TESTING THE SUPERNATURAL

[The following letter - a response to Mr. Panton’s article of the same name, - is used here as an ‘Introduction’ to it.]

Dear Sir,

Your valuable article on “Testing the Supernatural” has interested us deeply. Here in China demon powers are manifesting themselves in new ways; and even in the Churches there have been cases of evil spirits pretending to be Jesus Christ.

One case may be of interest. Last autumn, near Amoy, in a preacher’s house one night, a voice was heard in the ceiling and a light appeared. The voice professed to be that of the former preacher who had lived in that house, and had died there twenty years ago. It soon became known all over the country-side that the old pastor was speaking from the roof of his former dwelling, to any who would go and hear, and crowds flocked day by day. The utterances were extraordinary:- full of Scripture; exhortations to live a holy life were frequent; and people of evil character dare not go, because no sooner were they seated, than the voice would address them by name, and ask them to repent of their sins. In most cases, sins known only to the person and the spirit addressing them were revealed. There is a well known man in Amoy, a Chinese physician trained in America, and a real Christian. His fees were very high; and to his amazement, when he went to the house, the spirit called on him to repent of the sin of covetousness, and commanded him to reduce his fees. So great was the effect on him that he now treats poor patients for nothing and is in many ways a transformed character.

A brother who preaches the Gospel in the Amoy district came to see me and asked me if I did not believe that this spirit was really the voice of God. He said, “No one in Amoy, scarcely, doubts it; though a few missionaries perhaps may be a little sceptical.” I told him about testing the spirits, and advised him to use the test of 1 John 4: 2. The spirit never becomes visible, but often a brilliant light is seen hovering over the house.

Ultimately the test was put by a worker we know and trust. After putting the test, there was silence for about half an hour; and then the voice said, “Read 1 Cor. 13: 13.” As you say in the article, the “not confessing” is sufficient proof of the origin of the manifestation. Many Chinese Christians have been utterly deceived; they well know the supernaturalism of heathenism, but it has never entered their heads that a demon could manifest himself in a Christian church, use Scriptural terms, exhort to goodness instead of evil, and press the reading of the Bible.

I am, etc.,

MARGARET E. BARBER.

Pagoda Anchorage,

Fukien, China.

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The profound importance of rightly discriminating on the threshold of the spirit-world Paul (1 Tim. 4: 1-3) has indicated once for all. Most modern demonisms bear on their forehead the stigmata of Hell; but not all, and least those which are therefore the most dangerous. For the spirits who will approach us at the end; the originators of the Apostasy foretold, “are described,” as Dr. Nevius says, “as seductive in the manner and effect of their approach. Their real character is concealed. They accommodate themselves to the known belief and disposition of men. A form of demonic activity to which the heathen were always, and are still, subject, would, in time, show a new outbreak among people who had become identified with the Christian Faith.”* What adepts at deceptive personation modern demons can be Professor Lombroso bears witness:- “Incarnaters, who rapidly impersonate by word and look, etc., one or more deceased persons, one after the other. Such a medium is Randone, of Rome, who impersonated for us the face and gestures successively of an idiot, a church orator, a professor affected with general paralysis, etc.” **

[* “Demon Possession and Allied Themes,” p. 415. ** “After Death ‑ What?” p. 125.]

Moreover, claims the most daring, and the loftiest assumptions, are inevitable as the Church is confronted with demonic approaches under cover of the last shadows. “People talk of Pentecost,” says Sir A. Conan Doyle, “as something mystical. I and my wife have been in an upper room in Glasgow, with twelve citizens of Glasgow, and we all saw the flames of fire flickering around and settling on our heads. We all felt a mighty moving wind, and we heard a great voice speaking to each one of us in tones rolling and sonorous. The churches must come to us for the spirit power they have lost. We do not want an amalgamation. We are far bigger than they. If the churches come to us humbly, we will help them.”* On all hands movements are thus pressing in upon us, claiming to be restored Pentecosts, revelations of angels, gifts of healings, and embodied resurrections of the miraculous Church of the Apostles.

[* The Daily Express, Oct. 16, 1922.]

The crisis, therefore, is critical and grave. Thus confronted, it is both useless and dangerous to take refuge in the averted face, or in a cultivated ignorance; and much more dangerous to accept any “revelation” whatever on its surface claim. “We cannot be sure where these messages come from,” as even Professor Barrett assures the Church Congress (1922); “the Apostolic warnings are well to remember.” Moreover, it is the direct command of God “PROVE THE SPIRITS” (1 John 4: 1): thus we have no option: no spirit-movement or spirit-action must ever be accepted without submission to, and authentication by, the Divine Tests. These Tests, therefore, rule the situation: shorn of miracle, as the Church has been for seventeen or eighteen centuries, and therefore un-possessed of any present miraculous gift of “discernings of spirits” (1 Cor. 12: 10) and, much more, wholly incapable of discerning un-miraculously we depend absolutely on the applied Word of God, prescribed for the purpose in an ungifted Church.

