I have been thinking about this recently about two charges when it comes to how we test spirits. Yet both press severe charges. As I understand in Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, when Jesus had performed a healing, the Pharisees accused him of working under the power of the devil, due to and were declared to be in a long state of hard heartedness for more than one age. While on the other hand, there is another severe warning about trusting any spirit, and how even Satan can disguise himself as an angel of light. So we got two serious charges, one of trusting any spirit that appears good, and the other of presuming a spirit is bad. It seems like the accusations of the angel of light is a popular accusation to throw around towards anything, no matter how good that does not fit into ones own particular understanding of truth. Yet, this seems similar to what the Pharisees were doing in accusing Jesus of being under evil spirits, because he did not fit their understanding of truth. However, it then seems like a kind of scenario where your damned if you do and damned if you dont. Like on one hand, by testing spirits and calling something a demon, you maybe blaspheming the holy spirit, but if you say nothing, you maybe inviting satan in the form of the angel of light. This is the difficulty in understanding for me.

I don’t think we can determine what kind of spirit it is through any logical process.

Discerning of spirits is one of the spiritual gifts (1 Cor 12:10). Perhaps only a person who possesses this gift can know for sure. But then the problem still exists. For how can we be certain who possesses this gift?

“discerning of spirits” is one of the gifts listed in Corinthians. But John’s epistle tells us to “test the spirits” and in 1 Corinthians Paul says “test all things, hold fast what is good”(regarding prophecy and teaching).

There are a variety of ways to test spirits, such as…

You will know them by their fruits,

Their confession of the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and faith in His resurrection.

If they teach in accordance with the word of God(so we have to know the word to be spiritually effective)

If they give glory to Jesus Christ and God the Father, or seek glory for themselves.

Jesus said to the disciples on that day when they wanted to call down fire on their adversaries, “You know not what spirit you are of”- so even disciples get in a wrong spirit sometimes, which goes back to recognizing the fruit of the Spirit

Another way to test spirits is to listen to the testimony of trusted brothers and sisters.

When Jesus warned the Pharisees about blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, they had alreaady accused Him of casting out devils by Baalzebub. So he warned them. I personally dont think there is some evil sentence or two that instantly binds one over to judgment for blasphemy of the Spirit, but I think if one were to persist in such blasphemy they would find themselves in jeopardy. In order to do that (imo) you would have to be in the presence of manifestations of the Spirit such as genuine verifiable miracles of healing or deliverance, and call it devils work.

In all the main thing is knowing the scriptures, walking in the Spirit and recognizing that the adversary always creates confusion and deception, and exalts himself, and puts people in bondage.

This is sometimes the difficulty with Universalism and Spiritual Warfare. Since we are assured that Spiritual warfare is a very serious matter, which an infernalist and an annihilationist can and does often take very seriously. Often times, it turns into abusive cult practices, with a kind of fear mongering. And often times leads to greater evils, like the Spanish inquisition, Salem witch trials, crusades, Anti-Abortion terrorism, Al Quaeda and ISIS. Which for the infernalist, violence would be very consistent with its teachings. Plus, I was in a Spiritual Warfare cult in the Catholic Church for a couple months several years ago before becoming an Universalist. With constant approvals by the Vatican to do anything, constant rosaries, xenophobia towards anything outside Church approval, and constant hell lore.

So I pretty much gave up and pushed spiritual warfare away, seeing it as nothing but silly superstitions. It seems like even the Pharisees who accused Jesus of working for the Devil were acting in a spiritual warfare. Yet even so, we see evil all around, and many act so passively about it. Yet acting on violence is really just a greater evil often times worse than the ones being fought against.

There is really(in reality) no relationship between violence and spiritual warfare.

“And when he had disarmed the rulers and the authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in the cross.”

It is the cross that gave Jesus the name above every name, and the crucified life is the only effective spiritual warfare.

The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness and self-control. Not sure I got them all right, but I think that is correct. Anyhow, maybe we ought to test the spirits against that?

I think I myself have love, but not a lot of joy. I don’t have a lot of peace, I am somewhat patient. I am good, to a point. I am kind, to a point. My self control is above average. That said, if indeed these are the fruits, I certainly don’t have joy and peace. I am troubled constantly. I don’t wish to derail this thread, but even Biblical warnings of destruction frequently bring a lack of peace and joy… I guess I am not really conveying what I want to convey, so maybe I’ll try it this way. If the fruits of the spirit are indeed a comprehensive list and correct, then any teaching that seems to lack these fruits would be wrong.

For example - Preaching hate towards homosexuals and telling them to repent or burn in hell doesn’t seem to be a kind thing… It doesn’t give peace to the individual, it doesn’t give joy, it could be loving I suppose in the sense that if you love someone you are looking out for their good and so if something is evil in their life, then you would be loving to point it out and help them through it.

As for the OP - Great post sir - “Damned if you, damned if you don’t” seems to be altogether totally correct. You just can’t win.

I’ll use a biblical example… We all know of Simon Magus, right? He believed and was ‘baptized’ even. He then followed Philip.

I love those thoughts Gabe. There is certainly a dilemma, but I think the idea of testing spirits by fruit, of which all have in varying degrees of weakness or strength( “we bear this tresure in earthen vessels so that the sufficiency may be shown to be of God”, and as James says, “For we all stumble in many ways”) is a good one. If we dont have the basic instinct(by Christ in us) to recognize fruit then we are in trouble, but I think Jesus assured us that we would have that, “You will know them by their fruits.”

