From the Shakers to Charismania: The Same Spirit But Not the Holy One

In this episode, we compare the "Holy Spirit" manifestations from the early Shaker Movement to what we see today in the Hyper-Charismatic Movement.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to the Long for Truth podcast. I'm Robin Long.
Join my husband Dan and I as we explore the
roots of the early Pentecostal and Charismatic movements and we
shine a light on false doctrines and false teachers in
the modern church. Let's get started.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Hello everyone, Welcome along for Truth. My name is Daniel Long.
Today we're going to be talking about the early Shakers
and specifically comparing their manifestations what they call the Holy Spirit,
to what we see today in the hyper charismatic movement
movements like Bethel, because the Shakers did much of the

(00:40):
same things. And I'm here to tell you that there
is nothing new under the sun, Absolutely nothing new under
the sun. These kinds of manifestations have been going on
long before Charles Parham or William Seymour and the Azusa
Street Revival or any of the other past charismatic revivals.

(01:01):
This stuff has been going on for a long time.
The Shakers did things like well, of course, shaking, which
is why they were called the Shakers. They shook, they trembled,
they went into convulsions, they rolled on the floor, they
fell into trances, They saw visions, they prophesied, they spoke
in tongues, they got drunk in the spirit, they were

(01:24):
hit with uncontrollable fits of Holy laughter. And doesn't that
sound familiar because that's what we see today in much
of the hyper charismatic movement. Now, the reason I'm doing
this video is because I want people to see that
they need to start questioning these things. I mean, how

(01:47):
do you know if you are in these churches that
do these things, how do you know that what you
are seeing and what you are experiencing is the Holy Spirit?
How do you know it's not some kind of different spirit.
Because the Shakers did the same things, and they were heretical.
They were not Christians. They did not trust in Jesus

(02:08):
alone for salvation. And I'm going to show you that
they trusted in Mother and Lee as well as the Jesus,
the man's spirit, the man part of God, male part
of God, to save them. They were adoptionists. They believed
that Jesus basically was adopted at his baptism, and they

(02:30):
believed that in the Christ Spirit in something similar to
what Richard Rar teaches today. And so they were heretical,
yet they were doing these very things. They were doing
the same kinds of manifestations that we see today in
much of the hyper charismatic movement. So you got to

(02:52):
ask yourself a question if you were involved in this
kind of thing, is what I am experiencing the whole spirit?
Or could it be something else? Now, I'm going to
use you use several sources. And the first one I'm
going to show you is I'm going to be referring
to a book called Shakerism Mean It's Meaning and Message

(03:17):
by Anna White and Leslie S. Taylor. This is a
very important book because both of these women were Shaker
leaders back in the you know, early late eighteen hundreds,
early nineteen hundreds. Anna White was born in eighteen thirty one.
She died in nineteen ten, and Leslie Taylor was born

(03:37):
in eighteen thirty seven and she died in nineteen twenty three.
And so they are referring to eyewitness accounts people who
were much older than them, who were in the group
when some of the earliest leaders were part of that.
They're referring to old documents. It's a very good source.
And by the way, side note that book is out

(03:58):
of print. I do believe you, and find a few
copies on a books and I think I saw one
copy on Amazon. I don't know if there are any
digital copies out there. I thought I had heard there
might be a Google Book digital copy, but I'm not sure.
The second book we're going to be looking at is
this one right here, The Shaker Experience in America by

(04:19):
Steven J. Stein Stein is a historian and a scholar.
He's written a couple of books on the Shakers, including
one on Mother Ann. He's written a book on Jonathan Edwards.
He has written many scholarly articles for journals, and he's
contributed to encyclopedias and things like that. So he's a scholar.

(04:44):
The other resources that I'm going to be a resource,
I should say that I'm going to be referring to
are the newspapers. There is a newspaper article from the
seventeen hundreds, things like seventeen eighty four, a year after
Mother An died, And I will take you and take
you there and we'll look at that. So that's a

(05:04):
very important article and you'll see that as well. All right,
let's go ahead and give a little bit of background
about the early Shakers. The early Shakers came out of
the Quaker movement. They broke off from the Quakers back

(05:30):
around seventeen forty seven is when Jane and James Wardley
of the Wardley Society, or that's what it was called
war D L e Y. Jane and James Wardley formed
their group in seventeen forty seven and they were called
the Shaking Quakers. Now the influences what the group that

