On the Road With the Holy Spirit: A Modern-Day Diary of Signs and Wonders

By Ken Fish

You are only one story away from seeing the miraculous unfold in your life.

After reading this book, you will understand how to slow down and savor the moments that you have seen the Holy Spirit working and moving in miraculous ways, and you will live expectantly to see even greater things come to pass.

More than a hundred years ago, healing minister Maria Woodworth-Etter chronicled the work of the Holy Spirit through her ministry in a book she titled A Diary of Signs and Wonders. That book ushered in a healing revival before anyone had ever heard of such a thing, and it has become a reference standard among many modern Christians. In On the Road With the Holy Spirit, author Ken Fish takes a page from Woodworth-Etter and chronicles how he has seen the Holy Spirit move in modern times through his own ministry.

In addition to sharing the miraculous signs and wonders he has witnessed, Fish creates a theological lens through which to view the events recorded. This not only empowers readers to understand why miraculous signs take place but also will help them experience the miraculous in their own lives. Focusing on the importance of God’s presence, prophecy, power, purity, and prayer in seeing the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, this book will inspire readers to live the life of the miraculous and help usher in an unprecedented move of God in our day.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charisma House
• Release date: Jun 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9781636412559

Book preview

PILLAR 1

Prophetic Ministry

And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.

—MALACHI 4:6

And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the LORD their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the LORD a people prepared.

—LUKE 1:16–17

THE WORDS OF Malachi are the last spoken words of God until the dawn of the New Testament era, approximately four hundred years later. It is noteworthy that the New Testament opens with a citation of the Old Testament’s closing words. It is even more significant that both passages speak of a future reconciliation between the fathers (i.e., those who have gone before us) and the children of the current generation back to the wisdom and ways of those who preceded them. I do not mean literal fathers and their earthly children (although this passage could apply to them as well). Instead, the clear implication of both passages is that there has been a significant breach between the fathers of the faith and the children of their spiritual legacy. This state of affairs has resurfaced in our present day between the fathers—sometimes called the great cloud of witnesses (Heb. 12:1, MEV)—and the children of this present generation, who are, in fact, modern believers of all ages and denominational affiliations. The results of this breach are many. And the cause? A woeful ignorance of Scripture and an even more woeful ignorance of church history.

Everywhere I go, I see and hear this ignorance. It is reflected in what preachers say and in what people believe. On the one hand, these two disjunctions cause the children of this generation to reject things that other generations of the church would have readily accepted. This includes doctrine and practice. On the other hand, these disjunctions also cause the children of this generation to accept things that other generations of the church would have viewed with suspicion or dismissed out of hand. Let’s look at two examples, two currently emerging trends within the Charismatic/Spirit-filled church: Gnosticism and the rejection of the authority of Scripture. Movements within Christianity have come and gone since the beginning, some beneficial and some destructive. The point: without a strong knowledge of Scripture and church history, we may fail miserably to know the difference.

In AD 144 the Roman church excommunicated a man named Marcion. Born the son of a bishop in AD 85, Marcion had been a wealthy shipping magnate in Sinope, Turkey, but had come to Rome in the aftermath of the Bar-Kochba Revolt/War (AD 132–136) between the Romans and the Jews. This conflict displaced many in the Eastern Mediterranean. Marcion believed that Jesus was the Savior sent by God and that Paul was His chief apostle.

But Marcion also seems to have held some Gnostic beliefs: Among several distinctive teachings, he rejected the validity of the Hebrew Bible and its God along with most of the New Testament, other than the synoptic gospels and the writings of Paul. Marcionites believed the Hebrew God was full of wrath and a separate, lesser entity than the forgiving God of the New Testament. Marcion’s canon consisted of just eleven books: ten passages from Luke’s Gospel and ten letters of Paul. All other Epistles and Gospels in the twenty-seven-book New Testament are absent from Marcion’s canon. The ten selected Epistles of Paul enjoy prominence in Marcion’s canon, since Marcion credits Paul alone with accurately communicating the universality of Jesus’ message of love, grace, and acceptance. After his excommunication, Marcion started his own movement of churches that persisted well beyond his death in AD 160. For over three hundred years, until well into the time of the Byzantine Empire, his works were widely read, leading opponents to denounce Marcionism as heresy. Most notably, Tertullian wrote a five-book treatise titled Adversus Marcionem (Against Marcion) around AD 208.

