What if I said to you: For the next hour let's seek the Spirit to fill us that we might manifest His power so we may bark like dogs, flap our arms as though we were eagles and get on all fours and paw the ground as though we were bulls?

Suppose I said that the scriptures clearly teach that you do not have any assurance of your salvation and that you could lose it at any time.

Or how about the idea that Jesus Christ never meant to teach that He was God in the flesh, only that He was sent from the Father to demonstrate how we too, might attain a righteousness to get us into heaven.

Now you might scoff at these things, you might be offended. But the fact of the matter is that these types of statements are made throughout the world in the name of Christ either through certain teachings or through the actions of people who name the name of Christ.

We live in a world where communications are instantaneous. You turn on the radio, the television, surf the Internet on your computer and within seconds you are in touch with different thoughts, ideas and information.

In fact, Christians even have their own sources of information so they may be thoroughly informed of all that God is doing and wanting us to know about Himself. The 700 Club, Trinity Broadcasting Network, and a host of others all vying for your time so you may learn the latest work of God.

With so much information and so many different views concerning God and His word how do we truly know what is from God and what isn't?

This is a question you need to ask yourself whenever anybody teaches you about the things of God. Unfortunately, there is a trend which is not really new, but seems to be heightened these days which takes the attitude that if a man or woman of God says anything about God, that's good enough for me.

And because of that attitude there are many Christians who are being deceived and wading into spiritual arenas which are very harmful and which can actually turn their eyes away from the one true God to a god of their own making.

As we end our study this morning in the Gifts of the Spirit we will look at the gift of distinguishing of spirits, or as other translations put it, discerning of spirits.

This gift of the Spirit is very important in the church because it enables individuals to help keep in check the various elements which would try to deceive the Body of Christ.

But let me say this. This gift is not intended to be the final check, or even the first line of attack against the wiles of the enemy who would try to come in like a flood and sweep us away in his lies. However, this gift should be prayed for and it should be utilized in conjunction with the most important means for distinguishing of spirits which could be harmful to the church.

Our first line of defense is the word of God. And this line of defense is not meant to be handled only by the Pastor or elders of a church. Every member is exhorted by God to be in the word, to learn more of Christ and to be better equipped to stand against the attacks of the enemy.

This is why Paul exhorts us in Eph 6:10 "Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11 Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes."

The devils schemes are specifically designed to fool you, to cripple you and to knock you down so that you are completely inefficient in the battle for the souls of men and women.

If you've ever watched documentaries on war, whether it's the 1st world war or the second or any war, you'll notice on many occasions that prisoners are taken. What I always find interesting is that on many of those occasions hundreds and even thousands of men are marched out of their defensive positions with gun over their head in a posture of surrender.

The question might be posed. Why, if there are still thousands of men holding a position, would they willingly march out to surrender? A non-military person might postulate that as long as you've got men and bullets there is no reason to surrender, especially if the opposing force seems to be much smaller.

You look at the pictures of Desert Storm and see hundreds and in some cases thousands of men surrendering to small forces of the United States and even in some cases surrendering to cameramen.

What would cause that? Don't lose me here because this is the same tactic the enemy uses in our lives to cause us to want to surrender.

In Desert Storm there were a variety of things which lead up to the massive surrender of the Iraqi's. They were attacked unrelentingly by air power. For weeks their positions were under constant attack. The rear lines were attacked with the express purpose of cutting off their supplies. Their communications were destroyed so they could not receive information from their superiors.

In very simplistic terms this plan was designed to make the Iraqi's feel as though they were naked in the middle of the desert, without any possibility of winning because of a lack of support.

When your hope is taken away your will to fight diminishes and may even evaporate. This is the tactic the enemy will use in our lives, but it's not the only tactic. In World War one a soldier named York captured a large group of Germans because of his ability to fool the Germans into thinking that American soldiers surrounded them as he systematically shot up the ranks of the Germans from different positions around the German stronghold.

Deception ruined the ability of the Germans to continue to be an effective fighting machine. I believe deception is one of the main tactics being used by the enemy within the ranks of the Body of Christ today.

The church's response has been to create an environment which will combat these attacks. And so enters the program oriented approach. People are not being disciples and so we simply create a Discipleship "program". People are not sharing the gospel, so we create an Evangelism "program".

The church just doesn't seem to be growing and so we create a church growth "program". And what was once a very simple approach to extending the Kingdom of God with simple people simply loving Christ and responding to His love in love to the community, we now have substituted a very complex approach to the extension of the Kingdom.

