You are of God little children and have overcome them because greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. We've been looking over the past weeks at various aspects of living the overcoming life and the last two sessions we looked, we began to look at the enemies of the spiritual life and so we started with the world system and last time we looked at the flesh. Now the final one and there's a reason I left this for last.

The final one is overcoming the realm of darkness. Now the reason I left this one for last is because the realm of darkness which consists of satan and his hordes of demons they rely on the previous two enemies that we've covered. Without the world system there would be no people for satan to work with and to work through and he would be powerless because he controls the nations and he uses individuals.

Without the flesh temptations just would not work. You see demons work through and motivate the works of the flesh. Now tonight I want to look at the entire realm of darkness satan and how he set it up.

I've dealt with the concept of deliverance in a series that I did some time ago entitled overcoming evil and eventually became three full volumes and you can purchase those on our bookshop if you want to study further. But tonight I want to fill in some of the gaps and address a few things that I didn't cover in those series. I want to start by looking back at the beginning when God created man.

In Genesis chapter 1 and verse 27 and verse 28 we these words. So God created mankind in his own likeness. He created them similar to God.

He made them to be both male and female and God blessed them and God said to them be fruitful and increase in number fill up the earth and bring it under your control and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves around on the earth. When God made mankind he gave them full authority in the earth. He basically created the earth put them in charge and said here you go you take over from here I'm going back off into heaven again to do all the other things that I do.

I'll come and visit every now and then but you're in charge. Now when God made man he made him to be similar to God so that in effect Adam and Eve when they were in this world were the gods of this world. Adam specifically as the federal head of the human race made in the image of God was the god of this world and God made them to have a creative ability so that just as God created so man has in their spirit a creative ability that is similar to God's creative ability.

Now satan had neither of these abilities. When satan came to tempt Eve he only had one ability and that was the ability to persuade and to influence with words. At that point in time Adam and Eve were sinless.

They had not partaken of the forbidden fruit so they did not have the seed of sin in them. The flesh as we know it now did not exist in Adam and Eve and because of that satan had no power to control them in any way. He could only test them and tempt them by making suggestions.

Now once Eve and then Adam submitted to satan's temptation and took of that fruit they became sinful creatures and we have what the bible called the fall of man. From that time satan could now invade the earth and take control and when he did he set up a system that enabled him to control all living things in the world and he did that using a hierarchy that he had set up amongst all his hosts of demons that followed him and his rebellion in heaven and that were cast out with him. Scripture says a third of the angels of heaven were cast out with him.

These are the demon forces they are innumerable in number. Now there are various different levels in satan's realm. At the highest level they are what the scripture refers to as princes of darkness or spiritual wickedness in high places.

Underneath these dominating rulers in satan's realm there are different levels, three different levels of demon power that actually operates directly in this world. Now you see all of that described in Ephesians chapter 6 and verse 12. Paul says for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood but against principalities, against authorities, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

And so you see there are four different categories of demon powers in satan's realm of darkness. Once Adam had opened the door through sin and allowed satan to come in and to control this world, demons could now go wild, they could now possess animals because animals also have a soul and because demons are disembodied spirits they lost their angelic bodies when they were cast out of heaven. Demons seek something, a creature that has a body so that they can live again through a body because spirits have no influence in this physical world.

And we're going to see it in far more detail as we continue now. Spirits cannot influence this world directly, they can only do it through a body that is made from this world. Demons could now inhabit the souls also of humans but they could do far more than that, they could now tap into the power that was built into the human spirit which is godlike, has creative abilities and came from god.

Now this world is controlled by demonic princes, demonic princes. Now just so that you are sure that what I'm teaching is scriptural, in this series I am giving you as much scripture as I can to support what I'm teaching, you can go and examine it for yourself. How do we know that this world is being ruled by demonic princes? Well Paul told us this in 1 Corinthians chapter 2, reading from verse 7 he says this, he says but we speak the wisdom of god in a secret, the hidden wisdom which god foreordained before this age for our glory.

And then he says this, he says which none of the princes of this world system knew for had they known it they would not have crucified the lord of glory. Now who crucified Jesus? It was people, it was mankind, it was mankind that crucified Jesus but yet Paul says here that the princes of the world system were the ones who crucified Jesus and that means what those people who actually carried out the acts of crucifixion did was actually motivated by and controlled by higher level demon powers which are known as the princes of darkness. I want you to understand what a prince of darkness is.