(05:56):
influenced them were a group of French prophets called the
Chemisards I believe that's how you pronounce it. And the
Camisards came from France over to England in seventeen o
six and they resided in London and they spread their
teaching and their doctrine throughout London including uh, and I'm

(06:19):
not sure whereabouts Manchester is, but that is where the
Wardlies and Anna White resided was in Manchester. So the Wardlies,
they they started their group called the Shaking Quakers. And
I want to read a quote for you specifically and uh,
this is what would be happening at their meetings. Now,

(06:43):
this is specifically the Wardlies and this comes from the
Shaker experience in America. By Stein. It was reported that
sometimes their heads jerked so rapidly that their facial facial
features were not distinguishable. They screeched in the most dreadful manner, too,
disturbing whole neighborhoods at some distance with the commotions. Late

(07:06):
in the meetings, the frenzy of the fits gave way
to singing and dancing. These gatherings closed, it was reported
when the strength of the participants was exhausted. Now, before
we move on to Ann Lee, there's a couple of
things that she should know about Jane Wardley. Both Jane
and James were called the prophet and the Prophetess by

(07:30):
their people. And also Jane Wardley had a vision that
and prophesied that Jesus was going to return in the
form of a woman. She also taught that in order
to be saved, you needed to confess all of your

(07:52):
sins publicly. So the Wardleys were really influential to and Lee.
Fast forward tone or seventeen fifty eight. When Anne Lee
joined the Shaking Quakers, she like anyone else who joined
the group, had to confess all of her sins, and

(08:13):
that's exactly what she did. She confessed all of her sins.
She became a member of the Wardley Society. Now, she
was born in seventeen thirty six, and she was born
to a very poor family. Her father was a blacksmith,
and she had to start working at a very early age,
more than likely in textiles, But she ended up getting

(08:35):
a better job later on, working in an insane asylum
cooking for I guess the patients. Now she was. It's
claimed that when she was a young girl, she is,
at a very young age, she began to see visions
of angels and other things like that. She was very

(08:56):
spiritual when she joined the Wardley Society already. Now when
she joined she really struggled. She had these deep inner struggles,
these deep inner convictions. She tried so hard to be holy.
She wanted to be pure so bad, and yet the
more she tried, the more she saw herself as extremely

(09:16):
evil and sinful. And so she went through these very
difficult trials I guess of the soul, so much so
that she couldn't function, and it's reported that people even
had to feed her. Now what changed all that were
the visions visions came to her. And when she began

(09:39):
to have these visions again and she began to see
into the spiritual realm, she felt like everything was okay. Now,
another thing you need to know about Anne is that
she was married not of her own free will. She
never wanted to get married. She despised the thought of
getting married, but her father forced her to marry a

(10:02):
man by the name of Abraham's Standarin. The two together
had four children, all of them died, none of them survived.
And so she went through just an unimaginable amount of suffering,
which is what really turned her against marriage even more
and sex even more than that. And so she forbid

(10:26):
marriage and sex in the Shaker community. Now, while Ann
Lee was part of the Wardly Society before she left
Manchester and came over to America, left England and came
to America, she was doing some pretty disruptive things. She
was arrested. Let me read something from Sein's book. Stein's

(10:46):
book here about her arrest. This is what Stein says,
conflict with the authorities began to increase on May thirtieth.
On thirtieth of May seventeen seventy three, and Lee's a Shaker,
was rested for disturbing the congregation in the old Church.
She was detained for two days in prison, where the

(11:07):
constable provided meat and drink for Lee and her attendant
near the end of the Near the end of July,
she was apprehended again, this time in company with three
other Shakers, John Townley, Jay Jackson, and Betty Lee's. The
official account of the quarter session states that the group
was placed in custody for going into Christ Church in

(11:29):
this town and there willfully and contemptuously in the time
of divine service, disturbing the congregation, then assembled at morning prayer.
On this occasion, Anne Lee again spent two days in prison.
She and the others were each fined twenty pounds. The
sectarian pattern is unmistakable. By seventeen seventy two, the Shaking

(11:53):
Quakers of Manchester, including Anne Lee and members of her family,
were engaging and confrontational tactics. So Anne Lee claimed persecution.
The Shaking Quakers claimed persecution, and it wasn't really persecution.
They were being arrested and they were being detained for

(12:15):
disturbing the peace, and so they were pretty confrontational. Now
while she was in prison, and Lee claimed to have
a vision. In this vision, Jesus Christ came to her
and he anointed her with the Christ spirit, and he

(12:38):
explained several things to her. The first thing he explained
to her was the way of salvation. Salvation came through
confession of sins, through abstaining from marriage and sex, because
sex was the original sin in the garden, not eating
the forbidden fruit. According to this Jesus. That and Lisa.

