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Discussion Forum : Articles and Sermons : war on the saints

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I haven't read the book, just the comments and paragraphs on this thread. But I think I can already see why it causes some controversy. May I share some thoughts

Quote : "Eve was ignorant of "good and evil," and her ignorance was a condition which lent itself to the deception of the serpent."

Here is what scripture says (Romans 5:19)
"For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous."
Adam and Eve disobeyed the Word of God and that lead to the fall.

Quote: "The devil's great purpose, and for which he fights, is to keep the world in ignorance of himself, his ways, and his colleagues,"
Even if we are fully aware of the devil this doesn't mean that we have victory. Here is how Jesus won the ultimate victory:

"(Jesus )emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death — even death on a cross. 9Therefore God exalted Him to the highest place, and gave Him the name above all names," (Philippians 2:8)

Here is the story about Peter that we all know:
" and Peter was following at a distance. 55 And when they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat down together, Peter sat down among them. 56 Then a servant girl, seeing him as he sat in the light and looking closely at him, said, “This man also was with him.” 57 But he denied it (Luke 22:54-62)

This reminds me a bit of the decline of the western church: to follow at a distance - to sit down at the fire with non- believers and have a comfortable live

"Trust and obey, for there’s no other way
To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey."

 2016/6/24 3:43









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Quote from the 3rd chapter:

"Some of the members of Christ are yet in the stage of babyhood, and others do not even know the initial reception of the Holy Spirit. To such this book has not much to say, as they are among the weaker ones who need the "milk of the Word." But there are others, who may be described as the advance guard of the Church of Christ, who have been baptized with the Holy Ghost, or who are seeking that Baptism; honest and earnest believers, who sigh and cry over the powerlessness of the true Church of Christ, and who grieve that her witness is so ineffective"

 2016/6/24 8:12









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NDY wrote:

"Terrible book on many levels. Could write a book about how bad this book is."

Indeed, a little truth piled up with much error is the basic content of this persons self induced revelations. Most biblical Christians and not just some charismatic fringe groups have serious misgivings about many of her false teaching.

 2016/6/24 9:36









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"Those who locate God personally, and wholly in themselves, make themselves, by their assertions, practically, "divine" persons. God is not wholly in any man.note 6 He dwells in those who receive Him, by His own Spirit communicated to them. "God is Spirit," and mind or body cannot hold communion with spirit. Sensuous feelings, or "conscious" physical enjoymentnote 7 of some supposed spiritual presence is not true communion of spirit with spirit, such as the Father seeks from those who worship Him (John 4: 24).

God is in heaven. Christ the Glorified Man is in heaven. The location of the God we worship is of supreme importance. If we think of our God as in us, and around us, for our worship, and for our "enjoyment" (?) we unwittingly open the door to the evil spirits in the atmosphere which surrounds us; instead of our penetrating in spirit through the lower heavens (see Heb. 4: 14; 9: 24; 10: 19, 20) to the throne of God, which is in the highest heaven, "above principality and power, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but in that which is to come" (Eph. 1: 21, A.V.)."

You can find more of this in Chapter 6

 2016/6/24 11:37









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Wow, what made up pseudo spiritual sounding heresy, Christians cannot be possessed by satan as this writer states

 2016/6/24 12:26









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"Those who say they cannot be deceived by Satan, already are" J P-L somewhere.

 2016/6/24 12:47









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The book defines posession in chapter 4 as follows:

"a hold of evil spirits on a man in any shade of degree"

