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I wish I knew who wrote this but i do not…….It is a very important testimony…
A testimony of a former New Ager:‘The first time that I saw gold filling in teeth was back in the late 70’s when I was a graduate student at a New Age center for healing through the occult arts. An old-time new age christian evangelist named Brother Willard Fuller came for an intensive 5 days to teach the bible and introduce the “gifts of the spirit” which he said anyone can have if they just asked. He was invited because of the particular ‘power’ he operated in. He did teach on the bible beginning in genesis and did teach about Jesus. I don’t remember much of the teaching except for the miracles that this Jesus did.
I was interested in this particular training since Jesus was my spirit guide and I wanted to know more about him. At the end of the 5 days there was a “healing service” where he layed hands on people and gold would manifest in their mouths. I didn’t get gold but my teeth became a brilliant white ( for about a week afterwards).I was amazed by this type of power although my teacher, Eva, who was a shaman / healer and trans-medium ( channeled a spirit that would fortell and speak hidden “wisdom”) could do some pretty amazing things. I hadn’t seen anything like this that so titilated my flesh. I wanted this power that was in his name- Jesus. As a result, I bought a bible and began to study it on my own to find out more about this Jesus that I could be exactly like.. and operate in the same power. At one point a crystal manifested before my eyes, floated then dropped to the ground at my feet. My teacher said that this was a gift from my “spirit guide – Jesus” and was to be kept on me always as a source of power.Through the amazing grace of God I met the real Jesus alone in my apt while studying scirpture and He saved a poor wretch like me. After 7 years of studying to be a new age healer I became a Christian with the sincere desire to follow only Him. I burned all my amulets, books tapes etc renounced and repented. The mask came off of my spirit guide to reveal a monster demon.
The first church that I decided to attend was a Word of Faith church that was appealing because the pastor’s wife was a “prophetess” and they were seeking after ”true miracles”- signs and wonder. Now I could experience the “power“ ligitimately because I was a christian and it must be from god. During my 7 years at this church, I grew in the healing arts of christianity and got ‘drunk in the spirit’ alot through the ministry of Joe Jordon. We grew in flakiness and twisting of scripture and many lives became shipwrecked. The pastors divorced and the wife started working for the psychic hotline and her sister now reads Tarot cards.Sooo after joining a vineyard church I was hesitant when our pastor insisted that we go to Toronto for “the Blessing” since I thought the whole laughing thing was off( because of Joe Jordon) but you get swept in this and think that “how could so many people be deceived’? ” I want what they are experiencing.. I don’t want to miss out on a possible move of God.. I want to see real signs and wonders, etc, etc… ” But the sin of self/idolatry and desire for “power” and to be like god (gen.3) is so strong that you are blinded. When I heard of the gold dust and fillings I had a distant check but thought well it must be God if it is coming through Christians to the church.I began to see such similarity to my training in the new age from inner healing , body healing, visualization, meditation, body sensations, disguised shamanistic rituals and beliefs, divination , etc. that I was convinced that Jesus in very soon coming back for all religions are converging into one. After getting out of the river we began to read the bible with new understanding. The Holy Spirit really started to highlight scripture and teach us with a new understanding and in context.Jesus said to His disciples when they asked in Mathew 24:3-4 ” what will be the sign of Your coming. and of the end of the age? ” Jesus’ first reply to that question was ‘take heed that no one deceives you…’ That was His first response! Wow when you think about it that was a warning to the men who knew Him well . Jesus must have known that even those who know Him well could be deceived!I know well that satan can produce signs and wonders and much of what is being produced now through the charasmatic church is from satan. This polluted river is doing a fine job preparing the minds and hearts for the coming of the anti-christ. He IS coming back soon!
I know many people who are immersed (or should I say drowning in the pursuit of signs and wonders. It is almost like drug addiction. There is a growing need for something stronger with each experience. It does create a high. But as with drug addicts and alcoholics there is a denial. People really don’t want to look at their own sin or the harm that it is causing but would rather get high instead though the experience of “being at a conference where Jesus showed up with a sign and wonder”.
I just read about a conference called “Growing in the Supernatural” sponsored by Patricia King. There are 20 people advertized who will be speaking. I know that half of them operate ( in ignorance) in shaministic practices and with spirits of divination and sorcery. I guarantee that people who attend will have a sense of euphoria and a visitation but it will not be from Almighty God.