(13:01):
Jesus told her that Adam and Eve had sex in
the garden, and they had sex well, not in the
way he wanted them to. He wanted them to do
it for the purposes of procreation, but they did it
out of self indulgence. Therefore they were cast out of
the garden. That was the original sin. He also told

(13:21):
her that he received the Christ Spirit at his baptism,
and he again anointed her with the Christ Spirit. I
want to read a few quotes for you, Ann Lee
Or from the book Shakerism. It's meaning a message by
Anna and Anna White and Leslie Taylor. This is what
this says. Among these revelations were too striking at the

(13:44):
root of the constitution of things in the Church and state.
One was the duality of Deity, God, both Father and Mother,
one in essence, one God, not to but God who
possesses the two natures, the masculine and the feminine, each
distinct unction, yet one in being co equals in deity.
The second was that the secret of man's sin, the

(14:07):
hidden cause of man's fall from uprightness, his loss of purity,
lay in the premature and self indulgent use of sexual union.
With the story of the Garden of Eden in her mind,
not as an Eastern tale, but as a divinely revealed
historic fact, and Lee saw in a vision the act

(14:27):
of the first pair performed not as a natural function
under divine control, in a proper time and sequence for
the divinely directed purpose of propagation, but as an act
of self indulgence and therefore of sin. So that is
their belief. God is both male and female. I forgot

(14:49):
to mention that earlier. But God is both male and female,
and Ann Lee was the female version of that through
the anointing of the Christ's spirit. I'm going to read
you the next slide now, and this is what it's
from the same book Shakerism. This is what this says.
And by her obedience to the voice of God in
her soul, through faith and suffering, had become fitted as

(15:13):
a pure vessel to receive the Spirit of Christ. The
Christ spirit emanation from manifestation of the invisible god Father
Mother had descended upon the man Jesus of Nazareth, who
in a similar way had prepared himself a temple fit
to receive the indwelling Spirit. This anointing by the eternal

(15:36):
Spirit of Christ occurred at the baptism by John, and
Jesus became, henceforth Jesus the Anointed. He became the second Atom.
It was necessary that the Christ Spirit should come again
and in a woman complete, and in a woman complete
the spiritual, as Eve had completed the natural human creation,

(15:59):
the image of the Divine. This baptism received not at
the hands of man, but from the person of the
risen and divine. Jesus gave to ann Lee the authority
as well as the spirit of the maternal presence, the
Mother in deity. Henceforth, a Lee was recognized among the
humble band as of poor and spirit. So you can

(16:22):
see there that, yeah, an Lee believed herself to be
really another Messiah, anointed with the Christ Spirit, and so
they saw ann Lee as their savior, their mother. Another
quote from Shakerism. Through her speaking of Annlee was to

(16:43):
come the life divine to men and women in America, Europe,
the world for the coming of a Christ's spirit and
woman meant opportunity for the completed work of reunion between
God and Man. Henceforth, whatever new degrees of revelation might
be given, the foundation was complete. There could be no
other way. The image of God stood in spiritual wholeness,

(17:07):
and Lee, as a mediator, felt the world hang about
her neck, rest its weight upon her heart. The Father
Mother had made complete and manifestation the mediatorial order through
Jesus and Anne as representative and divinely endowed leaders. So

(17:30):
after seeing these slides, after reading what the Shakers believed,
what they thought of Mother and do you think these
people were Christians? Very works oriented. The entire thing is
all about doing good works and putting your faith in
Jesus and Mother Anne. So their doctrine was absolutely heretical,

(17:51):
and yet yet they were doing the same kinds of
things that we see today in the modern charismatic mood.
I want to play a clip for you really quickly
of Bill Johnson and Larry Sparks talking about some of
these manifestations. Watch and you know.

Speaker 3 (18:09):
One of the things that I've noticed, even pre as
Zuzu Street pre nineteen oh six, It's interesting when people
think of manifestations of the spirit, you know, the common
ones of people falling down or shaking and trembling, etc.
And they almost think that that was a Pentecostal invention,
when in fact, I mean, what I love, Pastor Bill,

(18:30):
is your robust knowledge of revival history and if we
were to look back through every move of God, particularly
the evangelical ones. I love looking at evangelical revivals with
Jonathan Edwards the West Brothers because that same phenomenon happened. Well,
I mean, let me ask you this because something I

(18:51):
like to say, and I always like to say it
for reaction, I say I don't tolerate the manifestations.

