Kundalini in the Church

by Pastor Don Elmore

September 7, 2014

Scripture Reading:  Exodus 7:22 

In the story of the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, we have the magicians of Egypt duplicating three of the miracles from God that Moses proclaimed that He would do against the Egyptians.   Many Christians are unaware that the magicians of Egypt could do some of the miracles that God could do:

• Rods turned into serpents (Exodus 7:11-13)
• Turning of the water to blood (Exodus 7:22)
• Bringing up of frogs (Exodus 8:7)

In fact, if the Christians reads closely he will see that it just wasn’t just the magicians, but the wise men, sorcerers and the magicians that were called by Pharaoh (Exodus 7:11).  What was the difference between them?

1. Wise men:  men of learning; men who knew the occult arts.
2. Sorcerers:  men who revealed hidden secrets; to uncover.
3. Magicians:  men who were decipherers or interpreters of the hieroglyphic writings found in books containing magic formulas that belonged to the Pharaoh.

Exodus 7:11:  “Then Pharaoh also called the wise men and the sorcerers:  now the magicians of Egypt, they also did in like manner with their enchantments.”

Let’s recreate the scene in our mind:  Aaron took his rod and cast it before Pharaoh and his servants and it became a serpent.  Then Pharaoh called his wise men, sorcerers and magicians and they also threw their rods on the ground and they became serpents.  So we have a tie:  we have all of these serpents slithering on the ground:  one serpent from Aaron’s rod and the other serpents from Pharaoh’s occult crowd.  But it didn’t remain a tie; for Aaron’s rod (serpent) swallowed up their rods (serpents)!  This proved that God’s power is greater than the power of the magicians.

But this also shows us that the occult does have some power.  They can perform some of these miracles in like manner with their enchantments.  The magicians, wise men and sorcerers in the future will bring down fire from heaven and do various kinds of miracles to deceive even the elect.  Does this also include the healing of the sick?

Can other people, outside of God’s covenant family, have the ability to heal the sick through other means other than through our Father?  The answer is: yes they can.  There are Hindus, Kundalinis, Buddhists, Chinese Taoists, African witch doctors, hypnotists, Pentecostals and others who say that they can heal a person. 

The Second Great Awakening 

The Second Great Awakening in the United States occurred around the very first part of the 1800’s.  It happened mostly around Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio and North Carolina.  The climax happened north of Lexington, Kentucky near the small town of Paris. There were Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Shakers, Quakers and a host of people with no church affiliation who were in attendance.  It lasted over a week and there was estimated over 30,000 individuals who came there.

This Second Great Awakening advanced almost a purely emotional Christianity to a central position in popular American religion.   The famous Cane Ridge Revival, was in 1801.  Cane Ridge, according to many historians, became “arguablely the most important religious gathering in all of American history.  It ignited the explosion of evangelical religion, which soon reached into nearly every corner of American life.  For decades the prayer of camp meetings and revivals across the land was ‘Lord, make it like Cane Ridge.’” 

The pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Cane Ridge, right outside of Paris, Kentucky; was Barton W. Stone.  It met at a one room Presbyterian Church with the vast majority of the attendees having to be outside the building on several acres of land. A Pentecostal historian provides an apt description of what happened at Cane Ridge:

“Those who attended such a camp meeting as Cane Ridge generally expected their religious experiences to be as vivid as the frontier life around them.  Accustomed to ‘braining bears and battling Indians,’ they received their religion with great color and excitement.  Their ‘godly hysteria’ included such phenomena as falling, jerking, barking like dogs, falling into trances, and ‘holy laughter’….”

There was much over-drinking of alcohol and sexual disorderly conduct at the camp revival.  Watchmen carrying long white sticks patrolled the meeting grounds each evening to stop any sexual mischief.  Enemies of camp meetings sneered that “more souls were begot than saved.”

Randa and I went to Cane Ridge and she took pictures.  The place was closed but we could look through the windows in both the one-room church and the museum.  We found the burial grounds of Barton Stone in the church cemetery located right behind the museum.

