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We continue now in the second
session on spiritual warfare, demonology and deliverance, freedom
in Christ. We need to notice that idolatry
enslaves. Doubt is darkness. Disobedience
is darkness. Demon worship is darkness and
demon worship is of course idolatry as well. Any form of idolatry
is darkness. Divination is darkness. Discouragement
is darkness. So the scripture describes these
evils as darkness which brings about bondage. Self-centeredness
is idolatry, which is an abomination to God. It gives a foothold to
demons. The middle-ed of sin is I, the middle-ed of lie is
I, and the middle-ed of pride is I. I, selfishness, is at the
heart of evil. Deception or lies is darkness,
and deception leads to darkness. Nothing is more infectious than
a cleverly cloaked lie, which Hollywood is very, very proficient
at producing. Lies bind. It is not harmless
to believe a lie. It's not innocent to believe
a lie. Now, I need a bit of help here. Those who know the Batman
films, there was that Batman a series where I think one of
the earliest ones where Harvey Dent was the criminal he was
the evil man but Batman allowed the people to believe that he
was actually a hero and the people went and he took the blame for
what went wrong and he thought it was better for the people
to believe this and by the next session the next series you see
how the people idolizing Harvey Dent who was actually wicked
and evil and making him out to be a hero led to the entire city
of Gotham City going into bondage and going into chaos and crime. Do you remember what those titles
were? Harvey Dent, he was I think the
district attorney of the city, but he was actually the evil
one and they decided to make a cult out of making him a hero
and the hero worship led to the entire city being rotted. It's
not harmless to believe a lie and I think that's surprising
when you can get even a stopped clock being right twice a day.
But believing a lie can have devastating consequences. Ignorance,
pride and deception lead to bondage. Just take for example the lie
that Robert Mugabe was a freedom fighter who liberated his people.
Just take the lie that Bishop Desmond Tutu said in April 1980,
the Kingdom of God has come to Zimbabwe. Really? The Kingdom
of God comes through a barrel of a gun, through landmines and
massacres and murders of Christians and missionaries in Rhodesia?
That Robert Mugabe never fought, he never produced freedom, how
can he be called a freedom fighter? He never liberated anyone, how
can he be called a liberator? Zimbabwe wasn't free from 1980,
it didn't become the Kingdom of God. That's a lie! And that
lie propagates and repeats it over and over, even by the BBC,
the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation, and CNN, the Clinton News Network,
and Slime Magazine, and Useless News and World Report, and Newspeak
and others, and Cape Crimes. The lie! Robert Mugabe liberated
the people of Zimbabwe. I mean, you've got to be joking.
Our mission has been working in Zimbabwe since 1982, and we
can tell you for the last 35 years, the people of Zimbabwe
have not been liberated. They have been oppressed, they
have been exploited, they have been stolen from. They might
have been butchered and murdered by the tens of thousands. That's
just one example of a lie. Or take another lie, that Vladimir
Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution liberated Russia from the oppression
of the Tsars. Well, first of all, the Tsar
of Russia was not an autocrat. He was removed by the Duma, that's
the Parliament of Russia. Russia to Poland, yes they did.
He wasn't overthrown in the Bolshevik revolution, he was overthrown
by the parliament, which proves that he wasn't a dictator, and
then The Parliament was overthrown by Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik
Revolution. But why let the truth and the facts get in the way
of a good story? And so we've got lies, lies and more lies
told over and over in order to justify wickedness and evil.
The Tsar was so wicked and evil, he had a secret police of a couple
of hundred. But Stalin liberated the people. He only had a secret police of
three million in the KGB. Under the Tsar, up to 67 people
could be executed in a given year. That's for all reasons,
murderers, whatever. Under the Commissars, people
were being executed by hundreds of thousands to the millions
every year. How's that for freedom? And the one who still talk about
the liberation of Russia from the Tsars? You've got to be kidding.
Or people talking about how Mugabe liberated Rhodesia. Nobody starved
in Rhodesia, but they starved under Mugabe in Zimbabwe. Ignorance,
pride and deception lead to bondage. Do you know about the monument
they're putting up in Moscow now, a huge one, to commemorate
the Gulags? to show that they are sorry and
that they, in a way, I suppose... Well, about time. They've got
a monument to the Holdomor, that's the deliberate starvation of
the people in the decolonization of Ukraine. So Ukraine's had
a monument for some years now of the Holdomor. And interestingly,
there's a picture of the President of Syria. President of Syria, Assad, visiting
the Holodomor and laying wreaths there in Ukraine. Interesting. Most people in the West want
to pretend it didn't happen. Lies bind, but the truth sets us free. Just about everything you get
in your school textbooks is a lie. Just about everything you get
from Hollywood is a lie. Just about everything you get in your
daily newspapers and on the evening news is a lie. I don't know why
we waste so much time polluting and distorting and distracting
our minds by giving attention to the world system which is
designed to keep us in bondage to their systems. How does a
dictator like Robert Mugabe stay in power for 37 years? impoverishing his people, running
up the greatest inflation in the history of the world, where
a $100 trillion note couldn't buy a quarter of a loaf of bread.
That's after they dropped 16 zeros off it. How did he stay
in power after committing economic suicide where the people are
starving? A country that used to export food now has half of
their population flee and they still can't feed the last half
that stay there and they're dying of starvation needing massive
amounts of food and hundreds of millions of tons to be imported.
How did he stay in power? The lie. Lies, lies and more
lies keep dictators in power. And how they do it? By distracting
people. Demonize the victims, glamorize the villains. Lies
bind. The truth sets us free. You can
distinguish between two basic types of bondage. There's voluntary
bondage, which involves the permission of the person, either consciously
or unconsciously, actively or passively. And there's involuntary
bondage, which would include familial bondage. The degree
of bondage and affliction suffered would be determined by the degree
of involvement by the person concerned and the kind and number
of evil spirits involved. By the way, you recognise these
characters here, they are the Maori of New Zealand who are
doing the Haka, which is what the All Blacks think is funny.
It's actually a witchcraft, demonic curse where you're putting a
curse on your enemy and also saying that you're going to eat
them. And by the way, people say that the Maori were the original
inhabitants of New Zealand and the English displaced the original
inhabitants. Not true. The Maori invaded and
ate the original inhabitants of New Zealand. They're not the
original inhabitants. And by the way, the American
Indians aren't the original inhabitants of North America either. They
butchered, killed, and ate, and sacrificed, and wiped out the
original inhabitants of North America. The same with Central
America and South America. They're not the original inhabitants
either. Archaeology has now discovered, well in fact there were more
original inhabitants, but they got slaughtered. But that's not
a good story. So let's leave the facts in the
way of a good story. Just leave the line. It also depends on
the ground given, the amount and frequency of exposure to
the demonic influence, and the nature and immunity of the person.
Now you know some people. Some people can see something
disturbing and they handle it and keep going. Another person
can be absolutely devastated by the same thing. Some people
are more sensitive than others. And it's also true when it comes
to skin types. My wife can go into the sun and come out to
the tan. I can go in the sun for half an hour and be burnt. I mean, I get sunburned very,
very easily. My daughter, Danielle, is the same as me. We cannot
tan. We can only burn. And I've seen it in the push.
