Toking the Ghost: Why Christians Must Redeem Drug Culture, Part I

Ever since I first became a believer, I have had a constant addiction to the Presence of God. I do not know of any other way to live the Christian life, apart from a loving compulsion to continuously be near this God of Gladness. One of the primary things the Lord showed us years ago was that intoxication on Him is the very essence of “first love.” God is not interested in your dispassionate praise or disinterested service. He is going for the depths of your heart strings. The thing that intoxicates you to the core is the very thing you worship. There is a deep, inner craving that draws us outside ourselves and into the realms of divine ecstasy. This is our inheritance as children and lovers of God. The only kind of love that will lay down its life is a love that has transcended life itself.

Supernatural pleasure, inner raptures, ecstasies, trances and visionary encounters are our Biblical inheritance as believers. Sadly, the church culture of today has become far removed from true, joyful experiential Christianity. Instead, it has morphed into a mere classroom on ethics, while losing the true core of spirituality and encounter that are freely available to all believers who choose to access the open Heavens of the cross. The great revivalist John G. Lake explained it this way, when discussing trances:

“Now what is a trance? A trance is the Spirit taking predominance over the mind and body, and for the time being the control of the individual is by the Spirit; but our ignorance of the operations of God is such that even ministers of religion have been known to say it is the devil.”[i]

We are tired of seeing the church forfeit over inner trance experiences to drug culture, new age and the occult, which can only offer counterfeits at best and demonic counterparts at worst. As believers, we should be the most intoxicated people on the planet – blissed out on the God of ecstasy who has rivers of pleasure flowing at His right hand! We were never created for a dry, boring, sober religious existence. True spiritual “sobriety,” of which the apostle Paul speaks, is coming into a vivid awareness of the unseen realm of Heaven. In Acts 2 and elsewhere in the scriptures, this “spiritual sobriety” looked like complete drunkenness to the natural eye. The new wine of God’s Spirit is the daily fare of the believer. The church started in the heavy drunken Glory on Pentecost, and we are moving from Glory to Glory. God would never give us a lesser experience for a greater one. What the apostles tasted in part, we will overdose on in full!

Drink Your Fill

There is a supernatural bliss the world longs to see demonstrated in the people of God. To live by the rules and regulations of naturalistic religion, without encountering the Spirit of God Himself, is to already be drunk on the ways of the world.

The scriptures have long commended us to be inebriated without limit on God, as we are told to “… drink your fill, O lovers.” (Song Sol. 5:1). How thirsty are you? Theodoret of Cyrus, in the fifth century, comments on this single verse saying:

“He commands these persons not merely to drink, but to be drunken; for there is a drunkenness that works temperance and not delirium – one that does not enfeeble the limbs but lends them strength.” [ii]

We want to be those who partner with Heaven to see a redemption and restoration of true supernatural, mystical experience by finding our intoxication in the Holy Ghost! God will never put a limit on your joy levels. It will take all of eternity to explore the depths of God’s gladness.

Taking it to the Street

When I go out for evangelism these days, I rarely ever start with the “four spiritual laws” or try to convince people they are sinners. I say this not to criticize anyone else’s evangelism method. If it bears fruit for you, go for it. But most people already know they are sinners. Very often, I just ask them if they want to get high! And more often than not, they do. Use bait for fish, not repellant.

Presence evangelism is the most effective mode of making true converts, because people are not simply making intellectual decisions based on points of doctrine. Instead, they are truly encountering the Lord of Glory through a tangible experience, and the explanation follows. Yes – of course we must give a rational exposition of the gospel. But without tangible demonstration, the gospel will be all talk and no show. Everybody is looking for interior fulfillment at a heart level, and we are carriers of that to a broken world. We pray, and people get rocked. They feel. They taste. They see.