In our complexity we have lost the simple truth of God's amazing grace. In it's place we have created things which tantalize and tease the senses, and move us away from the simple truth of God's word to the sophisticated approach which only the "truly enlightened" can appreciate.

The Body of Christ needs to get back to the same approach to growing in Christ as did the Bereans. The Bereans weren't as interested in the subjective approach to God as they were in the objective truth of God's word.

And don't misunderstand me here. Our relationship with God is most certainly subjective, as any relationship is subjective, which means it's meant to be personal.

But being personal doesn't mean that it's not based on Truth and on the only standard by which that relationship can exist, which is the unchanging word of God. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.

Everyone of us needs to be discerning. But there will be no discernment if there is no standard by which all else is measured. The apostle Paul himself was not even exempt from such scrutiny. And here's how Luke describes the Bereans who scrutinized Paul's teachings.

Act 17:11 "Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true."

They were open to the truth and teachable, but they were not so naive as to think that they couldn't be fooled. And if you and I ever reach the point where we think we are exempt from being fooled by the enemy then we've already been fooled and we're ripe for the picking.

This is why discernment is so vital. And discernment starts with a love for Christ who is the Truth, the living word. If we love Him above all then our desire to represent Him properly will be at the forefront.

Again, we must never be so naive as to think that the enemy is no longer concerned about us now that we're Christians. Paul tells us in 2Ti 4:3 "For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.
4 They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths."

The apostle Peter says in 2Pe 2:1 "But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them--bringing swift destruction on themselves."

How do we combat the false teachers and the false teachings they bring? With the truth of the whole counsel of God's word and an earnest seeking of God as we humble ourselves before Him.

When it comes to growing in Christ His word is vital for our ability to know the difference between what is false teaching and what is of God. The writer of Hebrews puts it this way. Heb 5:14 "But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil."

Discernment comes through the training process of examining and studying and handling accurately the Word of God. But discernment is not simply an academic pursuit as though knowledge alone gives us discernment.

The Spirit of God is the One who enables us often times to discern those things of the Spirit as He directs us to His word. And so it is the Spirit of God who is called our Teacher and Comforter and Counselor who must be sought as we come to the Word and as we desire to know the Truth.

And so when it comes the gift of distinguishing, or discerning of spirits, it is the Spirit of God together with His word which will be employed.

But how do we know if someone has this gift and how do we see it being used in the Body of Christ today? I mean, do people actually see these spirits roaming around and can distinguish them based on how they look?

Well, again if we are to understand this or any gift, or for that matter, any teaching we must go back to the word and see what it says. The apostle John gives us some insight into what this phrase distinguishing or testing the spirits means.

1Jo 4:1 "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."

Now this is important for us because what John does is to show us that the spirits and the testing of them , as he refers to them, is not disconnected from people, in this case false prophets.

There's a tendency to over-spiritualize some of this to the degree that people are somehow distinguished from spirits. And though spirits and people may not always mean the same thing, we must understand that people have a spirit which is integral to their humanity.

We are spirit, soul and body. But there is another aspect of spirit as it relates to humans which is, that spirits outside of our persons may influence us. These spirits, who by the way are personal beings, that John warns us about, are going to try to deceive us and lead us astray.

Most of the time the work of these spirits is an outward influence. By that I mean that they are working outside of us and trying to point us in directions which take us away from God and His truth.

In other cases these spirits can actually work on the inside of people to the degree that they actually possess people's bodies and in many ways control the thoughts and actions of people. This is referred to in the Scriptures as demon possession.

Quick test of discernment. Can a Christian be demon possessed? Before you answer to yourself what would you use as a source for your answer? That's right, the word of God.

In Christ, we are temples of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit cannot dwell together with demons. A house divided against itself will fall. And so contrary to what some Christians believe, who have not distinguished between spirits as they influence people, a Christian cannot be demon possessed.

That does not mean a Christian is exempt from the outward influences of demons. But even so, we need not fear them because as God tells us, 'greater is He who is in you, that is Christ's Spirit, than he, Satan and his demons, who are in this world.'

But what we see with the gift of distinguishing of spirits is that some people are gifted by the Spirit to have a very special sensitivity to spiritual influences and are then able to measure those spiritual influences with the word of God.

It is being able to take information on doctrines being promoted, or behavior being touted as, "from the Spirit", and then to measure those things according to the word. Those with the gift of discernment will usually have a hunger for the word of God and a desire to see the purity and unity of the church for the sake of Christ.