Insects and mosquitoes and whatever else will crawl over other people
to get to me. We will get the mosquito bites
more than others. And when I've taken people straight
from England, I remember we had one chap straight from England,
and it was wonderful. All the mosquitoes left me alone
and went straight for them. It's like they know this is more fresh blood
or something like that. So some people are more susceptible
to sunburn, insect bites, and so on, or stomach bugs. Similarly,
when it comes to demonic influences, some people who could be in the
same environment, go to the same concert, and come out of it apparently
not affected, and other people are really under bondage. I mean
this is true on many realms, nothing is the same or equal. It could be, but I mean remember,
I mean some people are physically stronger than others, other people
are emotionally stronger than others, some people are more
emotionally sensitive, so there's also a weakness, strength or
susceptibility and also some things may not bother one person
as much as another. You take a man like James Dobson.
James Dobson was for 14 months on the American Attorney General's
Commission on Pornography, and he studied pornography and produced
this 1,200 page doorstopper that I take to Parliament and drop
on the desk to relieve a thud when we're talking about it.
Now he was able to look at some of these things and investigate
and analyse it in a very clinical I mean, what's he? He's a...
a paediatric psychologist. He somehow had this ability to
detach himself and not be affected by it. Personally, I wouldn't
want to touch any of that stuff. I don't believe that I could
have done that kind of job. I mean, like, it just sickens
me completely. My mother was a nurse. She loved
drama, medical drama. She'd come and say, my day's
not complete if I haven't seen blood. And my mom was so disappointed
that her sons didn't go into medical professions. She thought,
you know, medicine is everything and medical drama is life. And
she rose to any medical drama. My mom could handle these things
no problem. She spoke about nurses that come
from university. They've got their degrees, they've
got their system, and they faint at the sight of blood. I'm able to handle inflicting
wounds, but I'm not very good at sewing them up. I must say,
I get quite queasy when it comes to some of the medical side of
it, and I've got no problem dealing with a bad guy, but I couldn't
stick a scalpel in somebody who's done nothing wrong to me, even
if you know it's going to help them. And yet my mom had that
ability. She was just designed for nursing. And we could be in the same family,
but she could handle a medical thing that I would have opened
my eyes and I don't even want to see that. I don't want to
be involved in these sort of things at all. And I think it's
true on these levels too. Some people need to recognize
they're more susceptible. Some people may be called to deliverance
ministry. Other people, it's better that they stay far, far,
far away and have nothing to do with it. Even if no ground
was given, sometimes serious trauma can cause a terrible wound
in a person's soul and spirit. That they seek to heal a wound
through sinful pleasure, or performing, or trying to please people, or
inflicting pain on others. I mean, let's face it, some people,
you could even live in the same family. where the father was
maybe abusive, drunk, divorced, and one child is devastated,
another child has a like, they just make a plan, they carry
on with it. Now they're both exposed to the same amount of
trauma, but one takes it much, much, much worse. And we've got
to recognize we've all got strengths and we've all got weaknesses.
And for example, a person who's able to handle a lot more attack
and bad influences may be insensitive to other things. So we know in
our family our musician, artist, daughter is far more sensitive
to almost anything. And then we've got our older
daughter. She's able to handle a lot more,
but she's not as sensitive. And like me, she could run roughshod
over someone's emotions because we're not as sensitive. I mean,
I can handle having been in the Rwandan Holocaust, being in prison,
being tortured, being given the water, boarding, drowning treatment,
and all this. I've been in a place where they've
been shooting at us and bombing us and all this, and it doesn't
affect me. I can't say I've ever had a nightmare or an emotional
breakdown or anything like that. It just doesn't affect me that
much. And other people can go through one incident and they
are really traumatized for life. So, we've got to recognize that
not everyone shows the effects of trauma in the same way. I
mean, some people turn to drink. Boy, did I see a lot of people
in the army turn to drink. and the fire brigade. And then you
see people turn to drugs and there are people who turn to...
there's all sorts of ways that people might try to handle their
problems. Pleasure, performing, pleasing,
or even inflicting pain on others. How many people have been abused
by their own parents and then gone out and abused somebody
else? And then they abuse their children. Their children abuse
their children. Until somebody breaks the chain with repentance
and real spiritual warfare. Are you turning to your pleasure
or pleasing people rather than turning to God? It is a form
of adultery, yeah. I'm either pleasing me or pleasing
someone else. I'm putting them in a place where God should be.
Or pretending. How many people put on an act?
You get these people, everything's wonderful, fine, great, tremendous,
and meanwhile they're absolutely bleeding inside. But they've
put up an act. or exerting power over others.
Many times a person who is abusive to others is themselves a victim
of abuse. And they're perpetuating it.
They can't always see that. Or pitying themselves. I'm going
to have a pity party at the bottom of the garden. Just invite myself.
I'm going to eat worms. Poor me. And I'm the most pitiful
person who's ever lived. There's pity parties. And that,
actually, self-pity can be a real form of adultery, too. It's wrong.
or through paralysis, passivity where, I mean, like... The bunny
or deer in the headlights just froze in the middle of the road.
If they would just get out of the way or blink or something.
I've seen it in the middle of the night and you suddenly have
this animal stuck in a road and you've got to, sometimes as I
hit the brakes, I switch the lights off too. Or just flick
the, and that sometimes breaks the spell and they get out of
the way just in time before you shut it just off a little bit
past where they would have been. And people get paralyzed. These things
make matters worse and they all give ground to Satan. A wound
not taken to Christ becomes a way for evil spirits to be bonded.
Let's put it another way. If you're involved in a traumatic
accident, whether it is with a shark bite or a bike accident
or whatever the accident may have been, something in the workshop,
if you don't take that wound to a medical professional, get
antibiotic, antiseptic cream, proper treatment, that can lead
to Pussy wound and gangrene, worst case scenario, amputation.
I mean, that can happen. Same thing spiritually. Spiritual
wounds can cause just as much damage. The physical ones we
can see, and so we jump around and treat it. The spiritual wounds
we often just compensate, cover over with band-aids and bandages
and pretend it's not there, but it's still festering. So the
process of deliverance includes us recognizing or diagnosing
the problem, repenting because where did I give ground to the
enemy, refusing further bondage and being ready to resist Satan.
Christian missionaries involved in deliverance ministries and
most of what I know about Virtually everything I know about deliverance
and demonology, I've learned from questions of intermission,
from the writings of Kurt Koch, from Reverend Greg Donation and
Giovanni Mission, a mission to the Hindus, and they identify
as possible signs and symptoms of demonic bondage. So these
are the symptoms. Physical symptoms would include
severe headaches and migraines. Now sometimes there's a reason
for your headache and migraine and we may have had those things
but continuous no medical explanation as to why having serious ongoing
headaches and serious migraines one's got to ask is there a demonic
cause. Muscle spasms like what's Mohammed's
Nurse and wife could each have described how he'd go into these
epileptic fits, foam at the mouth and so on. Nausea? Look, when
you've eaten something bad, one of the things that protects us
is that our body rejects them. This is going to make you sick
or kill you, and you vomit up what was bad. That's actually
your immune system kicking in to protect you. Sometimes you
hear some false doctrine, and if you've got any kind of good
spiritual discernment, you reject it, like, you know, you vomit
out this idea, like, ah, no, that'll only make me sick. I
want nothing to do with it. And so sometimes a natural nausea
is not a problem, but we're talking about for no reason. Similarly
with infertility, there's often, as Kurt Cox pointed out, you
will have a person who sought occultic healing and the sickness
has taken out their body and put in their soul. And sometimes
infertility is one of the consequences of seeking demonic solutions. For example, my mother, who was
in gynecology most of her life, she said the amount of people
she came across who'd had an abortion, who then suffered from
infertility afterwards, that it was chronic. They have an
abortion and they're never able to conceive a child again. And
that makes me wonder if that sometimes could be physical,
but sometimes it could be a spiritual thing. a serious consequence. Mouth ulcers, darkened skin.