It is amazing how drug culture and all manner of sedation are so prevalent in our society today. At best, everyone is addicted to television, food and materialism. But more common than you realize, even in the church today, people are addicted to worse mind-altering substances from Prozac, Xanex and alcohol to marijuana or hard street and party drugs. I cannot begin to count how many people we have seen set free when the liberating pleasures of the Holy Spirit are released. The anointing breaks the yoke (Isa. 10:27). How many thousands have we seen get rocked, who once suffered from depression that also led to physical ailments such as chronic fatigue, chronic pain and fibromyalgia? All because the joy of Jesus broke a spirit of heaviness from their lives!

Man is designed to live in an alternate state of reality. You were made to walk in the Spirit. If someone is not plugged into the ecstasies of Jesus, they are naturally going to look for their fix in a perverted form. Although the source of our intoxication is two worlds apart, secular people at least understand the principle of intoxication. There is an issue of relevance and reality here. Although religious spirits hate it, I have no problem drawing parallels between the ecstasies of God and a drug induced state of consciousness. The latter is only a counterfeit of the former. My goal is to bring the spiritual principles to street level language, where people need the revelation. Most non-believers think God wants to take away their fun. I encourage them to “Toke the Ghost” or take a trip with psychedelic Jesus. Not by using drugs of course, but by imbibing on the Spirit of God.

A Personal Testimony

Drug-induced trances are only shallow, deadly substitutes for Holy Spirit trances. We can convince people that they don’t need drugs by getting them high on the Most High. Then, and only then, freedom and deliverance are simple, if not instant. The best way to convince them is to give them a taste of what they are missing out on! This is the “one-step program” for deliverance.

I am living proof of this principle. I received an instant deliverance from drugs as a teenager, and I was the worst substance abuser of all my friends. The thing that finally broke my addiction was getting whacked by the thrilling pleasure of the infilling of the Holy Spirit! How could I ever choose a lesser substance after tasting Divine Bliss? Most of the strongest drug addicts consequently have the strongest call to raptures and the seer realm. Consider how every class of drug specifically imitates something produced in rapture. Sedatives only counterfeit the deep, supernatural peace of God. Stimulants, or uppers, only imitate the power and stamina of the breaker anointing when the Spirit of Might comes upon you. Hallucinogens only simulate the visionary realm. It is completely normal that people would want to experience peace, power and see things! These are God-given desires, but we should fulfill those desires in Him, rather than substances. Bono, from the rock band U2, makes a great point when he sings: there’s nothing better than the real thing!

We have taken it as a sort of personal mandate to influence the church toward the ecstasies and living a lifestyle of spiritual drinking. This is because the new wine all has to do with intimacy, and love is the highest way. God wants junkies, and I have resolved to be a Holy Ghost pusher. Pharisees often get offended when I talk about smoking “Jehovah-wanna,” popping a “taste and see pill” or drinking “Godka.” Of course we never have nor ever would encourage the partaking of drugs. But we strongly encourage the partaking of God! Hearing these sorts of analogies is like sweet water to the thirsty soul who was born to live an intoxicated lifestyle. I don’t give a rip about dancing a jig for a self-satisfied amen corner. Life is too short to try to force-feed a fat, religious cow. There are too many hungry, desperate people out there who are ready and willing to embrace a God who is tangible, loving, joyful and full of mystical surprises and intoxicating delight. This revelation of first-love intoxication drives young people through the roof. They know that this is what they were made for: to live more whacked than their friends who are on drugs.

The truth is that we are not really comparing God to drug use. The world has already done that! The very existence of a drug culture shows that the comparison has already been made. You do not need to inhale marijuana when you can inhale the ruah – the very life-breath of God’s Spirit! We are simply reversing idea that substances (or anything the world offers) can fill a void of pleasure and experience reserved for God alone.

Shock language

Imbibing on the pleasures of God is the most critical, key component for the preservation of society. Finding God as our holy “addiction” goes much further than a tactic for ministering to drug users. We must all learn to love God at the deepest, most compulsive levels of our existence. All of mankind is called to find its identity as lovers of God.

