A few days ago I was attending a meeting in Oslo arranged by a local Pentecostal Church. Present was a well-known evangelist, the Messianic Jew, Dick Reuben, from Pensacola Assemby of God, Florida, who was preaching on revival. The sermon, which was on sin, repentance, obeying the commandments and the restoration of backsliding Christians, was excellent, and could almost have been delivered by a New Covenant minister. As the meeting progressed, he whipped up considerable enthusiasm, and began to claim that he was receiving revelation, or "a word of God" for those present. He prophesied an enormous revival in Norway and claimed that his week of revivalist preaching was setting off the spark that was needed. Indeed, he likened his work to a refiner of gold gradually increasing the cleansing temperature so that the dross could be scooped off. Each evening, he said, people were getting more and more sanctified so that by the end of the week (at a meeting I attended) he claimed that people were really entering a blessed state of sanctification.

My suspicions began to be aroused because I was not aware of any particular spirit present, even though fantastic claims were being made that it was strong and that he indeed was before the throne of God. I discerned that something was wrong. Then he began a manipulative technique that I have seen used by cults that greatly alarmed me when he started making altar calls. His premis was that since we were all sinners, it was time that we quitted our sins (OK), and that evening was the moment of decision (OK -- maybe). He then started calling people to the front from the main meeting room and the gallery where I was (OK). Many came. But he wanted everyone there. A barrage of threats of hell were made, with illustrations of people who had suddenly died like a young girl buried that day, of a woman he had been called to minister to who had cancer, of a parishoner who dropped down dead in one of his meetings. Did we want to risk going to hell when we could confess our sin there and then and respond to the altar call (uh oh...). A few more came but not all. He becam irritated and called on all those of us who were left to turn to our neighbour and ask him if he was in sin. If the answer was "yes" (and of course it was "yes" for everyone, the Bible says, is a sinner, and a liar if he says he is not) then we were instructed to take the respondant by the hand and lead him to the altar (talk of compulsion!). Still others remained (about 75% had by now responded). He then began to make threats, saying that he would personally point out all those who were not responding to the altar call and ask them why they weren't responding, saying: "It's not for nothing that I'm called Red Dick" (because of his agressive missionary technique).

Well, a man came up to me and shook my hand -- I could see the Spirit of God in his eyes, but he did not ask me Reuben's question. I think we both understood that what this preacher was doing was WRONG because he was denying free agency.

What went wrong? Why did a Spirit-directed sermon suddenly end up in what I can only describe as demonic compulsion? I listened attentively and noticed the point where the Spirit departed and where the flesh took over. I doubt many (if any others) noticed it. As the first of the altar callees came up, he said, to the effect, that God was driving the spirit of PRIDE out of the people present. Now I have been a minister in Norway for nearly a decade and if there is one thing I know it is that there is alot of pride in the churches. As I milled around after the meeting I had confirmed what I already knew -- THE PEOPLE HAD NOT CHANGED. This was no revival -- it was a PLASTIC IMITATION.

I had a friend with me, an Indian Pentecostal, who wanted to talk with those present but I could see how they were LOOKING DOWN ON HIM as in some way an inferior. They tried to avoid him as though he had a plague because of the colour of his skin. Yes, Norway is an intensely racist country, and Christians here are little different from the surrounding Babylonian culture. I saw before me complete and utter HYPOCRISY. No doubt a few people present were brought to sincere repentance -- I cannot judge individuals -- but it was very plain for me to see that this was NO CHURCH REVIVAL.

I am sure that Dick Reuben came with the noblest of intentions -- He desired with all his heart for an awakening of God's people. He related in the meeting how he wished to convert a million souls before he died. So what went wrong? Why did the meeting degenerate into an emotional, soulish, entertainment show? And why is this so common in the churches?

The main problem is that somewhere along the line Christians make ENORMOUS ASSUMPTIONS about the Holy Spirit. They assume that when the Holy Spirit comes that it comes 100%, and that when they are speaking (as they suppose) under the influence of the Spirit, what they are saying is 100% God's word. This is a very dangerous theological error that can lead to many delusions and false prophecies which are rarely corrected because of the reputation of the "prophets" themselves. I have heard so many false prophecies by internationally renowned evangelists and super-preachers that I take them all with a pinch of salt these days.