Speaker 4 (18:57):
Of the Holy Spirit.

Speaker 3 (18:58):
I celebrate them because I don't want him to just
feel like we're just doing what we can. And it's like, well,
I don't really like that stuff, but we'll go with it.
How have you in a church like Bethel, how have
you all navigated over the years just the unusual manifestations
of the spirit, because it is the flesh, it's the

(19:19):
flesh responding to God. What are just some things you've
learned navigating some of those aspects of revival.

Speaker 4 (19:27):
Probably the most important thing for me is that I have.
For example, I've seen people tremble under the power of God.
I've seen them tremble because they wanted attention. I've seen
them tremble because of a demonic presence in their life.
And it all looks the same. The only great things
by the external, by the manifestation, you'll miss it two

(19:50):
thirds of the time. And what we do is we
continue to learn how to recognize what he's doing by
recognizing the presence when he sense it. The spirit of
God is at work. There's a different atmosphere around that manifestation.
If they are doing it to get attention, we don't
openly rebuke them and send them out of the room.

(20:11):
We'll just have somebody quietly pray for them and minister
to them. If it's a demonic issue, then we have
somebody not to draw attention. We don't. The enemy loves
to humiliate people that he has tormented, and so we
dial that way down, take the authority and bring a
real deliverance.

Speaker 5 (20:31):
There's fire Place it on their heads. Find somebody I
think he's got it, shake up bahbah, fire Place it
on another one's head. Fire legacy, legacy. The greatest thing

(20:55):
you've ever seen in your life. Prophesie over there.

Speaker 2 (21:00):
Ye all right, keep in mind as you're watching that
clip that these kinds of manifestations that are going on
in Bethel and at the Charismatic and in the hyper
Charismatic movement are the same things as we're going to
be talking about now as we move onto the manifestations
of the Shakers. Now, I've got a slide or two

(21:27):
to show you, but I also have a quote that
I want to read out of this book Shakerism that
I didn't make a slide for, but I think it's
an important quote. It's on page ninety six, and this
is what it says. In the spring of this year,
a revival had begun in the North family at Mount Lebanon.
Now this is in the eighteen hundreds, the early eighteen hundreds.

(21:48):
Mother ann Lei already died. She died, actually her and
her brother. She died a month after her brother died,
both of them being injured in mob violence. So she's gone.
Now this is around eighteen oh seven, so i'll start again.
In the spring of this year, a revival had begun
in the North family at Mount Lebanon, which spread among

(22:10):
believers in other places. Powerful operations were felt bowing, shaking, turning,
and speaking in unknown tongues. It was especially powerful at
tearing him. One of the peculiar operations is described as rolling.

(22:31):
People would be thrown to the floor and rolled violently
across its surface like logs. One brother at Tearingham, a physician,
was a stranger to such action of spirit force over
physical nature, and began to query mentally as to the
genuineness of the power. An elder came up to him

(22:52):
and clasped his arm about him. Instantly the power seized him,
threw him down, and rolled him with great violence, so
that the rest of the people were glad to crowd
against the wall out of his way. He was whirled
along to the fire and up against the fore stick,

(23:15):
so swiftly that he seemed fairly to buzz, then back
again out of harm's way. Before he had time to
get on fire, the power leaving him for a moment,
he was fain to crawl up on side of the
bed on the side of the of a bed, but
he was seized again with greater violence than before. Thinking

(23:35):
at this time, thinking that his time had come, he
gave himself up to die. When the strange influence left him,
but so beaten in bruised that he thought it would
result in his death. Immediately, a powerful shock went through him,
completely removing all ill effects. He was effectually cured of

(23:56):
the doubting habit and lived a good shaker for many years.
So those are the kinds of things that happened. Now
that's not the Holy Spirit. That is something extremely demonic.
That's what that is. I want to read a slide
for you here from the same book. With the life

(24:18):
of God flowing into the soul, came gifts such as
distinguished the primitive Christians of Apostolic days, and under the
spell of a power that felt that felt at the
day of Pentecost, some could not speak in their own
language for several days, but spoke in prophecy in an
unknown language. The power of God fell upon her. Speaking

(24:41):
of Anne Lee, now this is a quote from another
part of the book. The power of God fell upon her.
The gift of tongues was imparted, and she discoursed to
these clergymen, speaking as they testified in seventy two different languages,
speaking many of them, as they declared that ter than
they had ever heard them spoken before. Now, how true

