Join us for a thought-provoking episode as we explore the compelling desire to witness the divine. Delve into the biblical account of Mount Sinai where God’s presence was so powerful that the entire mountain shook and smoked. Discover why some individuals have sought manifestations of the spirit world through mediums and divinations, and the potential dangers lurking in such pursuits.
The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
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How would you like to see God? To actually hear His voice? Yeah, I would too. At least I think I would. Some people got close once. You remember the story from Exodus where Israel gathered around the bottom of Mount Sinai and God came down on the mountain and spoke to them? Well, when he came down, the whole thing began to smoke. You know, God, his power is like the sun in its full strength. He is an enormous source of power. And so when he touches things material, they have a tendency to smoke a lot. When God spoke from the top of the mountain, we’re told in the Bible that the rocks broke with the sound of his voice. It’s small wonder that the people were frightened out of their wits. They gathered up their stuff and moved way off. And they said, oh, please, Moses, don’t let God speak to us anymore. You talk to him. You go speak to him and you tell us what he said. But we don’t want to hear that anymore. So, yeah, I would like to see God. I would like to hear His voice. But I have a feeling I’d be better off waiting until I’m a spirit being to see Him. There is in man a profound desire to see something, if not God, to see some manifestation of God. And if not a manifestation of God, at least a manifestation of the spirit world. Men have even tried to conjure up devils, and the idea being, well, if I can see the devil, then I will know that there is a spirit world. It will cure my doubts. I won’t have any question about this, and thus I will know that there is a God. Show me the devil, they say, and I’ll believe in God. Now, I’ll leave it to you to figure out how stupid that idea is and how dangerous it is. People then pursue the spirit world in any of its forms. They consult fortune tellers and mediums. They play with Ouija boards and experiment with tapping tables and magic. One fellow wrote to me the other day and said that when he was a kid, he and the other kids around him, there were about ten of them, they used to play around with these things. And he said nine of them were able to sit there and make that little thing move on the Ouija board. He said, I never could make the thing move. It never did occur to him, of course, that the other guys were playing tricks on him. They weren’t waiting for the spirit world to move it. They were moving it with their own hands, but never mind. So anyway, people, by playing around with this kind of thing, make themselves vulnerable to every fake and charlatan that comes along trying to make a fast buck or every kid down the block who’s trying to make a play on your gullibility. Some people even go to church… Looking not so much for God, but for a manifestation of God. And that’s an interesting differential there, if you’ll think about it for a while. They go looking not so much for God, but looking for a manifestation of God, and they find, some places, what they’re looking for. No, they don’t find it in fire. Mountains don’t smoke. They find it in flesh. They find people coming under the power of a spirit. They find them jumping up and down in place as though they couldn’t stop. They find them lying inert on the floor, slain in the spirit, they call it, to where they’re absolutely as though they were nailed to the floor. And they look at their hand and will their hand to move, and the hand won’t move. Or they fall uncontrollably laughing and are unable to stop. Or they dance around the pews in a kind of holy dance, and some have even gone so far as to bark like a dog. Now, the people who have actually experienced this stuff are firmly convinced it’s from God. But how do they know? What can they offer us to prove that these manifestations are of God? For merely having made a crack between our world and the spirit world, and having come into contact with a power, a power to seize people and hold them down, or a power to make people jump up and down, does not mean that you have come into contact with the power of God necessarily, does it? You have simply made a breach in the wall between our world and the spirit world, And who knows what will come through that crack? Well, the Apostle John, in his day and time, wrote to the people he knew, and he said, Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Now, there’s a thought. Many false prophets are gone out into the world. Where are they? John didn’t say there were a few false prophets. He didn’t say there were one or two, one here, one there. He said there were a lot of them. Whoever they are and wherever they are, there’s a bunch. The very wording of this verse also suggests that there are spirits that are of God and spirits that are not. Listen to his words again. Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God. And doesn’t that suggest to you that there might be spirits that are not of God? Then comes the natural question. How on earth can you and I tell the difference? There are many simple folks who assume that if something is supernatural, then it’s got to be good. It’s got to be from God. And they are dangerously wrong. John continues and says, Hereby you know the Spirit of God. Not that it’s powerful. Not that it can move furniture around a room. Not that it can hold you motionless for three hours at a time. Oh, no, no. Hereby know you the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God. And every spirit that confesses not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God. And this is that spirit of Antichrist, whereof you have heard that it should come, and even now already it is in the world. In John’s day, there was something already in the world called the spirit of Antichrist. Should we assume that that spirit has no power, that it can’t do things, can’t move things, can’t touch people? Now, John left us with a little problem here. At least superficially, he seems to be giving us a litmus test for the Spirit. You stick the piece of paper in, if it turns green, it’s this way, and if it turns red, it’s the other way. It’s almost as though it’s a simple yes or no. It’s interesting, frankly, to realize how early heresy had come on the scene. There were actually those in John’s day, who argued that Jesus, when he was here, when he walked up and down on the earth, was not really flesh. That he was actually a manifestation of God in flesh, but not really flesh. In other words, the whole thing was, what shall we say, it was a fake. It was, you could reach out and touch him, and he felt like flesh, but he wasn’t really flesh. And he did not really die, because God cannot die. The heresy says that Jesus only appeared to die. Now, there are variations on this theme even today. And what John was doing was identifying for the people who were getting his letter the test they should use on this particular heresy. It seems unlikely that he meant that this is the only test. nor did he mean that spirits can’t lie when they are tested. In other words, you encounter the spirit, and you say, tell me, is Jesus Christ come in the flesh? And the spirit says, well, yes. The assumption is, well, the spirit couldn’t lie, so if it says yes, it must be of God, and you may have made a dangerous assumption, because there is such a thing, the Bible tells us so, as a lying spirit. There’s a strange example of this in the Bible, and I’ll show it to you when I come back after this break.
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The Bible tells us that one is coming who will be called the Antichrist. Who is this? How will you recognize him? A free introductory copy to the Antichrist series is yours for the asking. Write to us at Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. or call toll-free 1-888-BIBLE-44 and tell us the call letters of this radio station.
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The Bible tells us that there is such a thing as a lying spirit. That means a spirit being that comes down here into our world and lies. How does it work? Well, there’s a curious incident back in 1 Kings, the 22nd chapter, and I’ll set it up for you by giving you a little bit of the background. The king of Judah had come down to Samaria to visit the king of Israel. It was a state visit. And the king of Israel, whose name was Ahab, who was reputed to be the worst of the wicked kings of the northern tribes of Israel, He had been contemplating a military campaign to retake a city they had lost some time ago to the Syrians. And he asked the king of Judah to join forces with him to go up with their armies and take that city back. That’s our city. They shouldn’t have it. Well, the king of Judah was agreeable, but he was a bit of a godly man, and he felt that we shouldn’t do things that God doesn’t want us to do and doesn’t instruct us to do. And so he said, let’s consult the prophets to see if this is really a good idea or not. Except that what he said was, let’s consult a prophet of Jehovah to see if we ought to do this. So Ahab said, all right. And he called up his prophets, about 400 of them, to put on a show. Well, in those days now, you didn’t normally just speak words to prophesy. You might sing or you might dance or you might hop up and down or jump around an altar. You might do a parody. Who knows what you might do to get your prophecy across. So the prophets who were accustomed to tell the king what he wanted to hear, said, go ahead, let’s go into this battle. God will deliver this city into your hand. Shucks, folks, you know how it is. If you work for the king, the king has got power. The king can take your head off. You don’t want to tell that man what he doesn’t want to hear. And so the prophets sit there and figure out, let’s see, which way is the wind blowing? Oh, the king really wants to go do this, so let’s tell him, go do it. I don’t know where they would have been if he’d gone up to the battle of Austin and come back, but that’s another story. What they said, though, they did not say that Jehovah would give them the victory. They said that the Lord, different word, would give them the victory. Now, this troubled the king of Judah. He sat there and listened to all this and watched this show these guys were putting on. And he said, look, isn’t there a prophet of Jehovah anywhere around here that we could ask? This bunch