Shakers

The Shakers split off from George Fox and the Quakers.  It founder, Ann Lee (1736-1781), had a restoration message.  The Shakers rolled, jerked, barked, went into trances, had dreams, rhapsodies, visions of angels, etc.  Ann Lee taught her followers that “the source of evil was the sex act.”    Thus, they worked themselves into altered states of consciousness in order to “shake off sin” and rid themselves of “sexual desire.”  As some of these Shakers went into a trance state, they “saw visions and received [false] prophecies.”  They had a revival at Pleasant Hill, Kentucky a short time before the Cane Ridge revival occurred.

About 25 years ago our church went to Shaker Town, which is south of Lexington, Kentucky.  It is actually in Pleasant Hill, near Harrodsburg.  We stayed all night.  They described the Shaker church service as having no one person being the pastor and responsible for the sermon.  They all came into the meeting; men on one side of the room and the women on the other; and they waited until somebody was moved to speak.  Sometimes it was over four hours and not a word was uttered; but usually there was a “whole lot of shaking going on.” 

The distance from Shaker Town to Cane Ridge is about twenty-five miles.  So many of the Shakers attended the Cane Ridge revival.  Many of the manifestations which are common to charismatic extremism, were first practiced by the Shakers.   The Shakers were very evangelistic in their zeal to propagate their false doctrines and practices.  Shaker evangelists were involved with the Cane Ridge Revival and brought their manifestations (which they called “signs”) with them and infected the meeting.

 It was during the Cane Ridge meetings that there was a manifestation of being “slain in the spirit.”  Many, very many fell down, as men slain in battle, and continued for hours together in an apparently breathless and motionless state; sometimes for a few moments reviving, and exhibiting symptoms of life by a deep groan, or piercing shriek, or by a prayer for mercy most fervently uttered.  However, it was also noted by the orthodox Reformed ministers at Cane Ridge, that a person simply getting slain was not a true indicator of spiritual regeneration, “They noted that some who ‘fell’ had within six months gone back to the world.”

Cane Ridge was full of falling, jerking, dancing, barking, laughing, running, clapping of hands, praying, jumping, rolling, growling, shouting, screaming, shrieking, groaning and singing.  There were at different times at least seven different preachers, from different denominations; some standing on stumps and logs, some standing behind horse wagons; some sitting on the steps; some standing with no furniture to hold their Bibles and the people making all kinds of strange actions not seen in all of the churches at this time. 

The Shakers, who were welcomed at Cane Ridge, regularly performed the following strange characteristics:

1. Holy Laughter
2. Being drunk in the spirit
3. Being slain in the spirit
4. Experienced new revelations
5. Had prophetic utterances
6. Physical immortality
7. Had a type of present day truth not revealed in the first century
8. Jerking, spasms, hopping, rolling on the ground
9. Dancing in the spirit
10.  Getting songs while in a trance
11.  Belief they were becoming the manifest sons of God
12.  Belief in their establishing the kingdom of God
13.  Low biblical emphasis; anti-intellectual
14.  High  experiential and emotional emphasis
15.  Equality of women in the ministry
16.  Believed in universal salvation
17.  Believed God is dual:  father and mother 
18.  Denied the atonement of Christ on the cross 
19.  Denied the true  humanity and deity of Christ 
20.  Denied the eternal damnation of the lost 
21.  Most of the above are the same for today’s Charismatics. 

New Churches Formed

The young Presbyterian minister, Barton Warren Stone (1772-1844), arrived on the western frontier to pastor at Cane Ridge in 1796. By the end of the century, Presbyterians in Kentucky, southern Ohio, and northern Tennessee traveled to each other's sacramental communion services which typically began on Friday or Saturday and continued through Monday. Joining them in increasing numbers after a meeting at Red River in Logan County in June 1801 were Methodists, Baptists as well as Shakers.