(25:05):
these stories are, I don't know. But they did claim
to speak in tongues. I'm telling you more than likely
it was gibberish. It's what we see today in the
charismatic movement. And the first part of that quote, of
the first paragraph there it said that people spoke in
languages that weren't their own for days. It reminds me

(25:27):
a little bit of what took place in nineteen oh
one with Agnes Osmond, when she supposedly spoke in tongues
and could only speak in Chinese, and could only speak
in Chinese for days. She couldn't speak English, she couldn't
write English. All she could write was Chinese, according to
that story, which is bogus, by the way, because they
took her writings to a man who did know Chinese,

(25:49):
and the man looked at the writings and said, I
don't know what this is, but it's not Chinese. So
Agnes Osmond did not speak in tongues. And I'm sure
that what was happening here in the Shaker community was
the same kind of thing, nothing but gibberish. Another slide here, this,
by the way, comes from the Shaker experience in America

(26:14):
by Stephen J. Stein. As the months passed, the spiritual
gifts increased in abundance. Some manifestations were of conventional, conventional nature,
including messages of all kinds, anthems and laboring songs by
the hundreds, and new marches and dances. The celestial sources
for these resources seemed never to run dry. Often the

(26:37):
messages and songs were in unknown tongues and required interpretations. Some, however,
stood without explanation spirit languages and no need of translation. So, yeah,
the same kind of thing you hear today, you know,

(26:58):
praying the spirit. Everybody pray in the spirit.

Speaker 6 (27:01):
I ask you just to pray, everybody, Can you pray
in the spirit? Come on, we all bort abakata to
b and come on, just pray, come and just pray,
Just pray, everybody, come on here.

Speaker 2 (27:16):
So those are some of the manifestations. But those aren't
the only manifestations because they also got drunk in the spirit.
Same book Shaker experiences In a Shaker Experience in America
by Stein, Other manifestations from the spirit world bordered on
the bizaar, raising the eyebrows of even the most believing Shakers.

(27:39):
At water Lee, New York. Sarah Simmons was used by
some invisible hand, like a mop being scrubbed across the
dirty floor. Oliver Prentice shook mightily and rolled about the
meetinghouse at Union Village. The believers were required to stoop
down and eat Simplicity off the floor, an action which

(28:01):
many acknowledged defied common sense. Elsewhere, brothers and sisters acted
drunk with new wine or obsessed with the gift of laughter.
So we all know about the laughing gift, and we
know about being drunk in the spirit. Here's just a reminder.

Speaker 3 (28:29):
I can't us.

Speaker 4 (28:32):
You were fake and uh.

Speaker 2 (28:35):
And then you looked at me and you said, well,
just for that, you get a double post in.

Speaker 6 (28:54):
The sweets.

Speaker 5 (28:58):
People thought a gray.

Speaker 2 (29:22):
Rodney Howard's Brown's laugh is so creepy, I mean, just
absolutely creepy. Now, it wasn't just the adults that were
subjected to these manifestations in the Shaker community. Children were
subjected to these manifestations as well, and we see the

(29:42):
same thing happening in the modern hyper charismatic movement. Children
are really abuse. It's really child abuse, is exactly what
it is. And these children are also being subjected to
these kinds of manifestations like being drunk in the spirit.

Speaker 7 (30:01):
Watch thanks more though, give him that joy fire, God, fire, God,
drink drink, drink, drink.

Speaker 6 (30:30):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 7 (30:32):
This is true discipleship, presence of God. More Jesus, more more, more,
give you more, give him more. He's wanting to go more.

Speaker 2 (31:04):
Absolutely evil, And know that is not true discipleship. That
is pure evil. That is not the Holy Spirit, folks.
The Holy Spirit does not do these kinds of things.
And we know that because there's nothing in scripture at
all that talk about these kinds of weird manifestations. I

(31:27):
saw a YouTube channel that had a bunch of these
manifestations in it. I think it was called move of God.
I mean, the channel had like two hundred and thirty
some thousand subscribers, and one of the videos in the description,
this person who runs this channel put a bunch of
verses that had absolutely nothing to do with these kinds

(31:50):
of manifestations like being slain in the spirit in there.
And so they take scripture passages out of context. Folks.
There is nothing in scripture that shows these kinds of
manifestations other than tongues. But even the tongues and the
prophecy that we see today aren't real tongues or real prophecy,

