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Are you ready to be put to work for God's End-Time Army? It is NOW or NEVER! Angelia Ruth, “Angie”, has ministered in over 35 countries in some of the most dangerous places in the world. Author and co-author of over a dozen books, she has led mission teams and college groups over the past 30 years and is recognized for her prison ministry program by the State of Texas. She teaches God has a hilariously exciting life for every believer who will take Him at His Word and follow Him into R-I-S-K. If you have ears for truth and a sincere desire to sell out to God, this podcast is for you.
Okay. It's good to be that time of year, and so we're gonna take a biblical perspective of witchcraft. I'm gonna save myself some time and make sure that you clearly know that this is one area that I would ask you to be completely pure in, Where the Bible says to keep it simple, keep it pure, that if you're pure that God reacts to you purely. And I would just say if you could take an area of your life and just not mix things up in this area, I'd say it'd be the area of witchcraft. Because of all areas, that's the one area you're stepping completely outside of the god's power.
Speaker 1:And I feel like it endangers you to get deeper experiences with the holy spirit if you're gonna mix the enemy's power into it too. Like, if you're mixing anything about Satan into your life and then you go into the deeper realms of the Holy Spirit, it messes you up because you can't distinguish real well the difference between the power sources if you're I don't know if I should say milking off the 2 cows. I mean, there are 2 power sources in the world, and people will, a lot of times, start mixing them. I do not understand why. Me to me, witchcraft would be the one thing that, as a Christian, your spirit should be just absolutely abhorrent to.
Speaker 1:So when I meet someone and they have a fascination with something in it, it makes me question it at a foundational issue of something's wrong in their life, if there's some sort of a pull towards the mystical outside of god. So that's the approach I'm gonna take today. If you are in it, go ahead and confess it and get it under the blood of Jesus. I'm not telling you don't say anything because it only grows from here. So we're gonna take a look into Deuteronomy 1810 through 14.
Speaker 1:It's one of the strongest verses. It just says, let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire. Let no one be found among you who does these different practices of divination, of witchcraft, of sorcery. Sorcery in the Greek, if you move that word into Greek, it's talking about mixing it with any kind of medicinal. It's anything that involves pharmacea, anything that has anything to do with drugs.
Speaker 1:So drugs and witchcraft are mixed together. Interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or cast spells, or who is a medium, or a spiritist, or who consults with the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the lord. Because of these same detestable practices, the lord your god will drive out the nations before you. So in other words, how on earth can god put you in as a Christian nation if you're doing the very thing that he's using to drive out the pagans?
Speaker 1:Like, for instance, we come into this land. There's a lot of pagan natives in this land. And if they're driven out of the land and we're given this land as a Christian nation, and then we start doing what they're doing, then god goes, why did I drive them out? Does that make sense? So when people see that, you know, America has this strong sense that God placed us here, then suddenly we're doing the very things that the that the people who didn't know god, it becomes a conflict of interest.
Speaker 1:And so this is what it's saying here. The nations you will dispossess listen to those who practice sorcery or divination. But as for you, your god has not permitted you to do so. You're not to even listen to him. It can be translated at the last sentence, for those who practice witchcraft.
Speaker 1:God has forbidden you to do so. So we could stop right there and just be done with it if you could keep just completely clean, But I have never in my life seen such an outpouring of witchcraft around people these days. It is like everybody, whether you're involved in witchcraft to some extent, have an open door, there's some sort of person with witchcraft coming towards you. It's just kinda like a spirit coming down on our nation, on the world, and so you definitely need to be aware of it and pay attention. Because if I just take my time to tell you what happens in 1 month's time of talking to different people, it's shocking how much witchcraft that we're dealing with.
Speaker 1:Now let's get it clear. There is no such thing as white witchcraft and black witchcraft as far as god's concerned. He doesn't give a free pass to 1 because, oh, it does the good stuff. Some people try to move it. There's no such thing as good witches.
Speaker 1:It is completely under the curse. It gets your life spinning. Like, you can take a person, and the minute their life goes out of control, you can usually find some port of entry that witchcraft contacted their life. And it usually brings some kind of death or destruction immediately into their life. Now I want you to look at Leviticus 20.
Speaker 1:It says, I will set my face against anyone who terms the mediums and spiritists to prostitute themselves by following them, and I will cut them off from the people. And then verse 27 of the same chapter, a man or woman who is a medium or spirituous among you must be put to death. Yours to stone them. Their blood will be on their own heads. In other words, you can kill them and no blood will be on your hands.
Speaker 1:They deserve to die. These are strong words. I mean, you're not seeing much movement room there. The lord is very clear on witches that he literally has no tolerance for. And I would say that you're gonna have to have an understanding that witchcraft reacts differently.
Speaker 1:Like, when we've worked with people that have witchcraft, there's a legal opening that has to be shut down, and it takes more than just coming to Christ. You have to go into some areas of what I call renouncing. You're breaking some things that you made with your will. You know, Saul in the bible, Israel's first king, got into witchcraft and it got him into trouble. And any people in leadership, you need to pray for them because witch crap will try to attack them.
Speaker 1:So our leaders are under an attack from witchcraft. 1st Chronicles 1013 says, Saul died because he was unfaithful to the Lord. He did not keep the word of the Lord and he even consulted a medium for guidance. Anything like this gets you in deep trouble with the lord. So, as an introduction, is a lot of people get into real sensational or hype.
Speaker 1:You know, if you read a book, they really tell you the most gory stories that they ever have experienced. If you read mom's book on her story of coming out of being tormented, what I like about it is they don't go into the real hyped up examples. They really start talking to you about how normal people can be delivered, how you can be set free. Now I want you to give yourself a little exam, for a minute. When you hear a story about witchcraft or you hear that Christians can cast out demons and you think, oh, wow.
Speaker 1:I read about that in the bible. You mean people are really doing that today? And I go, oh, yes. Especially on the mission field. You will see all types of people involved in this.
