Sermon Central
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Spirit Boldness, Not Hoo-Ha
Contributed by Dr. Ronald Shultz on Mar 14, 2025 (message contributor)
Summary: What you see may be what you get, but what you see is not necessarily from God.
Act 4:31 And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness.
The Book of Acts is where most of the references are made to various miracles and people being filled with the Holy Spirit. You do not even have to do any deep Greek word studies to see that there are no instances of gold dust, gold teeth, orbs, clouds of glory, oil dripping from hands, fire tunnels, "alien" jewels, rain indoors, uncontrolled actions like being drunk in the Spirit, twitching, convulsions, laughing, barking or clucking going on and no grave soaking. There was no talk about time travel or numerous trips to Heaven.
You will find some of these things in the occult and New Age practices, but not in biblical Christianity.
In Acts, all people who came for healing were healed and no one lost their healing. The dead were raised and clearly shown to the public. All prophecies came true. Angels got you out of jail, but did not help with writing of the Scripture. Indeed, that is not part of their ministering to the saints job description.
The very first act of being filled with the Spirit was evangelism with people hearing the Gospel in their native language. Other times when it is mentioned that people were filled with the Spirit was people speaking the Word in boldness before their enemies or in evangelism. There were none of the manifestations that are prevalent in many groups that believe in the gifts, especially among the hyper-Charismatics.
Thus all of the hoo-ha that we see in the New Apostolic Reformation and others of similar beliefs have no basis in Scripture. Groups that have incorporated New Age beliefs into their doctrine believing they are taking back truths the New Age has stolen from the Church are deluded and deceived by seducing spirits and are now teaching doctrines of devils. They should be shunned and marked for the cults that they are to protect the flock from these wolves.
