A sermon defending being slain in the Spirit as biblically grounded. The speaker cites Old Testament priests unable to stand before the Ark and soldiers recoiling from Jesus in John 18 as evidence that God's manifest presence causes physical reactions. He warns against criticizing spiritual manifestations you don't understand.
I'm very often asked about the phenomenon called being slain in the Spirit. Now, this is a beautiful and life-transforming demonstration of the Holy Spirit's power. So can it be supported biblically? Well, we know that God manifests his presence throughout scripture and that those manifestations sometimes caused physical reactions. The priests were unable to stand in God's glory, 1 Kings 8:10-11. The soldiers who arrested Jesus were knocked backwards by his power, John 18:5. 5 and 6. Saul was knocked back by the Lord's presence in Acts 26. In God's presence, people can tremble and fall to the ground. No student of the Bible would ever deny that Scripture records physical reactions to God's power. Now, in an attempt to explain this away, some will move the goalposts and demand hyper-specific references. You may hear phrases like, well, they fell backward, not forward. Or they might say, that was judgment, not a spiritual encounter. Or they often repeated, but nobody laid hands on them. While these may at face value seem convincing, they are nothing more than emotional, stubborn rejections of what the Bible clearly shows us, that God's presence can invoke reactions. There's no getting around this airtight biblical principle. So you're on solid ground to embrace these manifestations, even if fringe sects of the church attempt to put God in a box. Remember this: be careful of criticizing what you don't understand.