 2016/6/24 13:00









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FIVE FATAL FLAWS
Penn-Lewis’ flawed thinking, ex- cesses and errors involve five subjects, which become the foundation of her theological system.
She views her own writings as divinely inspired.
She tilts toward rudimentary Word-Faith view.
Her views of sanctification were really the views of her time and of her own spiritual struggles. She locked believers into what she had experi- enced.
Her views of the inner nature of man led to introspection and confu- sion.
She viewed the Great Tribulation period as beginning about 1906 with the great and intense outpouring of demons on the Church and into Christians.
Penn-Lewis laid the seedbed for ‘‘territorial demon’’ teaching, prayer walks, and the likes of Frank Peretti novels. She claimed to have unique insights into the unseen world, which grew out of her obsession with the tribulation and an almost dualistic view of spiritual warfare. Her super- stitious slant on demons as being territorial and bewitching certain geo- graphical areas are lifted out of the teachings of a 17th century writer, Dr. Goodwin.24
Another confusing quirk of Penn- Lewis was to call sin and some emotional conditions ‘‘demons.’’ She expressed her view this way:
‘‘There is the drink wickedness: that is the spirit of drink. The tattling wickedness: that is the spirit of tattling. Perhaps you haven’t understood the ‘wicked- nesses that are spirits’ when
these foes were attacking you and pushing you to do things that you did not want to do in your heart. ... Then, too, there are the private meetings of the Lord’s children when they pass ton from one to the other the spirit of depression, which they do not recognize and immedi- ately refuse because they do not discern the working of the ‘power of the air’ at work around them! ... Evil things that come into your mind are not yours if you recognize their origin and refuse them.’’25

Penn-Lewis took her demonology to incredible extremes even claiming to know exactly where demons could reside in the body of a Christian. This is purely gnostic: personal, subjective, secret, unmediated knowledge, at worst — and wild imagination, at best.
She proposed in War on the Saints
that demons:
’’... bury themselves in the very structure of the human frame,
some acting directly upon the organs or appetites of the body, others upon the mind or intellect, sensibilities, emotions and affec- tions, and others more immedi- ately upon the spirit. In the body they specially locate themselves in the spinal column, nervous system, and deepest nerve cen- tres, through which they control the whole being; from the gangli- onic nerve centre located in the bowels, the emotional sensibili- ties, and all organs affected by them, to the cerebral nerve centre in the head, the eyes, ears, neck, jaws, tongue, muscles of the face, and delicate nerve tissues of the brain. They may obtain access gradually and insidiously, as al- ready shown, but there are in- stances where they make a sud- den assault, so as to rush the victim into involuntary surren- der.’’73
From the perspective of Penn- Lewis, there was hardly a part of the body safe from pestiferous spirits. Likewise in her view, demons could jump into and/or onto almost any part of the body at any time and possess believers. No wonder most of the circulated editions of War on the Saints are abridged and cleaned up with the extreme nonsense edited out. The book belongs in the ‘‘scary sci- ence fiction’’ section of your local Barnes and Noble bookstore alongside the X Files.
Penn-Lewis put forth the impossible premise that demons could sin through the believer, causing the be- liever to be confused and think they were sinning when they were not. She called it counterfeit sin:
‘‘Evil spirits can also counterfeit sin, by causing some apparent manifestation of the evil nature in the life, and matured believers should know whether such a manifestation really is sin from the old nature, or a manifestation from evil spirits. The purpose in the latter case is to get the believer to take what comes from them, as from himself, for what- ever is accepted from evil spirits gives them entry and power.

 2016/6/24 14:30









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http://www.revival-library.org/pensketches/revivalists/robertse.html

Evan Roberts - 1878-1951

Evan Roberts
The story of Evan Roberts and the Welsh Revival of 1904-5 is the most thrilling, but also the most sad and sobering in all revival history. On the one hand we see one hundred thousand souls in Wales coming to Christ in just nine months, from November 1904 to August 1905. This was the beginning of a world-wide revival that ushered hundreds of thousands more into the Kingdom of God. On the other hand, we see Evan Roberts, the principle revivalist of this move of God, becoming deceived, deluded and finally suffering a nervous breakdown which took him out of the public limelight to live the life of a recluse. Furthermore, the fruits of the revival in Wales (but not world-wide) were soon lost through criticism, fears of deception and a Welsh theology which suppressed the assurance of salvation. Within a generation there were no signs that a revival had ever occurred. Surely there are some important lessons for 21st Century Christians to learn here?