Sometimes people will confuse discerning of spirits with merely a feeling they get about someone. They may be in the company of someone and feel certain, "vibes" and conclude that there is something spiritually wrong with that person.

This can very dangerous if this is the only way in which people are trying to use the gift of discerning of spirits. It becomes very subjective and borders on judging the hearts of people. Hank Hanegraff of the Christian Research Institute once went to a meeting where "Holy Laughter" teachers were conducting a service. During the course of the service the leader came up to Hank and "discerned" that he was a wolf in sheep's clothing.

In fact, he threatened him and bullied him to leave the premises. What motivated him to come up to Hank? Was it a true spiritual discerning? Well, obviously not because the very thing he accused Hank of was the very thing he was, a wolf in sheep's clothing, promoting false doctrine and behavior. And yet he could come across as very "spiritual" before all of the congregation.

Does this mean the Holy Spirit will never alert someone who truly has the gift of discerning of spirits to a person who might be a wolf in sheep's clothing? No, in fact we see some instances of this in scripture.

One such instance is found in ACT 16:16 "Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling.
17 This girl followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, "These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved."
18 She kept this up for many days. Finally Paul became so troubled that he turned around and said to the spirit, "In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!" At that moment the spirit left her."

Now, what alerted Paul to the fact that this woman had a demonic spirit? It could very well have been the Holy Spirit alerting him, but it was probably a combination of both the Holy Spirit and others who knew this woman who alerted Paul. It could also have been Paul watching this girl for a few days, as we're told in verse 18, "She kept this up for many days." At the end of this time Paul saw that what she was doing and what she was saying were designed to deceive the flock rather than truly promote Christ.

The outcome was that Paul commanded, in the name of Jesus for this demon to come out. This is an example of how the discerning of spirits may be at work. And yet, even in that case, Paul could measure what she said and what she did with his understanding of the word of God which fully explained who God is and how he manifests Himself in the world.

Other examples of the gift of discerning of spirits can be seen in the case of Paul confronting two men in 2TI 2:16. Here Paul is writing to Timothy warning him of ungodliness and false teaching in the Body.

He writes, "Avoid godless chatter, because those who indulge in it will become more and more ungodly.
17 Their teaching will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus,
18 who have wandered away from the truth. They say that the resurrection has already taken place, and they destroy the faith of some.
19 Nevertheless, God's solid foundation stands firm, sealed with this inscription: "The Lord knows those who are his," and, "Everyone who confesses the name of the Lord must turn away from wickedness."

Here, we see that Hymenaeus and Philetus were two within the Body of Christ. They had access to Christians and were teaching things contrary to the word. Paul discerns that they are a real threat to the church and takes action. Those with the gift of discerning of spirits will also take action.

It may come in the form of alerting the leadership to be on the look-out for such teaching which is out of accord with true biblical teaching, or it may come in the form, depending on their position in the church, of confronting the false doctrines or false teachers.

I believe that many of the Discernment ministries are called by God to do just this. They are confronting these false teachers in love with the truth of God's word as they are motivated by the Spirit through this gift of discernment. One such ministry is called Defending the Faith. It's a ministry of Calvary Chapel in Tigard, Oregon.

And what I have personally found is that those people in many of these ministries are devoted to not only truly studying and understanding the word of God, they are also devoted in finding out precisely what these false teachers are teaching and where their teachings come from. In this way they can document the falsehood of such teachings as they compare them with the truth. In this way they can make it clear so we may have a better appreciation of the truth.

There are many such ministries throughout the country warning people of the false teachers and the teachings they bring. Those being scrutinized will more often than not view these discernment ministries as not having the gift of discernment as much as the gift of criticalness.

And though I would caution anyone that each gift must be employed in love, there will times when those on the receiving end of biblical scrutiny will not view it as love, simply because it exposes them and they don't like that and so their response is, 'whose business is it of yours to stick your nose into someone else's ministry?'

It's the business of the Holy Spirit as He protects Christ's church. And if the Spirit gives such a gift as the distinguishing of spirits then it should come as no surprise that the distinguishing or discerning is directed toward individuals who have access to flocks all over the world. If they are going to teach in the public spotlight, then they need to be willing to be examined in the public spotlight.

In times gone by it was more local in scope simply because the disseminating of ideas didn't travel as far and as fast as it does today. And because of the ease at which ideas travel to you, day in and day out, such ministries must reach out and touch those who can touch you on a daily basis.