Satan is not a king, god is king and his realm is called the kingdom of god or the kingdom of heaven. Satan wanted to be like god but he was not a king, he was only a prince. Satan can only set up a principality not a kingdom because he is only a prince and he's known as the prince of darkness.

Now he'd like to pretend he's a king and he'd like to copy god and set up a realm that looks like the kingdom of god but actually he's not capable of that because he's only a prince and therefore the entire realm of darkness and that is why I'm using the term realm of darkness rather than kingdom of darkness because it is not a kingdom. At one time I used to use that term and many people use the term the kingdom of darkness, there is no kingdom of darkness because there is no king ruling in that realm. Now Lucifer has set up a control of this entire world system under three heads.

He so wants to be like god that he has even tried to counterfeit the trinity and so Lucifer has with him two other demonic princes at a similar level to him although he is the chief prince and he set these up to be in control of a different aspect of the world. Now Lucifer himself he controls all world religions and the cults. Ever heard of the world council of churches? Trust me it's not a spiritual organization.

Lucifer's in charge of the world council of churches. He controls all false cults like Islam, Buddhism, Jehovah's Witness, Mormons, all these huge organizations in the world. Most of them opposed to and anti-christianity and trying to destroy the true church all under the control of Lucifer himself.

The second leader in Satan's trinity which I like to call the infernal trio is somebody in the bible calls Apollyon. He's a scaly creature mentioned in revelation and he controls the armies of Satan. Apollyon is in charge of creating war, sicknesses, pandemics.

We see the hand of Apollyon today throughout the world in the current COVID-19 pandemic. All demonic attack is under the control of Apollyon. Organizations like the World Health Organization.

Oh but they are so good, doing so much good. They're under the control of Apollyon. All the liberation movements of this world which I spoke about in our first teaching in this series.

They're all under the control of Apollyon from the highest level. The third member of this infernal trio I like to call Pharaoh because the Lord showed me that he is like the pharaoh of this world and in the scriptures Egypt is always a picture of the world and Pharaoh being the leader of the world. Pharaoh is known in the scriptures as the god of this world system.

Pharaoh controls the United Nations and all international political organizations. He also controls all international financial organizations. He controls the political and the economic world system and if there's any other organization out there that is sought to bring a control or an influence that reaches throughout the nations of this world you can be sure one of these characters has a finger in that pie also.

So be very careful especially as a believer to give heed or listen to these organizations. At times may sound like they're doing a lot of good but ultimately they are under the control of Satan. Now there's a lot of people out there teaching conspiracy theories and actually what they're trying to do is to give power to specific people in this world mostly those who have large financial resources and can use their finances to control but actually the true control of all conspiracy comes from the infernal trio right at the top.

So don't go pointing your fingers at specific characters in this world certainly they may be instruments that Satan is using but you need to look at the power that's behind these people because you see these demons they're not controlling a physical world they are controlling an inhabited world and their control comes only through the people of this world. If there were no people these demons would have no power whatsoever because a spirit without a body has no ability to influence this world. I want you to keep that in mind a spirit without a body has no ability to influence this world.

While you are alive and in a body in this world you have a power as a human being to be an influence in this world but the moment you die and your spirit leaves your body you lose that influence. Sadly some organizations like the Catholic Church teach that we can pray to the saints which are actually human beings that have died and left their bodies. Well don't waste your time because they have no power to do anything in this world.

Only a human being has been given authority and license to make things happen in this world because God gave that into the hands of his creation mankind and he never took it away. Now there's a prince for every region of this world. There are princes over continents, there are princes over countries, over provinces, over municipalities, over cities etc and these are commonly called territorial spirits because they have a specific territory that they've been given authority to influence and as I said already their power is manifested through people who are in those regions because only man has true authority in the earth.

Now under these demonic princes there are three levels of demon power which operate directly in this world and are largely involved in working specifically through and with human beings. I'll describe them there in Ephesians chapter 6 and he started at the bottom and he worked up. He said there are principalities, powers which can also be translated authorities and then rulers of the darkness of this world.

I'm going to start at the top one which is the ruler demon. Ruler demons are the strongest and most controlling demons and when a person is possessed by a demon it is usually the ruler demon that will actually take up habitation in a person in order to control them. We see a description of this in the gospels where Jesus cast out the legion out of a man and the demon, the ruler demons name was legion and Jesus cast the legion out but along with legion there were thousands of lower level demons.

