Imitating Historical Facts

We would like to warn believers against all kinds of fanaticism. We see and hear things among the “free friends” that sound almost unbelievable.

We wrote recently in Skjulte Skatter about a woman who at a meeting called out that people should take their shoes off because the place in which they were was holy ground, and that older men began to take their shoes off. In this instance they wanted to imitate Moses at the burning bush.

Some years ago a preacher took his clothes off and crept into the basement. That was supposed to be an imitation of Jeremiah in the well. However, others went after him and got him up again.

There was a private meeting of friends from a “free” assembly. During the prayer meeting a brother discovered that the leading brother was praying in the kitchen. “Why are you here?” the brother asked him. The answer he received was: “I have withdrawn myself a stone’s throw from the others.” That was supposed to be an imitation of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.

A leader wrote in a Pentecostal publication that in the country he had once walked around the meeting hall seven times before the meeting was to begin. Here he imitated the incident of Israel marching around Jericho seven times.

It is unbelievable how far these expressions of fanaticism can go. And they believe that this denotes spirituality. Soon we are likely to hear about someone jumping into a bake oven in order to imitate Daniel’s three friends in the fiery furnace, or that the entire assembly walked around the meeting hall seven times. Then we would experience pure Catholicism all over again. When leaders do such things, others will soon follow them.

Now it is time that the “free friends” all over the land wake up in earnest and reject all these false concepts of spirituality that the leaders have implanted in them. It is a good thing that there is a revival going on among the “free friends” from one end of the country to the other, and that several of them have now taken a stand against this humbug

Aksel Smith