Christians who depend on signs and wonders, such as gold dust falling from the ceiling, personal prophecies and other visible signs, are seeking a golden calf of experience over faith says Elizabeth Prata of The End Time. It is Prata’s belief that believers who seek after signs are dishonoring the Holy Spirit and robbing Him of his glory. In the Comments, Sheryl brings up a good point. “If you’re depending on emotional experiences, then you’re subjectively looking inward to feelings that are deceptive and fluctuate, which results in instability of assurance of salvation.”
Now to Elizabeth’s blog post, which includes a quote by Charles Spurgeon’s on “Christian emotionalists”:
We hear a lot about the big moves of the Holy Spirit. We see Youtube clips of young millennials falling to the floor, or standing with arms upstretched in front of smoke filled stages, pulsing lights, glitter, laughing and sobbing. Afterward they smile tiredly, saying “The Holy Spirit really moved!” Or, “The Holy Spirit really showed up!”
As an aside, I dislike that phrase, ‘The Holy Spirit showed up.’ It’s crass. It’s akin to attending a funeral and saying to the bereaved, “So your wife croaked, eh?’ The Holy Spirit doesn’t ‘show up.’ He isn’t hailing a taxi running late, throwing a scarf around his neck while jumping out of the cab and huffing into the church. The Spirit doesn’t ‘show up’. The Holy Spirit governs the universe.
To the main point regarding big moves of the Spirit. Successive years of successive generations of younger church-goers have twisted Hebrews 11:1‘s statement of what faith is:
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Into –
Now faith is the substance of things we’ve come to tangibly possess, the evidence of things seen and experienced.
Spurgeon had something to say about these “Christian emotionalists” in Sermon 898, A Word with Those Who Wait for Signs and Wonders, And when the people were gathered thick together, he began to say, This is an evil generation: they seek a sign... (Luke 11:29-30)