Have you noticed how a lot of the Hindus, especially in the
Communist Party Hindus, have got this very, very, very dark,
dark eye around them. It's not natural at all. And
there can be a serious amount of muscle twitching, obesity,
or anorexia. These are some physical symptoms
that if there's no physical explanation of what's caused it, you can
consider it a symptom of demonic possession. I mean, just looking
at this writer over there, or Karl Marx here, and I mean, they
are definite examples of demon-possessed characters. Then he gets psychological
symptoms, like the antagonism to truth that our dear Fidel
Castro exhibited. Was that a person who was ever
demonically possessed? The hatred of his people for
the church. In Angola, the amount of times
Cuban troops came into churches and did the most vile, torturous,
blasphemous... I mean, if you've heard of the
different front-line Tesmis, how Cuban troops would put an
AK-47 on the Pope and say, this is now your God, this is the
power of life and death, come and bow down and worship this. Do
you worship the lamb, the blood of the lamb? They'd bring in
a lamb, they'd pour the blood over the people as they'd chop the head
off this living lamb. Said the blood of the lamb is
shed amongst you, it's freezing and smearing on people's faces.
Forced them down to bow in front of the lamb, said they'd put
on an altar. Said you've committed idolatry, you can never be forgiven.
You're gonna die and come to hell with us. You'll spend all
eternity in hell with us. What leads people to do this?
Cuban troops who were torturing Christians in Angola in one of
these concentration camps, I was told this by people who went
through, they said, why don't you just kill us and get it over
with? And on several occasions I got this answer. Oh no, we
don't want to kill you and send you to heaven with God. No, we
want you to curse Christ and come to hell with us for eternity. Now where does that kind of mentality
come from? That's demonic. Those who hate God love death.
An inability to reason or to listen to others, like what Robert
Mugabe evidences. This is doubtless demonic. This
man didn't get demon possessed in a hurry. I mean, he was trained
by the Jesuits in school. He was conscripted into the African
National Congress at Forte University and won over to Marxism by South
African Jewish communists. He got involved in arson attacks
in Rhodesia. He was imprisoned in 19... 64
already for his involvement in arson and terrorism, and yet
he trained a lot there. He came out and was involved
in ordering the murder and massacre of, for example, the Pentecostal
pacifist missionaries, the Elam missionaries massacre in 1978.
Now, many people said, why would they kill them? They were pacifists.
They were liberals, actually. I mean, these English pacifists
Pentecostal missionaries in Elam, they gave food and any other
help and medical help to any terrorists passing by. They refused
to allow Rhodesian forces to have even guards on their property
or to protect them. They didn't even have dogs. They
were unarmed. You think, why were they targeted?
Mugabe ordered their murders. And I know this from the people
who were involved in the murders. Because four of the terrorists
who were involved in the attack got converted later and studied
at the Salvation Army Bible College in Pulawayo. And they said, Mugabe
ordered personally, you must kill them. Because the local
people are saying, but the missionaries are good people and they're on
our side. And that was bad for the propaganda and the commissars
were finding it hard to radicalize those people, so they had to
kill and get rid of these pacifist Pentecostal British missionaries.
It wouldn't have to do with anything. But those who hate God love death. Mugabe ordered the murdering,
systematic murdering of tens of thousands of mad people in
the 1980s. I mean, while people are still saying what a wonderful
man he was, a liberator, long before the farm invasions of
the year 2000 and so on. We saw this really in the 60s,
70s, 80s. The man was demon possessed so
many decades ago. that it explains how they've
destroyed what was once a paradise and turned into a hellhole, what
was once a great basket of Africa turned into a basket case. Sometimes you're talking to people
and trying to bring out facts, and you wonder what you're talking
to. The other person thinks in slogans and soundbites and cliches,
and they're incapable of reasoning or interacting with evidence
and facts. Well, in many cases, those people might have sold
their soul to the devil already. And I've argued with, in fact,
my daughter, who is part of the ballroom dancing up at UCT, although
she's not studied at UCT, she goes up there just for dancing.
And she said she's spotted some of these people walking around
with like, you know, Kill All Whites t-shirts, walked up and
said, really? Really? And she said, they looked at
me like they hated me and wanted to kill me. She said, they look
demon possessed. They probably are demon possessed
and they do hate you and yes, they would like to kill you.
There's a lot of those people like that. Yes, yes, absolutely. There are those who are deemed
possessed to evidence a really suspicious spirit. Everyone's
out to get me. This kind of nonsense which is
impossible because most people don't even think about you. The
suspicious spirit is a demonic thing. There's this fear and
panic attacks and sudden unexplainable awakenings at night with a sense
of oppression and dread. I remember being in Sophie Bulgaria
and we stayed in the home. It was a contact of Phil Bathman's. He knew the family and there
was this one young woman who lived in an apartment, Sophie,
that I kid you not had at least nine bolts, chains and locks,
including where you've got this big massive metal bar that you
put in it, there's brackets on each side with padlocks and you
know bolts up, down, sideways, chains. Unbelievable, let us
see if you like it. I said, is crime that bad in
Bulgaria? She said, no but I read Stephen
King novels. Yeah, well, if you're going to
read horror books and watch horror films, yes, you probably will
have a demonic, irrational sense of fear. Because, now, I don't
know if you've noticed, but people have documented how people in
Hollywood movies are murdered at 200% more than in real life. And then they carry on with a
whole lot of other things. If you were to take your perspective
of reality from the movies, You would be in fear most of the
time, because it's completely irrational, unreasonable, and
out of touch with reality. I mean, here's a character who's
definitely demon possessed. Che Guevara, who boasted that
he killed 7,000 people, personally. He was the head of the secret
police, the internal affairs, in Cuba, and he killed women,
children, absolute cold-blooded murder, and yet people wear his
t-shirt. This is a demon-possessed Marxist
who hated Christ. He said, if Jesus Christ was
alive today, I'd squash him like a bug. Well, Jesus Christ is
alive today, and he's squashing Che Guevara like a bug. Che Guevara
is stupid. Anyone who wants to take on the
eternal judge, I mean, they're going to lose. So, these are other symptoms
of demon possession. Blasphemous thoughts. Now, because
we expose ourselves to blasphemous media sometimes, blasphemous
thoughts could come to mind. But if we can't get rid of them
and they're just continually there, that's a sign of a demonic possession.
Abnormal depression. We all get depressed sometimes.