These are the authorities or the powers. They are lower level controlling spirits like sub-level authorities if you like and then the very lowest level which are the principalities which are kind of like ordinary people peasants and so we have hierarchy in the world so we have it in satan's realm as well. Now there's so much confusion in the body of Christ and people have taken this term principality and elevated it to the highest level because they don't understand what a prince is.

You see a principality is the region over which a prince rules and those people in the region are ordinary citizens. When we come against a principality demon we are dealing with ordinary little lower level demons ultimately they are under the authority of a prince demon not a principality demon. So if you've heard people speaking about we came against this principality realm it's nonsense it's a prince.

Principalities are small and they're probably the least significant and the least powerful of all the demons and there are gazillions of them. They're everywhere and that's the outline on satan's realm and how he set it up. I've taught a bit on that elsewhere but I want to bring it all together for you as we get to the main thrust of where we're going tonight.

Without the world system demons would have no power to control or affect us in this world whatsoever and that is why we look first at the world system. A system which has been set up under the control of all of these different levels of satan's hierarchy. Without that there would be no demons affecting us but when it comes to us personally satan has an inroad to every single human being and it's called the flesh and we looked at that in some detail last time.

Now satan could not touch Adam or Eve before they sinned because he was only a spirit without a human body. Once they became sinful however he could now influence them by bringing temptations and stirring up the desires of the flesh. Satan now has the ability to control us because we have a weakness in us that he can exploit.

It's that sinful nature which the bible calls the flesh. Now it always starts with the flesh. When the flesh is there satan and his demons have a cause, a ground to attack and do what they do.

Now there's an interesting little scripture mentioned in obscurity in one of the gospels and it may not mean what I'm going to share now but it illustrates the principle that I'm speaking about. In Matthew 24 and verse 28 it says for wherever there is a dead body that is where the vultures will gather together. Let me ask you a question.

How many vultures have you seen? How often do you see vultures in everyday life? You don't because there's no dead bodies lying around but go out into a place for example where animals have died and they're lying there rotting and sure enough somewhere out of nowhere will appear these ugly birds to come and feed on that dead rotting body. You see the flesh is like a dead rotten body. Its smell attracts all the vulture demons from everywhere.

They can almost smell it in the air. Ah there is somebody who has a weakness of the flesh. Here is somebody that I can attack and consume.

There was no flesh. There'd be no demons attacking. There's no dead bodies.

There's no vultures. See now when we healed the flesh to satan he has ground to work. So demons they look for fleshly weaknesses in humans and actually they don't know what your weaknesses are and they cannot read your thoughts.

They cannot know what you are thinking. They can only tell by your actions. However they do have the ability to place thoughts into your mind and this is how satan tempts.

He puts a thought in your mind and when you respond to that temptation he says aha that one worked. See put the thought into the person's mind. Hey you see that beautiful woman over there.

Go have a closer look. Maybe she's available and you could have sex with her. See now if you ignore that thought completely and you don't even turn and look satan doesn't know or he comes to the conclusion lust is not one of your weaknesses.

See but if the moment he puts that thought in your mind you turn and you look and you look a second time. He knows this is an area of weakness that I can exploit. I'm going to get work on that one.

I'm going to try and arrange circumstances to get him to sin. Now when we continually heal up our fleshly weaknesses and we get a whole list of them in Galatians chapter 5 which the bible calls the works of the flesh. When we continually heal these up to a demon eventually the demon begins to help us motivate that desire of the flesh.

Now you need to understand that if the flesh was not there the demon could not influence you. For example a spirit of anger does not produce anger in a person. It simply takes a person who's continually angry and encourages their anger and motivates it until eventually their anger goes out of control and a spirit of anger now is controlling that person's life.

A spirit of lust doesn't necessarily create the lust in a person but when it's healed it up to a demon when lust is allowed to control you the demon's going to be there to increase that sexual desire and motivate it until you are in bondage to sexual lust and desire. How about witchcraft? Most people think that witchcraft is something that demons specifically do. That it is demons that make a person a witch.

Well it may surprise you to find that amongst the list of works of the flesh in Galatians chapter 5 is witchcraft or sorcery. Witchcraft is not something produced by demons. Witchcraft is something produced by the flesh.

Demons simply get in and motivate it and help it to become stronger. What is witchcraft? It's simply the desire to impose your will on somebody else. So most of what we have attributed to demon powers and claimed that demons are the cause of these things in our lives in actual fact it's the flesh that originated these things.

