For a start, I have to question the word “slaying” in the first place. It is true that this practice can also be known as “resting in the spirit” and other similar names, but being “slain in the spirit” is the most common one.
The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary describes the word “slay” or “slain” in this way: “To strike or smite so as to kill; to put to death by means of a weapon; to deprive of life by violence. To commit slaughter or murder.” and “Of the Deity: To deprive of life; to bring death upon, to destroy.” And people are using this word to describe a wonderful thing that the Holy Spirit is supposed to be doing to them! “Slayer” is also the name of a thrash metal band which is known for its Satanic themes, and have been described in the Rolling Stone Album Guide (a non-Christian book) as “nasty, brutish and endless”.
I once heard someone say that two people who might have been slain in the spirit were Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5: 1-11), and this sounds a much more likely event to fit into the description of the word “slay”. It is a deadly, unpleasant word.
I would also like to question why there are catchers at these slaying in the spirit sessions. I know some people say they don’t have them at theirs, but there’s no denying that the majority of churches do, and one has to query why this is so. The natural answer is that the catchers have to be there so the people who are slain don’t fall and hurt themselves, but why would this be so? Is the Holy Spirit dangerous? Do people need to be protected from Him? Does God not know His own strength, so people are needed to cushion the fall from His overly powerful push?
There are actually a couple of records of injury and even death from slain in the spirit sessions, involving such people as Charles and Frances Hunter (known as The Happy Hunters) and Benny Hinn. Could this really come about during a movement of God? Is there anything even remotely like it in Scripture? No. No-one ever, ever got accidently hurt or killed when God was trying to impart a blessing. When people did fall to the ground in the Bible, like Daniel or Ezekial, they didn’t need anyone to catch them. They fell safely to the ground and, as we noted earlier, God was more interested in getting them back on their feet anyway.
Another question is why do people who are slain in the spirit fall in the first place? The general reason offered seems to be that people can’t handle all the glory God imparts, so their bodies fall - that’s also why so many people shake. Because the filling of the Holy Spirit is “too much” for them. But there’s nothing like that recorded in the book of Acts, when people were baptized in the Spirit. No-one is reported as having shaken, or fallen over. And throughout Jesus’ ministry on Earth, there is no mention of people falling or shaking (except for a certain incident, which will be mentioned later) when Jesus touched people or healed them.
And why do the people who are imparting the baptism, whether it be the Hunters, Hinn, Rodney Howard-Browne, Creflo Dollar or any others, not fall over themselves? If they are sending the Spirit to someone else, then they should be the most filled ones of all. So why don’t they fall? An answer some people give to that is that they are more “used” to it. They are already very spiritual, so they can handle more. This, for a start, sounds horribly arrogant, and it is also a very weak argument. These people get slain, etc sometimes themselves, even if only by each other, so if they are so "used to it" and are so spiritually mature, why do they fall over at all? There's an inconsistency here.
The fact is that this is all quite nonsensical. God knows what we can handle, and He is hardly going to send us anything in an overdose, especially if we’re in danger of getting hurt or even killed.
And this leads to my next queary about the slaying in the spirit, and that is concerning the fascination with being “drunk in the spirit.” This is related to the slaying, and as well as falling over and shaking, people can stagger around, laugh hysterically, make animal noises and basically behave like they have drunk a large amount of alcohol. This is known as being drunk in the spirit, and many Christians see it as a very Biblical, wonderful and natural thing to happen to them.
But is it Biblical? For a start, nowhere in the Bible are we told to get drunk in the Spirit. Nowhere. The words do not exist in God’s Word. The closest that comes to such a command is when we are told, in Ephesians 5:18, to, “Not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit.” Many people seem to think that that actually reads “be drunk with the Holy Spirit”, but it doesn’t. This was just a comparison. We are being told that, rather than drink lots of alcohol that can make us drunk, we should “drink” of the Spirit, which gives us a far greater blessing than getting drunk.
Many Christians like to refer to Acts 2, on the day of Pentecost, as an example of how Christians got drunk in the spirit. They say that, because, in verse 13, some of the people said of the disciples, after they had been baptized in the Spirit, “They have had too much wine.” (or they are drunk). But if we read the chapter closely, we can see a couple of things. For a start, that comment came straight after the account of many of the other people in bewilderment about the speaking in tongues. They discussed how amazing it was to hear their own languages, and verse 12 says, “Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?” Then in verse 13, we have the accusation for drunkenness.
We can see there that the drunk comment was referring to the same thing as what the other people were talking about before - the speaking in tongues. They heard an exciting babble of strange languages and came to the conclusion that the disciples were drunk. It wasn’t because they were staggering around laughing hysterically, shaking and falling over all the time. Can we really honestly say that anyone would have taken them seriously if they had done that? Would the people have then listened to Peter’s great sermon which immediately followed it? Could Peter have even been able to preach such a sermon if he was in the kind of state Dr Patrick Nixon describes some people getting into in his book "Signs Of Revival"?
If we turn to 1 Samuel, we can see that the Day of Pentecost isn’t the only time that someone is accused of being drunk for simply speaking. 1 Samuel 1: 12-14 has Hannah in the temple praying for a son, and says, “As she kept on praying to the Lord, Eli observed her mouth. Hannah was praying in her heart, and her lips were moving but her voice was not heard. Eli thought she was drunk and said to her, ‘How long will you keep on getting drunk? Get rid of your wine.’”