Evan Roberts was born and raised in a Welsh Calvinist Methodist family in Loughor, on the Glamorgan and Carmarthenshire border. As a boy he was unusually serious and very diligent in his Christian life. He memorised verses of the Bible and was a daily attender of Moriah Chapel, a church about a mile from his home. Even at 13 years of age he began to develop a heart for a visitation from God. He later wrote “I said to myself: I will have the Spirit. And through all weathers and in spite of all difficulties I went to the meetings… for ten or eleven years I have prayed for revival. I could sit up all night to read or talk about revivals. It was the Spirit who moved me to think about revival.”

After working in the coal mines and then as a smithy, he entered a preparatory college at Newcastle Emlyn, as a candidate for the ministry. It was 1903 and he was 25 years old.

It was at this time that he sought the Lord for more of His Spirit. He believed that he would be baptised in the Holy Spirit and sometimes his bed shook as his prayers were answered. The Lord began to wake him at 1.00 am for divine fellowship, when he would pray for four hours, returning to bed at 5.00 am for another four hours sleep.

He visited a meeting where Seth Joshua was preaching and heard the evangelist pray “Lord, bend us”. The Holy Spirit said to Evan, “That’s what you need”. At the following meeting Evan experienced a powerful filling with the Holy Spirit. “I felt a living power pervading my bosom. It took my breath away and my legs trembled exceedingly. This living power became stronger and stronger as each one prayed, until I felt it would tear me apart. My whole bosom was a turmoil and if I had not prayed it would have burst…. I fell on my knees with my arms over the seat in front of me. My face was bathed in perspiration, and the tears flowed in streams. I cried out “Bend me, bend me!!” It was God’s commending love which bent me… what a wave of peace flooded my bosom…. I was filled with compassion for those who must bend at the judgement, and I wept. Following that, the salvation of the human soul was solemnly impressed on me. I felt ablaze with the desire to go through the length and breadth of Wales to tell of the saviour”.

Needless to say, his studies began to take second place! He began praying for a hundred thousand souls and had two visions which encouraged him to believe it would happen. He saw a lighted candle and behind it the rising sun. He felt the interpretation was that the present blessings were only as a lighted candle compared with the blazing glory of the sun. Later all Wales would be flooded with revival glory.

The other vision occurred when Evan saw his close friend Sydney Evans staring at the moon. Evan asked what he was looking at and, to his great surprise, he saw it too! It was an arm that seemed to be outstretched from the moon down to Wales. He was in no doubt that revival was on its way.

He then felt led to return to his home town and conduct meetings with the young people of Loughor. With permission from the minister, he began the meetings, encouraging prayer for the outpouring of the Spirit on Moriah. The meetings slowly increased in numbers and powerful waves of intercession swept over those gathered.

During those meetings the Holy Spirit gave Evan four requirements that were later to be used throughout the coming revival:

1. Confession of all known sin
2. Repentance and restitution
3. Obedience and surrender to the Holy Spirit
4. Public confession of Christ

The Spirit began to be outpoured. There was weeping, shouting, crying out, joy and brokeness. Some would shout out, “No more, Lord Jesus, or I’ll die”. This was the beginning of the Welsh Revival.

The meetings then moved to wherever Evan felt led to go. Those travelling with him were predominately female and the young girls would often begin meetings with intense intercession, urging surrender to God and by giving testimony. Evan would often be seen on his knees pleading for God’s mercy, with tears. The crowds would come and be moved upon by wave after wave of the Spirit’s presence. Spontaneous prayer, confession, testimony and song erupted in all the meetings. Evan, or his helpers , would approach those in spiritual distress and urge them to surrender to Christ. No musical instruments were played and, often, there would be no preaching. Yet the crowds continued to come and thousands professed conversion.

The meetings often went on until the early hours of the morning. Evan and his team would go home, sleep for 2–3 hours and be back at the pit-head by 5 am, urging the miners coming off night duty to come to chapel meetings.

