely I was still drawn to spiritual things, a symptom called religiosity that occurs with psychosis and mental illness.

Not everyone with mental illness will lose their ability to understand logic. They may still be logical, but drawn to superficial visions and prophecies, almost like a drug. By seeing a Functional Medicine doctor and bringing their body and brain biochemistry closer to the normal alignment that it was created to have, they can give themselves the advantage in this spiritual war and make it easier to resist addictive flashy visions and have a wholesome and healthy desire for the Word of God instead.

I will mention in other articles about which imbalances in particular can cause this symptom. Copper toxicity is a common cause. High dopamine is another. There’s even imbalances that cause people to be drawn to the controversial and to conspiracy theories and to have paranoia in various amounts. They make a religion out of conspiracy, rather than out of the good, solid, sound truths of the Bible with point to the love of God, and when they meet with others in church their subject matter is always something paranoid or worrisome or negative and they rarely discuss the deep love of God.

Sometimes people can over-spiritualize a problem. Many of these people simply need medical attention and to be put on a protocol to balance their brain biochemistry and the subject matter they discuss will completely change. Their brain is agitated with inflammation and they are in low-level pain and agitation 24/7. They may not have enough gaba or serotonin to access certain regions of their brain. Some are completely in psychosis, but there is a spectrum and many are at various points in this spectrum.

These people can gain the advantage in their spiritual warfare if they will correct certain key imbalances which I will go over in future articles. The truth is, we are limited by our physical brains; we are not outside of our physical brain and we don’t have a spirit that can override our faulty brain chemistry when it’s not healthy.

The last thing I want to say in this article is that true prophets are not met with great acceptance. true prophets are hated because there is enmity between the world and God. (Genesis 3:15, James 4:4)

Matthew 5:10 tells us “blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness.”

Like Cain who killed his brother Abel because he was righteous (1 John 3:12), true prophets are not received well because they preach the law of God.

I’ve experienced this in my own interactions with people. If I say things like “God is good!” atheists will argue with me and lash out, but many Christians will say “Amen”. But if I say something like “our body is the temple of God and we must take care of it out of respect for Christ who died for us body, soul, and mind.” People’s attitudes change. You can feel the tension, like they are about to speak up in anger. They will tell me I can’t voice my beliefs on this issue, and try to get me to close my mouth. If it’s a website or an article the truth is being spoken through they will try to get the website taken down, or “warn” people and direct them away from the website. People aren’t neutral about the law of God and rebuke for breaking his law, nor are they neutral about Jesus Christ as the remedy for sin.

They like statements like once saved always saved. But if you start combining Christ with the law of God and showing the complete picture anger comes up quickly in their hearts. They do not want to part with their sins – even though Christ has given them a way to do so through Him.

The prophets that preach “2021 is the year of increase. God is going to bring many souls into the kingdom this year.” Or preach the prosperity gospel and tell people they will be rich and successful, obviously do not meet with enmity. But prophets that point to the law of God and the gospel together people have so much hate for. Really it’s unreasonable for true prophets to have that level of hate. It only happens because humanity has idols and doesn’t want to part with them. Because true prophets point to Christ as our answer, our sufficiency, and provide the remedy. We can walk with God through the sanctification process. It’s a difficult process for sure, but God has provided our cure. And gratefulness to Him is the only right response.

Prophets in the Old Testament and even John the Baptist in the New, were killed. People don’t want to be told the details of what idols they have and sins they are committing. They don’t want to hear how to be cured of their sin malady. They try to shut out the truth, not gravitate towards it or embrace it. Throughout history there has always only been a small number of people who have been willing to accept the truth and live by it.

“Small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and few there be that find it.”
Matthew 7:14

True prophets are not loved and accepted by very many people at all. And even those who appreciate them and heed their words experience difficulty in following their instruction. They have to crucify their flesh to do so, and take up their cross to follow Christ.

If the natural enmity of the world – and even many in the church because the majority of those in any church are unconverted – does not exist when people hear the prophet’s message – this is a huge indicator the prophet is a false prophet.

The type of enmity that needs to exist in order to indicate a true prophet, is enmity against the law of God, and it’s remedy, the cross of Christ and taking up our own cross in this life. Hate is natural in this world of fallen human beings. So hate alone is not an indicator. War has been the norm throughout human history. This is a specific type of hate. It’s hatred of righteousness. God’s righteous law.