(32:12):
so yeah, it just doesn't happen. Now, I want to
take you over to newspapers dot com and I want
to show you an article that I've clipped from the
late seventeen hundred, seventeen eighty four to be exact. So
let me take you over there now and we will
check that out. And as you can see here, actually,

(32:36):
let's do this one. There you go. Now you can
see that this comes from the Country Journal and the
Poughkeepsie Advertiser, and you can see right up here the
top there, the date is Thursday February ninth. Okay, this
is seventeen eighty six. I was thinking seventeen eighty four,
but this is seventeen eighty six. And we want to

(32:59):
start reading down here, and I know you can't see
it very well, so I am going to just zoom
right in here. Move over now. I want you to
notice a couple of things here before we start reading,
and that is this thing right here, because this is
old English, all right. And if you have a sixteen

(33:22):
eleven KJV, or you ever looked at a sixteen eleven KJV,
you're going to see that it was written in Old English.
And this little thing here is called a long s
and it just makes the same pronunciation as an S,
so it might look like an F, but it is

(33:43):
not an It's not the word Noif it's the promise,
it's not the word noise, it's the word noise. So
let's go ahead and look at this article, and well
you'll see some of the things that this report says
that the Shakers believe from eyewitnesses. And yeah, let's dive

(34:03):
in to the printer of the Essex new Essex, New
England Journal. Sir, the people called Shakers have made so
much noise in some parts of this country that many
here have been of the pains of long journeys on

(34:27):
purpose to find out their scheme from their own mouths.
It might perhaps save that trouble to others, as well
as afford some satisfaction to all, if you should think
proper to hand to the public through And I've got
to change pages here really quickly. We'll come over here

(34:48):
to the top of the article through the channel of
your useful paper. The following articles, which having been avowedly
maintained by themselves in a conference publicly held at one
of their meetings, were taken down, read and discussed before
them by paragraphs, and affirmed by sundry of their leaders

(35:14):
in the presence of a number of their disciples. So
here is what the Shakers believed. There is but one
person in the Godhead. The word Christ does not mean
any divine person, nor anything but the attributes of wisdom

(35:36):
and power, and the word Jesus. And the word Jesus
does not signify anything human. He was a man, indeed
when he suffered, but not since The word holy ghost
signifies no divine person, but only a power or influence
on the hearts of men which makes them believers, and

(35:58):
that comes only from the word of the Mother. The
Mother is the spouse spoken of in the Canticles, the
elect lady in John's epistle, and the woman that is,
the woman clothed with the sun in the I think

(36:19):
that's the eleventh of Revelations. She is holy, omniscient, and
everywhere present as God himself is, and as much to
be served, believed and obeyed as she. She is the
Lamb's wife and the mother of the Church. No blessing
ever came down from heaven, nor shall any man ever

(36:42):
ascend to that blessed state and world. But through her
hents none had ever gone to the heavens before the
year of our Lord seventeen seventy six. That year was
the I'm looking at that word? Is that that that
year was the something of time mentioned in the scripture

(37:06):
fullness fullness of time mentioned in the scriptures scripture. For
then the old literal dispensations of the Gospel under Jesus
sealed to make room for the new and spiritual dispensation
under the Mother, just as the just as that of
Moses withdrew when Jesus appeared. The scriptures are true and

(37:29):
given by divine inspiration, but they are all fulfilled already
except what is new completing in the Shakers. These are
the only true Church. These are the one hundred and
forty four thousand on my Mount Zion, with the Lamb
and them. Christ is come to the last judgment of

(37:51):
the quick and the dead. For carrying on this great work.
God was pleased to transfer his power in all his
gifts to the Mother and for them the same purpose.
She has commissioned, commissioned seven fathers who are perfect and
holy as herself. By the concurrence with their labors. The

(38:13):
number of the disciples already amount to a fourteen thousand,
and this number will soon be enlarged, so as to
destroy all that will not receive their gospel, and then
to fill all the world by this body. The gospel
is to be preached to all the living and to
all the dead, and whoever of either class believes, confesses,

(38:39):
and forsakes all sin shall certainly be saved, but all
others eternally damned. Here we go. Look at this. The
gift of tongues, of miracles, and of discerning spirits is
now imparted through the Mother to this church, and the
dead are daily before them to receive their final doom

(39:00):
from their mouths. Oh, yes, that reminds me. I wanted
to tell you this. I forgot all about this. Now
this is something that I might have happened in the
charismatic movement. I think of those who say they have
seen departed saints. John G. Lake was one of them.

