This is addressed to those who know better but do not have a ready explanation or answer when confronted by thriving aggressive extremism.
1 Samuel 9:6. ‘shall be turned into another man’- (or later ‘God gave him another heart’). This would not be a spiritual transformation, though it was God’s Spirit temporarily changing the involuntary behaviour of a proud and wilful man, turned from a simple cattle-herder into a prophet and later a king. God in rare instances chooses unholy vessels for His ejaculatory utterance. Similarly Balaam, the spiritist soothsayer recruited by Balak to curse Israel, involuntarily turned his occult spiritistic utterances into a blessing, including a remarkable Messianic prophecy. But both Old and New Testament writers describe his character as unrighteously opposed to God’s people and was later slain by the Israeli army.
Later in the Book of Samuel God restrains Saul from his murderous intent by allowing another spirit to expose his insanity by his prophetic-like ejaculatory utterances. This other spirit caused him to strip off his clothes lying naked all night in front of his men prophesying. This is an instance of Satan simulating the gift of God. This is particularly the case in our present-day of the apostate ‘falling away’ in Christendom, predicted by Christ during the latter days.
Note that today many unregenerate individuals ‘slain in the spirit’ are seeking spiritual phenomenon itself and thereby open themselves to an involuntary simulation of glossalia or other aberrant human behaviours they have observed to be the fashion of fervent worship. Involuntarily they lose control and fall down prostrate yielding to the subconscious desire to be like others: a spectacle.
This compares to jargon-aphasia in pagan occultist manifestations of animist and spiritist tribes. Even the two unconverted sons of thunder, James & John, when impulsively wanting to call down fire upon other unknown disciples were reproved: “Ýou know not what spirit you are of” (Luke 9:55).
Jessie Penn-Lewis went to visit the outbreak in Azusa Street, Los Angeles in 1906. Upon her return, she brought back to Wales her false fire of ‘glossalia’ as the sign and evidence of the Holy Spirit. Already condemned by Azusa’s Pastor Seymour, she wrote of her false demonology in ‘War on the Saints,’ and ‘Satan & his Kingdom’ and was a proponent in her writings of radical feminism.
Her emphasis on ‘glossalia’ and her influence on evangelist Evan Roberts as his confidante totally quenched the Welsh Revival and completely depressed Roberts until the day of his death as an isolated recluse.
Peter and the rest of the Eleven were converted when Jesus rose from the dead and appeared at Emmaus and Jerusalem opening their eyes to the Scriptures, lighting a fire within as they received the Spirit of God. (John 20. & Luke 24.) It is easy-religion’s convenient claim that the disciples were already Christians prior to that time, when in fact they were doubters with little or no faith without understanding the mission of Christ.
“When you are converted you will strengthen your brethren,” Jesus told Peter.
What is sadly becoming acceptable, in an increasing number of denominations, is part of the great deception of the last days. Azusa street phenomena, broadcasting Rev. Parham’s 1901 ‘unknown tongues’, appeared in 1904-6. on the heels of the highly popular spiritualist church movement of New York’s Fox sisters.