If the teachings of Marcion sound vaguely familiar, they should. From time to time his distinctive emphases have periodically resurfaced. Each time the church has universally decried these teachings as heretical, yet many of Marcion’s teachings appear to be coming to the fore again in the hyper-grace movement. To be fair, not all hyper-grace teachers say exactly the same things as Marcion (or as each other, for that matter), but similarities exist between many of their teachings and those of Marcion. For example, the widely touted statements that the Old Testament no longer matters and that there can be few to no moral strictures placed on believers because we aren’t under law but under grace are two problematic teachings that fit within the Marcionite framework. Turning back to the fathers suggests that we at least consider this new emphasis in the light of all that the ancients have previously written.

The other emerging trend is akin to ancient Gnosticism, though not identical. By its very nature, Gnosticism is fluid and subject to change based on the specific context despite certain common themes. Gnostic ideas influenced many ancient religions, but they especially impacted early Christianity with the notion "that gnosis (variously interpreted as knowledge, enlightenment, salvation, emancipation [freedom] or ‘oneness with God’) may be reached by practicing philanthropy to the point of personal poverty, [practicing] sexual abstinence (as far as possible for hearers and completely for initiates) and diligently searching for wisdom" through a life of service.¹ At times these and other practices may have looked similar to Orthodox Christian practices or even overlapped entirely. For example, Gnostic practices such as prolonged fasting, times of extended prayer, and ecstatic worship were also known to be Christian practices, which made discernment both difficult and imperative. This is why John’s Gospel has a decidedly different tone and focus than those of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Finally, many scholars think parts of Romans, Galatians, and 1 Thessalonians are also intended to refute the early threads of this kind of teaching.

In Gnosticism, the lower world is broadly associated with matter and time and more particularly with a fleshly, imperfect, transient world. The upper world is associated with the world of God, the soul, and perfection. The soul is expected to rise (or ascend) into God and His eternal, nonphysical world (similar to the current and growing emphasis on the third heaven). To ascend to God, the Gnostic apprehends specific, hidden knowledge that mixes philosophy, metaphysics, the secrets of history, and the secrets of the universe. These may also be mixed with natural curiosity, culture, and knowledge. Nearly all mystery religions and secret societies (like the Freemasons, and in particular the Rosicrucians as a branch of Freemasonry) traffic in these same categories.

Other distinctive ancient Gnostic emphases include the following:

the notion of a [possibly] remote, supreme, monadic divinity [or] source. This figure is the totality of the divine powers and emanations and is known by a variety of names, including ‘Pleroma’ (fullness, totality) and ‘Bythos’ (depth, profundity).²

the introduction by emanation of further divine [or spiritual] beings known as Aeons. These aeons seek to reunite with the one source, being aspects of the God from which they proceeded—broken off, as it were, to embed in the individual. The emanations are often conceived metaphorically as a gradual and progressive distancing from the ultimate source, which brings about an instability in the fabric of the divine nature of the spiritual universe.³

the existence of a distinct creator god or demiurge, which is an illusion [or possibly] a later emanation from the single monad or source. This creator god is inferior to the source, and as master over the material world it is a lesser or false god, antagonistic to the spiritual world. This secondary god is commonly referred to as the demiourgós described in the writings of Plato (fourth century BC) and the philosophical and theological traditions that follow him. The Gnostic demiurge resembles figures in Plato’s Timaeus and The Republic. "The relevant passage of The Republic was found within a major Gnostic library discovered at Nag Hammadi, wherein a text existed describing the demiurge as a ‘lion-faced serpent.’ Elsewhere this figure is called ‘Ialdabaoth’ [or Yaldabaoth], ‘Samael’ (Aramaic: sæm‘a-’el, or ‘blind god’), or ‘Saklas’ (Syriac: sækla, ‘the foolish one’), Ahriman, El, Satan, and even Yahweh. The demiurge is sometimes ignorant of the superior god and sometimes malevolent (hence the attribution in at least some sources of the name Satan). The demiurge typically creates [or recruits] a group of co-actors named [archa(singular: archon; see Ephesians 6:12)], who preside over the material realm and, in some cases, present obstacles to the soul seeking ascent from it."⁴