(39:20):
But uh, yeah, the the Shakers actually would converse with
departed saints. They would converse with them, and they would
uh the departed saints would even confess their sins to
the Shakers. So they were involved in spiritualism. It was.

(39:41):
It was an absolute mess, and I forgot to mention that.
Let me go back here now to the uh uh,
to the to the article. But uh yeah, so the
gift of tongues, of miracles and of discerning spirits. We
read that ten in order to uh salvation. In in
order to in order salvation, it is necessary to confess

(40:02):
all sins to the Mother and her elders utterly, to remount,
denounce marriage and all of it, and never commit any
sin for the future, but yield ourselves and all that
we have up to the disposal of the Church, and
be in all things obedient to its is a directions. Yes,

(40:24):
upon this confession, these leaders take all the sins of
the proselyte on themselves and set the new convert free.
And from that time he has no need to pay
any regard to sabbath, to baptism, to the supper, or
any external ordinance, all these being all ready fulfilled for him.

(40:48):
It is, however, incumbent on him, to labor himself up
to the perfection of God. This they may do. Say
this they may do by say bodily work, none such
being in truth an act of worship more than another.

(41:10):
But yet these labors must depend for their kind of
continuance on the gift conferred at the time. This sometimes
determines to one sort of labor and sometimes to another.
As laughing, singing, dancing, turning round, weeping, etc. All these

(41:32):
are appointed as means for mortifying the body and waking
up the soul. Just like the French prophets, the Commissarts
believe believed, they believe the same type of things. These
laughters or these shakings, these prophecies, these trances, these visions
were all part of mortifying the flesh. To them. This

(41:54):
may be a little bit hard to read here because
of the line that goes across the page, but I'm
gonna try. The church is now in the state of
the resurrection and equal to the angels serving God precisely
every something meet and never I can't read it, never

(42:15):
something one sin, So we won't even worry about that.
But if they should cease to labor and be seduced
by the devil to intermate the dance, they may fall
away and die. And in case they should, they and
I'm gonna go up here now, they shall never have

(42:39):
their bodies raised again, there being no resurrection but that
in which they now stand. So you know, they also
denied the resurrection to present this fall. They are ever
sighting against, fighting against devils and expelling them from themselves
and others. But all this combat is maintained in a

(43:04):
bodily manner, the devils being visible to their bodily eyes
as the good angels so are. Another thing too that
I forgot to mention is that, yes, they did deliverance
on each other. They believed that they had devils. There's
a story that I read somewhere when I was researching
this about mother and seeing a demon on the back

(43:26):
of one of her parishioners and had to exercise that demon.
So yes, they did practice deliverance, and so deliverance isn't
anything new. They cast demons out of each other. Let's
go back to the article number sixteen. They carry on

(43:47):
very frequent dialogues with both angels, devils and departed souls.
Does that sound familiar talking to angels talking to devils.
A party of them employed now in preaching to the
Indians and Negroes who have died since the beginning of time,
and the respective languages of these nations. Others are engaged

(44:12):
in like benevolent employ with the dead of other nations,
and among other instances of their success is that success
of their success. Several divines of eminence in those days
have lately returned, confessed their sins, received their gospel, joined

(44:34):
their head, and entered into their redemption. Among whom are
the late Reverend Whitfield and wat So George Whitfield comes
back and confesses his sins to the Shakers, and he saved. Right,
That's what it says. The devils, which will not depart

(44:55):
from the possessed when commanded, especially in the case of infants,
are to be expelled by whipping or even by biting
the unhappy subjects. So anyway, I'm not going to read
any more of that paper. It's it's it's just it's

(45:15):
just bizarre stuff. But I I do want to say this,
the violence there that that that last paragraphed paragraph mentioned,
the biting and things like that, reminds me of what
took place with the Paramites, those who followed Charles Parham,

(45:37):
who believe that all sickness and disease came from demon possession,
and they would they would cast demons out by violently
doing things like twisting limbs and things like that. If
you haven't watched the video that I did on the
Paramites called the Paramite Killings, check that out. It really

(46:00):
is eye opening. Now, what would be the response of
somebody like say Bill Johnson or Chris Vallentin, because of
course the Shakers were heretical, but they say that you
know they are, They're Orthodox, and so I know Bill Johnson,
he would say, well, you have to really come to

(46:25):
learn when you are in the presence of God.