Three years after the Cane Ridge Revival, in 1804, a small group of Presbyterian ministers from Kentucky and Ohio, including Stone, penned and signed a document, “The Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery,” at Cane Ridge that resulted in the birth of a movement seeking unity among Christians along non-sectarian lines. They would call themselves simply Christians.  The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the Churches of Christ (non-instrumental), and the Christian Churches (independent) of the Stone-Campbell movement trace their origins here. This movement is often noted as the first one indigenous to American soil.

The churches were the result of the revivals in the Midwestern part of our country that included interracial participants.  And it is not surprising that there were a whole host of activities that were not biblical; but were the same as found in other religions other than Christianity.

Kundalini Yoga

Kundalini is the term for “a spiritual energy or life force located at the base of the spine,” conceptualized as a coiled-up serpent. The practice of Kundalini yoga is supposed to arouse the sleeping Kundalini Shakti from its coiled base through the 6 chakras, and penetrate the 7th chakra, or crown. This energy is said to travel along the ida (left), pingala (right) and central, or sushumna nadi - the main channels of pranic energy in the body.

Kundalini Yoga is called the Yoga of Awareness. It is a dynamic, powerful tool that is designed to give you an experience of your soul. In Kundalini Yoga we harness the mental, physical, and nervous energies of the body and put them under the domain of the will, which is the instrument of the soul. 

This technology precisely and consciously combines breath, mudra, eye-focus, mantra, body locks, and postures to balance the glandular system, strengthen the nervous system, expand lung capacity, and purify the blood. It brings balance to the body, mind, and soul.

Kundalini Yoga is a yoga for householders, for people who have to cope with the daily challenges and stresses of holding jobs, raising families, and managing businesses. It is a path for everyone who wants the skills to cope successfully with the challenges of our times.  Itis not for a Christian.

Contemplation of the symbol of the caduceus will reveal how perfectly it portrays that process and that attainment.  The caduceus is the sign of today’s medical health services.

About 15 years ago our church stopped the local high school from instigating yoga classes in their gym classes.  They were going to bring up their idea to the school board for approval.  That night was the night they were going to ask the school board for the approval of their new yoga classes.  I went in to talk with the principal of the high school and got a huge surprise:  I told her that yoga was not Christian and she replied that she was a Christian and she had been participating in yoga classes for a long time.  I told her that our church would go to the school board meeting and oppose the school’s strategy.  Right after school was out the head of the physical education department came to see me and told me that they were not going to ask the school board for permission to have yoga classes.  It was shelved.  I wasn’t aware of all that I am now; I was relieved.

Pentecostalism began the invasion of the Kundalini arts from Hinduism and other eastern arts into the false Christian churches.  Both of these practices produce participates who are shaking their heads; have uncontrollable jerking; begin barking like dogs; falling over backwards (need someone to catch them); running; demonstrate a spirit of “drunkenness”; experience uncontrollable laughter; make animal noises; this had never been seen in the churches except in a very small way; and it has very quickly traveled all over the world:  From Rodney Browne’s uncontrollable laughing to Randy Clark’s Toronto blessing to Todd Bentley’s chaotic scene in Florida.   

This is also found in the Kundalini cults; not the Bible.  A guru places his hand upon the head of his follower and it produces the same affects.  In the church audiences there are a mixed-racial crowd of listeners so there has to be a false holy spirit.  This is what is warned about in the Holy Scriptures.

In the 1990’s the invasion happened.  Brownsville Pensacola; Todd Bentley and the revival at Lakeland; 214 million people watch what was happening in the world via computers.  In 2009 Peter Wagner, who was the top Apostle and Rick Joyner, top Prophet; gave to Todd Bentley a special anointing:  that his influence would increase; but it didn’t. It greatly decreased.  For Bentley divorced his wife; he actually had an affair while the revival was going on; he had an affair with an oriental woman.  Todd is back in his church with his new wife; they both are ministers.

