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.