Is Your Gift from God or the Devil? - Part 5
The Apostle Paul warned us to stay away from Christians who do not recognize the power of God.
“They will look like they are religious but deny God’s power. Avoid people like this.”—2 Timothy 3:5 (CEB)
Today there are many churches and religious leaders who call themselves Christians, but who vigorously deny that God performs miracles today.
These people are dangerous because whenever someone operates in a true supernatural gift from God, these people say that gift must be from the devil. Because they can’t distinguish the real from the counterfeit, these religious people actually do Satan’s work for him! They discourage genuinely gifted people from operating in their God-given gifts, and they falsely label these supernatural gifts as evil, turning people away from the wonderful gifts that God wants them to fully experience.
William Branham had this experience.
William Branham was arguably the most gifted human being of the 20th century. After he became comfortable in using his God-given spiritual gifts, he traveled the world demonstrating the power of God and leading many people to experience healing and physical restoration of their bodies. Marilyn Hickey, who recently passed away, was healed of barrenness in Branham’s ministry and went on to have children, grandchildren, and her own Christian ministry. Branham saw people raised from the dead and restored to healthy life, most notably a young boy, Karl Holma, who had been killed in a car accident in Finland. Branham gave many, many accurate words of knowledge and prophecy to people around the world, and remarkably, even though he has been fiercely opposed, no one has ever proven any of his words of revelation to be wrong.
But when he was young, William Branham did not understand his gifts. Well-meaning Christian leaders who had no experience with the power of God told him that his gifts must be from the devil.
One morning, after having a powerful experience of seeing Jesus in a vision, young Billy Branham excitedly ran to his pastor’s house to share what he had experienced. Unfortunately, his pastor was not excited at all about this experience.
“Billy, that’ll run you crazy. That’s the devil. Don’t you fool with nothing like that,” His pastor advised him. (Jorgensen, p.89)
Young Billy Branham had great respect for his pastor, so these words were very discouraging. The excitement he had felt at seeing Jesus with his own eyes was now replaced with confusion and fear.
Billy decided to ask another respected Christian minister what he thought about all of this. He visited the elderly Reverend McKinney, who had long been a friend of Billy’s.
After recounting his experience for the Reverend, Billy asked, “Now Brother McKinney, what do you think about it?”
Reverend McKinney stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Well Billy, I’ll tell you — I believe if you’ll keep your life clean and just preach what’s in the Bible here — the grace of God and so forth — I believe you’ll be better off. I wouldn’t go off after some fantastic thing if I were you.”
“Sir, I don’t mean to go off after some fantastic thing. I’m just trying to find out what this is.”
Reverend McKinney nodded, “Billy years ago they used to have those kinds of experiences in the church. But when the apostles ceased, those things ceased with them. Now the only thing we have that shows that type of phenomenon is demons and spiritualists.”
“Oh, Brother McKinney, do you mean that?”
“Yes, I do.”
Billy shuddered at the thought. “Oh, God have mercy on me! Brother McKinney, will you join me in prayer that God will never let it happen to me again? You know I love him and I don’t want to be wrong in these things.”
“Yes, I will, Brother Billy.”
The two of them knelt on the parsonage floor. Reverend McKinney prayed, “Heavenly Father, I want to ask You to prevent these demonic incidents from plaguing this young Christian’s life.”
“Yes, Heavenly Father,” Billy agreed in prayer, “please don’t let these things happen to me ever again.” (Jorgensen, pp.89–90)
And so, in this way, two respected Christian ministers unknowingly partnered with the devil in efforts to shut down the wonderful gifts that God had given to William Branham, simply because they didn’t understand the gifts or God’s reasons for giving these gifts to young Billy Branham.
Thankfully, God didn’t answer these prayers that Billy and Reverend McKinney prayed that day. God eventually helped young Billy Branham understand that these gifts were from Him, and that they had a very important purpose in his life. After Branham learned to cooperate with God in using these gits effectively, the lives of many, many people were changed in powerful and positive ways.
The Jazz Festival Outreach
A few years ago, I worked with two churches to organize an outreach event at an annual Jazz Festival in our area. We set up a booth called “Dream Café” and offered dream interpretations and encouraging prophetic words and words of knowledge (We advertised them as spiritual readings.) to visitors. We didn’t advertise ourselves as Christians because we thought that might turn some people away, but our whole ministry depended on the gifts and revelation of the Holy Spirit.
Our ministry there proved to be very effective and encouraging for the people who visited our booth. Sometimes, they would be so impacted that they would run out of our booth, find their friends, and bring them back to us so that they could also experience the ministry of the Holy Spirit through the power of God’s spiritual gifts.
But late on the first day of the festival, I was told that the festival organizers wanted to speak with me. It turned out that someone had accused us of being a group of Satan worshipers!
I thought, “Boy! Do you have the wrong group!”
Our accusers were a group of Christians from a traditional church who had a booth not far from us.
We were able to calm the concerns of the festival management by explaining that we were interpreting dreams and speaking encouraging words to people by praying to God (not Satan) for individual insight for each person. After we showed them that we were playing Christian music CDs and had a few Bibles (not witchcraft books) in the booth, they allowed us to continue.
A couple of days later, I ran into one of those festival managers again as I was walking through the festival grounds. I asked if they had received any more complaints about us.
“Oh, no. We don’t have any problem with you guys,” she responded. “But we have had all kinds of problems with that other church group. They have been breaking the rules of their vendor agreement. They have moved their booth from its designated spot, and there have been times when they have abandoned their booth altogether, leaving it unmanned for hours at a time! We’ve spoken to them about it. They will not be invited back.”
So, thankfully, justice was done. Our group was vindicated, and our accusers were completely discredited and banned from future festivals. Sadly, because our accusers were representing a church, their bad behavior brought shame to the name of Jesus Christ, who they claimed to represent.
Sadly, our experience is not an isolated event. I have known of other Christian outreach leaders who were persecuted and falsely accused by traditional church members.
We shouldn’t be surprised at this. Jesus experienced his greatest opposition from the religious leaders of his day. They were the ones who ended up killing Him.
As Jesus told us:
“Students are not greater than their teacher, and slaves are not greater than their master. Students are to be like their teacher, and slaves are to be like their master. And since I, the master of the household, have been called the prince of demons, the members of my household will be called by even worse names! But don’t be afraid of those who threaten you. For the time is coming when everything that is covered will be revealed, and all that is secret will be made known to all.”—Matthew 10:24-26 (NLT)
**Reference: **
Jorgensen, O. (2019). Supernatural: The life of William Branham, volume I, books 1, 2 & 3. Supernatural Christian Books.
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