Thousands of Pentecostal ministers all over the world are bringing these things in. There is no discernment ability.  There is a new generation of leaders:  John Scotland; John Crowder; mysticism class; trances; Bill Johnson Bethel Church, Redding, Pa.; IHOP; International House of Prayer (Kansas City); Rick Joyner (MorningStar Church).

These men sponsor a totally new age; Joshua Mills; with his glittering dust; Sid Roth’s biggest promoter of all of these strange adventures and Patricia King; interviews Bob Jones of the Vineyard.  One movement; strange anointing; world-wide movement; out of eastern mysticism; turn off your minds; very dangerous.

Martial Arts came out of yoga; Hinduism; spirits behind everything you do; Buddhism; universal power source; demonic realm.  There is no safe martial arts.

We had a family who moved from mid-state Ohio to be in our church.  He was a martial arts instructor.  I am sorry that I didn’t know then what I know now.  He eventually cheated on his wife and divorced her; our church supported the wife and two children as much as we could; but shortly thereafter the martial arts instructor was dead of a drug overdose.

Christian yoga and Christian martial arts is an oxymoron but they both are found in almost every good sized town in America.  Hypnosis is also a factor that could have been added to the chart; but we can’t cover everything in the time that we have. 

Summary Chart
Manife-tation	Kunda-lini Yoga	Shakers					Pente-costal Today	Bible Examples
Slain in the spirit
Uncontrollable laughing
Physical jerks
Animal sounds, roaring
Smelling fragrances		?
New spiritual insights & revelations								No: Bible competed 96 AD
Demon possession of adherents
Spontaneous movements
Leaders are Divine
Revival like meetings
Feel energy surge, electricity or fire
Repetitive singing, chanting		?
Clearing the mind, emotionalism Anti-intellectual:
Leaders Rich
Tongues								Acts 2
Awakened through laying-on-of-hands								Acts 8:14-19; 19:5
Leaders directly sent from God								Gal 1:12
Leaders inspired								2 Tim 3:16
Leaders miraculous								Paul
Many miracles and healing								Acts 8:13
Prophecy								Acts 2:17
Trances								Acts 10:10
Seeing visions								Acts 9:10-12
Mind reading		?						Jesus
Manifestation	Kundalini Yoga	Shakers		Pentecostal Today				Bible Examples

The Building of a Holy City

The man who did this was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1847; 46 years after the Cane Ridge Revival.  He had read the entire Bible by age 6.  When he was 13 years old he went with his parents to Australia.  After living there for a few years he returned to Edinburgh University in Scotland.  He left after a couple of years and returned back to Australia.  He then began to pastor a couple of Congregational churches for ten years before he began to preach divine healing.

In 1888, this genius of a man, Dr. John Alexander Dowie, left Australia and arrived in the United States, via New Zealand.  He remained on the West Coast for two years holding services from San Diego to Oregon.  In 1890 he came to Chicago for a divine healing convention.  He stayed in Chicago after he prayed for a lady who was suffering from a fibroid tumor and she was healed.  Dowie felt that Chicago was where God wanted him.

In 1893, Dowie opened “The Little Wooden Hut” across from the entrance of the World’s Fair.  It struggled until Buffalo Bill Cody’s cousin, Sadie Cody, received her healing and then the crowds began to come.  By 1895, Dowie leased one of the largest auditoriums in Chicago for six months.  When the lease was up, he organized the Christian Catholic Church. The name of the church should give it away:  Catholic means universal.   

But Dowie dreamed of something else.  He dreamed of putting the church in a city where God would be the ruler.  Not since the 1840’s when the Mormons built the large city of Nauvoo; now Illinois would have their second attempt at a theocracy.  Dowie successfully secured options on 6600 acres of land, approximately 10 square miles of land, to build “Zion City”.  It was located halfway between Chicago and Milwaukee. 

And like Washington, D. C., they had their plans completed before the first spade of dirt was turned.  Employment, schools, recreational facilities as well as no dance halls, no doctor’s offices, no drugstores, no tobacco shops, no saloons, no eating of pork, ham, bacon, or shellfish, no theaters, no gambling, no hospitals, no segregation and only one church in town—the Christian Catholic Church in Zion. 