But, you know, there's people who are like they're chained
in a pit. vile, violent temper tantrums
where a person is literally out of control, and sometimes for
no reason at all. Uncontrollable episodes of anger,
often misdirected at someone who had nothing to do with anything.
Homosexuality is actually a sign of demonic possession. I'll tell you what I've been
told by Greg Donation. Greg Donation has said he's never come across
a homosexual who didn't have demonic possession. He also said
he's never come across someone who had an abortion who wasn't
demon possessed. He never came across someone
who did body piercing who wasn't demon possessed. You get a free
demon with every tattoo. Now if you think that's a bit
extreme, this is someone who's specialized and he's invited
to lecture all over the world as far as Hawaii and Singapore
at the leadership conferences on demon possession and so on
so I have not done enough deliverance counseling to give much overwhelming
conclusions on these things, but I'm telling you from the
experts who've dealt with it their whole life, and many hundreds
of demonic deliverance counseling situations, they say homosexuality
is not a normal sin. It's a perversion that always
brings demonic possession. which would explain the irrational
hatred for Christianity and the blasphemous hatred for God in
this movement. Of course, there's probably some
new recruits that don't evidence this, but if they stay in it
long enough, that's the spirit. Vacillation, where a person can
never make up their mind, they can never come up with a yes
or no, they're just incapable of making up their mind. This
could also be a sign of bondage. Obstinacy in the sense of rebellion
and stubbornness is the sin of witchcraft, that kind of obstinacy.
So these are, take it from the counsellors like Greg Donation,
this is what they list. Suicidal tendencies. Now, there
is an inbuilt self-preservation in all of us. And even if somebody
might put a temptation before one, there's a lot in one that
says, no. It's like the first time I was required to step out
of an aircraft at 2,500 feet and jump into thin air. Even
though I had a parachute and I'd been trained, it was like,
there's this huge leap and... No! You must be kidding! There's everything in you that
just says no, which is why there's a sergeant major standing at
the door to put a boot in your back and sending... Because... It's not natural to jump out
of a perfectly good plane into thin air. There's a lot in us
that says, you have got to be kidding. Suicide, if you're hiking
on a table mountain, you come close to the edge of the mountain.
I mean, there's something in us that says, keep your distance.
Don't go too close to the edge. A person who genuinely wants
to commit suicide has bondage, serious bondage. This is such
an unnatural thing. Sometimes, I believe most times, suicide
attempts are just that, they're a cry for help. The person who
slashed their wrist, takes an overdose, didn't want to die,
they just wanted to get people's attention, it's a cry for help.
And they obviously got deep depression, they've got problems, but genuine
suicide, like the person really wants to end their life, that's
pretty demonic. Death wishes for others as well,
multiple personality disorders, Schizophrenia, psychotic disorders,
drug dependency, and alcoholism are all listed as symptoms of
demonic possession. Now, I would have just thought,
well, I've seen a lot of drunkards, I wouldn't have thought that
even possessed, and yet I know so many who didn't like it, who
hated it, and yet they continued to do it. What makes a person
do what they hate? Where did that bondage come from?
Spiritual symptoms can include hostility to the truth, falling
asleep whenever the Bible is being read, or whether there's
praying, or during church services. Do you know the amount of times
I've seen individuals who I know have got problems in many areas.
You walk in church, you stop, you haven't even said anything
yet. I mean, they're out. And it's not, you know, we can
all have a really sleepless night and a whole lot of problems and
be struggling some days, that happens. But I'm talking about
every time. there's something seriously difficult about that. A person has difficulty reading
the Word of God and an aversion to the Gospel of Christ. I remember
one wedding I had to do and it was a wedding where there was
a Jewish contingent of the family represented and they came up
to me, we're just on the wedding rehearsal, so just family members,
and as I mentioned, our Lord Jesus Christ, there was this
absolute, I mean, like aversion, what do you call it, allergic
reaction from the sister of this chap who was getting married.
And she came up to me afterwards and says, Would you mind just
leaving the name of Jesus out of the service? Because we're
very, very orthodox Jewish. And I said, well, we're very,
very, very reformed Christians. And she sort of talked for a
moment. Because I was smiling, she wasn't sure the implication
of what I'd said. But whenever, and my wife was
sitting next to him doing so, she says, every time I mention
the name of Jesus or the cross, there was literally an allergic
reaction. She was hissing. I couldn't hear it where I was,
but there are some people who literally you'll see an allergic
reaction like they almost hiss. You would have come across things
like this. I'm told that's a sign of demonic possession. Deadness
and hardness of heart towards God? I mean, how many people
have heard great messages and totally unaffected? No spiritual
growth. I know of a bunch of Christians
like that where they never sing a hymn, they never take part
in prayer, they are dull and they sleep during just about
every service, and they're in a family that's on fire Christians
and there's this one person who does nothing. No growth. No response. People have got mediumistic tendencies,
like this girl delivered by Paul in Acts 16. An obsession with
esoteric, mystical, occultic experiences. Now, you can go
into Longstreet, you can go to Woodstock, you can go to Culpe,
and you'll find a bunch of, you know, candle burning, statue
of Buddha types, transcendental meditation, new age guru types,
and They might be opening themselves up to some spirits if they're
not careful. But notice in the church how many people are obsessed
with being slain in the spirit, again and again, it's like they're
addicted. And it's holy laughter where they can't stop themselves,
they're just out of control. Benny Sim is one example of one
who specializes in this sort of thing. I mean, even here,
I don't know, this woman looks like she wants it and so on.
I don't think she's really being slain in spirit. She's just willing
herself to fall backwards while he sort of goes through the motions.
But this sort of thing, OK, hitting a person across the face with
your jacket is one way of making them fall backwards. Notice there's
people at the back to try and catch him. But I think a lot of this is
an act. But even those that aren't at,
they're opening themselves up to something. And in this, you
might have seen someone in a call for dissent where they're just
laughing at one another backwards and forwards. Or talking baby talk
tongues backwards and forwards to one another without any interpretation.
