Hi all,
There
are times a person's spirit is stirred as Paul's was when he saw the
city of Athens completely given over to idolatry*, and that is my
condition today concerning the newest fad coming out of Bethel Church in
Redding, California and churches like it, called 'grave sucking'. *Acts
17:16
For
the most part I hold my peace about the shaking and convulsing, though I
will address that in this series - to lay out what is God, what is the
devil, and what is the flesh - but today I am talking about the fad of
'grave sucking' or 'anointing grabbing'.
What is 'grave sucking'?
Grave
sucking is the practice of believers going to the graves of dead saints
to make physical contact with the grave to get the anointing of the
dead saint by transference, during contemplative prayer. They often will
sit, lay down on, or lay hands on the grave or tombstone to accomplish
this.
The
premise is that people feel they can swiftly advance in spiritual power
or jump-start their spiritual lives or destiny by going to the graves
of dead saints and suck or 'grab' that person's anointing to themselves.
It has been explained as receiving a sort of spiritual inheritance,
and as a sudden large cash inheritance can change a life, so too they
say, can a sudden spiritual inheritance received by grave sucking move
their spiritual life quickly forward.
It
is an error that twists an Old Testament event, using the case of 2 men
burying another when they saw some Moabite raiders coming*, and wanting
to get out of there, quickly lowered the dead man into Elisha's nearby
grave. To their surprise he sprang back to life upon touching Elisha's
bones. *II Kings 13:20-21
Grave
sucking as it is taught, it doing the same thing spiritually - grabbing
the dead saint's lingering anointing. When I first heard of grave
sucking I thought it was a joke, but the more I checked into it the more
I realized it was a sad truth, and since I just spent 3 days in Redding
and learned much more than I ever wanted to about it, I just can't
shake my grievance and sadness for the self-deceived souls practicing
this.
Readers can easily do a web search
about this practice and even see publicly posted pictures of Bill
Johnson's wife, Beni, lying on C. S. Lewis' gravestone 'grave sucking'
and Bethel students 'grave sucking' at Evan Roberts grave in Wales,
among others.
Years
ago there was a TV show that would start out with say, the Space
Shuttle blasting off, and then trace backwards through the centuries the
various little discoveries that led to the technology enabling us to
build such a vehicle today.
That's
what I am doing in this series - not focusing on the error, but to go
back in time to this truth and that truth which when compiled together
will provide us a means to rightly discern what is happening and why.
A little history, and what the Lord told me
It
may surprise some to learn that in the 1700's a wave of revival swept
through Europe, Britain, and the soon to be United States, including
among the Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, and Disciples of Christ
(Congregational). Trembling, shaking, groaning, falling to the ground -
all were signs they said that the power of God had come on a person.
In
the US we had the 'Shakers' who were known for this, though now they
are mostly known for the Shaker style of furniture. And of course many
know of the Quakers who evidently quaked but refused to shake :)
John
Wesley considered these body movements to be the body's natural
reaction to God's Spirit and love, rather than an outright supernatural
event. In the 1800's people like Finney reported these happening in his
meetings, and by the time I came to the Lord in the 1970's Pentecostals
were called 'Holy Rollers'.
Holy Rollers
Barb
and I were born again and Spirit-filled as teenagers and attended
Charismatic home based groups 2-3 nights each week, which her mother
didn't understand, having only her own German Lutheran early 20th
century culture to understand us by.
So
when Barb and I were to be married in her family's Congregational
church, her mother asked us with all sincerity if there was going to be
swinging from chandeliers or rolling on the floor as part of the
wedding, as that just won't do among the Congregationalists - she
was visibly relieved when we assured her there wouldn't be any of that
(though I desperately wanted to tell her we might cast out a demon or
two to see how she would react, but decided not to tease her like that).
Most
attribute the phrase 'slain in the spirit' to Kathryn Kuhlman to
describe a person 'slain' by God's power and becoming therefore as if
dead, though it is also known by other names.
What the Lord told me
Learning
now that for at least 3 centuries shaking, quaking, and falling have
been part of charismatic life, we need to look at scripture to see if it
is in there, which will provide a baseline of truth to be able to
understand if today's manifestations are God, the devil, or the flesh.
During
a time with the Lord I asked Him to teach me about what was Him and
what wasn't in being slain in the spirit. I had wanted Him to go point
by point in straight, never changing, doctrinal statements that x is
from Me, and y isn't from Me, but that's not what He did. It went like
this:
"Lord,
on the subject of being slain in the spirit, what is the earliest time
in scripture where that happened and what should a person expect from
the experience?"
Him:
"When I caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam* so I could do surgery on
him to form Eve's body. And you'll note that while that was physical
surgery, it was also of the soul for I took from his being to make her,
so that together they two were one in Me**. Today when it (slain in the
spirit) is of Me, like with Adam, I will often do what you might think
of as surgery on their soul for healing and sometimes physical healing
as well." *Genesis 2:21, **Genesis 5:2
(In Genesis 5:2 it says: "Male and female He created them, and called their name Adam
in the day in which they were created." Eve did not receive her name
until later after their sin, in 3:20-21 when the Lord made a covering
for their sin, clothing made from the shed blood of an animal, thus
clothes are a shadow and type of God's covering for man.)
He continued
"The
next time was with Abraham when we were making covenant* and a deep
sleep came upon him, allowing Me to assure him of our relationship and
tell him of his future and the future of his descendants. Today, when it
is of Me, I will often do something similar with people, assuring them
and giving them peace about the present and showing them some of their
future, and they also often renew themselves in Me in response, as Abram
did then." (*Genesis 15 covers the whole event, but v12 says a 'deep
sleep' came upon Abram in the same terminology as with Adam)
What
I took from that teaching was that when a person is 'knocked out' or
'asleep in the Lord', it is for a purpose, not a show - not a sign that
endorses some man or woman as the anointed prophet and God certainly
doesn't want any 'courtesy drops' from anyone.
I've
seen 'downloads' in people we might say today, of new things and
healing of old things when they've been 'asleep in the Spirit' - a peace
replaces emotional fear, turmoil - that sort of 'surgery'. The other
thing with Abram was covenant things, deep things in a person's heart
about their walk with the Lord and the settling of their destiny, and
similarly I've seen people awaken with a new sense of destiny and
purpose.
I will close with that for today - more next week, until then, blessings!
John Fenn
www.cwowi.org and email me at cwowi@aol.com
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