It is a sad thing that Jesus Christ and Him crucified- the wonder of the cross and His resurrection is not enough! It takes faith to walk this narrow road. And many times it does not feel good and there is suffering. We become impatient and have heard for years the rhetoric from the false prophets about the coming revival and visitation “where people will be healed and the dead raised”. Slowly our eyes turned from Jesus and our future hope to “I want something now which will confirm all that the false prophets have been saying”. There is such a desire to “experience something.. anything will do that is supernatural”. That is why contemplative prayer which is based on eastern mystiscism has become so popular in the church.
May the Lord through His mercy and grace open the eyes of our friends understanding and lead them into the truth.
Please use my testimony any way you see fit. Maybe it will be just the bait on the fishing pole that will draw someone out of the river. I pray for the people I know and those I don’t who are caught up in deception….People are looking for a quick fix and solution to their everyday problems. Being obedient and following the Lord – abiding in scripture is not appealing. Hebrews 5:14 ” But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil”.
Throughout history our tendency is to idolatry. These leaders are idols who are worshipped and their teachings are the gospel ( of course backed up with the false signs and wonders) Paul warns in 1 Corinthians 10:14 to “flee from idolatry” and 10:21 “you cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons…”
I know how angry and defensive people get regarding their golden calf. The ramifications of seeing are enormous. Repentance is not popular and is almost becoming obsolete. There is nothing we can say that will open their eyes but for the work of the Holy Spirit and the grace of God…’
Because of a special program broadcast in Brazil November 13, 2011 featuring Paul Gowdy, two new translations of his article are available.
https://kimolsen.wordpress.com/2011/11/16/a-decepcao-toronto-pelo-pastor-paul-gowdy/
Portuguese Version link above
https://kimolsen.wordpress.com/2011/11/16/el-engano-de-toronto-por-el-pastor-pablo-gowdy/
Spanish Version link above
*Update*
The Toronto Deception
By a former Toronto Vineyard Pastor
It has taken me nine years to actually come to the place where I would write this story. Part of the reason was because I was not fully convinced that it is appropriate to speak out against weaknesses in the body of Christ publicly. Another reason is because it has taken years of soul searching to become convinced that what happened in the Toronto Airport Church was actually all bad or at least more bad than good!
For the past number of years I have called it a mixed blessing. I think James A. Beverly called it this in his book Holy Laughter and the Toronto Blessing 1994. Today I would call it a mixed curse concluding that any individual good that came from this experience is far outweighed by much harm and satanic deception. I suppose that therein has been my dilemma. I have tried to live my life in the fear of the Lord and Jesus told us that the unforgivable sin was the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. Attributing to Satan what was in fact a work of God. If pressed as to whether or not the Toronto blessing is all God or all Devil I will still be hedgy, but I am convinced that Satan has used this experience to blind people to the historical doctrines of God, to produce fruit in keeping with repentance, to failing to test and discern the spirits and failing to test prophecy.
After three years of being in the thick of the Toronto blessing our Vineyard assembly in Scarborough ( East Toronto) just about self destructed. We devoured one another, with gossip, backstabbing, division, sects criticism etc. After three years of ‘soaking,’ praying for people, shaking, rolling, laughing, roaring, ministering at TACF on their prayer team, leading worship at TACF, preaching at TACF, basically living at TACF we were the most carnal, immature and deceived Christians that I know. I remember saying to my friend and senior pastor at Scarborough Vineyard Church in 1997 that ever since the Toronto Blessing came we have just about fallen to bits! He agreed!
My experience has been that the manifestation of spiritual gifts mentioned in 1st Corinthians 12 was much more common in our assembly, before January 1994 (when the Toronto blessing started.) than during this period of supposed Holy Spirit visitation.
During 1992-1993 when praying for people we would experience what I believe was genuine prophesy, deliverance and much grace and favour from the Lord. After the Toronto Blessing started, all ministry time changed, the only prayers were ‘More Lord MORE ’, the shouting of ‘Fire’ the jerky shaking of the body with the ‘ooh ooh OOH WOOOAAH’ prayer. (I kid you not!)
