4th Dimention of the Holy Spirit through Visualization & Dreaming Incubate
Cho’s teaching on the Holy Spirit adheres very closely to the classical Pentecostal position. He believes in speaking in tongues as the “initial evidence” of baptism in the Holy Spirit and that it is an experience distinct from the new birth.3 He sees the Christian life as progressing towards a deeper faith as one is filled with the Holy Spirit. Through the Spirit one receives “revelational knowledge” in contrast to “sense knowledge.” Through earnest prayer one receives the gifts of the Spirit, but one needs also to have constant filling with the Spirit in order to mature in faith. Idea of “visualization” is what we see intensely would be impressed upon the soul and transform it.
Yonggi Cho, one is left without a doubt that the doctrine of the Holy Spirit plays a very vital role in his understanding of the Christian life and mission.
Idea of “visualization” is that what we see intensely would be impressed upon the soul and transform it. In Ignatius Loyola’s meditations, extensive images of gospel scenes are vividly visualized. Using “composition of place” as Ignatius calls it, one places oneself in the very scene that one creates imaginatively and in the process one becomes deeply affected by it. The final outcome is a transformed soul who is now in a position to be led by God’s Spirit to make a major decision. The Puritan Isaac Ambrose describes what happens when the Christian “looks” intensely at Jesus:
God receives none to contemplate his face but he transforms them into his own likeness by the irradiation of his light, and Christ hath none that dive into these depths of his glorious and blessed incarnation but they carry along with them sweet impressions of an abiding and transforming nature.10Cho’s understanding of the spiritual progress of the Christian owes much to earlier holiness and Keswick teachings. This is seen especially in his exposition of the first of the threefold blessing: the prosperity of the soul. Human nature is understood in trichotomous terms reminiscent of Watchman Nee.11 Advance in the Christian life involves the progressive conquest of the “soulish” life by the Holy Spirit through hardships, trials, etc. until the Christian is totally surrendered to the Lord.12 Cho also insists that being baptized in the Holy Spirit is not enough; believers must also be led by the Spirit continually and have “continuous fellowship with God as the Holy Spirit leads them.”13 The fivefold gospel which includes Spirit-baptism must be applied to daily living as the threefold blessing which includes continuous filling with the Spirit. Cho’s books are peppered with extraordinary but real-life stories. For example, when Cho affirms that the Spirit gives power and boldness, righteousness, peace and joy, all these are not just a matter of talk but are actual experiences. There is always a real-life story to confirm the teaching. The stories are not just of ordinary boldness, righteousness, etc., but boldness of an extraordinary kind.III. The Person of the Spirit in the Trinity
When practical pneumatology plays such a critical role in so many aspects of the Christian life and ministry, it is understandable that the Holy Spirit should become the subject of Cho’s special attention. This is one of the great strengths of Cho’s pneumatology, especially when the person of the Holy Spirit is understood within the framework of a classical Pentecostal theology, as noted above.
Cho seems to think of the triune God as simply three coordinates with whom we sustain an intimate relationship. Just as we pray to the Father and to the Son, we should also pray to the Spirit. But is this the way Scripture understands the place of the Spirit in the Christian life?
Nowadays I always force myself to recognize the Holy Spirit, to welcome the Holy Spirit and to worship the Holy Spirit, because He is a person…. Dear Holy Spirit, I welcome you, I recognize you and I love you. I depend upon you.… Dear Holy Spirit, now I’m starting. Let’s go. Supply all the knowledge and wisdom and discernment, and I’m going to give it out to the people…. Dear Holy Spirit, we did a wonderful job together, didn’t we? Praise God!24
Thus he would encourage direct address to the Spirit just as one would address the Father and the Son:
…when we read the Bible, it not only commands us to have fellowship with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ, it also commands us to have fellowship, or communion with the Holy Spirit (2 Cor 13:14).23 IV. The Fivefold Gospel and Threefold Blessing
I think Cho is again right in seeing pneumatology as undergirding the threefold blessing.35 Cho believes that the Holy Spirit gives to
There are seven aspects of Full Gospel Faith. The doctrinal conversion of the message of the seven aspects of Full Gospel faith is now called the Fivefold Gospel. The applicational conversion is called the Threefold Blessing. As Christians, we can confirm through the Threefold Blessing the fruit of Christ’s redemption, the Fivefold Gospel.34
Salvation in the fullest sense includes the renewal of the physical realm. I think Cho is also right to see in the redemptive work of Jesus the reversal of the curse of original sin, and that God’s original blessing to Adam was not purely “spiritual” but had very much an earthly dimension. The relationship between the threefold blessing and the “full gospel” is well summed up in his book A Bible Study for New Christians: I think Cho is again right in seeing pneumatology as undergirding the threefold blessing.35
Cho believes that the Holy Spirit gives to The way by which the Spirit brings forth the threefold blessing is more fully elaborated in The Fourth Dimension. Cho believes that there is a spiritual realm, the “fourth dimension,” that controls the physical, three-dimensional world. It is a realm in which three distinct spirits can be identified: the Holy Spirit, the devil and the human spirit
Visions and glorious dreams are a part of our Christian walk. The Holy Spirit places them in our hearts to encourage us in our faith. All of a man’s activity is unfolded through his dreams…. Yes, the fundamental power to overcome hardships comes from having a dream in the heart…. You can be strong when you have a dream for a better tomorrow…. My prayer…is that you will have more abundantly according to the three-fold blessings of salvation and the five-fold message of the gospel.36 Believers “dreams and visions” to enable them to experience the blessing of Abraham in the threefold manner.
