Is Being “Slain in the Spirit” Biblical?

The following is a pre-recorded version of CORE Christianity.

We'll be back live again on Monday. Is being slain in the Spirit biblical? That's just one of the questions we'll be answering on today's edition of CORE Christianity. Well, hi, this is Bill Meyer, along with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. This is the radio program where we answer your questions about the Bible and the Christian life every day. You can call us with your question at 833-THE-CORE.

That's 1-833-843-2673. You can also post your question on one of our social media sites, Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. And you can email us your question at questionsatcorechristianity.com. Now, we receive a lot of voicemails during the week, and we do our best to review those voicemails. And here's one we receive from Michael.

Hello. I've been talking to a lot of other believers lately, and this question kind of keeps coming up in conversation about when we pass as believers, do you think that we go directly to heaven, our spirits go directly to heaven? Like, is it a conscious knowing that we're in heaven at that point, or are we resurrected once Jesus comes back? And then at that moment, do you think that we are in a conscious knowing state that we are with him?

It's just been coming up a lot lately, and I would just appreciate any kind of answer. Thank you so much. Bye.

Yeah. Hey, I appreciate that question, brother. One that we've gotten on the program before, but a really important one, especially when you think about people nearing death and thinking, what is my experience going to be as a believer in Jesus Christ? Am I just going to be asleep for a long period of time until the resurrection, whenever that is, the last judgment? Or am I going to be in the presence of the Lord, experiencing his grace, his goodness, the joy of the Holy Spirit? Well, it's the latter, and I think that there are a number of passages in the Bible that make this absolutely clear.

I'll point out just a few of them. In Philippians 1, the apostle Paul is having a conversation, if you will, with the church at Philippi, and he's talking about how he wants to stay with them to continue to preach the gospel for their benefit, for their growing in grace, but he also knows that going to be with Jesus is far better, and there going to be with Jesus is a reference to death. He says in verse 21, for to me to live is Christ, to die is gain.

In other words, if I die, there's gain. If I am to live on in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. I'm going to keep serving the Lord and laboring, and it's going to be fruitful for me and for you, Philippians. Yet, he says, which I shall choose, I cannot tell.

I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. And so he sees it as, look, when I die, Philippians, I'm going to depart and be with Jesus, and guess what?

That's way better than anything here on earth. This is something also that's indicated in 2 Corinthians chapter five, where the apostle Paul said to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. You also think about Jesus's discussion with the thief on the cross in Luke chapter 23 verse 43, where he said to him, today you will be with me in paradise. One other passage of scripture that I think confirms this is in the book of Hebrews in Hebrews chapter 12, where the author to the Hebrews is given by the grace of the Holy Spirit, a picture, a revelation, if you will, of the worship that's taking place in heaven. And what does he see? Verse 22, he says, you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to innumerable angels in festal gathering.

This is a party. And who's there? To the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect. That is the children of the true and the living God by faith in Jesus Christ, and to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, into the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. There are four passages that I just gave you that I think confirm that when believers die, when we die, we're not just in darkness. It's not just like we're sleeping, a nice deep sleep. We're in the presence of Jesus with the angels.

It's a festal gathering. We're worshiping around the throne of God. You see this also in the book of Revelation. And so that's a real comforting reality.

And it's, I think, what the Bible clearly teaches. God bless. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. Just a reminder that we have a podcast as well, and you can check out that podcast on the podcast app. If you do, we would love it if you gave us a five-star review that will introduce even more people to the Core Christianity podcast. So check that out if you would on your podcast app sometime this week.

You can listen to the show 24 hours a day. We also get emails here at the Core, and this one came in from one of our listeners named Megan. She says, Is being slain in the Spirit biblical?

Okay, well, the short answer I would say is no. It's this thing that you see in some churches where an individual overwhelmed by the Spirit, at least that's what's claimed, is slain, which just means they fall over. They're unable to control themselves, and they're just in this state of unconscious awareness, something like that.

I've seen this before. I've been a Christian for many years now, and I've been in different churches and a part of different Christian traditions, and I've seen this before. I just don't think there's anything biblical about it. The sad reality is there's all sorts of weird things out there that are taught that people say the Holy Spirit is doing. I've heard of things like holy laughter.