of sycophants out here, I don’t trust them. I’m not comfortable about this. Well, yeah, Ahab said there’s one man, his name is Micaiah, by whom we may inquire of Jehovah. But I hate him. And the king of Judah says, you hate him? He said, yeah, he has nothing good to prophesy concerning me. He never prophesies anything about me but evil. Well, I can kind of understand why he didn’t like him very much. The whole thing is almost funny. You get one prophet who will tell you the truth instead of what you want to hear, and you hate him. You go get yourself some prophets that will tell you what you want to hear, and you’ll like them. Is that human nature or what? Well, the king of Israel said, oh, don’t talk that way. And so Ahab called an officer and told him, go get Micaiah. And while they waited, the prophets that were there continued to put on their show. One of them strapped some iron horns on his head, and he danced around saying, with these shall you push the Syrians till you have consumed them. And all the other prophets said pretty much the same thing. They had a real pep rally going on here. I gather the officer that was sent to fetch Micaiah liked him because he tried to talk him into telling the king what he wanted to hear. And the messenger that went to Micaiah said this. He said, Behold now, look, the words of the prophets are declaring good to the king with one mouth. Let your word please be like the word of one of them and speak what’s good. And Micaiah said, As God lives, what Jehovah says to me, that’s what I’m going to say. So he brought him into the king, and the king said to him, Micaiah, shall we go against this city to battle, or shall we forbear? And Micaiah answered him, Go and prosper, for Jehovah will deliver it into the hand of the king. Now, you would have thought this would have ended right there, right? You would think here all these prophecies saying, oh, yeah, the Lord’s going to give you this city, and with all their displays that they had already put on and explaining it, not merely in words, but in dances and song, that when finally the prophet of Jehovah comes in and says, oh, yeah, go on, go up there, the Jehovah shall deliver it into the hand of the king, and this is the first time in all of his prophetic career he has had one thing good to say about Ahab. You would have thought Ahab would have been happy Now, I don’t know if it’s how Micaiah said it or what he, I don’t know what, but Ahab knew that Micaiah was not leveling with him. His response is almost comical. He hated the man because he would never say anything good. And then when he does prophesy good, Ahab won’t have it. And he said to Micaiah, how many times shall I command you that you tell me nothing except what’s true in the name of Jehovah? And Micaiah said, I saw all Israel scattered on the hills as sheep without a shepherd. And the Lord said, These have no master. Let them go back to their house. Their shepherd was Ahab. And what he was saying is, Ahab’s going to die, and they’re going to lose. There, said Ahab, didn’t I tell you he would prophesy no good concerning me but evil? And of course, he just came in here and told him what he wanted to hear. wasn’t satisfied but Micaiah wasn’t through and it’s in this short prophecy that follows that we gain a curious insight into the workings of the spirit world there is a spirit world you know it’s out there in fact it’s probably right here and we’re just not aware of it’s coming and going it’s like what science fiction writers would call another dimension and only when there’s a tear between us and them or a portal between us and them do we ever encounter anybody from that But Micaiah said, Hear therefore the word of Jehovah. I saw Jehovah sitting up on his throne and all the host of heaven standing by him on his right hand and on his left. And he said, Who shall persuade Ahab that he may go up and fall at the city? And one said on this matter, another said on that matter. It’s like a council of war up here, and God is asking all the assembled hosts, angels and what have you around him, saying, I want this man to go up to the city and die. The reason is simply being he is the most wicked king that has ever walked the face of the earth in Israel up until this time. And God had already prophesied, not only that he was going to die, but that because of the way in which he had caused another man to be killed, that where the dogs had licked the blood of that man… They would also lick the blood of Ahab when he died. So who’s going to take him up there? I want him to go up because I intend for him to die there. Well, there were various suggestions offered. And there came forth a spirit. And one really wonders what in the world this spirit is doing there. But it was there. And it stood before the Lord and said, I will persuade him. And the Lord said to him, how? And he said, I will go forth and I will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And he said, You’ll persuade him, and you’ll prevail. Go ahead. Do it. Now therefore, Micaiah said, Behold, Jehovah has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets, and the Lord has spoken evil concerning you. Now, this is really fascinating, and it’s troubling. I don’t know how many people over the years have asked me about this. You know, how come this lying spirit is in