The revival spread like wildfire all over Wales. Other leaders also experienced the presence of God. Hundreds of overseas visitors flocked to Wales to witness the revival and many took revival fire back to their own land. But the intense presence began to take its toll on Evan. He became nervous and would sometimes be abrupt or rude to people in public meetings. He openly rebuked leaders and congregations alike.

Though he was clearly exercising spiritual gifts and was sensitive to the Holy Spirit , he became unsure of the “voices” he was hearing. The he broke down and withdrew from public meetings. Accusation and criticism followed and further physical and emotional breakdown ensued.

Understandably, converts were confused. Was this God? Was Evan Roberts God’s man or was he satanically motivated? He fell into a deep depression and in the spring of 1906 he was invited to convalesce at Jessie Penn-Lewis’ home at Woodlands in Leicester.

It is claimed that Mrs Penn Lewis used Evan’s name to propagate her own ministry and message. She supposedly convinced him he was deceived by evil spirits and, over the next few years co-authorised with Evan “War on the Saints”, which was published in 1913. This book clearly delineates the confusion she had drawn Evan into. It left its readers totally wary of any spiritual phenomena of any kind or degree. Rather than giving clear guidelines regarding discerning satanic powers, it brought into question anything that may be considered, or that might be described, as Holy Spirit activity. Within a year of its publication, Evan Roberts denounced it, telling friends that it had been a failed weapon which had confused and divided the Lord’s people.

Evan stayed at the Penn-Lewis’ home for eight years, giving himself to intercession and private group counselling. Around 1920 Evan moved to Brighton and lived alone until he returned to his beloved Wales, when his father fell ill in 1926. He began to visit Wales again and eventually moved there in 1928 when his father died.

Nothing much is known of the years that followed. Evan finally died at the age of 72 and was buried behind Moriah Chapel on Jan 29th 1951.

May his life be both an example and a warning to all those who participate in revival to maintain humility; keep submissive to the Spirit; be accountable to godly men and women; remain true to their calling; use the gifts God has given, but be wise in the stewardship of their body.

Bibliography An Instrument of Revival, Brynmor Pierce-Jones 1995, published by Bridge Publishing (ISBN 0-88270-667-5).

Tony Cauchi
November 2007

 2016/6/24 14:50









 Re:

Hi bros and sisters,
I had also read that after the great Welsh revival Evan Roberts disappeared from the scene. That might not be unusual, like Duncan Campbell always said, he was not responsible for the Hebrides revival, God was. But Duncan kept preaching and giving testimony of the Holy Spirit moving in men's hearts back then.

I remember being surprised to see that Evan Roberts passed on in 1951.
And I read different accounts about Evan Roberts and Mrs. Jesse Penn-Lewis including the one Rev-Enu copied.

Over the last 40 years I've read and tossed away many a book. There are books that are beneficial and books that are bunk in Christendom.

I was saved in the mid-70's like many of you here. Was gloriously saved by grace through Jesus Christ. I was changed, born anew and repented of sins and have walked with our Lord ever since, but I can't say I did not fall for some false teachings after being saved. God in his mercy would always take me back to the Word of God in the Bible and make the crooked paths straight.

In the mid 80's my husband and I went to a ministry school that was birthed during the shepherding movement, and deliverance ministry was emphasized as well as moving in the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Although all these things in themselves are good,sometimes the teaching of them can get skewed because we have a very crafty enemy who wants us to get our eyes off the goal.

I came across the Penn-Lewis books years ago and every time I tried to read them it was like gobblety gook. So I never read them. And I am glad. I did read other books, but to be honest with you, I've forgotten most of them and the clarity and completeness of the Bible always speaks to everything. What Jesus and Paul taught us about spiritual warfare is plenty. Books like Penn-Lewis' seem always to give extracurricular time to Satan.

This is my opinion. I pray we would all be as gentle as lambs and as wise as serpents. ( Matt. 10:16)
Sis L


 2016/6/24 21:24





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