I've heard of things like holy barking, even people making animal noises, even people making animal noises. I've heard of people talking about being drunk in the Spirit, sort of picking up on what the apostle Paul talks about in Ephesians where he says, Don't be drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit. They say, Oh, maybe there really is twisting scripture, but they say, Oh, well, we should be drunk with the Holy Spirit, and that looks like being actually intoxicated, but with the Holy Spirit and people just acting silly. When Paul said in 1 Corinthians 14 that in the context of corporate worship, everything should be done decently and in order, and if you want to know what the fruit of the Spirit is, what does it look like to be filled with the Spirit? You go to a place like Galatians chapter 5. It's love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. That is the fruit of the Spirit. We know that the Spirit of God is working in us, filling us when that is what's characterizing us, not silly behavior, not losing our ability to control ourselves.

That's one of the fruits of the Spirit is self-control. I don't think that you're going to find biblical support for this practice, and this is why it's so important for us to line up the practices that we see in the local church, in our local church, with what we find in the scriptures. Now, I'm not saying that we need to go and just be critical about every other church that's out there.

I don't think that that's a healthy thing to do. Your time should not be spent occupied, first and foremost, with the problems of other churches trying to call them out. We have enough to deal with the sins in our own lives, and yet when you do see some of these things happening in the broader church, especially when they affect people that we love, and there are people that we love who are a part of this and maybe under a particular kind of teaching, I do think it's important for us to speak up and ultimately to say, hey, let's go to the Bible. What does the Bible say? Let's order our worship and our lives on the basis of the teaching of scripture. I appreciate your question, Megan, and I hope that you're in a solid church where the Bible is faithfully taught and where Jesus is worshiped as his word commands us to worship him.

God bless you. You know, Adriel, you mentioned some of those other rather unique phenomenon that you might see in some churches, holy laughter, holy barking, being drunk in the spirit. I'm curious, you know, in 1 Peter 4-7, Peter says very clearly we're to be clear-minded and self-controlled, and that seems to be defying that particular commandment in scripture.

Yeah, absolutely. I would say that it does, or even you think about 1 Corinthians 14, where Paul talks about the Corinthians were getting all wild with regard to spiritual gifts, and he says people are going to walk into your church and say, these people are crazy. And I've heard stories from friends who have gone to churches and they walk in and they think, what in the world is going on? I've never heard or seen anything like this. And it actually doesn't bring glory to Christ. It just confuses people.

It's this sort of just, I mean, it's just outrageous. And so we have to be really careful. And again, passages that we want to look at as we're having these kinds of discussions are passages like the one you just mentioned in 1 Peter, also 1 Corinthians 14. That's where the discussions on spiritual gifts in particular are had in the New Testament. And so, yeah, really important for us to bring this up.

You're listening to Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. We want to say thank you to a very special group of people we call our inner core. These are folks that support this program on a monthly basis and make it possible. You may have noticed we don't play commercials on this program and we don't receive funding from any church or denomination.

We just count on people like you to make contributions to help us pay the bills and continue doing what we do. So if you believe in this program, if it's been helpful to you and you would like to support us, we would ask you to just perfectly consider that. And if you join the inner core, there are some very special benefits you receive as well. Yeah, we send everyone who joins the inner core a copy of the book Core Christianity by Dr. Michael Horton. We often talk about the core doctrines of the faith here on this broadcast, but if you want another resource that's going to help you go even deeper than we're able to go in the little bit of time we have together, that's one of the things we send you. We also send you video devotionals and just helpful, encouraging articles, devotionals, as I said, that'll bless you in your walk with the Lord and as you grow in your understanding of the scriptures. We want to help people know what the word of God says and apply it to their lives. And if you've been blessed by this broadcast, prayerfully consider joining the inner core. It's a monthly donation of $25 or more, which is not very much, but it helps us a lot and we can partner together to get the word out.

And so would you consider that? You can find out more about the inner core by going to corechristianity.com forward slash inner core, just one word corechristianity.com forward slash inner core, and we would greatly appreciate if you would consider that. Well, let's go back to our voicemails. We do receive a lot of voicemails here, and you can leave us a voicemail 24 hours a day. You don't have to call during the actual program. You can call in the middle of the night if you want to leave us a voicemail. The number is 833-THE-CORE.

That's 1-833-843-2673. Here's one we received from one of our listeners named Greg. My mother is a practicing Catholic, and she's been attempting to follow absolutely every prescription of the Catholic Church before she departs this wonderful world of ours. And I'm just curious what your take on this is. I'm sure she's going to make it into heaven.

