In every battle, commanders send out spies to check out what they are up against and/or to take action on behalf of the attacking forces. We have that going on in the church too. New Age pastors have infiltrated the church, and they are on Christian TV, in Christian magazines, and even have books on christianbook.com.
Let’s talk impartations. So dictionary.com gives the definition of impartation as “the state or process of having been told, given, or granted something.”
The following are biblical impartations:
- God appearing and speaking to Moses
- The staff of Moses
- Joshua 5 commander of the army of the Lord
- Angels appeared to shepherds
- The Holy Spirit at Pentacost
- Paul on the road to Emmaus
There are many more. These are just ones I can think of off the top of my head. In all cases it was God initiating this. When God does something miraculous like this, it’s a display of His supernatural power.
Some churches are in the habit of giving impartations. This is where we run into a problem. It’s normal to send one off to the mission field with prayer. It’s another thing for a human to claim they are imparting miracles for a person. Your spiritual radar should go “ding ding ding” when people claim to be able to give you supernatural abilities. It is God who has the power to do the supernatural. If people claim they can, it may be witchcraft.
There’s one church that takes this to an extreme. Members of Bethel church have been known to lay on the graves of people to soak up their supernatural abilities. Grave soaking, as it’s called, it is straight up witchcraft there’s no gray area about that.
Another example of witchcraft would be to lay your hand on the Bible of a pastor to receive their supernatural ability. One well known lady, C. C., Did that to the Bible of well known false teacher, J. M.. This is not good. Things or people can’t give powers: that’s a red flag for witchcraft.
A red flag for a ministry is when the ministry is centered around a single individual or a single church location. False teachers generally don’t have a backup preacher. They are the superstar. When a single church location is holder of “the true gospel”, you are probably looking at a cult.
I know a pastor who prayed in Jesus’ name for someone to be healed and the pastor witnessed a leg grew longer. This was a private experience, not in church or on television. There’s no red flag here; this came from Jesus and the person took no glory for it. It meets all the criteria for something done by God.
Pray for discernment. God wants his children to have discernment to be able to distinguish between false teachers and the true gospel. It’s in the Bible to be discerning of things you hear.
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.
1 John 4:1 ESV
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