“EVERY SPIRIT WHICH CONFESSETH THAT JESUS CHRIST IS COME IN THE FLESH IS OF GOD: AND EVERY SPIRIT WHICH CONFESSETH NOT JESUS IS NOT OF GOD” (1 John 4: 2). It would seem that Gnostic demons, Swedenborgian demons, Irvingite demons, and overwhelmingly so demons in the Tongues Movement, have made the profession but not the confession: that is, an evil spirit can, of his own accord and when untested, state a perfectly correct theology; but when confronted with this specific challenge by the disciple of Christ, strategy or hate or Divine embargo compels a self-revelation. “BELOVED, TRY THE SPIRITS.”

Now it is exactly here that the whole modern supernatural movement collapses. “None of us,” a prominent adherent of the Tongues Movement once wrote to me, “could do it [put the test], for it would be false and ridiculous for us to do so.” Even when there is no such blank refusal, the Scriptures which technically apply seem never to have been mastered. A well-known speaker, who has since withdrawn from the Tongues Movement, when speaking in a Tongues assembly near Bournemouth revealed the usual mental chaos. “By these tests,” he said, “you shall test them, if it be an evil spirit or the Holy Spirit. Now I don’t suppose for a moment that any would dare get up here, and, in their tongue or prophecy, would ever dare to; but we never know, we never know, but what Satan would send someone here, and in the midst that awful word would be uttered, ‘Jesus is accursed’; so we have the remedy and can apply the test. Yes, in its place. It will be shown who is to ask the question. It is not everybody who is to test the spirit; but it would be a blessed thing sometimes to have the test, because we know that the person who is speaking is of the Lord, and the Spirit would surely witness to it with mighty praise.”* Mistakes are here in every line: (1) no evil spirit, unchallenged, would dream, in a Christian assembly, of saying, “Jesus is accursed” **; (2) if he did, no test is required; (3) every believer is empowered to put the test – “beloved” (1 John 4: 1) of every age or sex or clime; (4) for anyone to be selected presumably by the “utterance” - to put the test, should rouse suspicion at once; (5) the tests must not be used “sometimes,” but always, for every untested visitant; and (6) to, assume that “we know that the person speaking is of the Lord” before the test is put, is to reduce the discrimination to mockery. What use is such handling of the Scriptures against the masterly subtleties of the unseen? For an adequate use of the tests, it must be proved, by supernatural phenomena, that a spirit-being is present; he must, to be tested, so appear that he can be isolated, in conversation, spoken or written, from the human agent; it must be certain that he answers - not suddenly falling silent, or withdrawing, so leaving (possibly) a Christian to give the correct answer, nor must any assumption of any kind be made, in confronting (as we do) the oldest and subtlest evil intelligences in the universe. I have myself discovered a demon by the test, and so I know that it works.***

[* “Showers of Blessing,” No. 11.

** Tested, he may: “during this trying of the spirits (in Germany) one answered through a child of God, in ‘tongues’: ‘Cursed, be Jesus Christ.’ ” – The Overcomer, Jan., 1910

*** In Irving’s day, a spirit challenged with: “Wilt thou not confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh?” replied loudly, “I will not!” and after being expelled, says the narrator, it never returned. Miller’s “Irvingism,” vol. 1, p. 94.]

But the gravest danger, and a concealed man-trap needing constant exposure, is the clever elusiveness of spirit-beings who are past-masters in subtilty. Here is a triumphant application of the test (as he supposed) by one gifted with “tongues” in Sunderland:- “I felt I must know from God Himself whether what I had received was of God or not. I got on my knees before Him, and questioned the spirit within me: ‘Do you confess that Jesus Christ came in the flesh?’ Immediately my soul was filled with the glory of God, and the Lord of God was adored by me as never before; and that evening I spoke in four or five different tongues.”* Here it is obvious that the test was skilfully eluded, and an emotion substituted for an answer. A Christian acquaintance of the writer, in England, recently pressed for the application of the test in Los Angeles; and it was applied. “When fully under the influence of the spirit, I stepped to her side with these words:- ‘In the name of God, I demand of the spirit now present, Do you confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh?’ There came the response:- ‘It is Jesus, the Son of the Most High God that speaks. Say to my faithful children in England, Could it be any other than the Spirit of Christ which leads men to the throne?’ Criticism will disappear, never again to arise.”** That sober Christian hearts can be tricked by an avoidance of the test so transparent can only be explained by the infatuation, a real mental enfeeblement, which does accompany the evil occult.***

[* The Christian Herald, Dec. 5, 1907.