Beginning in the summer of 1900, hundreds of people came to what would be Zion City for an all-day affair which culminated in the dedication of the City to God.  The next year was spent surveying the city, laying out all the lots, planning for the utilities, and preparing for the opening of the City to the people.  July 15, 1901 was the date that the City lots were made available to the public.  The first house was built shortly thereafter in August 1901.  Dowie and his family came to Zion City from Chicago in July, 1902 and moved into Shiloh House, his newly constructed home.   

In 1903 and 1904 Dowie held a series of meetings at Madison Square Gardens in New York.  He led a round-the-world tour to the West Coast, Australia, Switzerland, France and England.  Dowie began to talk about building another Zion City in Mexico. 

Dowie had progressive views on race relations for his day and welcomed Blacks into his church, of whom some 200 settled in Zion.  He later sent some of the Blacks of his Church as missionaries to South Africa, where they established churches which became very influential.  Dowie was a Zionist and the churches that he founded were also Zionist-led churches.  There are over 3000 churches in Africa that have their origin in Zion. 

But Zion City never reached the potential that Dowie dreamed of having.  It suffered financial troubles early on.  But Dowie began to live high on the hog.  He dressed like the high priest in the days of ancient Israel.  He began to be extravagant and eccentric.  He declared himself to be the manifestation of Elijah and that he was the first Apostle and he began to wear ornate high priestly robes.  The Dowies’ had purchased a vacation home in Michigan.  Dowie had created a false church; with other races, even though he was known as a healer of sick people.

In the Fall of 1905, Dowie suffered a stroke and never fully regained his strength.  While he was recovering on the island of Jamaica, Dowie called Wilbur Glenn Voliva from Australia to be the overseer giving him full power of attorney.  Eventually, Dowie was asked to quietly resign from his office, but he sued and lost in court.  He died at Shiloh House in March, 1907 before his 60th birthday.

Dowie was a faith-healer among other things.  He published the monthly newsletter, Leaves of Healing, which had a world-wide circulation.  He was a man who could not heal himself, although he healed many other people.  

The founder of the Pentecostal Movement, Charles F. Parham, came to Zion City in 1906 to lead a Pentecost revival before nationally known faith healer John A. Dowie died.  He couldn’t heal John Dowie either. 

After a couple of months of being in Zion City, he traveled to Los Angeles to attend the Azusa Street Revival led by William Seymour, a Louisiana Negro.  It was Parham who had sent and paid the fare from his school in Houston, Texas to Los Angeles for Seymour to go.   Parham was very upset at what he saw in Los Angeles.  But what did he expect with Blacks, Hispanics, Asians and Whites were worshipping their god in a strange and very emotional unusual way.  What a strange man Parham was:  he later joined the Ku Klux Klan and was accused of being a homosexual!

Conclusion

In the Second Great Awakening, the emotional restoration movement proved very divisive.  It created, unknown to many Christians, the denominations of the Church of Christ, Disciples of Christ, and Christian Church and all the churches that have split from them.   The mixed-racial group at the revivals did the same things that Kundalini teaches its followers in the Hindu religion.  The Bible is silent on these movements; but it does warn its believers to “learn not the way of the heathen”Jeremiah 10:4.

Those who arose from Zion City to become influential in the Pentecostal movement included F. F. Bosworth, John Lake, J. Rosewell Flower, Daniel Opperman, Cyrus Fockler, Fred Vogler, Marie Burgess Brown, William Piper, F. A. Graves, Lemuel Hall, Martha Robinson, Gordon Lindsay, and Raymond Richey. Influential Assemblies of God minister Gordon Lindsay, editor of Voice of Healing, wrote Dowie's biography and gave him credit for influencing “a host of men of faith who have had powerful ministries,” referring to generations of Pentecostal preachers.