What's that for? Yes? I've heard some of these
experiences go with feelings of extreme euphoria. It must be, because they keep
coming back for it. But it's beyond, it can get beyond
a habit and an addiction to something that's a bondage. But it starts
out as an experience or a kick. While others are doing it, so
I might as well as well. And if you respect the person who's
promoting it, you know, whether it's Kenneth Pagan or Benny Sin
or Kenneth Hopeless, you tend to think, well, you know, they
recommend it and maybe there's something wrong with me if I
don't. Just one example. When I was converted, about a
year later I got involved in charismatic movement quite a
lot. There was a faith healer, I'll use the word loosely, who
came to Pines, had a meeting in Pines Town Hall, and encouraged
everybody who had glasses to come up and smash the glasses. Well, within a few weeks everyone
had got there, had to go and buy new glasses. Quite a waste
of money actually. But there was one girl who we
know, Janine. badgered her parents to get her
contact lenses because she felt so embarrassed that she'd have
to go back to church and wear her glasses. And so she was for
years afterwards referred to as the one who kept her healing
bits of her faith. And she had sort of shrunk within
herself because she didn't want anyone to know she had contact
lenses but I mean honestly Similarly, we heard the same thing when
there was a major faith healer went to Malawi. Now, one of our
good friends in Malawi, whose home I've stayed many a time,
was Dr. Chris Blichnort, the top eye specialist, in fact,
the only eye specialist in all of Malawi back in 1980s. And
so he, when he heard this healer coming to town and the blind
are going to see and the deaf are going to hear, he thought,
well, what harm can it be? Because there's a bunch of people he could do
no more for. So he took a whole lot of his worst patients, loaded
them up in the bus and drove them to this event. And sure
enough, they all went forward and smashed their glasses and
so on and so forth. Funny, the people in wheelchairs, they don't
have time for them, the people with real problems, and they're
going for people who've got minor things like, you know, I've asked
people about where you healed this. They don't know, but They
had their legs, which were different lengths, put right and said,
did you know you had one leg shorter than the other? No. But
the man diagnosed it up there and then he solved it. I mean,
you know, some people are really gullible. I didn't know I had
a problem but he solved it. But he couldn't deal with the
real problem. Something serious like somebody having polio or
cancer or cripple, something like that. So he went there and
came back and the next week he said every single patient he
took that had glasses came back to get new ones. Now of course
the Dutch formed church mission was paying for it, it wasn't
just subsiding, it was totally paying for the people's glasses. So
he said it wasn't just that they didn't gain anything, it wasn't
just the petrol he wasted and the time, they had this massive
unexpected expense of having to replace everyone's glasses
of everyone he took there. Everyone. And when the evangelist concerned
put out the story that the blind saw and so on, he put out a public
challenge and wrote to them and said, listen, I know every single
person with sight problems from the totally blind to the partially
blind in Malawi and I challenge you, not one blind person was
healed in all of Malawi because we've got a good communication
system and if one person was healed we'd all know about it.
And later the saw, the report about this revival in Malawi,
deleted the blind saw. They knew, they didn't even dare,
they could have been brought up, well Exhibit A says, I once
was blind and now I see. They didn't bring up anything.
They just dropped that claim. So, yes, there's a lot of deceit
going on, but we did have a discernment workshop here before. If you
haven't seen the Call for Discern DVD, you need to. I was just
going to share something. I took a patient of mine, a physiotherapist,
to a Wellington meeting. It was quite a few years ago,
and she had multiple sclerosis. She was Lebanese, but married
to a Jewish man, and she converted to Jewish religion. And I was
trying to, you know, deal with her spirit and so on, and I suggested
I would take her there, because she accepted the offer. And I took her there on the Sunday,
and it was very, very sad, because there were thousands of very,
very ill people there. And it looked like they were
into pick up their family and drive to the hospital. And kids and babies and very,
very sick people. And he prayed for people, he
prayed in general, and then he would ask some people to come
to the front. But the interesting thing with
my patient was, eventually when we got home and I delivered her
back home, she said to me, you know what? I don't mind that
I'm not better. There were so many other people
who were so much worse. And in a way, you know, she was
touched in that way. But anyway, eventually she passed
away. I've tried to get in to the Benny
Hinn conference with a camera and they wouldn't let me take
the camera in. I thought that having Joy magazine,
media and so on, they'd block me even going in. But the person
showed you where you sit and so on, he said to me, this is
very political, this is very political. I said to him, you're
so excited. That's the fact. Anyway, maybe
I didn't have the right attitude. Yes, I've regularly thought that
about myself too, that maybe it's just my attitude's wrong,
I'm too suspicious. But the Bible doesn't in any
way commend gullibility. We're meant to be reasonable.
Come, let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins
be as scarlet, it shall be as white as wool. We're continually
required to test things. We're meant to use our mind.
We're not meant to have the removing of our mind, but the renewing
of our mind. So social symptoms of demon possession can include
very asocial and antisocial behavior. Just think of, for example, the
person who shot Ronald Reagan. I mean, he was as antisocial
as they come, that whole story. There's a lot of people like
that, really weird, weird characters. And then those who are absolutely
obsessed with socialising with people, and you know, they like
addicted. And then involved in occult,
obviously anyone involved in occult is bound to be demon possessed. People who slavishly follow the
fashions of the world, even when they don't make any sense. Like
having your trousers basically hanging off you. These people,
why would you pay more money for clothes that don't fit? and
do what they're meant to do. And why would some people wear
some of those stupid things? And the body piercing, that's
another story. They're already torn tats and so on. And you
pay more for it. It's bizarre. Somebody worked
out the cost of tattooing, like what Todd Freel has. Tattoos
aren't free. The demons are free, but the
tattoos cost a lot of money. And if you're going to have tattoos
over much of your body, it's going to cost a hundred thousand
US dollars. A hundred thousand dollars. So
the people who do this have really got money to burn. Not to mention
the fact that they're introducing skin diseases and all the rest
of it to themselves. Ask a dermatologist what they
think about tattoos. ask a dental hygienist what they
think about putting tongue studs and lip rings and things that... Interest and involvement in false
religions and criminal activities. A lot of people in the gangs,
a lot of gangsters are demon possessed, a lot of people in
false religions who have an obsession. Have you come across those people
from Christian families that apostatized and turned to some
false religion? And the enthusiasm for it. They
hated Christianity but they loved this cult or Now symptoms and
signs observed before prayers for deliverance have included
physical swelling of the veins in the temple area and on the
sides of the head, profuse sweating and reddening of the face, wandering
and flitting eyes, you know where the eyes are all over the place,
and even a seductive look in the eyes. Greg Donation says
he's had cases of people who he's trying to counsel for deliverance,
trying to seduce them. what a seducing look extraordinary
but those things can happen Jesus taught that those who sin are
slaves to sin do you not know that to whom you present yourself
slaves to obey you are that one slaves whom you obey whether
of sin leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness
whoever sins is a slave of sin rebelliousness remember rebellion
is as a sin of witchcraft an angry expression on the face
I mean Just think of the Julius Milena's and Castro's and Mugabe's
of this world. Glazed overlooking the ice, I
mean like nothing there. Dizziness and, you know, nobody
at home. You can put your hands from now on sometimes. Dizziness
and visual problems or spasms. Pains and pins of needle movements
in parts of the body. Again, without an obvious cause,
like you were sitting on your leg. You know, well obviously
that would produce pins and needles. It means something that doesn't
have a physical explanation. Emotionally, of course, you will
always see there's fear. Anxiety. God doesn't give us
a spirit of fear, but it does come from the devil. Anger, suspicion
and negativity. I mean, there's people who've
got a problem for every solution. During prayer the person may
go into a complete trance, where the eyes go blank as if not seeing
anything, not even blinking when a hand moves right in front of
the eyes. The body may tense up or tremble or sway, and I've
seen this even in churches, people swaying and going into altered
state of consciousness, and the local church leader is thinking
it's just fine, the person is obviously under spiritual influences. Yes, but not the Holy Spirit.
