It has been said that being slain in the spirit has no biblical basis. If you are looking for the word ‘slain’ in the Bible to support that ‘slain in the Spirit’ is unscriptural you are correct. There is no place in scripture that describes the experience of being slain in the Spirit by using the word ‘slain’. There is however many other words used in the Bible that verifies this type of an encounter with God.

Daniel wrote of his encounter with a messenger of God and said, "So he came near where I stood: and when he came I was afraid, and fell upon my face: but he said unto me, Understand, O son of man: for at the time of the end shall be the vision" (Daniel 8:17).

"And I Daniel fainted, and was sick certain days; afterward I rose up, and did the king’s business; and I was astonished at the vision, but none understood it" (Daniel 8:27).

"Therefore I was left alone, and saw this great vision, and there remained no strength in me: for my comeliness was turned in me into corruption, and I retained no strength" (Daniel 10:8). Daniel had no control over his strength, and in verse 17 said, "Neither is there breath in me."

Ezekiel had a similar experience that accompanied his encounter with the presence of the Lord, he said, "…I fell upon my face…" (Ezekiel 1:28). This same type of phenomenon occurred a second time to him in Ezekiel 3:23-24, "Then I arose and went into the plain: and, behold, the glory of the Lord stood there, as the glory which I saw by the river of Chebar: and I fell on my face. Then the Spirit entered me, and set me upon my feet…"

The New Testament also records this same kind of effect when a person encounters the presence of the Lord. John gives his own personal testimony of this in Revelation 1:17, "And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And He laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not, I am the first and the last.

The point that I would like to make, is that they fell under the power. It makes no difference if they fell forward or backwards, or were afraid, or if someone chooses to use the word ‘slain’ to identify it. The fact is, they went down.

2 Chronicles 5:14 says the priests could not stand, "So that the priests could not stand to minister by reason of the cloud: for the glory of the Lord had filled the house." Talk about falling under the power. There you have it. The next time someone says the Bible says nothing about being ‘Slain in the Spirit’ you will know better.

Both Old and New Testament, saved and unsaved testify of a humbling experience outside the control of man when the glory of the Lord becomes present. For thousands of years and from all walks of life people have witnessed encounters with the glory of the Lord that has caused them to faint or fall down under the power. From an unsaved Saul on the road to Damascus to faithful John the beloved on the isle of Patmos,

Let me share the true story of what the Lord was doing at the start of the Jesus movement. I had been attending a small church in Costa Mesa where the youth pastor actually glowed. People started coming from all over to see this glowing young man that looked like Jesus. I brought an unsaved friend one Wednesday night to see the visible presence of the Lord shinning. Later that night at the afterglow service my unsaved friend said, "Did you see that, he pushed her down" as people were being slain in the Spirit. I went to another part of the sanctuary so he could sit alone and on the way home he told me this story. He said, "Not long after you left, I got up to see where you went and on my way out I locked eyes with the minister from a distance. I don’t know what happened to me but I fell to the floor and I couldn't move; my legs were like rubber. If a train were headed at me, I swear to you I could not move." My unsaved friend had no reason to make up a story like that, and he had just accused the minister of pushing people down. Also he said don’t tell anyone about this.

Respectability somehow has a way of quenching the work of the Holy Spirit. It was 1970, and what would his friends think? Even our church began adapting to the same form of respectability. Not long after that, they changed the afterglow service to become another teaching session and no longer allowed the congregation to sing in tongues. At first they limited the singing to only two or three people at a time and then eventually stopped it altogether.

During the Jesus movement, our pastor Lonnie Frisbee would always tell us kids, "Jesus really is real."

Pastor Tilson