an estimation of the world, owing to [that just mentioned], as flawed or a production of ‘error’ but possibly good [redeemable] if its constituents will allow this. This world is typically seen as an inferior representation of a higher-level reality or consciousness just as a model of an object would be inferior to the object itself. In more extreme cases, the Gnostic view of materiality takes on the ascetic tendency to view the human body as evil and constrictive, thus the world becomes a prison for its inhabitants. The explanation of this state… [lies] in the use of a complex mythological-cosmological drama in which a divine element ‘falls’ into the material realm and lodges itself within certain human beings; from [there] it may be returned to the divine realm through a process of awakening [or revelation] (leading toward salvation). This is similar to Buddhist meditation unto enlightenment (bodhi), or Hindu yoga and tantric practice, which moves one from the world of illusion (maya) to terminate the so-called wheel of karma that drives reincarnation. The salvation of the individual thus mirrors a concurrent restoration of the divine nature; a central Gnostic innovation was to elevate individual redemption to the level of a cosmically significant event.⁵

If the teachings of the Gnostics also sound vaguely familiar, they should. Troubling similarities exist between the teachings of Gnosticism and certain glory teachers. Of course, unlike the Gnostic teachings just described, their teachings are manifestly expressed in Christian language. In fairness, a variety of teachings exist within this movement, and some may stand the test after being sifted. This is a significant issue in the modern church, and it deserves thoughtful attention and proper diligence.

Thus says the LORD, Stand by the ways and see and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is, and walk in it; then you will find a resting place for your souls. But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’

—JEREMIAH 6:16, NASB

Let us stand in the ancient paths as we consider these two winds of doctrine blowing through the church. Let us neither make the mistake of Jeremiah’s contemporaries who refused to receive the admonishment of the Lord nor make the mistake of those who accepted false doctrine and departed from the faith during the early church.

None of this is written to call out any one teacher or group of teachers but rather to establish a framework for thinking about these twin emphases that are at play within the worldwide church. We do so to try to understand what is useful and what should be set aside.

September 1, 2011—Southern California and Dallas

Recently I co-led a series of public and private meetings in various parts of Southern California with a friend from Australia, Jerry. Most Americans have never heard of Jerry; he’s what I would call a nonconformist kind of prophet. He calls things like they are, without much concern for how people in church circles feel about it. But I trust him implicitly; and when he prays, things happen.

At these meetings, spiritual phenomena across the spectrum took place. Quite a bit of physical healing occurred, including several people healed of endocrine disorders and one woman healed of neuralgia at a couple’s home. Afterward, oil mysteriously appeared on the walls. (This reminded me of a San Francisco-based church known for the phenomenon of oil running down the walls and windows.) Jerry and I led a meeting at a Foursquare Church, where some folks had come up from San Diego. They reported that after the prayer they received, they saw the Lord visit their churches in greater power and with increased healing. The phenomena we saw really seem to be transferable.

In Huntington Beach, many people received empowerment for ministry, and one person’s uneven leg grew out. A great deal of skepticism surrounds growing legs because people can easily shift in a chair to create the false impression of growth. But this leg actually grew. There was also a man who was healed of emphysema. Additionally, a teenage girl who requested prayer for nightmares and night terrors afterward reported that all of them had stopped.

After we finished up in Southern California, we headed to Texas. Dallas was hot, but in all the right ways! The Lord’s favor definitely went before us. We had thought we would be ministering to a smaller group from a house church, but by the last night we had nearly three hundred people! The ministry was powerful and intense. As has become common, there were several waves of empowerment and deliverance. Among the physical healings: a woman who had arches created in her formerly flat feet! Many in that meeting physically inspected her feet and could testify to the existence of the new arches.

September 9, 2011—Moree, New South Wales, Australia

I am in Australia with Jerry. The first night we were sitting around the campfire on the edge of the outback when Jerry said, He’s out there, about two hundred meters away. I can feel him.

Who? I asked.

The elder, Jerry replied. He’s watching us.

The elder is literally that, the elder of an Aboriginal tribe. He’s human, but he carries an unbelievable amount of spiritual power. If he points the bone at you (meaning, he literally points the bone at you), unless there’s someone around to help you who knows how to counteract that kind of power, you are going to die. Such things are well known in Aboriginal circles.

Jerry and I shared a tent, and that night he awakened with a sense that the elder was standing outside. Jerry spoke to him, saying, We don’t mean any harm.

Sometime later that night, I woke up myself, feeling a disturbance. I opened my eyes to find an off-white-colored hawk inside our tent, even though we had zipped it up completely before we went to sleep.

You don’t belong here, I said. Leave our tent. Then I rolled over and went back to sleep.