We, as New Covenant Christians, have learned over the years much about the spirit of revelation, and perhaps one of the spiritual keys we have been blessed with is the understanding that revelation is as pure as the person who is speaking it. That purity will be determined by a number of factors: (1) His thinking processes (theology/doctrine); (2) His feelings; and (3) His nearness to the Holy Spirit (sanctification). And though a word of God may fall upon a sinful man briefly and be conveyed in nearly 100% purity by a supreme act of grace on the part of God, this is not usually the case. Rather, He permits those who name His Name to grow in the prophetic office degree by degree so that instead of being "taken over", as it were, by the Spirit and acting as mere channels (pardon the New Age term), they become gradually transformed within (akin to sanctification) so that what they speak is always the word of God.

Without exception, all of us begin as babes in the faith after our first salvation event (born again experience) and grow gradually in knowledge, pure feelings and spiritual sanctification. Though devils may have been cast out of our lives, there is still the old Adam Nature ("flesh", "soulish nature") to deal with. It's there all our lives and but either be subordinated through spiritual discipline, or allowed to control us (partially or wholly). Thus a man or woman growing up in the prophetic gift will experience what we call "muddy revelation", that is, the word of God distorted by the fallen Adam-nature. The diagram below illustrates the concept:

As the young prophet matures, his theology becoming more alligned to the Bible as a whole, his thinking and feeling refined and purified, so revelation and prophecy will pass through the human lense increasingly unhindered by the Adam-nature. Time and experience are needed to do this. And thus, with greater prophetic clarity, he may correct any tainted or "muddy" revelations he may have had in the past, as Fig.2 below illustrates:

In saying these things we must not confuse this "conceptual revelation" with what is called "verbal plenary revelation". The latter kind, which is rare, implies that every word is literally dictated by God and is therefore 100% perfect. This kind of revelation is only possible if you have a pure language -- and whilst one may obtain 90-95% purity in a modern language like English, for example, you will never get 100% purity.

Recent research on the Bible codes has demonstrated that the Torah portion of the Bible, at least, is more than a narrative -- it is a computer code that contains the entire history of the earth, from beginning to end, in minute detail. Remove a single letter from it and the whole code falls apart. This is verbal, plenary revelation, but also much more, because the revelation of God lies not just in the words and sentences but in each individual (Hebrew) letter. The Torah (the first five books of Moses -- and computer studies may well extend the same to the rest of the Bible books) may therefore be said to be letter-perfect. The Torah was not in any way conceptual revelation -- it is not as though God planted 'concepts' in the prophet's head and he translated them as best he could with his finite mind -- no, each letter was dictated to create a computer program so complicated that not even the most powerful Crays can decipher it completely. It is for this reason that copyiest have always added up every single word and letter throughout history to ensure an accurate text.

You will search in vain in the writings of men for a similar code -- whether the works of Dostoyevsky, the Book of Mormon, the Koran, or even the modern bibles created from minority manuscripts (those which became corrupted by heretics and others). It is for this reason that the Bible revelation must stand above all other types of revelation -- and that includes our New Covenant revelations like the Olive Branch which are largely (99.9%) conceptual.

Now in that meeting in Oslo I heard a sincere but immature prophet speak sometimes in God's Spirit and sometimes in his own. He prophesied at the beginning of a meeting that a young lady would become a famous evangelist -- I do not know if that is true, but I am sceptical. And I am sceptical because I have seen how "prophets" from that denomination have made fantastic promises to ungifted persons who have become conceited and lifted in their pride as a result of such pronouncements. Men like Dick Reuben must beware else they could so easy fall into the category as a completely false prophet. This is not a gift to play with because the words that a prophet utters deeply affect the lives of people who trust in them. And we have seen, have we not, the fruits of such trust in the destroyed lives of the believers in Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, Ellen G. White, Mary Baker Eddy, legions of New Age gurus (like Elizabeth Claire Prophet), Kenneth Hagin, David Koresh, Jim Jones, Sun Myung Moon, Rajneesh, etc..

Prophecy and revelation is like nuclear power -- wrongly used, it can destroy; rightly used it can bring fantastic blessings. May you learn to discern the spirits (Heb.4:12; Exek.44:23).

This page was created on 25 January 1998 Last updated on 23 February 1998

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