Speaker 1:Or you hear a sermon on it, how does it affect you when you hear about it? You'll either have some people that shake with excitement. I mean, they get into a frenzy. And then you have other people that run and never go back to that bible study again. And CS Lewis made that comment.
Speaker 1:He said this in the beginning of Screwtape Letters. They either have an absurd fascination with it or they're completely frightened about it, and they just will pretend it doesn't exist. Which way does it affect you? Well, neither one is correct. You need to do it biblical.
Speaker 1:Let's just look at it, face it like the Bible faces it. I don't wanna get too hyped over it. Jesus told them, go out and cast out demons. And, honestly, when you see a demon cast out, it is so amazing. You see the power of god.
Speaker 1:You know why the disciples came home and said, I can't imagine. This is so amazing. And Jesus said, alright. Let's take it back a notch or 2. Let's rejoice that your name's written in the book of life, Or, you know, you'll have this thing where people are totally afraid of it, and they will not do what the Bible says, and that's addressed demonic spirits.
Speaker 1:I hope that your feet are planted so solemnly on the ground that not if you face a demonic spirit, but when you face a demonic spirit, you know what to do. It's not hard. It's very simple. We've laughed, you know, when mom spoke Psalm 91, that one lady was so afraid when they were robbing the convenience store and she was in there. She couldn't think of Psalm 91, and she just screamed feathers.
Speaker 1:She was trying to say, Hunter is Williams. You know, you try to get out some scripture. You might get out some word out of your mouth when this happens to you. But if you can get out the word Jesus, it causes every demonic spirit to have to obey. Set with strength.
Speaker 1:You know, you remember that scene in The War Room. They did such a good job in that movie, The War Room, to describe what it looks like to use your authority in a dangerous situation. So, yes, it's strange phenomena. You just think about it. People that are into witchcraft, they're odd.
Speaker 1:They have a lot of problems. It's confusing. It feels dark. It's witchy to you. But what's even odder is how much I'm hearing that witches are going to church.
Speaker 1:You know, we were in a certain place in West Texas just in the last few weeks, and they said that they found out a lot of these people that were in the human trafficking It bothered It bothered me that last night, my mom's speaking in a bible study for a group of women not too far from here, and they were saying that the lady who put a curse on them, it was into the witchcraft stuff, goes to church with them at their Baptist church. And so I looked her up on Facebook. I was in there, and I was reading about her of just what kind of person is she. You know, some people advertise that they're into witchcraft, some don't. But when I heard the words coming out of her mouth, it just made it hard for me to reconcile with what she has posted on Facebook.
Speaker 1:That's very troublesome to notice that there are people that have witchcraft mixed in. Now you don't need to mix. That's where the trouble comes. If you mix at any level Revelations 315 says, don't be like the hypocrites. People are not the only ones who hate hypocrites.
Speaker 1:God hates a hypocrite. You can't claim both sides. God doesn't want wishy washy, compromising fence riders. You've got to make a deliberate choice to be either hot or cold, but don't be a mixer. Don't have both temperatures going on in your body.
Speaker 1:And that's the same way that it's saying here is you need people that are either completely sold out to the lord or people that haven't yet met him. But these people that are in the middle mixing, it's what we call I call they're like a freak. Like, they have some of the Holy Spirit and then they have some of the dark kingdom. What are they doing? So I would say to you, make up your mind.
Speaker 1:Go one way or the other. Luke 1428 through 30. It's like, make up your mind your loyalty. Make up your mind if you're gonna serve me. Whether it's an emotional experience or not, you can't take the deliberate calculated willful choice out of it.
Speaker 1:It's either hot or cold or you're hypocrites. And the sad thing about living lukewarm, you're gonna miss out on all the crazy fun that you have sold out to the lord. I mean, you miss out on really enjoying your walk with the lord. And so anything short of a sellout, you're short changing yourself, and you're gonna make me spend too long in your deliverance. So in the interest of getting this cleaned out, I want you to look at some of these verses in the bible and know where they are.
Speaker 1:1 of the most unusual passages is in acts 814 through 24. And in this passage, it's when the disciples were so excited that after acts 2, when the holy spirit fell on everybody, they start going around and getting disciples filled with the holy spirit. And it was so powerful when they were being filled with the holy spirit that a magician thought, wow. I don't have any trick that I do that's better than this trick of the holy spirit. I'm telling you this power that these guys have, it it would be worth a minute in my show.
Speaker 1:And so he puts money on the table and says, can I buy this act? Now do you remember Peter, what he had to say about this? He goes, may your silver and your gold perish with you? Go home and try to get forgiven? I don't know if you can get forgiven.
Speaker 1:Your heart is so full of gall and bitterness, and Peter just starts calling him everything in the book. Wow. That's your first impression of someone that comes up and said, can I mix? You know, can I make this for profit? Like, tell us how you're doing this.
Speaker 1:I mean, I'm gonna put some money down for this. So in x, the first sign of someone coming up, and they make a a real plain spoken offer. Like, this is so powerful. If you look at it from the positive sense, is your Christianity so powerful that magicians are wanting to bite? I mean, you gotta look at it and think there must have been such an incredible move of the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1:It must have been so flashy that he says nothing I do compares to what you disciples have just shown me. And then he decides money can buy this. And that's where he gets in trouble. So the first thing is the gifts of the spirit can't be bought. It's gonna be either the love for money, love for name, or love for god.
Speaker 1:Now the second thing about mixing is mixing yourself into it. It's Isaiah 1412 through 15. And I want you to study the big eyes. So many people, they mix together their own soulish self with Christianity. Now this one is a little bit trickier.
Speaker 1:But if you look at Isaiah 14 12, the speaker is talking about the 5 wheels. But tonight, we're talking about witchcraft, and we're talking about how literally the Lord forbids any part of witchcraft being among the Christian's life. So I want you to look at this. It says, in this, you have Lucifer speaking. And he said, I will ascend to heaven.