On January 20th 1994 about 15 people from our church traveled over to Toronto Airport Vineyard in order to listen to Randy Clark, a Vineyard pastor from the USA. John Arnott had called our senior pastor to invite us. He communicated that Randy had been to the Rodney Howard Browne meetings and that the stuff had broke out in his church in the following weeks. John was hoping that something might break out with us too. We were only too happy to travel over. We were a church plant out of the Toronto Airport and we started in 1992. In those days there were three Vineyard Churches in Toronto. One Down Town church, Scarborough vineyard church to the east and the Airport Church. We were one big happy family. Because we were small in number we did special meetings, conferences etc, together.
The year before most of our leadership teams joined and had headed to Nicaragua for a short term missions trip. We had genuine love and fellowship with each other. Since leaving the Vineyard churches I have read a fair bit of analysis from the critics.
Some make out that the Toronto Blessing was one huge conspiracy to lead the body of Christ into heresy. Heresy and apostasy I suspect may well be the result, but none of these destinations were intentional. I am honestly convinced that the leaders in the Vineyard churches are genuine born-again Christians who love the Lord, but have fallen into deception. They have not loved the Lord enough to keep His commandments. They have failed to obey the scriptures and have been led astray by our longing for something bigger and brighter and more exciting and dynamic. I am guilty of this sin also. I have preached renewal in Korea, the United Kingdom, the USA and here in Canada. I am genuinely repentant and in writing this story I would ask you the bride and body of Christ to forgive me. Especially the Pentecostal / Charismatic Christians among you, for you are my immediate family theologically. I am an evangelical Christian, I always have been but I do not believe in the cessation of the spiritual gifts at the end of the apostolic era. I believe that it was my evangelical roots (my family are Baptists and I was born again in the Presbyterian Church.) that started to open my eyes to problems with this so called renewal.
In hind sight I look back and think how could I have been so blind? I laughed at people acting like dogs and pretending to urinate on the columns of the TACF building. I watched people pretend to be animals, bark, roar, cluck, pretend to fly as if they had wings, perpetually act drunk and sing silly songs. How I thought that any of this was from the Holy Spirit of God amazes me today. It was loud irreverent and blasphemous to the Holy God of the Bible. I suppose in my mind I reasoned that as long as they did not teach any thing in direct violation to scripture then it was what we called the exotic. This is a buzz word for manifestations that could not be justified from a biblical perspective. I was taught from the pulpit that we had two options. The order of the nursery full of life and messy or the order of the graveyard, very orderly but dead!
As a young immature pastor I wanted life with mess. I failed to remember that God wants us to become mature and grow up in him. I became disconcerted by the prophetic words that came forth especially one by Carol Arnott in which she had her bride experience where she was taken into the very presence of Jesus and said that the love that she experienced was even better than sex! I was shocked in my spirit and thought how can one compare the love of God with sex? When we suspected that demons were running riot in our services John Arnott would teach that we should ask are they coming or going. If they are leaving then that is ok! John would defend the chaos by saying that we ought not be afraid of being deceived, if we have asked the Holy Spirit to come and fill us then how could Satan come and deceive us? This would make Satan very strong and God very weak! He said that we needed to have more faith in a Big God to protect us than in a Big Devil to deceive us. This sounded very convincing but was totally contrary to scripture for Jesus and Paul and Peter and John all warn us about the power of deceiving spirits and especially so in the last days. Again we did not love God enough to obey His Word and the result was that we opened ourselves up to lying spirits. May God have mercy upon us!
Finally the penny dropped for me as I was rolling around one night ‘drunk in the Spirit’ as we would say. I started singing and as I rolled around the floor the Nursery Rhyme ‘Mary had a little lamb its fleece was white as snow.’ came to mind. I sang this in a mocking spirit and instantly my heart told me this was a demon. Instantly I repented and was in total shock. How could a demon get into me? Did I not love God? Was I not zealous for the things of God? Was I not nuts about Jesus? I knew that an unclean spirit had just manifested through me and I was guilty of great sin. After this experience I stayed away from TACF. I did not go back there any more. I did not possess the conviction to denounce the whole experience but thought that we where failing to pastor the Blessing well enough.
