The manifestations of the Holy Spirit have been subject to great distortion and error.
Many Charismatics took isolated scriptures and drew up Pentecostal doctrine.
"Slaying in the Spirit" was a great perversion of the witness of the Holy Spirit in the life of a believer.
Adherents to this controversial practice cite John 18 as proof:
"They answered him, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus saith unto them, I am he. And Judas also, which betrayed him, stood with them.
"As soon then as he had said unto them, I am he, they went backward, and fell to the ground." (John 18: 5-6)
In this part of John's account, the soldiers who accompanied Jesus' betrayer were certainly not believers. When Jesus spoke "I am he", he in fact said "I AM", testifying to His deity with God as God (cf John 1:1-2). God had revealed Himself to Moses as "I AM that I AM". His sheer power knocked down the soldiers, and Jesus had to ask them again "Whom do ye seek?"
The Pentecostal movement took this one verse and spinned a practice in which believers would stand at the altar of a church and receive an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and then fall on the ground, "slain in the spirit".
The Bible is clear to warn of interpreting one scripture as the sole basis for truth:
"Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation." (2 Peter 1:20)
When I was growing up in a Charismatic church, people would weep and run around, flapping their arms like birds, or writhe in the ground, demonstrating that they were "filled" with the Spirit.
"Slaying in the Spirit" was one perversion of the Word of God, one which contravenes the Power of the Holy Spirit. Throughout the Scriptures, the moment that the Holy Spirit moved in people, the sick were healed, the dead came to life and ministered to others, and the Word of God was preached. Not once did a believer baptized in the Holy Spirit fall on the ground in a coma.
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