Speaker 1:But I want you to notice the I wills. I will ascend to heaven. I will raise my throne above the stars of god. I will sit on the mount of assembly in the recesses of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the cloud.
Speaker 1:I will make myself like the most high. This is called the I wills. If you're on the throne of your heart, if you're on the throne of your little Christian heart, it's a problem. Because you're getting into self power versus god power. And this one's a little harder to recognize.
Speaker 1:I mean, when you have a magician trying to buy, it's one thing. But when you have someone that is very self willed, you don't realize this is the passage where Lucifer actually failed. And so it's the I will. And so what you're gonna find out that it's a spirit. Witchcraft is a spirit that wants to go independent of God.
Speaker 1:Any independence in you that wants to go independent of God, like making decisions independent of seeking his will, making decisions on your own, fence under this category of what I'm calling a mixer. Like you're mixing your selfish ambition. You're mixing your self will, your pride, your arrogance. You're mixing that I will. So those steps open the door to this form of witchcraft that we're just seeing poured out on our nation.
Speaker 1:Now, also, what witchcraft wants to do is it wants to take someone who is a good, sweet Christian and put them underneath them. For some reason, they like having possession of someone, and that might be you. Somebody has their design set on you that you're targeted, and they want to manipulate you in some form or the other. I would be shocked that you could live your whole life and not come up against this. Your interpersonal relationships.
Speaker 1:Your handlers try to get the best of you. You've gotta watch for something when you're being manipulated by the spirit because it wants to get in control of your will. So we're gonna have a little fireside chat tonight. This is for those who think Halloween is harmless. And it's only been of recent years that the church has really stood up and rejected Halloween.
Speaker 1:And, yeah, it's a it's a bitter pill to swallow for most of us, especially us that are very honorary at heart and love pranks. I mean, you're like, you're taking my day away from me that I prank everyone. You know, like, you want to do these absurd things to people. Let me just tell you, move your day to April 4th. You can do whatever you want.
Speaker 1:There's a day stored for you. But I had a girl that gave me a lot of perspective on this. She was a cross liner, and she was watching all the parents of little children, all our little cross line, young marriage, start boohoo and crying that they were giving up Halloween for their children. And she goes, you've got to be kidding. You've got all mixed with god, and you're crying about giving up Halloween.
Speaker 1:And she said, what do you think I gave up to become a Christian? She said, did you know that my parents are Buddhist and rejected me? My mom slapped me in the face. She said every nursery rhyme I ever learned, every story, every piece of my culture, every bit of the way I think. And she said, your Americans are upset over one small day out of the year when you're asking people to convert that are out of Muslim faith or out of Buddhist faith, Hinduism, and they have to completely give up everything.
Speaker 1:And we think nothing of that. But if we're asked to give up something that the Bible forbids, we think we're traumatized. When she was through speaking, nobody had a word to say. But in studying and in going through people's lives, I've not been able to determine that it's anything harmless about it. It's just a step to get closer into you.
Speaker 1:And it's that thing that we're talking about where you actually are mixing something, and what you're giving up is so small. You're missing out on the power of god. You're missing out on what god can give you with strength and power. And if you'll go on with the lord, you'll find out you'll never feel cheated by him. He always has unique ways to have your life just full and satisfied and fun.
Speaker 1:Believe me, I'm not in this because it's boring. That literally, the life that god has for you is the ultimate of everything you've ever wanted. You know, someone reminded me today, they said, I love that concept you have that you have to go to the room of the lordship. The lordship to Jesus Christ room before you find the secret bookcase. Like, it's in going through the lordship room that the lord can take you to the room of the desires of your heart.
Speaker 1:Because he literally will put you in the room where you cannot imagine the treasures in the room of the desires of your heart. But it would be dangerous to put you in that room before you had first gone through the lordship room. You have to go through the lordship room to be trusted with the desires of your heart because there can't be mixing going on. That's where the soul gets in. Now the story that I always enjoy reading on October 31st, I get to actually speak on that day.
Speaker 1:I love taking the story. First Samuel 28, y'all can be looking it up. Wow. This is a problem where Saul actually mixes the occult. Now the problem Saul had was that he didn't actually want a witch in the land.
Speaker 1:He had been the one that had taken the witches and thrown them out of the country, but he had a small problem. He had never learned to hear god's voice, and Samuel had always done it for him. So all he had to do is do what he always did and get to Samuel. Let Samuel hear the lord for him. The only problem we have with Samuel hearing the lord for him is Samuel dead.
Speaker 1:It's a small detail that's a problem. This is why I would invite you to learn how to hear the lord because sometimes the person that you're used to relying on, they expire, and you have a slight problem of needing their gift to be able to hear the Lord. So Saul comes up with this unique idea, and his idea was, look. It's not that I'm gonna go hear from a witch and let the witch tell me what to do. I'm a just let the witch get Samuel for me, and Samuel will tell me what to do like always.
Speaker 1:And if you'll notice, that was the scripture I gave you to begin with. This is what got Saul in trouble. So it's a great story to read late at night when everybody wants something spook of. Why did they tell ghost stories when you could be telling stories like this in the bible? This is a really good story.
Speaker 1:And you have to ask yourself a thousand questions. Like, he conjures up a grumpy old man. And the very fact the guy is so grumpy, you kinda think that he may really have called up Samuel and not a demon. I mean, I would just imagine what brother Jacob would do if I decide to pull him back. I mean, rump and frustration is not even the word.
Speaker 1:So you see this very unique experience where Samuel comes back in some sort of form, and he tells Saul what he wants to hear and what he doesn't want to hear. So if you're looking at verse 6, the problem of not being able to hear god is now he's hearing. And even though he had earlier banished the witches from the land in, verse 7 and 9, he'd gone far up into the north in verse 11 through 15, and he had found a witch that was just on the border of Israel. Now what's interesting is we've interviewed someone in that little city, and they love to talk about the witch of Indore. Like, I think all the witches still live up there to this day.
