The devil’s emissaries have often come on the Christian scene as “angels of light” and “ministers of righteousness” heralding the end of the age and a new Pentecost preceding Christ’s return. However, the Holy Spirit was given exclusively to the Church at Pentecost as the “earnest of our inheritance” and will only be poured out on “all flesh” during the Millennial reign of Jesus Christ. Throughout the Church Age, heretical sects, in their hasty departure from the sound doctrine of the Bible, have found common ground in mystical experiences. To validate their experiences as Biblical, they conveniently detach verses of Scripture pertaining to the supernatural from their contexts — which set parameters to protect God’s people from Satan’s counterfeits.
The following outline chronicles a continuous stream of mystical sects, the ecstatic manifestations that defined their experiences and the heresies they embraced and propagated — to the current revival of mysticism writ large in Satan’s plan to counterfeit Jesus Christ’s Millennial Age with its attendant signs and wonders. Christians who naively assume that the Holy Spirit is always and only present where signs and wonders are manifested should take careful note of the supernatural manifestations which have frequently accompanied the most radical heresy and apostasy. Observe how the occult counterfeits and perverts the legitimate spiritual gifts that God bestowed upon the Church at Pentecost — gifts that are subject to the believer and not vice versa as seen today in the altered states of consciousness that Satan induces in his slaves.