But look at what these Pentecostal preachers come from:

• Dositheus claims to be the Messiah
• Simon Magnus (Acts 8:8-24) a false prophet, sorcerer, and magician, became a disciple of Dositheus
• Cerdon (Cerdo) was a disciple of Simon Magnus.
• Marcion learns from Cerdo and denied the God of the Old Testament stating He was only for the Jews.
• Montanus, claimed spiritual understanding including ecstatic utterances, which was used in the pagan worship. Also taught oneness; Jesus was another God.
• Cathari (the union of Marcion and Montanus)
• Mormonism, in order to prove its position has claimed theological partnership with Marcion and Montanus.
• Montanus and Marcion influenced Manichaeanism.
• Manichaeanism led to what is called Albigensesism, which flourished in southern France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
• This was the beginning of the Camisards, A sect of French fanatics who terrorized Dauphiné, Vivarais, and chiefly the Cévennes in the beginning of the eighteenth century.
• This led to Quakers and Shakers (ecstatic utterances continue).
• The Reformation view of the papacy as the anti-Christ causes the instigation of the Jesuits.
• Manuel Lacunza, a Jesuit, began what is known as Millenarianism, a belief by a religious, social, or political group or movement in a coming major transformation of society after which all things will be changed in a positive direction.
• Lacunza is recognized by the Adventist movement as a prophet.
• Adventist movement led to Jehovah Witnesses and 7th Day Adventist.
• Edward Irving was greatly influenced by the Jesuit defense of the papacy, Lacunza, Montanus, Marcion, and Manichaeanism (combines all these thoughts into a new revelation). Relies on ecstatic utterances and prophecies to form his theology.
• Darby influenced by Edward Irving’s millenarianism forms modern dispensational teachings.
• C. I. Scofield is influenced by Darbyism.
• Darby travels to America and converts N. C. Richard Sparling, Southern Baptist preacher.
• John Alexander Dowie influenced by Irving moves to America and begins the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church and promotes divine healing.
• Charles Parham influenced by Dowie marries a Quaker (ecstatic utterances practiced by her)
• The spiritual “fire” had begun in America and Parham was caught up in it from within his family and from without.
• Parham goes to Texas to evangelize and meets W. J. Seymour.
• Parham was charged with sodomy with two young males in San Antonio, Texas.
• Parham starts the Bethel Bible College in Kansas.
• Parham and his students AGREE on the new theology and to pursue the “experience,” per his wife’s account and on January 1, 1901 after teaching on the baptism of the Holy Spirit, a woman by the name of Angus Ausman was praying and around midnight she said that she had received the first century gift of the baptism of the Holy Spirit and had spoken in tongues.
• Parham informs his friend, W.J. Seymour in Huston, Texas of the “experience.”
• W. J. Seymour attends Parham’s teachings in school but he must set in the hallway because he is a Black man; Jim Crow’s law.
• W. J. Seymour is invited to Pastor in Los Angeles at the Nazarene Church.
• The Nazarene Church rejects the “experience” and stops W. J. Seymour from continuing.
• People in the church that heard W. J. Seymour preach asked him to continue teaching in their house.
• The crowds got too large for the house, so W. J. Seymour rents an old stable on Azusa St. and teaches for a few years.
• When Parham visited Seymour there, he denounced the revival as a “darky camp meeting,” saying, “God is sick at His stomach!” and “what good can come from a self-appointed Negro prophet?”
• Parham joins the Ku Klux Klan.
• G. B. Cashwell visits Azusa St. Revival.
• G. B. Cashwell meets A. J. Tomlinson (a Quaker) in Alabama.
• A. J. Tomlinson receives the “experience” Church of God, Charlton, Tennessee.
• After the death of A. J. Tomlinson there was a split in his church and now there are 24 denominations.
• Charles Harrison Mason founds the Church of God in Christ in 1897 due to being expelled from the Missionary Baptist Church for teaching holiness.
• Charles Harrison Mason visits Azusa St. and has the “experience.”
• Church of God in Christ changes its name to Church of God and is now teaching the “experience” (mostly Black Church).
• The White Pentecostals separate from the Black due to racial tensions and forms the Assemblies of God in 1914.
• By this time the “experience” has spread across the country and the family of Demos Shakarian is involved in Azusa St.
• Demos Shakarian is a wealthy business man who meets Oral Roberts.
• Demos Shakarian sets Oral Roberts up with other business men to market the “experience.”
• Demos Shakarian founder of the Full Gospel Businessmen Association.
• Full Gospel Business Association finances the movement.

