Plus Random Ruminations

My sister and I attended Calvary Chapel of Kendall today. She heard about it from a friend. I got on the web and looked it up. Evidently, there is a body of something like a thousand churches under the Calvary Chapel umbrella. They are charismatics, but they are a bit fed up with charismatic excesses, such as barking and holy-rolling. They don’t permit speakers to speak in tongues while teaching. They also deny the authenticity of the phenomenon of being “slain in the spirit.” This is something believers claim happens when the Holy Spirit is present in such intensity that it causes their knees to buckle. I’m inclined to believe it happens. I think the Bible mentions people feeling weak in the presence of God, but I’m too lazy to look it up. As I have written before, I have had unexpected moments of mild dizziness in church.

I don’t think it’s a big enough deal to drive your church of choice. I’m always surprised to see Christians fall out over things that seem fairly trivial. Is the Rapture before the Tribulation or after? Do the dead go to heaven or merely sleep until the Resurrection? Who cares? I don’t think the little things matter.

The musicians were spectacular today. In particular, a singer/guitarist and a man who played the electric guitar. I’m not fond of high-distortion rock-and-roll-style guitar in church, but whether or not it’s a good idea, he did it extremely well.

The pastor was very good. He told about the birth of Christ.

They didn’t harp about money. They don’t take a collection. They have boxes at the rear of the church, and you can also donate online. I liked that. I get tired of hearing preachers pray over offerings, asking that they be “multiplied back” over and over. It’s as if they’re trying to assure the congregation that donating isn’t a stupid thing to do, because the money comes back. I think it does come back, in one form or another, but you should give because it’s right, not because you’re counting on God to make you rich.

I can’t say I felt much of that familiar “God’s presence” sensation, except at the end, when the pastor made an altar call. That was when he really shined. Or shone.

According to web sources, some people have criticized the Calvary Chapel bunch for insisting that members feel more joyful than they really do, and for being somewhat fanatical. I don’t know if these things are true. They seemed fairly tame compared to the other two churches I’ve been to recently.

I got home and felt like watching Perry Stone. He’s unbelievable. I am not endorsing him; he talks so fast, it’s impossible (for a lazy person like me) to keep up and check his scriptural references and make sure everything is kosher. But my instincts tell me he’s the real thing.

Charismatics believe in something called “the word of knowledge,” which simply means they believe God tells people things. I have gotten into it with my sister for saying God had never told me anything. When I say that, I don’t mean I don’t get urgings and so on. I mean I have never had an explicit message from God, delivered supernaturally. I have never heard a voice giving me news. I have never seen letters floating in the air, spelling out a message. To me, that’s the kind of thing you should hold out for before you confidently state “God told me something.” If you haven’t had an experience like that, you should say, “I THINK God is telling me…” This could save the church a lot of embarrassment. Didn’t some big-name preacher claim God told him McCain was going to win? I’m not sure, but I think that’s correct. God didn’t tell him that.

Perry Stone says he got a word of knowledge once, and it was in April of 1998. He awoke from sleep, and as he was waking, a voice told him the governor of Texas was going to be the next President. He told a few friends, and later that year, he happened to be leading a tour at the Western Wall when he ran into George Bush, and he encouraged Bush to run. Stone claims he has this chance meeting on video. Supposedly, Bush has said he decided to run a few days later.

I found that interesting, because he said he heard the voice as he was waking up. I have had a couple of very strange experiences as I was waking. One was unquestionably supernatural. The other, I have never been sure about. I always figured that if you were a prophet and you had a vision, you would probably have it while you were wide awake, because that would distinguish it from a dream. However Aaron recently told me that the vast majority of prophets received their information in dreams. And that information has turned out to be sound. I suppose I was wrong. I know of a lot of prophetic dreams in the Bible, but I didn’t realize they represented the standard method.

I’ve written about the first experience. I was trying to sleep, and I kept feeling a beam of energy playing over my body, like an invisible spotlight. Wherever it touched me, I felt loved and optimistic and at peace. Seriously. When it touched my foot, my foot felt these things. I was convinced it was the presence of Jesus. Sounds crazy. I was completely awake, but I fell asleep while this was going on. You would think I would have been too freaked out to fall asleep, but I was used to having supernatural experiences, and I didn’t know what to make of this one, and I guess I was sleepy. I awoke with both hands in the air, and I heard a crackling sound, and I felt energy arcing into my palms. Eventually it stopped.