Speaker 1:And, you know, they're attracted to certain cities. Kinda like here, if you notice, a lot of the witchcraft people Watch who takes their vacation to Salem this year? Certain towns have certain pools to them. And what's bad about people going to Salem here is the word Salem means peace. I mean, it's Jeru Salem.
Speaker 1:It was meant for the holiness of god. It wasn't meant for a witchcraft to get a a stronghold in it. And so the message that Saul gets here is 16 through 19 is you will die. And let me just save you a trip to the local medium. Pretty much everything you'll hear from them is something to do with death.
Speaker 1:Like, the monarch spirit is always concerned about your death, and it will give you a timeline for when you'll die. You know, the enemy, he's kinda like a peddler, and he comes on a wagon. He reminds you in the old days where the peddler comes. He's pushing the the snackel and the charmer, and he you know, all these different things he has. And the guy, he didn't care what he sells you.
Speaker 1:He's just gonna sell you something off of his wagon. Same with the enemy. He's just trying to sell you something. He wants you to receive it. He wants you to believe this is gonna happen.
Speaker 1:And when you receive it, I can't tell you how many people that say, wow. That's exactly what I had, you know, said to me, and then this hit me. You know? Or this happened to my father, and he went to a fortune teller and exactly what they said. You're getting into a realm where you're making an allot with what the enemy has has planned for your life.
Speaker 1:In other words, let's just make it shortcut. You could just say, Satan wants to steal, kill, and destroy from you. Jesus wants to give you life and life abundantly, so you just agree with the devil still killing and destroying from you. You just make it a lot shorter by getting into that realm of the occult. How many of you have ever had some sort of a cult involvement?
Speaker 1:You know, have you ever had that in your past? Is it in your family line? I would tell you this is so important for you to repent of anything where you've mixed it. Any generational curse coming down your family where there was any witchcraft, craft, it sets up problems for the future generations. It sets up things that go wrong in your life.
Speaker 1:Saul compromised. Saul cheated on God. Saul was one half obedient to God, and he never learned to hear God for himself. God expected for him to tap into the spirit realm as a way of life. He told Saul, he said, when you go to these people that you're gonna meet them on the road, you'll be changed into another man.
Speaker 1:Twice, he told him that. But Saul persisted in doing things both ways. He wanted to please people, and he wanted to please god. He wanted to please those around him, and this is where we get into trouble. This is where Jesus calls your allegiance to question.
Speaker 1:And he says, you're gonna have to completely let go of everything else and follow me. And then he gives you the strength to be like a wall of bronze to these people. Like, he gives you the strength to reach them. But as long as they have you under their influence, you don't have any real respect with the people that you're trying to reach. So god had expected Saul to turn into another man, but Saul just couldn't completely let go and, let god have his life.
Speaker 1:So first Samuel 20 83 and the odd thing is he was actually successful in getting to Samuel. Just because you're successful doesn't make it right. Just because you're able to make it happen, just because you get a message back from the dead doesn't make it okay. God had offered Saul all of his power, but Saul only gave god a portion of his will. God made him king.
Speaker 1:He gave him position. He rejected it by compromise and saw sin with spiritual adultery. When you go into witchcraft, you are committing adultery. You're committing spiritual adultery against God. And this is where it gets it all confused inside of your spirit because God is offering you all power, a position, strength, and you're keeping your odds open for other power sources.
Speaker 1:You're keeping everything open in those areas. It starts making things very complicated. Now if you're somebody that has a strong call of god on your life, I've noticed towards the end of your life that there'll be a spirit of witchcraft that will try to come and get you under their control. If you'll read these spiritual giants, like if you read different ones of them, at the end of their life when they get very old and their will starts, you know, or just age has gotten to a certain point with them, immediately, the spirit will try to make contact with them. They'll try to get them under their control.
Speaker 1:Read Kathryn Kuhlman. Someone came in, took care of things she had. They'll cut your communication off with everyone. Someone wants to control you. So if you hear this word, if I say or you read something, speaking about witchcraft or you hear it said, you're thinking it's always a cult or some kind of satanic practice.
Speaker 1:But when a person says there's a spirit of witchcraft after you, 9 times out of 10, they're also meaning a spirit of control. They interchange those words, witchcraft with control. It's when your life comes under someone else's will. It comes out of 1st Samuel 15. I want you to hear this.
Speaker 1:Samuel tells Saul, and he's the one that's been hearing the lord for Saul, but he says, your rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft. And he said, your arrogance and your stubbornness is like idolatry. You know, we ask ourselves, why would anybody make an idol and bow down to it? I mean, what would you think if if you came in here tonight and I was bowing before that fox over there? Just on the ground, chanting something about you would think something's really wrong.
Speaker 1:Not only would you say, is there something wrong with me? Because I was doing idolatry, you would say something's wrong with her brain. How could a stuffed fox give you any power? But did you know it's saying the same thing about your arrogance and your stubbornness? If you're a stubborn person, it's as stupid as idolatry.
Speaker 1:You would look at me and go, oh, that's really pathetic. That's really something's tragically wrong. But the same thing's true. Arrogance and stubbornness is just like that. Same kinda sin.
Speaker 1:And rebellion is the same kind of sin as witchcraft. But notice the scripture doesn't stop there. That's where people come up with that concept. That's the point that I'm making. There's things in the spiritual realm that is subjecting you to someone else's will.
Speaker 1:It says because you've rejected the word of the lord, he has rejected you as king. What you don't wanna do in your life is reject god's word. And, you know, what's unique about this is it's god's word to Saul through Samuel. When I started doing a study of this, sometime we can go through it, I realized Saul was responsible to what another man heard. That's where it gets very interesting because there's examples in the bible where you don't need to follow what someone else says, and then there's examples where you absolutely have to follow what someone else says.
Speaker 1:Let me let you guess how you know the difference. You just gotta know the word of god, whether it's coming out someone else's mouth or whether it's coming directly down from heaven. Yes. You're his sheep. You're made to hear his voice.