Sometimes they start speaking another language of voice, not
their own voice. I mean, you have a guttural male
voice coming out of a woman, things like this. Weird things. They may take on the posture
characteristics of a particular evil spirit that's troubling
them. For example, a lot of the Hindus in Atal will start dancing
like the monkey god Hanuman. That's very common. He's a very
popular Hindu idol. And some will hiss and ride like
a snake, and I've seen that. They may become very aggressive
or destructive towards themselves. I've literally seen, in Mozambique,
people take their own fingernails and rip their face so that blood
spurted out. To think a person could do that
to themselves. They may also vomit or sweat out needles or
metal objects from their skin. Now this you may find hard to
believe, but Greg Donation, who... I've been there sometimes weeks
on end at their mission. We run camps, courses there,
and we've taken the people to learn from Jivanadi. There's
a great mission for deliverance and ministry to Hindus. And I'd
sometimes got up in the morning to go out on a jog and met Greg
Donation coming in from an all evening, he hadn't got to bed
yet, he'd been praying for dealing with deliverance issues through
the night. He was going to bed after I'd just got up. That sort
of thing. And he, when I asked him one
time about this, he pulled out a couple of glass jars, and in
them were a whole lot of needles. Everything from razor blades,
needles, nails, and he said these had been sweated out of people's
bodies without any blood. I thought this was bizarre, so
I mentioned it to Uncle Erlo, Erlo Stegen, at Crestavantu,
a little bit later, and he said, oh yeah, and he went to his room,
came up with a whole bunch of his glass jars filled with metal
that had sweated out of people they were praying for deliverance
from. Metal coming out of their mouth, out of their body without
blood. Now, I can't explain it, I'm
just reporting to you that these are some of the symptoms that
come across with people dealing with this. Metal coming out of
their bodies. And we're not talking here about
someone who had, you know, tongue stud, nose ring and so on. Other
things, you know, like a long needle, a long nail, razor blades. unbelievable. The Spirit of the
Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel
to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the
blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, and to proclaim
the acceptable year of the Lord. So here in Luke 4 we get our
Lord Jesus proclaiming his Jubilee ministry. He's come to set the
captives free. And you can see both in the Lord's
earthly ministry recorded in the Gospels, and in the Apostles'
ministry in the Book of Acts, and in church history, this is
what true Christianity does. It sets captives free. Free from
addictions, free from demonic bondages, free from every kind
of sinful habit and bondage that holds people back. Making the
literal blind see, but also the people who are spiritually blind
see. The evil deeds of a wicked man ensnare him. The cords of
his sin hold him fast. So Proverbs 5.22 is speaking
about how sin can be like cords and you know, just like if you
keep tying, it doesn't matter how thin the string is, if you
keep tying more and more and more, after a while not even
the strongest person can break it. Repetition. Bondage. As C.S. Lewis said, every decision
we make makes us more creature of heaven or hell. Every choice
we make sets us more down the broad path to destruction or
the narrow way to life. Every sin we resist makes the
next temptation easier to resist. Every temptation we give in to
makes the next one harder to resist. But God be thanked that
through you, though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed
from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered.
And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness."
You know, sometimes you meet people saying, did you know that
Desmond Tutu saved? And the first question he says,
from what? You don't want to be facetious, but some people
talk about being saved, and you think, well, what have we been
saved from? Because you know it tests me, you get a person
like Uncle George, he says, I was once a slave and now I'm free.
I was a diamond thief, but when he was saved, what was he saved
from? Greed and covetousness, and he did full restitution,
he returned everything, and he's set free. We know people who
were drug addicts, now they're free. done drugs in years. We've got one lady here who's
part of our mission. She's part of Alcoholics Victorious.
She told us the other day she's been 11 years and so many days
sober. She knows what she is freed from.
She was a drunk and she is now sober. And we've got people who,
you know, I was a thief and now I work for my living. I don't
steal anything. And there's people who have got
all kinds of different addictions and backgrounds, but when they
saved, they were changed. But when you get a person who
is still in all the things of the world and they speak about
being saved, you've got the right to say, what are you saved from?
It's not just to get out of hell free, Cod. We're meant to be
transformed. The Apostle Peter wrote to people
who are slaves of corruption. They promised them freedom while
they themselves are slaves of corruption. 2 Peter 2.19 The
Apostle Paul writes that they may come to their senses and
escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by
him to do his will. So 2 Timothy 2.26 is speaking
about people coming to their senses and escaping the snares. You know what a snare is? The
snares are so bad they cause wild animals to try and bite
off their leg to get out of the snare. That's how terrible snares
are. And a snare, like the leg hold
traps, these wires that tighten the more you try to resist it,
biting into your skin. The devil has got snares to these
trapped people. the gospel comes to free us from
these snares and these traps and these bondages and these
chains. The apostle Peter rebuked Simon the sorcerer saying, for
I see that you're poisoned by bitterness and bound by iniquity. When you come across someone
who's really, really, really bitter, you know that you've
got a problem. That person's got real bondage,
bitterness. For example, I mean, you try
to deal with some things. I was at a Bible college consultation
and a Bible college principal from Vendor which is a place
riddled with demon possession. They've done sacrifices of the
most beautiful golden district to the crocodile god in Lake
Funditzi. I mean, a lot of demonic things going on in Venda. But
this man was so worked up. I was giving one of the most
inspiring presentations I have to give on what would David Livingston
say to us today. And this man, all he could deal
with afterwards in the question and answer time was, how could
David Livingston have thrown the diamonds back into the bush?
He should have made this available for the people to get out of
their poverty and what he needed. But David Livingston knew the
value of the diamonds and he knew we're still trying to evangelize
the Tjwana people. If all the miners move in here,
the vice that's going to come, we haven't even evangelized,
let alone discipled them yet. It's going to ruin the Tjwana
people. The mission field is working
amongst us. If we allow the diamonds. And so he said nothing. And it
was another about 26 years before the diamonds were openly discovered
and the diamond rush occurred. But during those 26 years, Robert
Moffat had succeeded in thoroughly discipling and they were able
to resist the temptations coming. But this man just carried on
and on about this diamond. And I told him, but Jesus said,
you know, the man who finds the pearl of great price. Here, David
Levinson had the gospel of Christ, the pearl of great price. He
wasn't going to get distracted by diamonds, he had something
more important, the Kingdom of God. This principle just was
so worked up about how could David Livingstone, like he had
committed the greatest crime on earth because he was impoverishing
the people. I said, no he wasn't, he was
enriching them so that they could gain the riches of heaven. But
I mean, he could not, he was so bitter Bitter against all
whites, all missionaries, all missionaries, including me, and
David Levinson, he could not get to see the spiritual or even
the social realities. It was all about money. And the
Apostle Peter rebuked Simon the Sorcerer, saying, I see you're
poisoned by bitterness. And we met those people. He who
sins is of the devil. for the devil has sinned from
the beginning. For this purpose the Son of Man was manifest that
he might destroy the works of the devil. And it's talking about
he who practices sin, he who is consumed by it, he who is
not just falling into a sin, but who is continuing to practice
that same sin. On the cross, our Lord Jesus
Christ dealt with our sins. He crucified ourselves. He defeated
the world. He triumphed over Satan and all
of his evil spirits and hosts of hell. And you being dead in
your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive,
together with Him, having forgiven you all your trespasses, having
wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against
us, which was contrary to us. and He has taken it out of the
way, having nailed it to the cross, having disarmed principalities
and powers. He made a public spectacle of
it, triumphing over them in it. Deliverance is a dynamic work
of Almighty God, working on the base of Christ's victory on the
cross, applied by the power of the Holy Spirit. Deliverance
is God's work. Our prayers honestly cannot deliver
any person. No method can deliver any person.
