@Josef_Urban (2009/12)- Although there are many websites that quote these examples from Spurgeon's writings, there are few who cite his comments about placing undo trust in such events:

"Our Manifesto" (sermon 2185):

I hope that none of us will ever fall into the snare of following the guidance of impressions made upon us by texts which happen to come prominently before our minds. You have judgements, and you must not lay them aside to be guided by accidental impressions.

"A Well-Ordered Life" (sermon #878):

Some, I know, fall into a very vicious habit, which habit they excuse themselves—namely, that of ordering their footsteps according to impressions.

Every now and then I meet with people whom I think to be rather weak in the head, who will journey from place to place and will perform follies by the gross under the belief that they are doing the will of God because some silly whim of their diseased brains is imagined to be an inspiration from above. There are occasionally impressions of the Holy Spirit which guide men where no other guidance could have answered the end. I do not doubt the old story of the Quaker who was disturbed at night and could not sleep and was led to go to a person's house miles away and knock at the door just at the time when the inhabitant was about to commit suicide—just in time to prevent the act.

I have been the subject of such impressions, myself, and have seen very singular results. But to live by impressions is oftentimes to live the life of a fool and even to fall into downright rebellion against the revealed Word of God. Not your impressions, but that which is in this Bible must always guide you. "To the Law and to the Testimony." If it is not according to this Word, the impression comes not from God—it may proceed from Satan, or from your own distempered brain! Our prayer must be, "Order my steps in Your Word.

Now, that rule of life, the written Word of God, we ought to study and obey. The text proves that the Psalmist desired to know what was in God's Word—he would be a reader and a searcher. O Christian, how can you know what God would have you to do if your Bible is unthumbed and covered over with dust? The prayer implies, too, that when David once knew God's Word, he wished to fulfill it all. Some are pickers and choosers. One of God's commands they will obey—another they are conveniently blind to—even directly disobedient to it. O that it were not so with God's people, that they had a balanced mind in their obedience and would take God's Word without making exceptions, following the Lamb where ever He goes!

"Order my steps," Lord, not in a part of Your Word, but in all of it. Let me not omit any known duty, nor plunge into any known sin. There was, in David's mind, according to this prayer, a real love for holiness. He was not holy because he felt he ought to be and yet would gladly be otherwise. If there were anything good and lovely, he desired to have it. If there were anywhere in God's garden—a rare fruit or flower of purity and excellence—he longed to have it transplanted into his soul, that in all things his life might be the perfect transcript of the Word of God. Stick, then, to God's Word. There is a perfect rule in the Divine statutes. May the Holy Spirit cast us in the mold of His Word.


"Two Episodes in My Life," from "The Sword and the Trowel," October 1865:

SUPERSTITION is to religion what fiction is to history. Not content with the marvels of providence and grace which truly exist around us, fanaticism invents wonders and constructs for itself prodigies. Besides being wickedly mischievous, this fabrication is altogether unnecessary and superfluous, for as veritable history is often more romantic than romance, so certified divine interpositions are frequently far more extraordinary than those extravaganzas which claim fancy and frenzy as their parents. Every believing man into whose inner life we have been permitted to gaze without reserve, has made a revelation to us more or less partaking of the marvelous, but has generally done so under protest, as though we were to hold it for ever under the seal of secrecy. Had we not very distinctly been assured of their trustworthiness, we should have been visited with incredulity, or have suspected the sanity of our informants, and such unbelief would by no means have irritated them, for they themselves expected no one to believe in their remarkable experiences, and would not have unveiled their secret to us if they had not hoped against hope that our eye would view it from a sympathizing point of view. Our personal pathway has been so frequently directed contrary to our own design and beyond our own conception by singularly powerful impulses, and irresistibly suggestive providences, that it were wanton wickedness for us to deride the doctrine that God occasionally grants to his servants a special and perceptible manifestation of his will for their guidance, over and above the strengthening energies of the Holy Spirit, and the sacred teaching of the inspired Word. We are not likely to adopt the peculiarities of the Quakers, but in this respect we are heartily agreed with them.

It needs a deliberate and judicious reflection to distinguish between the actual and apparent in professedly preternatural intimations, and if opposed to Scripture and common sense, we must neither believe in them nor obey them. The precious gift of reason is not to be ignored; we are not to be drifted hither and thither by every wayward impulse of a fickle mind, nor are we to be led into evil by suppositious impressions; these are misuses of a great truth, a murderous use of most useful edged tools. But notwithstanding all the folly of hair-brained rant, we believe that the unseen hand may be at times assuredly felt by gracious souls, and the mysterious power which guided the minds of the seers of old may, even to this day, sensibly overshadow reverent spirits. We would speak discreetly, but we dare say no less.