And so someone in Tigard Oregon with the gift of discernment may be compelled by the Spirit to name names and expose teachings of people in South Africa, for example, who have access to you through radio, television or personal contact through local meetings and rallies.

One such teacher is Rodney Howard Browne, who is from South Africa. He is the one who is generally credited with launching the American laughing revival, as "Defending the Faith" publications has reported.

Now, I've mentioned this Holy Laughter phenomenon before and I certainly don't want to take a lot of time discussing it, but because it is relevant and because it will be coming to this area through local churches and you will be encouraged to experience this "Move of the Holy Spirit", it's worth noting in light of being able to distinguish the spirits.

There are four main manifestations in this experience. Holy laughter, being struck dumb in the spirit, slain in the spirit where people are out, not for moments, but for hours at a time, and 4th the "prophetic manifestations of people running around waving their arms and uncontrollably acting like different animals; be they lions, eagles, dogs and so on.

By the way, this is not a brand new phenomenon. Quoting the 1995 winter edition of the Christian Research Journal, "Larry Thomas of Amazing Grace ministries observes that during Jimmy Swaggart's Argentina crusade in the late 1980's, there were literally hundreds of people who would begin to laugh hysterically and throw themselves down on the ground....

.... They would howl like dogs, they would roar like lions, they would make all kinds of wild sounds, and when these things began to happen, the ushers went and physically restrained them, took them out of the coliseum to a tent outside, and they cast the Devil out of them. But, now when you do that it's evidence that the Holy Spirit is doing some great thing in your life."

In that same magazine "Former Jim Bakker associate Richard Dortch says that "this doesn't seem to fit into my theology, but God doesn't need my approval for what He does". "We bless what the Father is doing," affirms John Arnott, but we don't know exactly what it is."

Questionable behavior inconsistent with the word of God, not knowing what in the world it is and yet willing to accept it as work of the Spirit? Where is the discernment?

This phenomenon, though more pronounced in Charismatic and Pentecostal churches is crossing those boundaries and is showing up, according to CRI, among Mennonites, Nazarenes, Methodists, Anglicans, Baptists, Catholics, and even Salvation Army members."

In all fairness, not all Pentecostals and Charismatics are embracing this. Many of them are coming out against it. Why then are many flocking to it in spite of the experience not conforming to God's word?

Because people within the Body of Christ are tired of dead orthodoxy, but instead of re-igniting their first love through a devotion to Christ and His word, people would rather have an instant experience they can turn on and off at their discretion.

Quoting John Arnott, Pastor of the Toronto Vineyard Church, Defending the Faith writes, "And so now we're starting to see people prophetically acting like lions and oxen and eagles and even warriors. We had a phone call one time it said, 'One of our congregation's been acting like an eagle flying around the room. We can't get them to stop, what do we do?' And we thought, you know, throw a rabbit out in the middle of the floor and maybe they'll come down. [Laughter]"....

..... So, does that help with the animal sounds? Officially, we're saying, 'we don't know, cause we don't know. Why is that guy roaring like a lion? I don't know."

Now, Rodney Howard Browne will use all sorts of scripture to validate these bizarre experiences. But they're all taken out of context and have nothing to do with such behavior. According to Defending the Faith, he "attempted to justify being "struck dumb in the Spirit", by referring to Luke 1:20. "It's scriptural, [he says]. In Bible days people like John the Baptist's father Zacharia were struck dumb and couldn't speak."

"One wonders if Rodney has ever bothered to read Luke 1:20 in context. Luke says that Zacharia lost his ability to speak as a punishment for disbelief: "And now you will be silent and not be able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words."

There are many other examples, and many other types of teachings circulating through the church in the guise of being "of the Spirit". But no matter what gift someone claims if they are not willing to examine that teaching according to the revealed word of God they must be suspect.

1Jo 4:6 "We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood."

1Co 14:37 'If anybody thinks he is a prophet or spiritually gifted, let him acknowledge that what I am writing to you is the Lord's command.
38 If he ignores this, he himself will be ignored."

We must all pray for discernment and we must ask God that He would use His gift of distinguishing of spirits in our midst as well as thanking Him for this gift working in such ministries as CRI and Defending the Faith.

Praise God He gives us eyes to see and ears to hear. But unless we are in His word and obeying His word in the power of His Spirit our eyes and ears can become dull as we've seen in the case of the Holy Laughter movement.

Let me end with a prayer from Paul which is the Spirit's prayer for all of us. Phi 1:9 "And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight,
10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ,
11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ--to the glory and praise of God."