Speaker 1:And, yes, you can be responsible to what someone else hears for your life. Someone may be going up to you and gonna give you a word from god. It's just like god given it to you, if the word of god's in their mouth. And that's what's happening here to Saul, that he had not gotten acquainted with the word of God for himself, nor could he obey it when someone else gave it to him. Now the spirit of witchcraft, let me tell you what it'll feel like when you get near it.
Speaker 1:When I get around people that are heavy into just the old, occult witchcraft, it makes my head spin. Or I get a real bad hit right here. Like, I can't hardly be in new age shops. My parents would laugh that when I was a little kid, they would take me through a certain city, and I'd be in the back seat crying. My head.
Speaker 1:My head. We went through a tour in Israel, and they were showing us places that were heavy in idolatry, if you can believe it. You know, some of these places where Jesus did one thing or the other, they've made them shrines. And it's no longer worshiping Jesus. It looks like more idolatry than you can imagine.
Speaker 1:And so everybody on our team was coming out, and they were all sitting in a circle and they were saying, what happened? Like, we have splitting headaches. And I told them, I said, well, we've been in a place where there's actual worship trons going on in there. That's your discernment reacting to a spirit. So, yeah, when you get around witchcraft, when you get around the new age, you should have discernment.
Speaker 1:And a lot of times, you will feel it inside of you. Like, your head will spin. I led a witch to the lord He and I were discussing some things, and I dabbled a little too deep in finding out about his past and what he was able to do. And I and I remember it just felt like something had gripped my head, and I was going straight to the ground. You know, there's a cult that's near here that and the cult leader, one of his men, came into my dad's office years ago.
Speaker 1:Dad asked the guy, did the children of Israel serve Moses or serve god? And the guy goes, I can't answer that. And it's because they're messed up y'all. It's just like a a network of control. You know, the beauty of God is he didn't control you.
Speaker 1:He does not make you accept eternal life. He doesn't make you accept Jesus. He gave his free will. It's the beauty, and it's also what frightens me the most. I would have liked for Eve to pick that fruit off the tree and got it slapped it right out of her hands.
Speaker 1:I would have thought there's some choices I've made that I was like, lord, you just have permission if you ever want to just slap it right out of my hands. So the danger is the fact that you have free will, but it's just like falling in love. How about if someone went up to you and said, you have to love me. I'm gonna force you to. And they pull out their caveman club, and they hit you over the head.
Speaker 1:They drag you by your hair, and they drag you into their home, and they say, you will love me the rest of your life. Are you convinced? Is that a good Hallmark movie? We're just we're mortified by that. That's because god made love free, and that's the beauty of it.
Speaker 1:He made you where you had to woo, where you had to flirt, where you had to create joy. And the same thing is with him. There's much joy around him. And when you get around manipulation and control and those kind of things, you're entering into the enemy's camp. Even if it's in the name of religion, it's not the spirit of the lord.
Speaker 1:Will the lord be tough on you? Oh, yes. Will he discipline you? Mhmm. Will he tell you what's good for you?
Speaker 1:Mhmm. He's father, but it's love, and it's strength. But when you get near this spirit, what you're gonna feel is confusion. Like, your head will start feeling like it's gonna come off its rocker. If you ever like, in a certain class, and we would get in certain scholarly works.
Speaker 1:And they would start telling you the bible doesn't mean what it's saying, or the bible's wrong on this. It's, you know, that inerrancy question. And they can make it so muddy that it literally makes your head just start feel like it's gonna crack. I'm telling you, be aware of that when you're reading because you bumped into a spirit. That's your spirit telling you something's not right.
Speaker 1:Something's very wrong. Let me tell you something. Sometimes you feel like the one that always hit me was doubt, and I could feel my head spin. That spirit of doubt would get so strong. I'm gonna tell you, you're in spiritual warfare.
Speaker 1:Do something about it. Pay attention to that. That's not your imagination. That's a spirit of doubt trying to talk you out of your relationship with god. And sometimes when a little snakey thought would hit me, like the snake did to Eve in the garden and say, how about if God doesn't mean what he's saying here?
Speaker 1:He still check with your spirit and say, in my spirit, I feel peace. Now my head may feel crazy, but I feel peaceful in my spirit. And you let your life be ruled by peace. It's very clear in my family because of what happened to mom after she she witnessed to that Buddhist lady, that it creates chaos in your mind. So I'm telling you that a spirit of witchcraft will affect you with confusion, and there's plenty of it out there.
Speaker 1:You can get into the news. You can read things, and literally, there's times that your mind starts to feel like it's about to break. You're in the spiritual warfare. Take a step back from it and start doing what you know to do. Start filling yourself with the truth of of the lord and ask the lord.
Speaker 1:Like, sometimes I'll take something that confuses me, and, I'll do what my mom says. I'm gonna put it up on a shelf. And, lord, when you're ready to talk to me about it, bring it up with me. And sometimes in my bible, I'll put a question mark by something because know this, the devil is a theologian. He can quote scripture.
Speaker 1:He will take it and he will twist it. Every major cult is based on scripture. There's this retro connected to these things. Like, I was shocked to find that this one guy that was at our church had had his brother in a cult, and I can't remember the name of which cult it was. But they have trained men that after they paid $20,000, they went in, they kidnapped him.
Speaker 1:They pulled him out of the cult. The police notes this organization comes in and for $20,000, the price of a car, you can get your relative out. But they put them for part of the $20,000, they put them in a training for 3 months to deprogram them. And so they deprogrammed his brother's mind. And I said, how did they deprogram him?
Speaker 1:And they said, with scripture. There's government agents that use scripture to deprogram their minds. I said, were the government agents Christians? No. They just know what scriptures to use.
Speaker 1:But guess what? They so unraveled him that he has no religion now. So they made him secular. Because let me tell you something. It's not a mind religion.