Now surely no-one can honestly say that Hannah was doing anything other than standing and praying quietly to the Lord. She wasn't staggering around in a drunken stupor. So we can see there that people, at least in Bible times, were quite capable of coming to the conclusion that people were drunk without seeing them behave like they are intoxicated on alcohol. And it is very reasonable to assume that the scoffers at Pentecost jumped to that conclusion just from the tongues, since while Jesus was on Earth, the Pharisees were very deft at making drastic critisms, despite the evidence of their own eyes.
Another very signficant manifestation of slaying in the spirit is shaking. Sometimes people’s arms shake, sometimes their hands. Sometimes they jerk around. We are told that, again, this happens because people can’t always handle all the power the Holy Spirit fills them with. Is this shaking Biblical?
Yes it is, but not in the way many people might think. Mark 9: 14-29 speaks about Jesus healing a boy possessed by a demon, and after Jesus commanded the demon to come out of the boy, the first part of verse 26 says, “The spirit shrieked, convulsed him violently and came out.” Earlier in the passage, we are told that the other effects of the demon were, “Whenever it seizes him, it throws him to the ground. He foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth and becomes rigid.” The demon also robbed the boy of the power of speech. In the light of this, can we then come to the conclusion that shaking and convulsing is the work of the Holy Spirit?? No-one in the Bible is said to shake when they are blessed by God. No-one. There is no evidence, unless people try to push their views into certain passages.
Dr Patrick Dixon’s book “Signs Of Revival” talks about how people can get so drunk in the spirit that they are in danger of having a crash when they drive home. He speaks of how we should learn to be careful in how to deal with such things. Some churches even have taxis ready for those who are to drunk to drive! Can we seriously believe this to be the work of God? Are His blessings something that can put us in such danger? What kind of blessing would that be?
Another manifestation has to be the most bizarre one of all, and notably, even some supporters of slaying in the spirit seem to be hesitant about accepting this one, and that is the animal noises. In such incidents as the Toronto Blessing, people have been known to bark like dogs, cluck like chickens, moo like cows, and although this isn’t animalistic, even fly around the church like an aeroplane! For those who do beleive this is the work of the Holy Spirit, I ask this: Er... why?? How on Earth can we come to the conclusion that people having the tendency to behave like animals means they have been filled with the Holy Spirit? Genesis 1:27 tells us that man was made in God’s own image. He put us above the animals. How degrading to be brought down to the level of behaving like an animal. What blessing can there be in making animal noises? The argument might come, “Ah, we don’t know what God might do. We can’t put God in a box. He has a sense of humour”, but again, we are commanded to “test everything.” God can do unusual things, but so can Satan. I imagine Satan has a sense of humour too, albeit a cruel one. In the light of Scripture, how can we ever come to the conclusion that animal noises mean a blessing from God? The only time the Bible speaks about people behaving like animals is in a degrading manner, like King Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel chapter 4. Verse 33 of this chapter says, “Immediately what had been said about Nebuchadnezzar was fulfilled. He was driven away from his people and ate grass like cattle. His body was drenched with the dew of heaven until his hair grew like the feathers of an eagle and his nails like the claws of a bird.” Would anyone today like to be "blessed" like this?
That was no blessing from God. It was a punishment, and what a terribly degrading one it was. People behaving like animals are never, ever glorified in the Bible.
To those people who dismiss the animal noises/actions, but still accept the slaying in the spirit and the other manifestations, I ask this: Aren’t you being a bit inconsistent? Can we pick and choose which part of the blessing from God we want? If the falling over and the shaking is from God, where are the animal noises from? Did He send them? If so, why not accept them? If not, where did they come from? Did God let in Satan to throw his own fun about during the baptism of the Spirit? This is totally unacceptable. The whole slaying in the spirit must be taken in one package, because it is one package, even if not every manifestation happens every time. Either it’s all from God, or none of it is from God. Which is it?
One more observation I would like to make about the slaying in the spirit is the big deal that is made about it. Meaning, so many Christians seem to love getting it for an emotional high. It seems to become a fix. I have heard of someone who travelled to this city of Brisbane when she heard that Benny Hinn was coming, just so she could get herself being slain in the spirit on video! Again, is this kind of attitude Biblical?
It is true that the baptism of the Holy Spirit should feel good (although one would imagine it to be accompanied by the conviction of sins, something that seems to be overlooked a lot these days), but is that all it is? A “feel good” experience? Is that how it was portrayed in Acts? When people were baptized in the Spirit in Acts, they preached, they praised God. They didn’t keep hurriedly looking for some more for another spiritual high. And this is one of the dangers of the slaying in the spirit. It can become a drug. I had one friend who said she once got slain in the spirit and was on a “spiritual high” for two weeks, but then came crashing down into depression on the verge of suicide. Now I’m not saying she didn’t have certain problems anyway, and I’m not saying this can only happen to people who have been slain. But surely this great emphasis on feeling good with the slaying is very dangerous.
With these two pages I’ve written on slaying in the spirit, I have been concious that it is a very popular practice in Christianity today, something that has been, and continues to be experienced, by many thousands of Christians. Not for a moment do I question their Christianity, although I do get concerned when I see someone like Benny Hinn slay a group of teenagers and then say that they are now going to Heaven. I am not saying people are not Christians because of their involvement with this practice.
But I am asking everyone to “test everything”. Think logically about the implications of slaying in the spirit, and go to the Bible to see whether the slaying, and its associated manifestations, really could be from God.
Because it seems one hundred percent obvious to me that no way are they anything to do with Him.