There's no technique or ritual that can deliver any person.
God alone delivers and by the power of the Holy Spirit. It's
not magical mediums we need, but God Almighty himself. Now,
when Hollywood had a bit of a respect for the church, I remember seeing
some vampire movies where the priest could bring out a crucifix
or cross and the vampires would flee from it. Now, OK, I suppose
that's better than what you get these days, but it's not the
magic that an unregenerate soul can lift up a cross and there's
just some power in some inanimate object. I mean, that's magic.
The person needs a real relationship with the Lord, and this needs
to be God's power that's defeating demons. Why would they have fear
for just a simple wooden or metal cross, let alone a crucifix?
I mean, that's about the best Hollywood could do when they
still vaguely respected it. The person... Yes? Yeah, I mean, that's magic. That's assuming
that there's power in this... It's the words of God that are
powerful. But, if I've got a rebellious,
wicked heart, and I can wave this around, it's not going to
achieve much more than my own judgement. God resists the proud. The person needing deliverance
must recognize his need and willingly seek help. You cannot help a
person who does not really want to be helped. A person who is
bound needs to want to be free. The Lord asks the people, will
you be clean? Yes, Lord of all. What do you
want me to do? I want to see again. So sometimes
the Lord would be asking them to verbalize what they want.
Because if the person wants, Infirmity, I mean there are some
people who are hypochondriacs, there are people who like to
be sick and maybe they prefer it. Gives a good excuse as to
why I can't do anything. But if a person wants to be free,
there's a responsibility that comes with it. They need to be
desperate to be set free by the Lord. The one seeking deliverance
should humble himself completely. God resists the proud but he
gives grace to the humble. Where there's pride in the heart,
the person cannot be delivered, not truly. So you get some people
who are really arrogant about even their rebellion and full
of excuses. That's not very promising. Foundations need to be carefully
laid. It's important that the person understands how evil spirits
work, by what laws they operate and what ground for bondage is.
I'm not an innocent victim needing deliverance, I'm a guilty sinner
needing forgiveness first and foremost. I gave Satan ground. What ground did I give him? How
did I give him ground? How can I reclaim that ground? What restitution
can I do? Otherwise it would be easy for
them to be re-deceived by the evil spirits, to again give ground
back to the devil. It's a truth that sets us free,
and unless the person is filled with the Holy Spirit, he'll be
opened for further bondage by evil spirits. Now for example,
just take the fact, here I'm slightly diverging, but Many
people teach it's always God's will for everybody to be healed.
All sickness is of the devil. It's never of God. And God can
never be working through sickness. It has to be of the devil. It's
got to be rebuked. And we all claim healing now.
Okay. Now, bearing in mind that most
people are sick because of unhealthy lifestyles and extremely bad
things we do, like everything from the vaccinations that the
state requires to the chemical sprayed plants and the hormone
pumped cows and the vast amounts of extremely unhealthy things
that we eat, not to mention smoke, and then we're not even talking
about the fumes that we breathe in from pollution, and there's
a lot bad in our society. Now, take a person who eats drunk
food all the time. They just go for McDonald's,
morning, noon, night, and supersize it. And they drink Coca-Cola,
and they smoke, and so on. Now, this person gets diabetes,
and they get all these different problems. Now, assuming that
different medical problems are causing, you know, the liver's
shutting down and all this. Now, this person comes forward
and you pray for them and they get healed. Okay? And now, if he doesn't
change his life, he's going to go back to the same process of
getting the same things again. Isn't there a place for discipleship
and for preaching about principles? It's not just that everybody
here is some innocent victim of Satan who needs deliverance
or healing. Okay? But if there's no discipleship
and teaching, the people just go right back into the very lifestyle
sins that caused the problem in the first place. He goes out and he finds seven
other demons and goes back in and the person's last state is
worse than the first. Correct. So it's only Christ's victory
on the cross that makes deliverance possible. The ground that was
given to evil spirits must be reclaimed before true deliverance
can take place. The process of deliverance now
needs to be reversed. Step by step the ground that
was given to the enemy needs to be reclaimed. The counselor
needs to be called. I mean, this isn't everyone's
ministry. Not everyone can handle, just like not everyone can handle
being an emergency room trauma nurse, not everyone in the church
is called to deliverance ministry. They need to be called and cleansed
and consecrated and committed. It's a lot of hard work. People
like Erla Stegen and Craig Donation spend multiplied hours and sometimes
days and weeks on some counselling cases for deliverance. It doesn't
always happen in one go. When spiritual warfare, the battle
lines have been drawn. There's a battle between light
and darkness, between holiness and sin, between the real and
the counterfeit. And boy, is there a lot of counterfeit
in the world today. We're living in a fake world full of fake,
fraud, and farce. There is the truth and there's
a lot of deception. There's forgiveness and there
is bitterness. The Lord makes it clear, if you will not forgive
your brother, neither will I forgive you. Forgiveness is predicated
on we must forgive as well. Forgive us our sins as we forgive
those who sin against us. There is submission to God and
there is rebellion against God. There is humility and there is
pride. Freedom and bondage, truth versus
lies, activity versus passivity, and it's God versus Satan in
the final analysis. Like a surgical operation, there
needs to be a pre-operative phase, prepping, and actual operation,
then the post-operative phase. And that's true for deliverance
as well. So in the same way, the three phases of deliverance
are preparation for deliverance, which is teaching and counseling.
There's the process of prayer for deliverance, which is the
actual operation. And then there's the post-deliverance,
how we stay free afterwards. Phase 1, preparation for deliverance
requires removing all ground for bondage and preparing ground
for deliverance. Darkness must be dealt with ruthlessly
and deception must be discovered and destroyed. For example, You
go into the person's home and, yep, do you have occultic music? Yes, we do. Do you have occultic
books? We do. Do you have a Ouija board?
Yep, that's got to go. Statues, idols of, whether it's
Mary or Buddha, I mean, idols go. Witchcraft, occultic things
you bought for fun at the side of the road in Zimbabwe, occultic
masks that's used for human sacrifices. It's not funny. Let's get rid
of it. Pornography, got to go. These
cancel this, destroy that, burn this, break that. There's a lot
of things that are giving ground to devil we can get rid of. All
doors that were open for the demons must now be closed, one
by one. All ground given to the enemy
must be removed and retaken one by one. And this requires separating
from sin, self-centeredness and satanic activities and influences.
Uniting with God, His holiness, His light, His truth and His
integrity. For example, the Kendrick brothers
make some great films. My personal favorite is Fireproof.