"The Holy Spirit in Connection with Our Ministry" from Lectures to My Students, Vol. 3:

I need scarcely warn any brother here against falling into the delusion that we may have the Spirit so as to become inspired. Yet the members of a certain litigious modern sect need to be warned against this folly. They hold that their meetings are under "the presidency of the Holy Spirit:" concerning which notion I can only say that I have been unable to discover in holy Scripture either the term or the idea. I do find in the New Testament a body of Corinthians eminently gifted, fond of speaking:, and given to party strifes—true representatives of those to whom I allude, but as Paul said of them, "I thank God I baptized none of you," so also do I thank the Lord that few of that school have ever been found in our midst.

It would seem that their assemblies possess a peculiar gift of inspiration, not quite perhaps amounting to infallibility, but nearly approximating thereto. If you have mingled in their gatherings, I greatly question whether you have been more edified by the prelections produced under celestial presidency, than you have been by those of ordinary preachers of the Word, who only consider themselves to be under the influence of the Holy Spirit, as one spirit is under the influence of another spirit, or one mind under the influence of another mind.. We are not the passive communicators of infallibility, but the honest teachers of such things as we have learned, so far as we have been able to grasp them. As our minds are active, and have a personal existence while the mind of the Spirit is acting upon them, our infirmities are apparent as well as his wisdom; and while we reveal what he has made us to know, we are greatly abased by the fear that our own ignorance and error are in a measure manifested at the same time, because we have not been more perfectly subject to the divine power.

I do not suspect that you will go astray in the direction I have hinted at: certainly the results of previous experiments are not likely to tempt wise men to that folly.
___________

Many more of Spurgeon's comments of a similar nature can be found at: http://phillipjohnson.blogspot.com/2005/11/spurgeon-on-private-prophecies-and-new.html

Let us be careful in our interpretations of events (or impressions); even Satan himself can appear as an angel of light!

hi, i heard of this nut named abram who heard these voices and left his wealth behind and went looking for a city he did not even know the citys name.one day while following these voices this nut tried to kill his son. if you think he was nuts ,this other guy named noah was living in the wilderness were it had never rained and he heard a voice telling him to build a huge boat much to the entertainment of his neighbors who knew he was nuts.then he started gathering animals and putting themon his boat.these stories of these loose canons are amazing to me.i once was lost and tormented by demonic activity daily in my life and even though i never had read one verse in the bible heard a voice that told me that Jesus loved me personally and died that i might have eternal life.i bowed my knees to His lordship in my life and have been following Him for 46 years.jimp

Wow your right Jimp those guys were nutty, They should have used their bible to know these things aught not happen. Just plan ridiculous the guy that built the boat he should have been a better steward of his time and resources and built a hospital or something perhaps a religious organization? ;) And the Abram guy should have been arrested clearly a terrible father for trying to kill his son. These really are some outlandish stories and the characters are as if they knew something we didn't but since we don't know what it was we can simply ride them off as nutcases.

I once heard about a guy that talked to a bush and lead hundreds of thousands of people into a desert, don't even get me started on that guy. :)

_________________
Matthew Guldner

hi, len ravenhill was preaching at a meeting with william branham and after len finished his message william got up and asked for three people who really need healing to come forward...the first was a woman and wb approached her and asked her if God would heal her would she stop the sinful relationship with the man in the fifth row...she sat down as did the other two...my pastor many years ago when i was in bible college told this story...as a baptist pastor who received the baptism in the Holy Ghost he upset some of his members and one lady said he had molested a child in the church to get rid of the pastor...in a public meeting when he was to announce his resignation he said that if this rumor be true let God slay him now and if not true let God slay the source of the rumor...that lady fell dead onthe spot.jimp

"Do not despise prophecying" its a commend from apostle Paul, not an option. We dont have to rely of the experience or witness of a great man of God to believe that the Holy Spirit works in a supernatural way still today. I agree with many christians that the gifts of the Spirit have been abused today and that there is so much counterfeit experience and deceiving spirits apearing as "angels of light" to deceive believers and fear grips many to deny the authentic manifestations of the Holy Spirit.

If we are washed in the blood of the Lamb and filled with the Holy Spirit, God will certainly give us gift(s) to minister to the saints for their upbuilding in the body of Christ. And we have no right to seperate the gifts into ordinary and extraordinary b/c that is not suported in the Scriptures. All gifts are supernatural, the theologians invent terms and great theories and speculate. The bible speaks loud and clear the truth without watering it down.

Its a great wrong to divide the gifts and graces of God as if they came not from the same source. The Spirit of love is the Spirit of power and prophecy, and this Spirit is holy. We need power from on high to overcome.

_________________
Redi