Even after I stopped going over to TACF, I had to pastor the fruit of it. One example was when some of our people returned from a meeting there asking us if we had all received the golden sword of the Lord? I asked them what they were talking about thinking that it was some prophetic reference to the Holy Scriptures but they said, ‘no, its not the Bible, it’s an invisible golden sword that only the really pure can receive. If taken in an unrighteous fashion then the Lord would kill you. But if you are holy enough to receive it then you can wield this sword and it will heal aids, Cancer etc. and bring salvation. How one wielded this sword was by pretending to have this invisible sword in your hand and motioning to strike people with it when in prayer! I thought while even in deception at this time that the TACF had become Looney bins! This was purportedly first received by Carol Arnott and then given to the ones holy enough to receive it!
Another thing was the golden fillings in the teeth. We had people in our assembly peeping down one another’s throats looking for the gold fillings that God had placed there to show how much he loved them! In all my time there I only heard one message on repentance given by a visiting speaker from Hong Kong named Jackie Pullinger. It went over like a lead balloon. We were not there to repent, we were there to party in the Lord! After one year into the blessing I spoke out at a pastors meeting and said ‘guys we have shaken, rattled, rolled, laughed cried and bought the tee-shirt. But we have no revival, no salvation, no fruit and no increased evangelism so what’s the deal?’ I was soundly rebuked – who was I to expect to see fruit when the Lord was healing his broken people? We had been legalistic long enough and God was spending this time restoring his wounded and freeing us from legalism I was told not to push the Lord and the harvest would come in his time.’
I knew this was wrong because the Lord had commanded us to go into all the earth and make disciples! Not, that everyone should take a sabbatical for who knows how long, while God does some strange new thing! Ultimately I left over something as controversial as the ordination of women. Personally I believe from scripture that women should not be pastors/ elders in a local assembly. I could be wrong on this and there is much debate in the Church today but that is my conviction and in the Vineyard churches they were ordaining all the pastors wives to co pastor with them. I am certainly for women in ministry but believe that the Elder/ pastor role in a local assembly has been reserved for men. I did not write scripture but God willing I will have the grace from now on to obey it.
So there is my story. I could go on and document much excess, folly, sin and latter day reign teaching that manifest from the prophetic end of this Blessing but others have already done that. We sang about Joel’s army and the billion soul revival as if it were one of the Ten Commandments, and as always it was just around the corner. Next month, next year etc. Jesus said that when the son of man returns will he find faith upon the earth? And if he does not return when he does no flesh would be saved but for the sake of the elect he comes. This is a far cry from the dominionism that is being taught all through the vineyard / prophetic/ spiritual warfare movement. I honestly think that they think they are going to take over the whole world! While in the Vineyard I embraced a life verse from the Apostle Paul the phrase do not go beyond what is written!
To finish I just want to say sorry for the damage, that I have personally done by teaching things that are not correct biblically. I repent before men as I already have before God. I will not excuse my falling into deception. I did not bother to test things when the scriptures commanded us to do so. Everyone who was there when this thing started knows that what I write is true, they would just come to different conclusions especially if they are still promoting the ‘river!’
To those in the river I would say swim out, there are things living in the water that will bite you real good! I love the people of TACF and the Vineyard movement but I think that we have much to answer for and may the Lord open your eyes sooner rather than later. I suspect that when this letter goes online I will get bombarded by emails from both camps, some damning me for still believing in the ministry of the Holy Spirit and still walking in deception and some old friends damning me for exposing dirt or being negative about the Lords anointed! Well, the Lord knows my heart and by his grace he will guide me into all truth as I seek to know Christ and him crucified! If you believe that I walk in sin and error please pray for me that the Lord would forgive me and open my eyes. I will study the word to show my self a work man approved! I would call on all who read this to pray that the Lord would open the eyes of all who have been involved in this deception. Whether leader or follower, we are loved and the Lord is a forgiving God. He says if we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. I believe we are like the church in Laodicea, we think that we are rich, have prospered and need nothing, we do not realise that we are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked. We must take the Counsel of Jesus and buy gold refined in the fire (which is his suffering, not a false spirit!), white garments to clothe our shameful nakedness and salve for our eyes that we might see again. Jesus is calling us to repentance and thank the Lord that he is, for it will lead us to true restoration with our Father! If God has forgiven me and opened my eyes then he can do it for all those caught in deception too. I will finish with a warning from Paul, he says if you think you are standing firm be careful lest you fall.
Sincerely Paul Gowdy.
DiscernIt 
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