Demons are simply there to motivate and to assist those works of the flesh. Now Adam and Eve originally did not have this and Jesus was born in a similar condition to what Adam and Eve were. He was born without the seed of sin and therefore when Satan came to tempt him his temptations had no power because they couldn't he couldn't control Jesus because Jesus didn't have the flesh and again if we want scriptural proof here it is.

In John chapter 14 and verse 30 Jesus said after this I will not talk much with you for the prince of this world is coming but he has control of nothing in me. No flesh, no demon influence. Now demons have to use the power that is built into mankind.

Demons use human power. Only man who was created in the image and likeness of God. Only man amongst all the creation has the ability to create.

Demons cannot create. They cannot. If a demon wants to create anything they have to tap into and use the creative power that was built into man.

And so part of the reason why a demon wants to enter into your body and influence and control you is that demon wants to get access to the power that is resident in you. Somebody's called it the latent power of the soul but it's not. It's the latent power of the human spirits.

Satan wants to use that power for himself and so he's got to gain entrance into you to get access to that power. Well how does he gain entrance? Does he jump in when you're not looking? A lot of people seem to think that demon possession took place when we weren't looking. Satan just jumped in when we didn't notice and now you have a demon.

No, no. A demon only gains entrance into your life through sin, through the flesh. And your sin now gives him the license to your spiritual abilities.

Your sin gives demons access to the power in you. And the sins of other people gives demons access to that power and they are able to now use that power against you. But it's not their own power.

It is the power that is built into humanity. Now we look at something like witchcraft and divination. As I said already witchcraft is a work of the flesh which involves imposing your will on another and when you yield that work of the flesh to a demon that demon will bring in spiritual forces tapping into the power of your own spirit to impose a kind of control, a force to bring other people into subservience and to do what they want to do.

How about divination? Now revelation is a function of the human spirit. We have intuition, the ability to get true knowledge and revelation. We have communion which is the ability to communicate with other spirits and we have wisdom which is the ability to anticipate the future and to plan for what is coming.

When satan takes control of those powers he's now able to do a kind of a fortune telling and to predict the future. Well what opens the door to this? Your fleshly desire to know what's coming tomorrow. Oh if only I knew what the future held for me.

Will I be handsome? Will I be rich? Will I be popular? Will I marry the person of my dreams? Am I going to live long? See our fleshly desire, our selfish desire to want to know the future opens the door to a demon power that will come in, will tap into the power of your human spirit and will actually now control and create the future for you. Now a spirit of divination is not only on the future, a spirit of divination also knows the past and the present. All of these things are a counterfeit of prophetic ministry which is under the control of the Holy Spirit.

We have demonic, spiritualistic, occultish practices. It's two main ones and they work very similar depending on which part of the world you are. In some parts of the world they use what's called a Ouija board, in other parts they use a glass with a series of letters and that's normally called glassy glassy and when people participate in practicing these things they are inviting demons to tell them things about past, present and future.

Now all of these things require human intervention. A demon doesn't speak out into the air, we don't sit and say okay spirit will you tell me the name of the person I'm going to marry. No, what happens is everybody joins in the case of glassy glassy they all put their finger on the glass, in the case of Ouija they hold the Ouija board and the demon powers within them cause their bodies to move the glass or cause the needle in the Ouija board to begin to spin.

That power is not coming directly from the demon it's coming from the person who is being controlled by the demon because demons cannot make things physically happen in this earth, only human beings can. So the demon power taps into your spiritual power and causes the prediction to take place. You see that? Some people have had a loved one that's died and they also want to know where is the person now.

I would love to speak to them and make contact with them to find out about them and so we have a realm called spiritism the desire to talk with dead people. Now when you allow that to happen a demon is quite happy to pose as the dead person but in order to do that it requires a human being person normally known as a medium through which the demon can speak and so when a medium goes into a trance the demon takes control of their body and the demon speaks out pretending to be the dead person and because the demon knows all about the dead person it can then speak through the medium things that only that original person may have known. Spiritism becomes so advanced that the medium can actually produce a physical image of the face of that person.

It appears like a ghostly apparition. Now as I said demons cannot do things in this physical realm so what a demon does in spiritism is it causes actually some of the cells of the body of the medium to actually ooze out the ears and their nose and their mouth. The substance that they call ectoplasm and they take that ectoplasm and they will form it into an image that looks just like the face of the person who died.