Speaker 4 (46:30):
The most important thing for me is that I have
For example, I've seen people tremble under the power of God.
I've seen them tremble because they wanted attention. I've seen
them tremble because of a demonic presence in their life.
And it all looks the same. If the only great
things by the external, by the manifestation, you'll miss it

(46:51):
two thirds of the time. And what we do is
where we continue to learn how to recognize what He's
doing by recognizing the presence. When you sense that the
spirit of God is at work, there's a different atmosphere
around that manifestation.

Speaker 2 (47:07):
Now, I have an article that I want to show
you by Chris Valentin. It's actually from Chris Valatin's website,
and the article is about being slain in the Spirit.
It's not a very long article, so let's let's go
over and take a look at it if we can.
I'm sorry for the small font but this this, these
are the two things we're going to be looking at.

(47:27):
Slain in the Spirit and holy laughter. And you can
see it's not a long article. So this is what
he says. Another manifestation that is more prominent but equally
hard to explain. It's people falling down or laughing hysterically
for no obvious reason. We call the falling down experience
being slain in the spirit. This happens often when we
lay our hands on people to pray for them, although

(47:50):
it happens in other situations. Also, sometimes people just seem
to fall backwards as if they just passed out. Some
are conscious conscious, while others act as if they are
asleep or in some sort of trance. They must often
fall backwards. I have no idea why it has been
happening for so long that we now station catchers behind

(48:11):
people when we pray for them so that they won't
get hurt when they hit the floor. When people who
have been slain in the spirit get up off the floor.
They frequently share testimonies or of experiencing God in some
incredible way. I personally have never had this experience myself,
but I have watched thousands of people fall down when
I am praying for them. Could they be faking, No question,

(48:35):
some are. But if you have ever witnessed this phenomenon personally,
you would see for yourself that many of these people
fall in such way that if someone didn't catch them,
they would bounce off the floor. In many cases, it
would be impossible to fake that kind of fall. Now
here's where he gets into his explanation. Could it be
the devil? If it is the devil, he's doing a

(48:58):
wonderful job of helping people get closer to God. In
almost every case where people have been slain in the spirit,
they report being more convinced than ever of God's love
for them. This may all sound strange, but it's no
stranger than many things that people have experienced in the Bible.
Now let's take a look at holy laughter. One of

(49:22):
the manifestations that has been most offensive to people is
something we call holy laughter. This condition occurs when, for
no obvious reason, people just begin to laugh hysterically as
if they're drunk. Some laugh so hard that they literally
fall on the ground. These people report being overcome by
intense joy that can't be expressed with words. I've watched

(49:43):
thousands of people, well, why that went on like that?
I've watched here, we are right here. I've watched thousands
of people all at once overcome by this manifestation. It's
fun to witness someone who is really serious, who is
really serious, who is rich, who is really serious encounter
this experience. Again, I have never experienced this condition myself,

(50:06):
but I've carried my wife out of several meetings when
she was so spiritually drunk that she couldn't walk. Weird,
you say, yeah, I agree, it looks it looks that
way to me too. I love what Angela Monet said,
those who danced looked quite insane to those who didn't
hear the music. I think this quote applies here. Again,

(50:27):
it's very hard to attribute this to Satan when the
fruits of this manifestation is always positive and the people
having the experience. I must admit that some who watch
people having this type of encounter are offended. I can
say the same thing about the Shakers. The Shakers, after

(50:48):
these spirit manifestations would come on them, they would claim
to live holy lives. So the manifestations were a means
to holy living. In the video that Bill Johnson did
with Larry Sparks, he said that we have to come
to know. We just have to practice.

Speaker 7 (51:07):
We have to learn.

Speaker 2 (51:10):
When we're in the presence of God. As if the
devil is going to just announce himself, Hey, guys, HiT's
me the devil. I'm here. No, he's going to come
as an angel of light and disguise himself because that's
what the Bible says he does. He's crafty, he's sneaky,
and so folks. Again, the question is, if you are

(51:31):
in a church that is doing this kind of thing,
how do you know what you're experiencing is the Holy Spirit?
How do you even test these manifestations? You can't really
even test them with scripture because most of the things
that you see in these meetings are not even in scripture.
We're never commanded to seek after these things. So I

(51:55):
would say that the only thing, the only thing you
can trust is scripture. You can't trust your experience. It's
the Bible that we have to fall back on. So
if this video has been helpful, I would ask you
to please pass it along, share it with someone who
might be caught up in a church that's performing these

(52:21):
kinds of things. Bethel and these movements like Bethel are
dangerous and people need to be warned about it. Thanks
for watching, Lord Willing, We'll see you next week.