She's always attempted to follow the prescriptions of the Catholic Church, but what is your take on it and how it pertains to any Christian that's trying to get into heaven? Thank you very much. Have a great day. Hey, Greg. Boy, it sounds like your mother is laboring under a heavy burden if what she's trying to do is follow each and every rule to the T perfectly so that God might welcome her into heaven.

I know what that's like. I think that we can revert to that kind of mentality as Christians where it's very works-based. Our relationship with God is very works-based. We're hoping to earn His love, to earn even our salvation. The ultimate question, Greg, is who are we trusting?

Who does your mom trust in? Even when you read some of the great fathers of the church throughout history, and they'll talk about their lives, they'll always say, look, at the end of the day, I'm not holy. I'm not righteous. We flee to God and to His grace, and God saves us, not on the basis of how perfectly we obey a list of church rules. He saves us through His Son, Jesus Christ, and the work of Christ for us in the gospel, the good news of what God has done to redeem His people. One verse that I think is beautiful and helpful, Titus 3 verse 4, when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness.

I wonder if that could be a great comfort to your mother right now as she's working to enter into heaven, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His mercy by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified, and that word justified means declared righteous, being made right in the sight of the true and the living God, being justified by His grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. It's mercy, it's grace, it's a gift, not on the basis of what we've done, not on the basis of what you do, what your mother does, it's on the basis of what Jesus did. And in light of what Jesus did, well, Greg, we love the Lord, we serve the Lord, it's a response of gratitude. We obey the law of God by the grace of the Holy Spirit, imperfectly, because we still struggle with sin and thought, word, and indeed every day.

But our comfort, our hope, is that we have Jesus Christ, that He's forgiven us, not on the basis of our works, but on the basis of His word. And the last thing I'll say is churches, particular churches, can give us a whole prescription of things to do. And sometimes those things aren't even biblical. Some of the ceremonies or rituals that they might be calling us to.

And so it's really confusing in a couple ways. If they're saying you gotta do these things to be saved, but the things that they're telling you to do aren't even biblical things, they're not even a part of God's law, well, there's all sorts of problems there. The law of God calls us to do, but we don't perfectly obey it.

That's why we need the gospel, which is for people who break God's law. That's me, that's you, that's your mother, and we can rest in the grace that we receive in the gospel. God bless you.

Amen. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. One of the ways that you can ask a question is by emailing us, and here's our email address. It's questions at corechristianity.com.

Julie emailed us with this question. She says, I have two boys, both Christians, with a solid upbringing in the church and in Christian schools. The older one is out of college and working, but he still lives at home. He recently began seeing a girl and has begun to spend occasional nights at her apartment.

I don't know any details, but obviously that's an inappropriate situation for a single Christian guy. My husband and I aren't really sure how to approach this. We've told him very briefly to just think wisely about his actions. We want to say more, but at the same time he's an adult and makes his own decisions. We don't want to create a rift in our relationship with him or have him think we're overstepping our bounds as parents. Any advice about how to communicate with him along these lines would be appreciated.

Yeah, a very practical question. And of course, I mean, it sounds like we know better, right? Like in situations like this, a young couple dating, the guy going to spend the night at his girlfriend's house, probably not the best situation if you're trying to fight for having a healthy, pure dating relationship. We're not called or permitted as Christians to fornicate, that is to have sexual relations prior to marriage with anyone. And I think it's obviously a dangerous thing and ultimately dangerous because it's sin. And sin is grievous, it hurts another person, it hurts us, in particular sexual sin.

Paul says it's against our own body. And so I think not just as parents, but as Christians, you can have this discussion and say, hey, like what's up with this? And I think that's important, right? I think it's important for us to be able to have those kinds of candid conversations within the body of Christ where we're encouraging one another and exhorting one another so that our hearts don't grow hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

It's what the author of the Hebrews said in Hebrews chapter three. And so in terms of having this discussion, I would approach it more as, hey, I'm your mother, we're your parents, but we're also family in Christ. And more than anything, what we want for ourselves and for our family for you is to love and to honor Jesus by everything that you do. And we just want to make sure that that's happening. And the concern here is that if you're putting yourself in a compromising situation and also knowing the passions of the flesh, how easily we're tempted, especially for a young couple, maybe this isn't the wisest thing.