If you read the testimonies of these people mentioned, along with all the leaders and members of this movement, you will notice a common thread. That thread is EXPERIENCE. Anytime you allow an experience to dictate what scripture says, you are in deep error. This is exactly what has happened in the Pentecostal and Charismatic movement and the Word of Faith. They are Gnostic from the root.

Let’s look at the scripture that they use constantly to prove their ritual: 

Acts 2:1-4

“And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.  And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.  And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews [Judahites], devote men, out of every nation under heaven.”

Now just who are the people that are “out of every nation under heaven”? The every-day universal Christians never think about who celebrated Pentecost at this time?  It was the Israelites.  But the northern kingdom of Israel who had been divorced for over 700 years and for 200 years before that didn’t even keep the feast day of Pentecost right.  It was the Judahites along with Benjaminites and Levites who came at this time, along with the murderers of Jesus Christ—the imposters of Judah:  the Edomites and Canaanites of Judea.

So, who were the people that came “…out of every nation under heaven”?  Did it include the nations of Peru, Brazil, Congo, South Africa, Japan, Jamaica, Canada, and New Guinea?  Did all these nations come to Jerusalem to keep the Passover!

Isn’t it rather the nations spoken of in verses 9-11?  It was the 120 disciples of the Lord who were speaking in the languages of those nations where the inhabitants of the former kingdom of Judah were staying in other lands who were there in Jerusalem celebrating Passover:  Parthia, Media, Elam, Mesopotamia, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylla, Egypt and in those parts of Libya about Cyrene, Crete and Arabia.

And it was not the gibberish that is spoken today; i.e. unknown languages that are not interpreted by someone in the congregation.  It was the actual languages of these nations that were in Jerusalem so that the people could understand what the Galileans were saying.  It is not for any Christian to speak some strange, unknown sounds that no one can interpret. 

And what does the Bible instructs us to do if we are sick or have a problem?

James 5:13-16

13) “Is any among you afflicted?  Let him pray.  Is any merry?  Let him sing psalms.

14) Is any sick among you?  Let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord:

15) And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.

16) Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed.  The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” 

Why are these verses ignored?  Verse 13 begins be saying that if anyone is in an ill plight or in distress or suffers a hardship it gives us the remedy?  Let him pray. 

In verse 14 it tells us if any is weak, feeble or sick the remedy is for them to call for the elders of the church and to confess their sin(s) if there has been any that has been committed.  The elders are to pray over them, anoint the sick with oil, invoke the name of the LORD and pray the prayer of faith.

The oil used in the anointing was probably olive oil.  But this anointing oil was merely symbolic of the healing of God by the Holy Spirit.  It could not mean that olive oil was a cure for all kinds of diseases.  The oil was not to do the healing else the anointing oil ALONE should be done.  One would not have to pray and invoke the name of Jesus Christ merely to anoint with oil, nor would it have to be done by the elders of the church.  This power to heal is promised each believer, not only the elders of the church.

There is a twofold secret of bodily healing:

• Confess your faults one to another
• Pray one for another, that you may be healed.

This is true divine healing that our Father has told us to do today.  Healing and forgiveness are the twins that go hand and hand.  Don’t be deceived by the Kundalini and false practices of so-called healings in the Charismatic churches of today that had their over two hundred years ago in the Second Awakening.  Do what the Bible says.

Blessed be the LORD God of Israel.