Maybe that's because I was in the fire brigade. key scene there
where the character Kirk Cameron is playing takes a baseball bat
to his computer. I mean, that was where his temptation
and his problems and his bondage was, and he physically takes
it to pieces. Now, I mean, that's a dramatic
scene in the film, but it's often what's needed. Sometimes for
a person, and I know people who've come from those sort of lifestyles
where A fire service, like they have at Quest Monte. I've decided
to follow Jesus, no turning back. Burning your bridges, burning
your boats, so to speak. Bringing the occultic materials,
like they did in Ephesus. And having a bonfire, just, this
is the end, I'm not going back. And that brings a lot of freedom. It's like leaving Egypt and entering
the Promised Land. Negatively, the person needs
to be dead to sin, self, society and evil spirits. This is what
baptism symbolizes. You're buried with Christ in
baptism, you're raised to newness of life. It's the end of the
old life and the beginning of a new. You come out of Egypt
and you should go into promised land. But of course Israel didn't
go into promised land for 40 years. Why? Because of doubt,
disbelief, rebellion, sin. They wandered for 40 years in
the wilderness instead of going straight from Egypt into promised
land. They could have, but for sin. So many Christians actually
spend most of their life in the wilderness. Because, spiritually
speaking, very few Christians go out of Egypt, out of the world,
and into a spiritual Christian life of real spiritual warfare
and so on. Most are just wandering around
defeat in the wilderness. Correct. Only Caleb and Joshua
of the twelve scouts gave a good believing response. The other
ten gave an unbelieving response. So negatively, you leave Egypt.
Positively, you enter the Promised Land or you need to be alive
to Christ, to holiness and the Spirit of God. As with the people
of Israel in the Book of Exodus, you need to get out of Egypt,
out of slavery, cross the river to the Promised Land and conquer
the enemy. And that's a symbol of our spiritual life. We need
to die to self and come alive to Christ. Now this involves
a realization of where we have given ground to evil spirits,
to where we may be in demonic bondage, recognition to the truth
of our condition. I mean, for example, when I was
converted, I was a secular humanist who believed in abortion and
euthanasia. In fact, I even argued in a debate,
and I was chairman of the debating side, I argued that we should
have mandatory euthanasia for everyone at age 65. Where do you get these ideas
from? 15 year old brats, I mean, what did I know? But these are
the kind of silly things that I believed, and of course, what
I believed about history, what I believed about just about anything,
was wrong. It all had to be changed. And
also, one of the things I enjoyed doing as a... Thank you. One of the things I enjoyed doing
back in my time as a pagan, was shoplifting. I didn't need to
shoplift, I shoplifted for fun. And I shoplifted for fun out
of a challenge, because I remember when the idea came to my mind,
I was with my mother, who's opening an account in a department store
downtown Bulawera, and I saw someone being brought in by security
and taken to back and my mother asked what's that and said he's
been caught shot with it. My mother asked what's going to
be done with him. They said, well, we require them to pay
twice the value of the thing that they stole or we take them
to the police. And she asked, well, why don't
you take them to the police? It's more trouble than it's worth.
If they're willing to pay twice what they stole, then we let
them go. And at that, Something triggered
my mind and I thought, great, as long as I always have twice
as much money in my pocket as the item I'm stealing, I can
get away with it. And I shoplifted a lot of things. I mean, I didn't
need them. I always had more money than
I needed than the things I stole, but it was like shoplifting became
one of my sports. And so when I was converted,
did I have a lot of, and many of the shops that I'd stolen
from no longer existed. And I wasn't blown away anymore.
So I took a huge library of books that I'd stolen, all Biggles
books and things like that, to the Red Cross Library and donated
to the Red Cross Children's Library, things like this. And shops that
I'd stolen from in Cape Town, I had to take it back. So there
was obvious restitution that had to be done instantly. I didn't
recognise immediately everything I'd done wrong. I mean, for example,
that was the first time I recognised as, you're a shoplifter, you've
got to return the things you stole. But later on it came,
you've used the telephone without permission, at the mission that
you were volunteering at, run a big phone booth with long distance
phone booths, that's all sustained. But I mean, that took me actually
a couple of years to come to that conviction. My conscience
wasn't alerted to everything immediately. It's like an onion,
you peel off one layer and then, oh, that brings something else
to mind, and so on. Now this involves recognizing all the
ground that we've given to evil spirits and relying on God. For
example, it came to mind at one point I'd gone with my mother
who did Transcendental Meditation. I got involved in Transcendental
Meditation and all these things and I discovered in my investigation
later that this name that we keep repeating was actually the
name of a Hindu God. and they said they choose a name
for you to meditate on, it helps you clear your mind. It's just,
it's a Hindu evangelistic effort, this Transcendental Meditation.
The Mahesh Mahesh Yogi who, he converted the Beatles to Hinduism
and somehow or another we got sucked into Transcendental Meditation.
That was something else I realized after a while. This has also
got to go. But there are so many things that I'm still finding
in my mind and in my knowledge of history, things that are lies
that I need to now reject and replace with truth, tales of
truth. remembering, researching into family background something,
and life and revelation from God. As I discovered the huge
amount of occultic activity that, for example, I mentioned my father
doing clairvoyance and going to witch doctors and so on. And
sometimes God brought to mind other matters too. We need to
remember, we need to recall back to memory those steps, those
stumblings and those sins that led to our state of where we
are. And of course, the later in life we're converted, the
more complex and the more involved it is. Cross the Bunch mission
requires people to make a list of all the sins God brings to
their mind, and it can take weeks. Some people it takes months.
before they have got a fairly... and then sometime later in their
life they'll remember more things. But we can't handle it all at
once. It's a step-by-step process.
Remember therefore from where you have fallen and repent. We
live in a world of deception and a world of falsehood. And
therefore we shouldn't be surprised that deliverance is quite a complex
ongoing process. Now the best way is to write
down these sins one by one and repent to them one by one. And
this should include sins of commission and omission. One of the things
I was convicted of was the need to make right with people that
I had hurt or who were offended at me. as somebody who could be quite
harsh and very direct and argumentative, I had quite a few I had to go
to. And that included my parents. We need to repent radically and
completely. In some ways it's easier for
a gangster or someone from an obvious criminal background to
repent because they know what their sins are. The trouble is
respectable people in a church who've been brought up in a Christian
family take just about everything they've done for granted and
don't recognize the insidious nature of the world. I've got
a date, I know I was converted, on the night of the 3rd of April
1977. I mean, it's crystal clear. I
came from a secular background, I was converted, I've got a date.
But a person brought up in a Christian family, like my children, or
my wife, they have trouble remembering exactly when they were converted,
because they were brought up in a Christian family, and it
was all kind of a process. But true repentance involves
a complete change of mind, a complete change of heart. and life, and
a radical change in our attitudes, our affections, and our acts.
I know that I was so hypercritical that I had no respect for my
elders before I was converted. But afterwards, that's one of
the first things God contacted me to do, is to have respect
for my elders, and to stop arguing without respect. Without repentance,
there's no salvation. Without repentance, there's no
deliverance. Without repentance, there's no relationship with
God. Repentance is the lifeblood of the Christian's walk with
God. It's at the heart of true Godliness. The crisis and continued
life of repentance includes conviction of sins, contrition. You know
what contrition is? It's a change of heart. Conviction
is a change of mind. Contrition is a change of heart.
and conversion to change of life. There can also be confession,
cleansing, conversion, consecration and commitment to Christ.
Demonology & Deliverance
Series Spiritual Warfare Workshop
| Sermon ID | 11291740553 |
| Duration | 1:17:00 |
| Date | |
| Category | Teaching |
| Language | English |
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