And you should really think about that. You should think about the perception that you're giving off to others also, to the example that you're giving. And so I think that's how you have the conversation. Again, first and foremost, we want to honor the Lord with everything that we do. And God calls us as parents and just as Christians to speak the truth in love. And sometimes that truth is not an easy thing to speak. But that's a sign that we really love each other when we're willing to do that, when we're willing to have the difficult conversations, ultimately for the sake of the glory of Christ, not just trying to overlook issues or make sure that everybody's happy. That's, you know, when we're engaging in sin, that's not where we find true happiness. And so for the joy, even of this couple, for the health of their relationship before the Lord also, I think this is an important thing to be able to bring up.

And may God bless you and give you wisdom as you go about that. You know, one thing that she did not mention, Julie did not mention, she says that her son is a Christian, solid upbringing in the church, and yet she doesn't mention anything about this girl's particular faith background. We've talked before about the dangers of being unequally yoked, as the Bible says, in a dating relationship. And that's perhaps a concern as well.

Absolutely, yeah. That's a command in Scripture not to be unequally yoked. It's what the Apostle Paul told to the, said to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 6, verse 14. And also with regard to relationships and marriage in particular in 1 Corinthians 7, he says, look, there's freedom with regard to who we're wanting to marry or planning to marry, so long as they're in the Lord.

That's the main thing. Is this person a believer? Is this person a Christian?

But if that's also not a part of this relationship, if the girlfriend here is not someone who confesses Christ, then I think that should also be a part of the conversation. You're listening to Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. Here's a question that came in from one of our listeners named Matt. Hi, Pastor Adriel and Bill. I have a question. I've been hearing a lot about the desert, mothers and fathers, and I'm curious if that has a place in theology. I've heard it a couple of times from a Catholic and also on an evangelical radio station as well, twice recently. So I'm wondering if you can give me some clarity on that.

Thank you so much. Yeah. Hey, thanks for that question. If you know me personally, I have an affinity for all things ancient. I like reading the ancient church fathers. I like reading church history.

I'm sort of a nerd when it comes to worship and liturgy. And so I've spent some time reading some of the desert fathers. In particular, there's one who I would really recommend, a guy who spent time in the Egyptian desert for a while, a man named Athanasius. And the work that you want to read by him is on the incarnation. It's one of those classic Christian works.

And so I think that there is a place. Sometimes, when we're reading theology and people who are talking about the scriptures, we want to be discerning. Ultimately, we read everything through the lens of scripture, and the scripture is the ultimate authority that we have. But that doesn't mean that we can't read some of the scriptures. We can't read some of this other stuff and benefit from it, be encouraged by it, whether that's maybe through some of the prayers that they had or just some of the wisdom insights that they had.

I think that that's totally fine to look at. As I said, I would point you to Athanasius in particular, a guy who was very instrumental at the first council of Nicaea. It was at least there, but was instrumental in really combating a lot of the heresies that were around in the early church. And so, yeah, get that book on the incarnation. God bless. You're listening to Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. Let's go to Valerie in Grass Valley, California. Valerie, what's your question for Adriel?

Hey, I was just hoping I could get some help. Is it true or false that God cannot go where he's not invited, or is it sometimes true in certain circumstances? Yeah, thank you for that question. I imagine, if we're thinking about it in the context of corporate worship, sometimes I think we believe that we're having to invite God down and invoke him into our presence. Sometimes he shows up, sometimes he doesn't, and that's sort of how we think about it.

I think that's totally wrong. Actually, God is the one who welcomes us and invites us, and sometimes he even shows up uninvited, I think. I mean, just think of Jesus in the Gospels, or think about when Jesus confronted Saul of Damascus as he's on the way to persecute Christians, to imprison them, to murder them, and Jesus knocks him off of his horse. And I don't think that at that time, Saul was... I know that at that time, Saul wasn't just saying, Lord Jesus, come into my heart.

I'm looking for you right now. I'm trying to draw near to you. No, it was the work of the Lord. Now, we can grieve the Holy Spirit, and so we have to be careful as believers that we don't do that, but God is sovereign, and he goes where he wills, and we are the recipients of his grace. And so I appreciate your question. May the Lord bless you, and thank you for giving us a call here at CORE Christianity. Join us next time as we explore the truth of God's Word together.