The essence of true love goes far beyond our works or service. True love must find pleasure in the object of its affection. While Christianity is full of cliché terminology to describe love, joy, worship, adoration and the like, it is sometimes more effective to use shock language and wild demonstration to convey how extreme is the joyful possession He offers us!

We have many pastors ask us to “tone down” the vernacular when paralleling God encounters with drugs. But by the grace of God I will not tone down an ounce of what He is doing until the day I die. Jesus never toned it down, and he never held anything back. One of the very reasons we use this type of language is to dismantle the very religious strongholds that keep people from “going too far” in the Spirit. Heaven is all about a great party. Even the great evangelist Billy Graham has made the analogy between conversion to Jesus and drug use. Taking the stage at the request of rock concert promoters in the late 1960s, he encouraged young people coming to hear the Grateful Dead and Santana to “get high without hang-ups and hangovers” … on Jesus.[iii] Graham used to quote the testimony of pop star Cliff Richards in interviews saying, “When I accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior … this was 10,000 times more of a turned-on experience than any trip I took on LSD.”[iv]

It is also important to remember that God is not offended by our play! It is not blasphemous to enjoy God or crave Him for a fix. He is waiting for a people who are willing to come closer and play with Him more dangerously. Enjoying God in this way is the furthest thing from irreverence. It is time to show some irreverence toward those religious devils that prevent the people from drinking the Living Bliss of Christ. It is actually the “criticism” of such holy enjoyment that borders closest to blasphemy.

Next week we will share some radical testimonies from folks who learned to Toke the Ghost!

Interesting take on it.

I recently read LSD, Spirituality and The Creative Process and Cleansing the Doors of Perception: The Religious Significance of Entheogenic Plants and Chemicals and from exhaustive research, findings show that schizophrenia and LSD experiences exactly simulate historical reports of religious experiences. They are indistinguishible from one another. Similarly, transcendental meditation (when done right) is yet another means of breaking through the 'ego' construct into a state of blissful, terrifying, ecstatic oneness with God/the Universe.

Native American and South American religions base their prayer and closeness to God upon their use of psychedelics. (Ayahuasca, Peyote- produce the same effects as LSD.) There was even an ancient psilocybin mushroom religion. These are the "entheogens," meaning plants that contain God.

So, no. Chemicals aren't the traditional Christian way of finding God-- maybe. Like the way the great Christian poet William Blake experienced the world, his visions and infinite perception, he believed it was holy. Everyone else thought he was insane. Drugs, insanity, drums (again, tribal trance rituals), dancing (evangelical and other religions) are all means to the same end. And if the end is right, does it not justify the means?

It sounds to me like there's more money to be made by churches if the masses depend on them as the only route to spirituality, same old orthodox game that's been around since Rome.

 "Die Religion ist das Opium des Volkes." - Karl Marx, 1843, Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right

" Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man—state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion. Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo. "

Toking the Ghost: Why Christians Must Redeem Drug Culture, Part II

The past few decades, with moves such as Toronto and others, people are truly beginning to grasp that the New Wine of God’s Spirit is not just to be discussed or analyzed, but to be drunk. The Lord has always sought, throughout the scriptures, to relay the concept that we are to be entranced on Him. God has always used wine as a typology of His celebratory nature. He says in Ephesians 5:18:

“And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled with the Spirit …” (NKJV).

Obviously, most believers know we are not to be drunk with natural wine. But nevertheless, the Lord correlates a spiritual experience to the buzz derived from alcohol. Why would God make such a comparison? Alcoholic drunkenness is off limits – yet God uses it as an analogy, to point us to the real drunkenness He desires. His goal is to turn us away from the false, in order to turn us toward the true. Just as God correlates the real to the illegal counterfeit in the passage above, so do we correlate drug use (also off limits) in a similar analogy. Realize that the issue has nothing to do with drugs, alcohol or pink elephants. It has to do with spiritual intoxication. The package is irrelevant here, so we may as well get over it. God is going to be ripping up a lot of religious packages in these days, in order to express Himself to a generation.