Here James pretty much says that is exactly how to test the spirits…

Jas 3:13 Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show by his good behavior his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom. 14 But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth. 15 This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, natural, demonic. 16 For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing. 17 But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy. 18 And the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

And Paul echoes it here I think…

2 Tim 2:24 The Lord’s bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, 25 with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, 26 and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will.

In Peter’s defense tho … thinking how well your example syncs up with the topic of blashphemy of the Holy SPirit and perhaps also what occurred with Annias and Saphira- We tend to measure these events by our limited experience, but I wonder if those actions would be akin to a Levite deciding to take a dump in front of the curtain before the holy of holies as the high priest was making the yearly sacrifice as the Spirit was descending onto the mercy seat, perhaps to overflow and fill the whole templ with glory.

As we read, perhaps understanding that the power displayed in the presnce of the “living stones” of the new tabernacle(in Acts) was ,above all else, an exponentially huge manifestation of love(more than of power) and to use it for self benefit or to abuse it as unholy was a particularly eggregious affront to the Manifest Presence under the circumstances. Perhaps Peter was so engaged in that presence that we cannot hold him strictly accountable for the result- but must look to the One who carried out those corrections as expressions of the pure purpose of the Guilty Party, and recognize that He showed Simon more mercy than was shown to some

I have been wondering for a few days if I got into some occult practices. Because I was reading a book of supposedly true stories about time travel. Now I read this because I have an interest in spacetime and wormhole travel in relation to quantum mechanics and Einsteinian relativity. Basically a wormhole is a mathematical possibility in relativity theory where you can take a shortcut to different points in spacetime.

However, this book started out some stories of the conspiracy sort about Government working on advanced top secret technology and some man from the future claiming the Government did some experiments on him. Then there was one about some guy getting hypnotized back to a different location. Another was some kid in Japan who could with his mind teleport paper from one location to the other. The weirdest one came from some supposed demon or extra-terrestrial 5th dimensional being called black eyed children who monotonously ask for stuff from adults, but mean harm. Then I got rid of the book once it went on about bigfoot being extra-terrestrial 5th dimensional.

Now I will admit, I had been interested in wormhole space travel for a while, and at one point considered using magic to find one. But this was a while back. But I do wonder what point does something become occult? I know that essentially occult is about seeking after power and supernatural forces with a focus away from God. But doesnt technology do the same thing?

Time travel seems to be logically impossible.

Suppose to travelled in time to the time and place where you were born. Would you see a baby which in fact was/is you? What if you stayed in that time and place, and was with the baby for say 15 years. Would you get to know yourself as a teenager? What if you killed that teenager? Would you then cease to exist? But how could that be since you had already existed well beyond that time?

What if you travelled in time to just yesterday? Would you meet yourself doing what you did yesterday? But then the two of you could travel to the day before yesterday? Would there then be THREE yous in that time and place. By repeating this process you could go to a time and place where there would be hundreds of persons, each of which was you.

Does the above seem possible as well as rational to you?

I’d think the only way for time travel to be possible would be if it were one-way, and that forward. And IF that were the case, the instant you left that then present realm of existence you would have in effect ceased to exist in that previous realm, i.e., you will have simply (mysteriously) disappeared… only then to reappear elsewhere henceforward. (hmm maybe not dissimilar to stepping through death’s doorway??)

Personally, I have no interest to travel in time. I find that to be way too dangerous and presumptuous. However, I have heard that in the glorified state, we are no longer bound to spacetime, and are in all times at once. How this could be, I have no way even to imagine it.

Getting back to the original point of occult, I am interested to know if the problem of occult practices are the actions themselves, or what they signify. Since it looks like lots of what is condemned in the occult is a perversion of some good supernatural gift from God. For example, necromancy, divination, or occult seem more like perversions of prophecy and the communion of Saints(If your Orthodox, Catholic or Anglican). From what I understand, the whole heart of the occult is the ego, which is the false sense of self that sees itself independent from God. Since from what I understand, God can give us revelation in any way he pleases. Take for example, nature is full of signs foretelling what will happen. Take meterology for example. In the early Church, Jesus was seen as not only the fulfillment of Jewish prophets, but the pagan myths and the sages and philosophers. For example, with Eastern Philosophy, the Buddha could be seen as a prophet who knew that temporal life is suffering, and that our ultimate destiny is not bound to the physical world of space and time.

I sometimes wonder if the problem is that occult occurs when we place too much faith in the pointer. This reminds me of in the Old Testament, how the Copper Snake was a sign of healing, but had to be destroyed when it became an idol. I have seen this within Christedom, where people can easily idolize the signs. I have seen people use spiritual aids like the rosary as some form of necromancy of trying to manipulate Mary to do your bidding. In fact, I see more occultism amongst those who are most obsessive and see the devil everywhere.

What are the spirits saying? Are they saying to look to this person as a king, ruler, prophet, etc? Stay away. Are they pointing to worship God and follow a path of morality? Then you can probably listen to them. In the book The Pipe and Christ: A Christian-Sioux Dialogue by Roman Catholic priest William Stolzma, he talks about 3 kinds of spirits: spirits of heaven, hell and earth. Spirits of hell would be the most deceitful. But look at what they are saying or pointing to (i.e. what do they want you to do, etc. Fruits, again). As far as time travel goes, I liked Star Trek - the Next Generation, with Q and Captain Picard, in 3 different time periods.