Positive proof that this dead person as it were is actually speaking through the medium. These are the kind of things that take place in spiritism but always always always there has to be a human channel through which the demon can work. Now satan likes to counterfeit what god does and god produces by his spirit what is known as the gifts of the spirit.

Satan tries to copy those to make us think at times that a person is being influenced by the holy spirit when in actual fact they are being influenced by a demon spirit and without the gift of discerning of spirits you can be taken in and you may believe a lie. Demons can speak in other tongues so the fact that a person speaks in other tongues is not necessarily proof that they are speaking under the influence of the holy spirit. Now there is a danger there and some people have been taught that their tongues were not of god but were of satan.

Well if you genuinely came to god the scripture says we ask him for an egg he's not going to give us a serpent we ask him for bread he's not going to give us a stone so you don't need to be afraid that if you genuinely sought the holy spirit and speak in tongues by his power you don't need to be afraid that that may be a demon tongue but people unbelievers who are possessed by demons can speak in tongues in spiritless churches they will often have tongues and even interpretation making it look like something real counterfeit satan can create healing after all he's the author of sickness and disease all he needs to do to remove his hand and counterfeit what looks like a healing and you may think that this person has the power of healing but they're not doing it by the power of the spirit of god they're doing it by a demon power and when you allow yourself to be healed by such a person you actually submit your body to a demon power and actually you can come under a spiritual bondage so that your healing actually is motivated by a demon and even the future you identify this and renounce it the sickness can come back instantly be very careful of gifts of the spirit as a proof that a person is of god demons know the past and the present so because a person knows all about you can tell you what the curtains in your lounge look like does not mean they're a prophet or are using the spirit of god be very careful now when a demon tries to counterfeit god they present what looks like god in the book of acts we see that this young girl who was possessed by a spirit of divination kept crying out these men are the servants of the most high god well that was true wasn't it it made it look like this demon was from god but it wasn't it was distracting people and paul eventually said come out of her and cast out that spirit of divination now amongst people who have been involved in some of these false things there's the idea that there are good spirits and bad spirits you know you get white witches and you get black witches you know white witches they do a lot of good black witches they bring destruction and kill people and destroy so the one is good and the other one's bad no they are all evil he's simply trying to counterfeit what god does i want to look at a very important subject before we end you and that is some of the false teachings and the confusion that exists in the body of christ right now when it comes to dealing with demon powers and overcome them most of us most of this occurs in the charismatic realm now and in the area of what is now known as deliverance ministry i hate that term i often use it these are a few terms you may have heard and there's much teaching out there on them you may be taught that you have created soul ties with somebody and to cut soul ties i find that people got that they have a great struggle cutting soul ties with somebody else now this is the truth when you come in contact with another human being the communion function of your human spirit is able to reach out and touch the communion function of their human spirit and if there are demonic powers and curses in that person's life you can actually open yourself to being influenced by those demon powers when a person has sin in their life and you then open your spirit and your heart to them you can pick up the contamination of the demonic curse that's in their life because of their sin it's not a soul tie it is a spiritual bond and that spiritual bond needs to be renounced and it needs to be broken see most of the curses that we experience come from human spirits and people are so taken up with fighting demons without realizing that actually demons can do nothing unless they have human channels most of the problems you have from demonic attack are coming from another human being who has given a demon license to use the power in their spirit against you and now you come under the curse and a bondage and are influenced you don't need to break soul ties you need to break spiritual links and bonds with that person and actually it's a very simple process you just say i break all spiritual links of that person to whom i've opened my heart i renounce every influence that came from them i have nothing to do with their curses or any of it in the name of jesus i cut that cord down and it's like an umbilical cord that is cut instantly and you are set free it's not a struggle now because demons have their favorite ways of working and have so many different manifestations largely through the sinful habits of the flesh a few people out there have decided to give names to certain kind of demons and you've probably heard of the jezebel spirit the jezebel spirit based on queen jezebel in the old testament jezebel also mentioned in the book of revelation which used sexual immorality to seduce people and lead them astray and so the jezebel spirit is portrayed as this controlling seducing spirit but the jezebel spirit is not a demon spirit the jezebel spirit is a work of the flesh it's a person who seeks to dominate and influence and control others now when it exists in women they will often use their physical attraction and sexuality in order to control men they don't go looking for the demon of jezebel to cast it out look for a person who's living in the flesh and they've healed