Mat_24:24 For
there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs
and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very
elect.
Col_2:8 Beware
lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition
of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.
Luk_8:14 And
that which fell among thorns are they, which, when they have heard, go forth,
and are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no
fruit to perfection.
Excerpt The Spiritual Man - by Watchman Nee
'He wants to eliminate every obstacle to our
spiritual walk. He wants us to live in Him, not in our feelings.
Another danger may arise for those who live by
sensation rather than by the spirit through the will: they may be deceived by
Satan.
This is one matter
about which we ought to inform ourselves. Satan is skillful in counterfeiting
the feelings which come from God. If with diverse kinds of sensations he
attempts to confuse Christians who aspire to walk wholly after the spirit, how
much more will he play his tricks on those who desire to follow their feeling.
In their pursuit of emotion they fall directly into the hand of Satan, for he
delights to supply them with all kinds of feeling which they assume to be from
God.
The evil spirit is able to excite or to
depress people.
Once a person is
misled into accepting Satan-dispensed feeling, he has yielded ground to Satan
in his soul.
He shall continue to be further deceived until
Satan has gained control over nearly all his feeling. Sometimes Satan will even
induce him to experience supernatural sensations of shaking, electrifying,
freezing, overflowing, floating in the air, fire burning from head to foot and
consuming all his uncleanness, etc. When anyone has been beguiled to this
extent his whole being comes to thrive on feelings, his will is totally
paralyzed, and his intuition is entirely surrounded. He exists altogether in
the outer man; his inner man is completely bound. At this stage he follows
Satan’s will in almost everything, for the enemy merely needs to supply him
with some particular feeling to goad him to do what he wants him to do. The
tragedy is that the believer is not aware he is being tricked by Satan; he
instead pictures himself as being more spiritual than others since he enjoys
such supernatural experiences.
Supernatural
phenomena such as those described damage the spiritual life of many a Christian
most severely today. Countless numbers of Gods children have fallen into this
pit. They consider these supernatural occurrences—which give them a physical
feeling of the power of the spirit and render them happy or sad, hot or cold,
laughing or crying and which supply them with visions, dreams, voices, fires
and even inexpressible wonderful sensations—as most definitely bestowed by the
Holy Spirit, and thus represent the highest attainment of a Christian. They are
unable to recognize that these are but the works of the evil spirit. They would
never dream that the evil spirit as well as the Holy Spirit could perform such
work.
Totally ignorant are they of the fact that the
Holy Spirit operates in the spirit of men. Whatever induces feeling to the body
proceeds nine out of ten times from the evil spirit.
Why have so many
fallen into this snare? Simply because they do not live in the spirit but love
to live in their feeling! They accordingly provide the wicked power opportunity
to play his tricks. Christians must learn to deny their sensational life or else
they shall give ground to the enemy to deceive them. Let us seriously warn
every one of God’s children to take note of their bodily feeling. We should
never allow any spirit to create any feeling in our body against our will. We
should resist each of these outward bodily feelings. We should not believe in
any of these physical sensations. Rather than follow them we should forbid
them, for they constitute the enemy’s initial deception.
We ought solely to follow intuition in the
depths of our beings.
A careful
observation of a Christian s life of feeling can uncover an underlying
principle in such a life—which is none other than “for the sake of self.” Why
is joyous sensation so sought after? For the sake of self. Why is barrenness so
abhorred? Again for self’s sake. Why seek bodily feelings? For self. Why crave
supernatural experiences. Also for self. Oh, may the Holy Spirit open our eyes
to behold how full of self is a so-called “spiritual” life of feeling! May the
Lord show us that when we are filled with joyous emotions our life is still
centered on self. It is the love of self-pleasure! The reality or falsity of
spiritual life can be gauged by the way we treat self. '
No comments:
Post a Comment