In the morning an off-white feather rested just outside our tent flap where we had put down rubber mats to wipe our feet. Jerry, who got up before I did, picked it up and laid it on his cot, so I didn’t know about it until later.

Meanwhile, I got up to walk about. While in the bush, I saw a man about two hundred meters away. He was clearly of Melanesian extraction, dark like weathered rosewood and wearing an off-white cloth about his waist with a sash of the same material that ran from his right shoulder across his chest and stomach to the waistcloth. He appeared to be perhaps seventy or eighty years old; he was standing upright, watching me, holding a spear in his right hand. I pointed at him to let him know I saw him—and just then the white hawk appeared again.

He hovered above me and came closer and closer, so I held out my hand and said, Come closer, friend. You are welcome to land on my hand. I mean you no harm. The bird hovered very near to me for about two or three minutes, then caught a thermal and flew to a branch in a tree thirty or forty meters away. It landed and watched me.

I looked back to where the man had been standing; he was gone. For some minutes the bird watched me, then flew to another tree, this time farther away. Again it landed and watched me, so again I offered my hand and bade it come to me. It remained perched in the tree, and the man did not reappear, so after some time I turned and walked back to our camp.

When I returned, I shared the story with Jerry. It was then that he handed me the feather. He said, Did the bird have this color? Yes, that was it, exactly the color and pattern.

On our way back to Sydney, Jerry and I visited his spiritual father, George. When we described what had happened in the bush, George said, Yes that was him. I know him, but he hasn’t been seen around here for many years. George leads a Foursquare Church and had been part of the Aboriginal mission in the area many years before. He is wise in the ways of the Spirit and of deliverance.

Upon returning to Sydney, I searched for pictures of Australian raptors on the internet. I found a few that looked similar to the bird I had seen, but none that looked the same. It then dawned on me that the elder whom Jerry had sensed, the hawk that had appeared to me in the night, the man I had seen in the bush, and the bird that nearly landed on me were all one and the same.

In the old way of the Aboriginals, changing shapes was well known. These types of behaviors are well documented in Mircea Eliade’s outstanding work Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Eliade was a world-renowned, non-Christian sociologist and anthropologist at the University of Chicago who documented people who could shift shapes or be run through with spears, unharmed, right before his eyes. It was assigned to me as a textbook for a class I took while I was at university in the early 1980s; the fact that someone with academic credibility studied this phenomenon has stayed in my mind for the last forty years.

I gained further insight when, before returning to Moree, I spoke with one of the Aboriginals who had been saved during a move of the Spirit there twenty-five years earlier. He recounted that during that revival, at strange times and places, always unbidden, elders appeared to some of the youth of his people. Their purpose was to warn the youth who were coming to Christ, and many subsequently forsook their professions of faith. When I asked what had become of the spirituality of the Aboriginals during the ensuing years, he said that many of them were nothing. That is to say, they were neither in touch with Aboriginal spirituality nor did they have a Christian spirituality. They had simply ceased to believe in or practice spirituality at all.

My experience led me to a realization: much modern theology (I am thinking of the writings of men like Bultmann and Tillich and Schweitzer, and even of some Evangelicals) is so divorced from the worldview of Jesus and the apostles that those teachers and their followers literally are unable to understand New Testament spirituality as it was originally described. To interpret properly the meaning of verses like, Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man (John 1:51) requires a worldview that has all but vanished from the Western world.

My trip to the outback left me wanting to spend more time among the Aboriginals, ministering the truth of Jesus to them but also learning of their understanding of the spirit world. I hope the opportunity comes again.

September 18, 2011—Melbourne, Australia

The first few days in Melbourne featured visits to churches in Mitcham/Nunawading and the Yarra Valley. Afterward, we went to an Anglican renewal conference hosted at a prominent church in a wealthy suburb. The deliverance anointing continued in these two churches, with one deliverance in particular at Yarra Valley catching my attention.

It started as the usual stuff, if such a thing can be said. Among the issues from which the Holy Spirit freed people were drug use, sexual immorality or perversion, and dabbling in the occult. All of these things will open the door to demonic oppression. (This is not an exhaustive list, but it gives a sense of the kinds of things that can create open doors in people’s lives. Satan will exploit those things to create captivity and bondage.) Oftentimes when people come into Christian faith, particularly from a non-Christian religious background, they may pray the prayer of conversion without actually getting set free from the things that bind

Reviews for On the Road With the Holy Spirit

[Jennifer Fulford · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

AMAZING testimonies of God at work today. So needed in the church.