the presence of God? How come God gives this spirit permission to go to Ahab and lie to him? I don’t get it. Well, there are two ways of taking this prophecy, and because it’s a prophecy, you really do have this option. The one is to take the thing literally, that actually here was God’s throne, and Micaiah sees it in the vision, and all this stuff is really going on. or that God has given to Micaiah an allegory to illustrate, to carry the truth forward in a pungent way, to actually say that God has seen to it, that all your prophets that you have gathered around you, whom you prefer and whom you want to hear and who will tell you what you want to hear, you’re going to get from them exactly what you deserve. And he draws this allegory of what happens around the throne of God to take Ahab into battle so that he may die. About that time, the prophet with the horns on his head walked over and slapped Micaiah across the face and said, which way did the spirit of Jehovah come from me to speak to you? And Micaiah said, well, you’ll see in the day when you go into an inner chamber to hide yourself, hide in your closet from what’s going to happen. And the king of Israel said, take Micaiah and carry him back to the governor. And thus saith the king, put this fellow in prison and feed him bread of affliction and water of affliction until I come back in peace. And Micaiah’s last words to him were, well, if you return it all in peace, then Jehovah has not spoken by me. Well, Micaiah was right. They went up to the battle. Ahab was killed in spite of every precaution he could possibly take. And finally they took his chariot down to wash it after he was killed in it and his blood had been spilled in it. And they washed the chariot, and the blood ran out, and the dogs licked his blood right where they had licked the blood of the man whom Ahab had had killed. So why am I telling you all this? I’m telling you all this to tell you that there is such a thing as a lying spirit. So when John says, now this is how you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God. Well, you know that a lying spirit will say anything. It might even, when you ask if Jesus has come in the flesh, say, yes. John, in this passage, was only dealing with one of many forms of deception that a spirit might use. Now I return to my original question. How can you know whether a spiritual manifestation is of God or of the devil?
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I’ll answer that question when I come back. For a free copy of this radio program that you can share with friends and others, write or call this week only and request the program titled Try the Spirits No.
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Write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791 or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE-44 and tell us the call letters of this radio station.
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How can you know whether a spiritual manifestation of one kind or another is of God or of the devil? Don’t you think the devil could fake many of the things that God does, that he could create a counterfeit, an imitation, if you will? Remember when Moses went down into Egypt, God gave him signs and wonders. One of them was he had a staff in his hand, and Moses said, well, how am I going to prove to them that I’m from you? He said, well, you got that staff in your hand? Yeah. Throw it on the ground. He threw it down, and it turned into a snake. And then God said, grab it, which Moses probably was not that enthusiastic about doing. He said, grab it. Moses grabbed it, and it turned back into a staff. And he said, when you get down into Egypt, you do that in front of Pharaoh. So Moses did. In the presence of Pharaoh, he cast down his staff. It became a serpent. He reached down and grabbed it by the tail. It turned back into a staff. Very impressive. And then Pharaoh’s magicians did exactly the same thing. You know, they spoke in tongues in the Bible, and they may speak in tongues in your church. Now, here’s my question. How do you know this is the real thing and not a counterfeit? It’s not enough for you to tell me, well, I just know, or, well, I feel like it’s a real thing, or I can feel the presence of the Spirit. Don’t you think that the devil can kind of walk up and down your spine and make you feel good or give you a shiver? How do you know? Better yet, how do I know that what you’re experiencing is the real thing and not a counterfeit? Well, there is no easy answer, but there is an answer. How does an art appraiser tell the difference between a genuine Rembrandt and a fake? Those guys can walk up to a painting, and they can study that thing for a little while, and they can pronounce it real, authentic, or they can tell you it’s a fake, and they can show you why. Well, they do it, or they’re able to do it, because they have an educated eye. Their eye has been trained to see what you and I might not recognize if we looked at a painting. The question is, when it comes down to spiritual matters, how do you educate your eye? How do you train your eye? How do you develop the discernment to know whether a miracle is real or a fake? And between two real supernatural events, how do you know which one is of God and which one is not? Now, I only know of one way. It’s by