** “Trying the Spirits,” p. 3 (Sept. 15, 1924).

*** Owing to the extraordinary craft of the foe, and the psychological complexity of spirit inter-acting with spirit, it is perhaps safest for the “gifted” to be tested by others, rather than to test the spirit in themselves.]

One warning it is vital to add. The withdrawal of a spirit into the background, while he pushes forward his Christian victim to answer Scripture questions, is a constant danger.

“We all knelt in prayer,” says Mr. Joseph Sladen, “and soon the speaker with tongues began with a beautiful melodious voice under the control of a spirit. I rose, and demanded of the spirit inspiring the lady - ‘Has Jesus Christ come in the flesh?’ No answer was given by the spirit. After a short interval the lady again knelt, and in an impassioned prayer expressed her belief that Jesus Christ had come in the flesh. Some weeks later she said to me, ‑ ‘The reason why you had no reply to your question was the spirit had left me when you put the question.’ Shortly after, I put the test again. ‘Do, let the spirit get complete control of me,’ she said, ‘before you put the question to the spirit’; and shortly commenced to speak in a tongue. Again there was no reply to my question. Some days after, she told me, ‘the spirit left me before, you asked the question.’ ” It is obvious that a spirit’s studied avoidance of the test is as self-revealing as a negative answer.

How dreadful can be the revelation after a supposed baptism of the Holy Spirit one of countless cases will show:- “A sister who had received the gift of tongues by the laying on of hands at the Conference at Mulheirn, when it had been proved that the spirit by which she spoke was a demon, wished to be set free.* For several hours we prayed with, and for, her. The spirit which previously spoken of Golgotha and the Blood, of glory and of revival, now began to abuse us in ‘Tongues’ in the most fearful manner. When we commanded him to depart in the Name of Jesus, he told us simply we need take no further trouble, he did not intend to go, we had better depart. Then the spirit began threatening the sister in ‘Tongues.’ He was furious with her that she had betrayed him, and he threatened to destroy her. The more we prayed, the more he raged, and cursed and swore, and threatened us. I am not at all an emotional man, but I had the impression that the room was full of demons. The spirit flung the sister about the room, tore and bit her body in a fearful way; we ourselves heard the spirit cursing and swearing in ‘Tongues.’ The words used were so awful that I cannot write them down. I understood a good deal without the sister’s interpretation, for at times the spirit spoke in Latin, Italian, and some French. Unfortunately, I could only understand fragments without interpretation, as the spirit spoke very rapidly. It is awful to think that these demons, raging, swearing and threatening to murder us, up to this time had spoken to the children of God of Golgotha and revivals, and other spiritual matters, and had been believed. What is to become of the people of God, if they believe such demons?” Such is the very warning of our Saviour:‑ “For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; so as to lead astray, if possible, EVEN THE ELECT. Behold, I have told you beforehand” (Matt. 24: 24).

[* The idea that no believer can experience the on-fall of an evil spirit is not only in itself deeply erroneous, and contrary to actual cases unnumbered, but establishes the error that whatever spirit does actually fall must be the Holy Ghost if only the recipient is truly converted. Tests would thus be purely superfluous.]

How exceedingly solemn is ignorance both on the critical need and on the exact method of probing beyond phenomena to fact in the supernatural, the experience of Mr. F. F. Bosworth, the American evangelist - to cite but one case - will show. Mr. Bosworth says:- “God graciously gave me this gift eleven years ago, and nearly every day in prayer and worship I speak in tongues, and it is one of the sweetest things in my Christian experience. In every revival I am privileged to conduct, God graciously bestows upon many the gift of tongues.”* Yet, throughout, Mr. Bosworth not only records no testing as commanded by Scripture, but no remotest thought of such a test - its urgency, its gravity, its decisiveness - seems ever to have crossed his horizon.** The Church, un-warned, un-alert, moves blindfold into the dangerous mazes of fin‑de‑siecle miracle.

[* “Do All Speak With Tongues?” p. 17. “The Pentecostal Movement,” says Mr. D. M. Panton, in the May, 1925 issue of his evangelical magazine, “is stated to embrace more than 1,000,000 members in all lands, with 3,000 ministers and 500 missionaries.” I wonder what their numbers are today?]

** That silence is a negative the Test itself says:‑ “Every spirit which” – not denieth, but – “confesseth not” silence is disclosure, and the moral identification of a crafty foe.]

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