I assume it was a supernatural experience, because the things that preceded it happened while I was still awake, and because it seemed to continue even after it woke me up.

I have never figured out what it meant.

The experience that made the deepest impression on me–this is not the second experience I mentioned above–took place while I was awake and the sun was shining. I was sitting on the couch, and I happened to look at the wall. And up near the corner of the room, I saw a creature. I’d say it was about five inches long. It seemed similar to a cockroach in its general shape. It was a long oval shape, with a line across it near one end. The line appeared to define a head. That was the only feature it had. You could draw it perfectly in ten seconds with a pencil. It had no color. It was clear. I can’t describe it well; it didn’t look like glass, because it was not in this world and it didn’t look like things that belong to this world. The outlines were not clearly focused. It was as though I were seeing it through the distorting effect of the physical universe. You might think of the creature in the movie Predator, or maybe one of those clear network logos at the bottom of a TV screen.

This thing was about four inches from the ceiling, clinging to the wall. Its head faced away from the corner. Its body was parallel to the ceiling. It was just sitting there. I had no trouble seeing it. It was as obvious as a table lamp, and I got a good, long look at it.

I kept staring at it, because…well, who wouldn’t? Eventually, it appeared to realize I could see it. I don’t think it liked this. It detached from the wall and floated away from it, and as it did, a line appeared down its back, defining two wings which parted and peeled up toward the head. The wings then began spinning around the head like a propeller, except that they seemed to merge into a smooth disk perpendicular to the axis of the body. As this happened, it began to rise, and it rose toward the ceiling. When it reached the ceiling, it passed through it and disappeared.

The smoothness of the motion was beyond anything I have ever seen in the physical realm. It had an idealized quality to it, as though its spiritual nature permitted it to be simpler and more elegant than a physical object.

This was a spirit. That much, I’m sure of. But was it a good spirit or a bad one? My guess: bad. It took off when I spotted it, which is not what you would expect a benign spirit serving God to do. It acted guilty.

It made me think of phrases like “lord of the flies” and “prince of the air.” Some people say there are foul spirits that are like flies, flying around from place to place to cause trouble. And I also thought about Christians who claim foul spirits inhabit houses and have to be commanded to leave. Truthfully, though, I am not sure of its exact nature. Sometimes I wonder if it was here to bring a specific type of trouble to the house, like bugs, which it resembled.

I used to keep the story to myself. I’m not sure why. These days, I don’t care who knows it. So here it is. Maybe someone else out there has seen something like it, and they’ll be relieved to know they’re not alone.

Today the pastor mentioned something remarkable, and I also heard it on a Perry Stone video. They talked about the 400 years the Jews spent without hearing from a prophet. The pastor called it “radio silence” and compared it to hearing a favorite station go off the air. I thought it was kind of scary. Imagine having prophet after prophet and then four hundred years of silence. How did the Jews cope? And how did they find the strength to continue trusting in God?

People make fun of Christians for believing Jesus will return after 2000 years. But the Jews have been waiting…what year is it? I believe it’s 5769 to them. They don’t believe Jesus was a prophet, so to them, the prophetic dry spell has been running since Malachi. It has been going on for 2400 years. I don’t know when they began believing a messiah was coming, but it was at least that long ago. So they’ve been waiting considerably longer than we have. Talk about perseverance. It’s amazing that they’ve held out this long. No temple, no state until 1948, no priests, no king, no sacrifices, and still, there are observant Jews.

Maybe I’m getting this wrong. I know they believe there were miracles after Malachi. Anyway, it is remarkable that any of them still believe. That is a special kind of faith.

I have heard that Perry Stone thinks God is shaking up America right now, trying to drive us to repent. I hope that’s true, because my own take is that we are finished as the preeminent nation on earth. He believes the prophesied outpouring of the Holy Spirit is upon us, and that after it reaches its fullness, Jesus will return. He certainly knows more than I do.

Interesting stuff. But at the end of the day, the thing that really matters is trying to lead a life that pleases God. All this other business will become clear eventually.