consistent and careful Bible reading. The Bible is the record of God’s past dealings with men, and it educates our conscience so we’ll know the difference between right and wrong, between true and false, between the real and the fake. A lot of people say, let your conscience be your guide, but frankly, the human conscience, uneducated, is not a good guide. Your conscience is only a good guide when it has been properly educated. And the Bible speaks of being able to discern spirits as though it’s a spiritual gift to be able to do so. But candidly, I don’t know how you’re going to be able to discern the spirits as to whether they are good or evil, whether they are true or false, unless you do it in relation to the Bible. that your discernment is educated and trained by the Scriptures. Now take speaking in tongues as an example. The original event is found in the second chapter of the book of Acts, and it’s worth taking a moment just to look at this. The scripture tells us that when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they, that’s the disciples, were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven like a rushing mighty wind, something like a tornado, I guess. And the sound just filled the whole house where they were. And then there appeared to them distributed tongues like a fire, and it sat upon each of them. You can visualize what science fiction movie makers would do with that. They would sow shimmering fire all across the ceiling of the room, and then a little stream of it would come down from the mass at the top and sit on the head of every man there. It was a hair-raising experience, to say the least. Nothing quite like this is happening in any of the churches nowadays that I know about. Well, anyway, they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. They began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. Now, one thing about language. In our language, in English language, the word tongue is sometimes used as a synonym for the word language. In other words, we speak in the French tongue, the Latin tongue, and so forth. The same thing is true in Greek. Now, how are we to take this? Well, they began to speak with other languages as the Spirit gave them utterance. And this is the original example of speaking in tongues. It’s what many people may be trying to do with modern-day tongue-speaking in churches. But there is an important difference. Verse 5 continues and tells us, There were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men out of every nation under heaven. Now when this was noised abroad, a whole crowd came together, and they were confounded because every man heard them speak in his own language. It’s not the language of angels, by the way. It’s not the tongues of God or the tongues of angels. Nothing like that. These men heard them speak in their own language, and they were all amazed and said, Look, these are all Galileans. How come I’m hearing them in my own tongue wherein I was born? And look at who’s around here hearing this, Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamians, Judeans, Cappadocians, Pontus, Asia. They go on to list here 14 named recognizable languages that were being spoken here at this time. The disciples were speaking in recognizable languages, and they were being understood. What may be more important here is that not only was the language known, but The message was the important thing. We even know the content of what they were speaking. Note what they said. We do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God. So we’re not talking gibberish here. People standing by heard them and understood them. Everyone there understood them. The purpose of the gift of tongues is not to satisfy our desire for a supernatural manifestation. It’s not to titillate us. It’s not to thrill us with the fact that we’ve come into contact with some power outside this world. It’s not to convince us that God exists. We’re supposed to already know that and believe that. The purpose of the gift of tongues is to communicate the gospel. Those men who were there on this particular day had a real challenge ahead of them, because the commission that they had been given was to take the gospel into all the world for a witness, and to do that, they needed to be able to speak to the people in their own languages. The significance of the gift of tongues given on this day was, I want you to go where these tongues are spoken. If we stand around waiting for God to give us a supernatural sign, we’re going to wind up being losers.
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Until next time, this is Ronald Dart, and you were born to win. The Born to Win radio program with Ronald L. Dart is sponsored by Christian Educational Ministries and made possible by donations from listeners like you. If you can help, please send your donation to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560 White House, Texas 75791. You may call us at 1-888-BORN-TO-WIN. Bible 44, and visit us online at borntowin.net.
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Stay in touch with the new Born to Win with Ronald L. Dart app. This app has all of your favorite Ronald L. Dart radio messages, sermons, articles, and it even has a digital Bible. Simply search on the iOS or Android app store to download it for free today.