Speaker 1:It's a heart relationship. All these movie stars that are into the the control of the mind, that's how you know it's a cult. We do not find God with our mind. Mother spent 8 years trying to find God with her mind. Truth will sometimes bypass your mind and go straight into your spirit, into your heart.
Speaker 1:So realize your mind sometimes gets knotted up. And even a person that doesn't know the Lord can think scripture and sometimes untangle your mind. I mean, it's it's unusual. This is what we're dealing with in the area of confusion. The next thing that you can know is the spirit of witchcraft.
Speaker 1:It causes division. It will separate people that were very good friends. It will separate people that had deep agreement relationships. If you have a prayer partner, if you have someone that is your strength, at some point in your life, the devil will attack that friendship. At some point, the enemy will attack that relationship and try to undo it with division.
Speaker 1:Be ready for it. It's not hard you can fix it with the word of god. Remember when the devil quoted the word of god to Jesus? He didn't go Jesus didn't go, oh, no. The devil's quoting the word of god.
Speaker 1:We're at the end. What do I do? The devil just said the word of God to me. What did Jesus say back to the devil? He'd been saying, it is written.
Speaker 1:It is written. It is written. And he goes, it is further written. Ain't that funny? He just put one more word in it.
Speaker 1:It's further written. So that's what I was gonna tell you is sometimes something I teach you, someone will untwist it and they'll teach you and say that's not what you mean. That's why I always ask you, do me the courtesy to come back and ask me. Because a lot of times, I can say, get it further written and show you something. You'll go, oh, now that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Because there's so many tricks in the bag. I mean, people are when you argue with these guys, they've got an argumentative spirit about them, and it causes division. And they're very religious. That's why I try to treat y'all very gently to start getting word in you, get word in you, because people will trick your mind. And they make a mess out of things that are precious.
Speaker 1:The guy was taking something very precious, and he was making a mess out of it. I mean and he was messing up all kinds of people by threatening them and making everything be fear based. They have division. It's control for people to use these things to manipulate people to do them the way they want them to, And it can work on the other end too. So as it starts to do the division, the next thing is that emotional manipulation.
Speaker 1:If you feel guilt, if you feel like, oh, I just if I don't help this person, they're just not gonna make it. Mom has had that attack this week. So, anyway, it's just where they start emotionally trying to manipulate you and try to make you do what they want you to do. Let me tell you what you're gonna face is is gonna try to make you lose your mind. My son-in-law, he was 3 generations baptist.
Speaker 1:His preachers and music directors, and so he had decided he would go down because he had been a Christian all of his life. You know, he accepted the Lord at very young age, accepted Jesus. And he went to get a friend of his out of a cult in Waco. He'd gone to school with this girl. And so when he went to get her, she came out and started talking to him.
Speaker 1:And his mind started doing something really strange. He came back at this point, he wasn't married to Jolinda, but he comes back to the church, and he's in the back of the church, and he starts telling me that it was something about Jesus isn't the son of god, and he was saying some really crazy things. And I knew his parents were chilling, but it had just come on him just like this. And I knew he had picked up a spirit from that girl, and he just started seeing all kinds of things. Just as fast as like, they talk really fast.
Speaker 1:And he was telling me this stuff. And I would ask him, are you are you okay? And he started babbling things that I knew he didn't believe. And so I just laid hands on him. When I commanded that spirit to come off in Jesus' name, let him go, his mind came back to him.
Speaker 1:And that's why I like for you to witness with me where I'm on a trip with you and I hold your hand. So if anything goes wrong, then I can be there to help work you through it. Because, literally, the enemy does not want you to take someone out of the kingdom of darkness. That's exactly what happened to mom. She was taking someone out of his kingdom, and he goes, oh, no.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna pay you back. And so that's what happens here. They want to go to hell. They're very happy about it. They don't want you messing with them.
Speaker 1:The people under witchcraft are very much satisfied. So that's where I would tell you that you need to realize you are in spiritual warfare. So the confusion, the division, the emotional manipulation, and the spiritual battle you get into is witchcraft. And if you don't wanna just see it in American culture, you can go over in the gypsy side a little. There's a lot in India.
Speaker 1:The Chinese have it. The Jewish people have their cities. The Arabic people have it. Witchcraft's everywhere. There's forms of it in every culture.
Speaker 1:You know, I remembered y'all being at the return with Franklin Graham. And all of a sudden, you felt this cool wind, and somebody said, what shifted? And I think y'all asked Moss. And, Jonathan Khan had rebuked the spirit of witchcraft. You can feel the shift in atmosphere because we've been just discussing when you make an atmosphere shift.
Speaker 1:It's the difference you'll feel if if you have a city where your intercessors pray till they run the covens out of your town, where you can get that to come off of them. So in Exodus 2218, the bible is very serious about not allowing a witch to live, And it just says that should not allow a witch to live. Now I don't know under the new testament if we should put this in forward motion. So I'll give you probably a a better new testament idea about it, but we did talk to a lady when we were praying for her. I think it's last week.
Speaker 1:She had murdered someone. And, you know, that's the reason I started doing prison ministry was because I didn't wanna work with boring people. I wanted to see if the gospel worked on people that had done something really, really bad, like murder someone. I was looking at this girl. I was like, you murdered your mother.
Speaker 1:Like, why did you murder your mother? I said, I don't need to look at you. Why did you murder your mother? Why did you do that? And she said, my mother took my cell phone away from me.
Speaker 1:Wow. Uh-huh. Oh, yeah. You meet all types. That's why you're out there and you're like, if the gospel's gonna work, I want it working in very dark places.
Speaker 1:Like, give me the unusual ones. Well, the Lord's been so faithful. We've been getting a lot of very unusual people. So we have this little lady down there, and I'm looking at her and she goes, I'm passive and very passive. And she goes, there was this guy that liked me.
Speaker 1:In fact, there were several guys that liked me. And she says, I pretended to lock him. And then I shot him and killed him. And so the 2 ladies there had brought her because she wanted to go back to prison. They were afraid that she was gonna use them to get her way back into prison.