Don’t let religion feed you water, when God offers to turn it into wine. We have found that using street drug language has a great shock effect, because people will instantly make the correlation to how extreme and radical God wants us to experience Him, to be reliant on Him (abandoned addiction to Him), and to be pulled into exotic spiritual experiences with Him daily. Maybe you have never had daily encounter with God. Maybe you’ve been a Christian for decades, but never believed He was so close as to intersect your daily life on a regular basis. Don’t let your past experience dictate the standard God has for you. Take a puff. He died so that you can encounter Heaven continually in unbroken communion. How do we access this? By simply believing – by faith. How do we drink of Him? How do we toke Him up? By faith. Need more faith? Take a puff.

Addicts Set Free from Drugs and Prostitution!

I am always excited to see the fruit of “Toking the Ghost” in the lives of ordinary people, who get freed up by encountering Jesus this way. We get simple testimonies like this one emailed to us all the time:

“It was awesome you came to me and asked me if I wanted to get high and then you blew on me and I passed out. I have not been the same since thank you.” – Ricky S., Cave City, Kentucky.

If that testimony sounds tame, consider this one: after an outreach we did in Canada, multiple prostitutes gave their lives to Jesus. What impacted their decision? Oddly enough, it was largely influenced by getting high on the Most High:

“Two young female prostitutes/addicts are safely in a Christian detox center in another city and after 28 days will be in Montreal at Safe Haven for 2-3 years. A third female is being looked after. A male escort is now at Harvest House and a pimp is on the verge of salvation. One of the persons was native. … Confidentiality must be strictly observed. All of our lives at risk and there are many (illicit sex) clients who go to church. Church is not always a safe place for testimonies. One (prostitute) had 12 clients at one of the largest spirit-filled churches in the Maritimes. A deaf ear popped open and a woman who had internal damage during childbirth, bone problems and great pain was instantly healed (at the meetings). (One of the) things that brought tears to all the prostitutes and touched them the most were … when John Crowder took some arms on front row and pretended he was shooting them up but it was with the Holy Ghost not a substance – they all went wild when they saw how much fun Christianity could be!” – Anonymous, Nova Scotia, Canada

We also hear regularly of people whose drug addictions were broken – not by going into a program, but by finding a better substance! They encountered the substance of Heaven:

“One year ago I was asked to leave the only church I ever felt like I fit because I confessed that I was struggling to stay free from pot smoking. … Then I attended a conference in Harrisburg where John Crowder whacked me on my head and later (Yes, I went back for more) injected me in the arm with the Holy Ghost. I have been wasted since. I realized ...Oh Lord! There is no way I can ever go back to smoking now. This is so much better and free! Thank you for your peculiar example. (I have) been enlightened. … Suddenly joy is oozing out of my pores! The wonderful thing is Holy Spirit said I caught it – I am infected with a move beyond any move. There is a wide spread epidemic of joy being released. People are going to catch a joy buzz everywhere I go … and lately I seem to be walking around just on the brink of laughter. … The epidemic is spreading! People are filled with joy every where you go there are smiling faces. It becomes common to be standing in the check-out line and hear spontaneous laughter. Wow! Life is good! The whole region is now being transformed. We are having street parties shouting “Jesus is Lord and oh so good!” … Put down your needle! Intoxication is free! And better than any concoction ever put together by man. Whoooohooo! People are getting saved all over the country because these courageous, infected-beyond-repair victims are completely caught up in love with Jesus. Suddenly everyone wants Him!” – Sharon C., Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Drunkenness Sets School in Chaos

One of my favorite testimonies we have received was from a young, 17-year-old Dutch girl who reports that her drunken behavior set her entire school in a glorious uproar. Persecuted by teachers, counselors and peers, she stayed faithful to the whack of God, and thus set everyone talking and being exposed to the workings of God:

“I’m a 17-year old girl from the Netherlands and me and my friends are experiencing 'strange' things at our school. That Friday that John had a conference in Holland, I was at school and suddenly I felt the Holy Spirit come upon me. … I went out of the classroom and sat down somewhere in the hall. … My whole body shook and I fell to the floor, God was really doing something. After a while (my friend) Samantha would go and tell the teacher what was happening, because we were away for a long time already. So the class didn't know what to think and when Samantha went back to us again, another Christian began to explain to the people what was going on. At the moment she began to speak a wind was going trough the classroom, when she stopped the wind was gone. When she began again the wind was there again. A girl who doesn't believe in God felt the wind at first and she said that that wasn't just normal. I was still on the ground shaking when the class was over and then the teacher and two other Christians came to have a look. He asked if we would like to explain it all to the class in one of his lessons.

“After he was gone another teacher came (I don't know how you call it in English but they both teach in religion and stuff). He wanted us to come into his office. So they had to pick me up from the floor and help me get into his office. But when we were there he began saying that I should 'get out of it' and that I had to do this in my own time, because we were at school. … I was still shaking at the front of the school, where all the people were because it was lunch break.

“After that I went home and that night I was in the conference where John was speaking and it was just so cool, because he was acting as weird as I had done that day! And again God was doing something in me. That whole weekend God was there and I was really drunk all the time, it was so funny! I have learned much from John, and I can't even count the number of how many times I fell on the floor because God was doing something so powerful. But the Monday after that weekend God hadn't stopped his work, so I was drunk all the time even in classes! As a result of that teachers now worry about me; my mentor phoned home and my parents have to come to school and talk with her. … Students and people who aren't even at this school talk about it. … So there really is chaos and we're at a point where we don't know what to do next.” – Chayah V., Netherlands

All it takes are a few drunken warriors with a boldness to let God break out in their midst, even when it is unexplainable. A few people like this in His hands can awaken entire regions.

Maybe you have gone to church for years, but have never been floored by the immediate, tangible presence of the Holy Spirit. I would like to encourage you that God can swoop right into your circumstance and bring you a radical, addictive overhaul in one moment of your life. He did it for me, and He does it for many others. I will share one more testimony of someone who was altered by a heavy-duty Jesus fix:

“I just want you to know that I have acquired a brand new Holy Spirit addiction. I got all the prayer at the conference and then stayed for Sunday service. … I was a Holy Spirit seeker and now am a Holy Spirit addict. … They scraped me off the floor and I was so drunk in the Spirit. That has never happened to me before. I had a 3-hour drive ahead of me and they put me in the car and I laughed and prayed (yelled/warred) in tongues for more than an hour of it. Thank God I made it because I was so completely fried. I even acquired new tongues, either a new language or more of the one I already had. I went straight from Kenosha to a meeting at my own church and since it is pretty much a seeker friendly church, I was not sure how my condition was going to go over, but I didn't really care that much. I got a lot of favor and one man told me today that when he saw me on Sunday, I was glowing. … It's great! You were so right. In that condition, I don't care about anything. I can do so much more this way because I don't care what people think of me. It's awesome! All I want is God and more God! Nothing else matters. Hey I even came home feeling love for my son-in-law who has been quite a thorn in my side. Today I took a prayer drive around the perimeter of my town and heard God directing my prayer for this town really clearly. Thank you for sharing! This is amazing!” – Paulette M., Kenosha, Wisconsin

Prepare to be stretched, because God is releasing His kingdom in some radical new expressions in this hour. Let us trust Him and enjoy the flow of this new move!

Blessings!

Sons of Thunder
P.O. Box 2333
Griffin, GA 30224

x-ray
if your back's against the wall, turn around and write on it...

The Energizer Bunny?

Oh, wait. He's not an organism. Hm. Well I'm stumped. AND offended.

~ Amanda

"Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave..."

~ Amanda

"Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave..."

I have been sober a few days now, LOL.  But I have noticed a new grace for certain things.  I am not going to post all of John's newsletters.  I just found this funny after me writing about it in my last post.  Anyway, bless all of you and may you be filled with the love of Christ.

Stigmata Appears at Manifestations of Glory Event