themselves over to a demon power so the sexual desire in them is strongly heightened and they now have an orientation that we like to call pi or parental inversion where they try to dominate and control others and be parents to everybody else and treat everybody else like children now this spirit this work of the flesh does not only exist in women men have it as well the jezebel spirit is simply a controlling person who has submitted themselves to satan to enhance their own natural strengths using the power of their own spirit to impose on somebody else and control them the person has that kind of spirit they bring others very quickly into subjection when they tell you to do something you find yourself responding before you realize hang on i don't need to do that it's such a strong influence that comes on you that you find yourself responding to it now that person needs to get dealt with casting the demon out is not going to fix it because the flesh is still there another spirit that everybody's majoring on is the spirit of python and that's based on one little scripture the one there where paul cast the spirit of divination out of the girl the slave girl and the spirit of divination there in the greek word is puthor which is interpreted as being python and a spirit of python it's got nothing to do with a python certainly it may manifest itself in a physical image of a python but simply a spirit of divination and you know what most demons particularly the power demons and especially the ruler demons have the ability to do that it's not a special breed of demon it's quite simply again a person who has submitted themselves to demon powers using their own human power now to get false revelation yeah the spirit of leviathan leviathan is a a big sea creature a monster described in scriptures and so people say the spirit of leviathan is like this aggressive monster spirit no it's not it's a monster work of the flesh of dominating and controlling and being aggressive and attacking and go looking for demons go looking for the flesh and you'll find the spirit of leviathan and then this one is a favorite marine spirits spirits that live in the sea lord the scriptures that people take to try and prove this just they just amazed me you know in greek mythology they were the gods and the goddesses who controlled humanity now who came up with this brilliant idea of these gods and goddesses they're simply demon powers that manifested themselves over time and people instead of worshiping god began to worship and look to demon powers demonic princes and so we have the king of the sea and all this greek mythology and people now try to interpret this into demons and the creatures of the sea are are symptoms of how these demons work even as a shark may attack you there's a shark marine demon there's a stingray marine demon oh what a load of nonsense already told you the four levels of demon that they are and they can manifest any characteristic they want don't go looking for marine spirits please throw away this garbage and everybody's trying to teach out there now here's something it's very subtle and it's part of the counterfeit and i want to mention it and i do it hesitantly and i want you to understand where i'm coming from when the holy spirit moves upon us the holy spirit actually also works with our human spirits but now it's the holy spirit the spirit of god that is taking what god built into us and highly magnifying it far greater than what any demon can do and when the holy spirit begins to move upon us producing what the scripture calls the fruit of the spirit and as we have the external manifestations of the holy spirit where we actually physically feel the presence of god this begins to affect every part of our being our spirit and our soul and our bodies it affects our emotions and when the spirit of god comes upon you you may sense a very strong release of love and peace and especially joy you may feel such joy that all the cares of this world melt away and you feel that you can just laugh out loud maybe something you haven't done in years others as they come into the presence of god become so aware of their sin and their weakness and their failures that they weep uncontrollably in conviction and repentance before the lord one of the most visible effects of the external anointing is when the human body cannot stand under that power and people collapse to the ground and fall under the power of god for some people the power of god in them feels so strong that they feel a trembling and a shaking take place in their bodies these are all true manifestations of the holy spirit but satan is not happy for people to submit to the holy spirit he wants to lead people astray and confuse them and he tries to produce his own manifestations as a distraction to stop you from tapping into the genuine now this is seen very frequently in so-called revival movements and revival churches when the genuine comes satan has to fight it by counterfeiting the genuine and making it look like it is god and when we look at it sometimes because if we think it is god we can be distracted from the true spirit of god among some of these movements people begin to manifest behavior that's out of control one of these is they may roar like a lion and they justify this by saying that's the lion of the tribe of judah that's roaring through me listen that's the only passage in the bible that likens god or jesus anyway to a lion most of the time the lion is a picture of satan who goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour when i see a lion in the spirit the last thing that ever comes to my mind is oh that's the lion of the tribe of judah the lion of the tribe of judah relates to israel folks we are the church we are the church of the living god we are the first born in christ if anybody's going to rise up in power like a lion that's going to be you and me the spirit of god is not a lion nor is he a barking dog and people bark like dogs supposedly under the power of the holy spirit and there's other loud manifestations which people think this is how god manifests i ministered to somebody once who had a manifestation which they called the trumpet of god