Speaker 1:But, anyway, I said, did he do something abhorrent to you? Like, did he need to be? Like, you shot him. Did he need shooting? And they didn't think that was funny.
Speaker 1:I thought I had been really funny, but they weren't laughing. And, so then I make another joke. I go, well, you are very passive until the day you're not. And I was like, wow. When you come out, I mean, you just bubbled out there.
Speaker 1:But as we went on, she goes, no. He didn't do anything. He was, you know, he just liked me. I just couldn't tell him no. And I was like, well, I had a cousin like that with vacuums, but I'm just in shock with you with this with the guy.
Speaker 1:But then she mentioned something. She had made a deal with the devil. The devil had started putting pressure on her. Give me your soul. Give me your soul.
Speaker 1:Give me your soul. And she goes, why not? That's passively. Okay. Why not?
Speaker 1:And then she told us, well, he might have been in witchcraft. So she was sensing something on him, but it took her over 2 or 3 hours of talking to us before she ever said there was a dark side to him. You know, we're coming into an environment that people are just openly telling you what's happening. If y'all have not seen Sid Roth and him telling about astral projection. And he got into those business books.
Speaker 1:I think Pat told me the name of one of the books on business work. Sid Roth wanted to make $1,000,000. Okay. Which businessman has not told himself, I wanna be a millionaire by the time I'm 30? But they get you into meditation.
Speaker 1:Well, Sid was a secular Jew. He started reading that I wanna make $1,000,000. He started doing that meditation, and something got a hold of him. And when he would try to go to sleep at night, his soul would leave his body and travel. And he said it was going all over the place.
Speaker 1:And he said, I got so crazy in my head. He said, I was giving back the $1,000,000. You know? Like, I don't want the $1,000,000. I just want the ability to sleep again.
Speaker 1:And he said that's what brought him to faith was that he couldn't make his soul quit slipping out of his body. And, like, he would try to sleep and out it would go and take off. And so you can feel like, you would say a business book can do this, but it's like you're giving your will over to something. Watch them. You'll have these guys tell you, I traded the devil something for my success.
Speaker 1:They'll go to India and make a deal. They'll go to China. Start paying attention to that because that's what's happening is that people are making a deal. Now everything of the devil is a counterfeit or a corruption of what god has. You know, the lord has you where you can translate in the spirit.
Speaker 1:You know, Philip, he was preaching in one place, and he ended up preaching in another. But the difference between translation and acts the difference between translation and acts is you take your body with you. I mean, the lord puts you there. You go there body, soul, and spirit. Where soul travel is you leave and then you come back.
Speaker 1:Okay. So was Samuel the prophet something like that? I mean, you're getting into this realm. So the power to do it for self, the power to do it for money, and that people want power. I sat next to a lady in Canada, and she told me I got into the occult because I wanted power.
Speaker 1:She said, I don't care whether I get it from god or whether I get it from psychics. I want power. I said, you've got to be kidding. And then we were praying for a pastor not too long ago, and and he did the same thing. He got into the occult because he wanted power.
Speaker 1:So you have powerless Christians, but the answer to powerless Christians is not getting power from this source. It is the authority of the believer. It is through the lord in your life. So the title that you're picking up tonight is getting the devil out of your life. There you go, Alexis.
Speaker 1:Getting the devil out of your life. The different types of intents like, even there's types of pornography that can lead to witchcraft. Like, it it takes you into realms that you never thought you would go into. Our writer that helped me with the interviews on our Israel book, she had her sister-in-law married her brother on Halloween, and they did the service in the graveyard. Guys, if a woman wants to get married on October 31st, don't marry her.
Speaker 1:If they choose the graveyard for a it's not a good setting. You know, you're you're into destination marriages. I would say not this one. Like, I wish to tell you that this is just rare, and I've had 1 or 2 this is happening everywhere. It's like a scourge.
Speaker 1:So, anyway, you're gonna have people, and they post everything about their witchcraft. There are several people that go to churches here that I know, and you watch on their Facebook, and they're offering you all their little potions to buy. It's getting more and more blatant. So whether it's the pastor who wanted power and he was in seminary, and he was drawn to it, and it has a hold on him now, and he can't get free. And he comes to us and says, help me get free.
Speaker 1:This power is something you're giving your willful, like, your the one thing that belongs completely to you is your decision maker. It's the thing that god gave you sovereignty in. Like, that's what makes you distinctly you because he wants you to freely give yourself to him in love. And this is completely the opposite. And so anything like this is a deal with the devil.
Speaker 1:Like, when we first started doing this, I was praying for a young girl, and all of a sudden, I felt like the lord said she made a deal with the devil or some kind of covenant with the devil. And she was like, yes. But it starts these different aspects in your life. If you talk to dead relatives, if you see people or dead relatives who used to live in a house wandering through the house, if you had imaginary friends, any of those things can be where there's some split personality, different things. There was a youth pastor who was in my house this week, and and he saw my piano rolls, and he does stuff.
Speaker 1:Oh, those are Harry Potter wands. And stuff goes, you won't be in this house very long if you talk like that. And he's a youth pastor. I'm like, what are these guys doing? Like, I tell myself, we don't need to mess with the bible study on this, but you've got to help us because, literally, people are messing at this at deep levels.
Speaker 1:And I love this guy. This is not a guy that's not on fire. He's very on fire for the Lord, but he mixes, and he lets his kids mix. So you're mixing with movies, with songs. By the time you're repeating the lyrics and saying those words, you're getting them deep down in your spirit.
Speaker 1:If you got into anything that has witchcraft in it in songs, how many times did you sing it? Can I put the tune on now Will you start saying the words? You've got to break that alliance with those words. That's how the enemy is trying to get down where only god belongs. Because in your spirit, it's where it's holy.
Speaker 1:It's where nothing can live but the holy spirit when you're born again. And music goes down into your spirit. That's why it's so dangerous to start getting darkness into your spirit after you've known the lord. So it's Proverbs 16:8. A perverse man spreads strife and a slanderer separates intimate friends.
