Naw.
The Toronto Blessing thing was a very late entry into the phenomenon. Scripture has some hints of such.
The closest I ever got to experiencing such was when I was a teen during a service with a particularly heavy PRESENCE of God . . . at one point in worshiping, my legs below my knees just quit working. I was standing near a pew so I just sat/fell down in my seat.
Lots of very heavily anointed folks have prayed for me over the years—this past week a very heavily anointed Bro . . . people fall right, left, front and back of me routinely. I never have. And I HATE folks pushing at me toward falling over when they pray over me. I want the real thing or nothing.
It’s not per se passing out. There’s usually some awareness of one’s surroundings. It’s more like the focus is so intense on God and what God is saying or imparting or sending into one’s spirit, body, mind . . . that the surrounding environment just fades to nothing as unimportant, by comparison.
Most folks are aware that they could stop the experience and get up—given the beauty and blessedness of their communion with God in that state—to stop it and get up prematurely, would be absurdly stupid.
We have a fellow in our congregation who busts out robustly laughing fairly routinely when Holy Spirit touches him. WE have a very generous attitude toward people’s individual expressions as they are experiencing and touching God and as He’s touching them—as long as there’s some decency and order to it all.
So the laughing fellow is just enjoyed for who he is and his relationship with God is a joy to behold.
Besides . . . given our humanness—when God touches us—there’s plenty laughable about it, normally.
I have been part of a church which practices all the Pentecostal stuff. And I do say practices.....
There are people who minister at the altar who are pushers. There are those who drop every time they go up. It makes it meaningless at that point.
I do take issue with some of it because it is either based on bad theology or is downright unscriptural as far as I’ve been able to determine from the Word.
My biggest issue is the judgment and resultant condemnation that comes with much of Pentecostalism. It is legalistic in it’s own right, just as legalistic as the Baptists who evaluate one’s spirituality or spiritual maturity based on whether they don’t drink, dance, smoke or chew and don’t go out with girls who do.
The typical Baptist determination of spirituality comes from what you don’t do (sins). The Pentecostal determination of spirituality comes from what you do do; raise hands in worship, speak in tongues, drop when prayed for (slain in the spirit), how *undignified* you are when you worship, etc.
There is no room for allowing God to work in my life as HE sees fit. If I don’t be a Christian the way they think I should based on nothing more than their theology, then I’m judged. I’ve had my fill of it.
The big danger I see is that people are being deceived into thinking something happened that didn’t based on *signs*, like speaking in tongues, getting slain in the spirit, even being *healed*, all stuff that can be faked, not necessarily IS faked, but can be.
I was filled with the Spirit recently. I didn’t speak in tongues, drop, or get healed, but it was definitely a touch from God and the most real experience I’ve been through. I don’t and didn’t need a *sign* to validate it and I don’t need people judging my encounter with God based on their criteria of how God is supposed to work in my life.