this person themselves a bit confused and wondered what this was about but they'd been told by the leaders that this was the trumpet of god sounding announcing victory well as i prayed with them i was shocked as we came to pray and the spirit of god began to move this person suddenly let out a loud noise i tell you what i nearly died of fright i was not the holy spirit no sir no sir and then the demon actually spoke through them they moved their head from side to side well i didn't need the gifted discerning to spirits of spirit to know that was not the spirit of god it was a demon anything that's out of your control folks is not the holy spirit now among some of these revival churches especially places like brownsville and the revival that took place at that time people began to contort in all sorts of weird ways their bodies would twist they would twitch do weird things like that they thought that this was the spirit of god one person became famous videos were published everywhere of this person who couldn't stand still she just kept moving her head like that and that was supposed to be the spirit of god making a fool out of her now folks no that's satan trying to pose like the spirit of god be very careful when you see these manifestations people suddenly ripping out with laughter or crying and i've seen people move from the one into the other and there's no anointing no presence of god no no there's something deeper inside there watch out for it counterfeit spirits you always remain in control says in two terms the one verse seven god did not give us the spirit of insecurity and timidity but of dynamic power and of agape love and of self-control if any influence comes on you that you cannot control reject it take authority over it right now and tell it to go because that's not the holy spirit the holy spirit is a gentleman he's the shepherd he leads he doesn't dominate he doesn't force himself anything that's forceful comes from satan and the holy spirit moves on you he creates an influence and you are free to submit to it and respond to it if you want to and if you don't want to you can resist it you can quench the spirit and he will withdraw now how then do we overcome demons firstly we have the power of the holy spirit we don't overcome demons by telling them to come out that can only be done in unbelievers who don't have the holy spirit in them in a believer we have the power of the holy spirit if we want to overcome satan's influence we must overcome the works of the flesh and how we do we do that by the fruit of the spirit by the indwelling holy spirit what we like to call the internal anointing of the spirit of god demons on the other hand need something more powerful and to come against them you need to use the external anointing now unbelievers they don't they don't have any power to overcome these things so much of what is taught under deliverance of ministry can certainly be applied to an unbeliever who's possessed by a demon you could cast that demon out jesus and the disciples cast demons out of unbelievers only person that we read in acts who manifested the demon after becoming a christian was simon the sorcerer and we do not read that peter and john cast the demon out of him they addressed the flesh instead unbelievers may need deliverance and may be deliverance all says in 2 timothy 225 in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves if god somehow would give them repentance these are unbelievers to the acknowledging of the truth and that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil who are taken captive by him at his will these people need the gospel and they need to be born again now believers on the other hand are totally protected from evil and we saw that scripture at the beginning you have god little children and have overcome them because greater is he that is in you and he that is in the world humans do not jump in when you're not looking they can only be invited through sin as you walk in the light the realm of darkness is overcome i taught this before there's a lovely scripture in 1 john 1 7 that says if we walk in the light as he is in the light we have fellowship one with another and the blood of jesus christ his son cleanses us from all sin and you know when we walk in the spirit and we walk in the light instead of passing curses to one another we begin to pass blessing and people who become associated with you begin to be contaminated by the good things of god and the blessing of god people who hang around you should experience blessing in their lives so we have the holy spirit and his power to overcome demons and we have the power of authority which is in the name of jesus authority has been delegated downwards all believers have authority to use the name of jesus those who qualify for higher level ministries are given additional authority and we've taught that much elsewhere just remember that all authority the power comes from faith if you want to exercise authority as a believer you must build your faith by filling yourself with the word and so in conclusion satan has no power over us unless it is given to him through sin when you send you give him license and you give him an open door to reverse this you must kick him out and close the door james chapter 4 verse 7 is our definitive scripture always on how to deal with these things it says submit yourselves therefore to god resist the devil and he will leave once you've dealt with your own sin deal with the spiritual links where you've opened your heart close to james 4 7 first and then break spiritual links with everybody you know including the dog now that's a joke you don't know sometimes where come from break brings with your links with your relatives with your friends whether they're believers or not make sure that there are no spiritual links there that are giving satan an inroad in your life now just invite jesus to live in you and through you and we've taught you that in some detail in the previous parts of the series and then folks as you step forward and walk in the spirit no demon can touch you you can walk a life overcoming the realm of darkness

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