The way by which the Spirit brings forth the threefold blessing is more fully elaborated in The Fourth Dimension. Cho believes that there is a spiritual realm, the “fourth dimension,” that controls the physical, three-dimensional world. It is a realm in which three distinct spirits can be identified: the Holy Spirit, the devil and the human spirit. But this ability to control the physical through the spiritual dimension can be done either through the evil spirit or the Holy Spirit. Cho believes that it is the former that accounts for the miracles in non-Christian religions and philosophies.39 We, the Christians, however, “can link our spirit’s fourth dimension to the fourth dimension of the Holy Father—the Creator of the universe—we can have all the more dominion over circumstances.”40 The Holy Spirit does this by giving to us dreams and visions, and through “visualizing” them we could “incubate.
The spirit is the fourth dimension. Every human being is a spiritual being as well as a physical being. They have the fourth dimension as well as the third dimension in their hearts.… So men, by exploring their spiritual sphere of the fourth dimension through the development of concentrated visions and dreams in their imaginations, can brood over and incubate the third dimension, influencing and changing it.38 But this ability to control the physical through the spiritual dimension can be done either through the evil spirit or the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit does this by giving to us dreams and visions, and through “visualizing” them we could “incubate our future” and “hatch the results.”41 Cho is quick to point out that this is not a simple process, but requires us to speak the rhema-word which “releases Christ.”42 Rhema is a word from God: “a specific word to a specific person in a specific situation.”43 Rhema comes from “waiting upon the Lord.”44 Cho goes to great lengths to specify the conditions under which God’s rhema is received: the will needs to be surrendered to God; desires must be sanctified and “screened” by the written word of God; one must wait for God’s signal to move and be spiritually sensitive to God’s timing.45 One detects a robust asceticism which is characteristic of many traditional forms of spirituality. This is another commendable feature of Cho’s teaching that is often forgotten by many modern Charismatics looking for quick success in ministry. Cho’s threefold blessing—more precisely, the health and wealth components of it—is perhaps the least traditional aspect of an otherwise very traditional Pentecostal orthodoxy. 1. God must respond to our demands.
“By the spoken word we create our universe of circumstances….” (Solving Life’s Problems, p. 51)
“You create the presence of Jesus with your mouth…. He is bound by your lips and by your words….” (The Fourth Dimension, p. 83)
2. “Through visualization and dreaming you can incubate your future and hatch the results.” (The Fourth Dimension, p. 44)
3. get the book “The Fourth Dimension”, see pg. 39-44, 50, 64, 36-43, 38-40
4. “Then God spoke to my heart, ‘Son… the spirit is the fourth dimension. …[as] the third dimension includes and controls the second dimension, so the fourth dimension includes and controls the third dimension, producing a creation of order and beauty.” (The Fourth Dimension, p. 38-40)
5. “There are three spiritual forces in the earth. The Spirit of God, the spirit of man, and the spirit of Satan…. All three spirits are in the realm of the fourth dimension, so naturally spirits can hover over the material third dimension and exercise creative powers….
“The Holy Spirit said, ‘My son, man still does not realize the spiritual power that I have given him.'”
“Yes, I said, realizing what God was referring to…. False prophets had power in the realm of the spirit because they had come to realize their potential.” (The Fourth Dimension, Volume Two, p. 38)
6. Cho many times uses the word ‘incubate’ instead of ‘visualize’
“In Genesis the Spirit of the Lord was incubating… like a hen sitting on her egss….” (The Fourth Dimension, p. 43)
7. “We’ve got to learn how… to visualize and dream the answer as being completed as we go to the Lord in prayer. We should always try to visualize the end result as we pray.”
“In that way, with the power of the Holy Spirit, we can incubate that which we want God to do for us….”
“God used this process of visualizing the situation to help Abraham…. By that visualization through the associated thought Abraham… could incubate his [future] children and dispel the doubts from his heart…. The main thing is that we should know the importance of visualization.” (The Fourth Dimension, Volume Two, pp.26-27)
8. “God spoke to my heart, “Son… the fourth dimension includes and controls the third dimension, producing a creation of order and beauty. The spirit is the fourth dimension.”
“Every human being is a spiritual being…. They have the fourth dimension as well as the third dimension in their hearts.”
“In Genesis the Spirit of the Lord was incubating, brooding over the water; He was like a hen sitting on her eggs, incubating them and hatching chickens. In much the same manner the Holy Spirit incubates the third dimension, so does the evil spirit incubate….”
“You may wonder how we can incubate our subconsious… the only way for us to incubate is through our imaginations…. Through visualizing and dreaming you can incubate your future and hatch results….”
“So men [Christians or occultists], by exploring their spiritual sphere of the fourth dimension through the development of concentrated visions and dreams in their imagination, can brood over and incubate the third dimension, influencing and changing it.”
“This is what the Holy Spirit taught me.” (The Fourth Dimension, p. 39-44)
9. “I imagine that Abraham… when he looked up at the stars, all he could see were the faces of his children, and suddenly he felt that he was hearing them call to him, ‘Father Abraham!'”
“…He could not sleep when he closed his eyes, for he saw all the stars changing into the faces of his descendants…. Those pictures came to his mind again and again… [and] became part of his fourth dimension….”
“These visions and dreams carried dominion over his one- hundred-year-old body, and it was transformed as if it were like a young body.” (The Fourth Dimension, p. 48)
10.”We should always try to visualize the end result as we pray…. If you have not visualized clearly in your heart exactly what you hope for, it cannot become a reality to you….”
“We have taught our people how to… visualize success…. Through visualizing and dreaming, you can incubate your future and hatch the results.” (The Fourth Dimension, Volume Two, pp. 25-28, 68) (The Fourth Dimension, p. 44)