Testing Visions and Discerning Spirits
- Michael E.B. Maher
- 3 days ago
- 7 min read
Mark 5:1-13 “Then they came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gadarenes. (2) And when He had come out of the boat, immediately there met Him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit … (6) when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and worshiped Him. (7) And he cried out with a loud voice and said, "What have I to do with You, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I implore You by God that You do not torment me." (8) For He said to him, “Come out of the man, unclean spirit!" (9) Then He asked him, "What is your name?" And he answered, saying, "My name is Legion; for we are many." (10) Also, he begged Him earnestly that He would not send them out of the country. (11) Now a large herd of swine was feeding there near the mountains. (12) So, all the demons begged Him, saying, "Send us to the swine, that we may enter them." (13) And at once Jesus gave them permission. Then the unclean spirits went out and entered the swine (there were about two thousand); and the herd ran violently down the steep place into the sea, and drowned in the sea.”
It is important to note that in all the examples which we have discussed in this section that the visions occurred as the Holy Spirit willed and not as the individual willed. In other words one who has received this gift cannot choose when they will see a vision, the Holy Spirit does. Another point that we need to discuss is the fact that this gift is called discerning of spirits, it is not called discerning of clean spirits. In other words one who has this gift will see both clean and unclean spirits, depending on what the Lord wants to show the individual at the time. The examples we have looked at in this section have been primarily of the Lord Jesus and God’s angels appearing to men. Nevertheless there are also numerous incidents recorded in scripture of demonic spirits being encountered through the operation of this gift. The above quoted passage of scripture is an example of one such encounter. The context of this account is that this particular man had become demon possessed (Mathew 8:28). When one is demon possessed the demon is able to speak through the individual using the person’s voice. And so, we see in this incident that Jesus spoke to the demon and not to the man, and that the demon spoke to our Lord, using the man’s voice. Everyone present on that occasion heard this conversation taking place, because Jesus and the demon were speaking to each other in the natural. In other words the Lord was not operating in the gift of discerning of spirits at this stage. But then something else happened, for the scripture tells us that all the demons begged Him saying, "Send us to the swine, that we may enter them." No one else heard all the demons begging the Lord, only Jesus did, and the reason for that was because the rest of the demons were not speaking in this realm, for they were speaking in the spirit realm. And so it was at this point that our Lord began operating in the gift of the discerning of spirits, and He was able to hear what the demons were saying. Another example of seeing unclean spirits with this gift is when our Lord Jesus had the encounter with Satan in the wilderness (Matthew 4:3-11).
1 Thessalonians 5:20-21 “Do not despise prophecies. (21) Test all things; hold fast what is good.”
We have used the above quoted passage of scripture to establish the principle that we are required to test all spiritual gift manifestations to ensure that we are being exposed to the genuine and not the counterfeit. False ministers love to pretend that they operate in the gift of discerning of spirits, claiming that their “visions” endorse the distorted gospels that they proclaim. And so a very simple mechanism that the church uses to test visions that people proclaim to have had is to compare them to scripture. The vast majority of so called “visions” that people claim to have had are easily proven to be false when compared with scripture. It amazes me to see how many churches are taken in by the false ministers who go around telling everyone about their fictitious visions that they have had. The pastors of those churches will be held accountable on their day of judgement for exposing their congregations to such charlatanry. Some of the “visions” are so blatantly fraudulent that I can only assume that the pastors in question are either completely ignorant of scripture or they are complicit in working with the false ministers to deceive the church. God has given His saints His written word for a reason and one of those reasons is to use His word to test visions that are proclaimed in the church.
I will close this section with some experiences regarding this gift that the Lord Jesus has allowed me to have. There was a time in my walk with the Lord when I left the ministry and went into the business world. During this period my walk with the Lord was never as close as it had been when I was in ministry, and consequently I began to progressively backslide over time. By the grace of God, after a period of time I came to my senses, repented, and began to walk with the Lord again and prepared to go back into the ministry. After I began to once again walk in close fellowship with the Lord however, I found myself waking up in the middle of the night experiencing strong demonic oppression. The demon would either be above me or standing next to me, and although it was dark I could still make him out and he looked to me like a small creature. In response to the demonic attack I would rebuke the demon in the name of Jesus and he would disappear. This experience initially occurred once or twice a week, but over time the incidents occurred less and less frequently. This ordeal continued for fourteen months however, and I have no idea why it lasted so long, the Lord knows. On the last night that I was attacked in my sleep, I woke up to see another demon sitting in a chair in our bedroom, and he was looking at me. This demon was different however, because he looked like a man. He had a cloak on and I looked into his eyes and they were red and almost like the eyes of a snake. Again, I rebuked this demon in the name of Jesus and he continued to look at me for a brief moment, and then just disappeared. That was the last attack I had and my sleep has been undisturbed ever since.
A number of months after this last incident I started receiving dreams from the Lord, and I will relate one of those dreams here. In my dream I found myself approaching Hades from above. As I got closer to the entrance of Hades I could sense some form of demonic presence there. I was not at all fearful, but rather because of the demonic presence, I sensed a righteous anger rising up on the inside of me. I came down to the bottom and stood there. My attention was then diverted, as I saw people coming down from above and landing at the edge of Hades. Other than the people that I saw I could see nothing else, as the whole place was completely dark, black actually. I felt myself drawn in even closer, and I remember speaking to someone who was alongside me (I do not know who it was). But I sensed that this person was acting as my guide through this experience. And I recall saying to this person that I could now clearly make out individual people. There was some sort of an invisible barrier between myself and those I was seeing. Then directly in front of me, an ex-work colleague of mine came down and stood there for a moment. I was shocked to see him there. He then said something which sounded very peculiar to me at the time. He said, “Now I’m finally here”. I screamed his name and told him that he was in the wrong place. He did not hear me, even though I was screaming at him. He then turned away from me and moved off with the others into the black darkness. The dream ended at that point. The Lord gave me this dream to teach me that I had been negligent in sharing the gospel with those around me. I had never shared the gospel with this individual, even though I had sensed at times, that the Holy Spirit wanted me to do so. When I thought about the dream a while later, I recalled that this individual on more than one occasion, had bragged that he was going to end up in hell when he died (this was not a Godly man by any stretch of the imagination). Obviously, he had no idea what he was saying because he was walking in darkness, as all unbelievers do. I repented before the Lord for not being obedient in sharing the gospel with this man, and I share this dream with believers to warn them that we need to be obedient to the prompting of the Holy Spirit in sharing our faith in Jesus with others. At least everyone that you know should know that you are a believer in Christ, so that they can watch your lifestyle as a witness for Christ.
Michael E.B. Maher
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