Speaker 1:The enemy is into busting up agreements. He's into busting up people you get strength from. So I'm gonna tell you, instead of killing riches, which I don't think we have a biblical stance for that in the New Testament. I know you were thinking I was leading something else. Flee.
Speaker 1:Get away from them. Plead the blood of Jesus. Put your armor on. Don't have anything to do with them. You can either give god glory for this gift or you can allow the devil to take you over.
Speaker 1:1 of you were working with one of my college kids, and you discerned witchcraft came over her family, where her whole family is having mutiny. And they're turning against god, and they've gone crazy. You told her, you got witchcraft there. And she goes, I remember I let a fox into the hen house. I let it around my girls.
Speaker 1:What happened? She was witnessing to someone, but she let their guard down. And she put that woman in one of their rent houses. And that woman started infiltrating our girls. We're gonna have to be careful.
Speaker 1:The witchcraft is not just going after you, but it's going against your family members. Steph, tell what happened to you growing up. Come here real quick with the graveyard. It it didn't happen to you. It happened to your friends 1 week before.
Speaker 1:I don't like having nurses who are witches. They're in a covenant with death, and yeah. Tell me what happened to you. Well, you were talking about when you were young that there was a psychic show on, and the guy would go down and he could give messages.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. That was this morning. Oh. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:It was this morning. I was praying, asking the lord just if there's anything that I haven't covered. And I remember there was this guy, and he had he's like a just a little 30 minute show, and he would have people in the audience that had lost people. And he would basically give them a word from the dead. And it looked like it had good fruit because the people were really under, you know, duress and sorrow and that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:But when he had tell them stuff, they would, you know, seem peaceful and really okay to get something to hear from their relatives. And I hadn't thought about that. And, I mean, I hadn't seen something like that in over a decade.
Speaker 1:But he was using it
Speaker 2:all the time. Because I'd asked the lord, is there anything? And I was like, well, that's kinda odd. But so I just renounced it and repented of it. And because at the time, I didn't realize that it was something I didn't realize is witchcraft.
Speaker 2:I didn't know.
Speaker 1:Tell what happened to your friends when you lost a good friend in school. You live near a cemetery.
Speaker 2:Well, I live yeah. You could look out my parents' window, and you could see the cemetery. And it was probably it was just an open pasture, but it was quite 2 blocks, like, 2 blocks away. And I had some friends one night. They drove by the cemetery, and it was just there's 2 or 3 of them in the car.
Speaker 2:And one of them, out of the blue, starts yelling, get it off me. Get it off me. There's something on me. Get it off me. And she's screaming.
Speaker 2:Get it off of me. And, I didn't know about this until a week later. She ended up getting killed in a
Speaker 1:car wreck. So a spirit of death sometimes jumps on you. As we were with Malue, and she took us driving through the cemetery next to her house, it's the day before Halloween. They call it all saints day, and they give food to the dead people, and they do all kinds of things, and families meet down there. It's a very big tradition in the Philippines.
Speaker 1:But while we were sleeping in that room, there was something not right. Steph had something grab her leg. And I was getting up in the night and trying to get out of there. Like, they lock you in at night. And I was like, something's wrong with Blue goes, oh, by the way, someone committed suicide in that room.
Speaker 1:And she told us that as we're leaving the country. And and we were really upset because there was a very dark thing on Malue that didn't look right. And, you know, she was dead before the next time I could get back over there. But I'm telling you, you're dealing with a spirit of death. So you have got to close these doors.
Speaker 1:Another lady where all hell broke loose on her family of 5 was she was trying to take pictures of paranormal stuff in her home. When I told her to repent, she got mad at me, and her life fell apart. You can tell when someone's under the spirit and it's grabbed them when you tell them to repent and they get mad. I had and I'm just throwing this in there. I had a couple of our cross line girls, and they were straight as could be.
Speaker 1:They love boys, but they went with their boys to bars. But the boys weren't straight. So they were going to homosexual men bars with their boys, and both of those girls now have crossed over to the same thing. It's like these spirits from cemeteries to spirits of death. Put your armor on.
Speaker 1:A lady that was a friend of my mom, she had just come from a funeral. When you go to a funeral, just put your armor on. Put the blood of Jesus on you. Cover it. We've learned a lot from these different things, and we're in something that's pulling people both directions.
Speaker 1:Let me tell you, if you've got a dark pull on yourself, come confess it and get it broken off. Because in John 104 through 5, it says, you'll hear the voice of your father and you won't follow the voice of strangers. If you're hearing other voices, it tells you you will. They're stranger voices, but it says you won't follow them. You're not meant to follow.
Speaker 1:Anything mythology, weirdness, I used to like Houdini. I'd read about all his stuff. Elvis, all of them got into it. So remember this, Acts 1919. Give you 2 ending verses.
Speaker 1:When it became known to the Jews and Greeks living at Ephesus, and they were all seized with fear, and the name of the lord Jesus was held in high honor. Many of those who believe now openly confessed what they had done. And a number who practice sorcery brought their their papers, their scrolls, and they burned them publicly. And it's hilarious to give you a money account. They didn't sell them in a garage sale, but they burned them, and they calculated the value of what they burned.
Speaker 1:It was 50,000 dramas. Y'all can look at how much that was. In this way, the word of the Lord spread widely in great power. There may be some things you need to burn. So you can read Isaiah 478 through 14.
Speaker 1:It says, now listen, you lover of pleasure, lounging in your security and saying, I am, and there is none besides me. I will never be a widow or I will never suffer the loss of children. Both of these will overtake you in a moment on a single day. Both the loss of children and widowhood. They will come upon you in full measure in spite of your many sorceries and all your potent spells.
Speaker 1:For you've trusted in your wickedness and you've said no one sees me. Your wisdom and knowledge mislead you when you say to yourself, I am, and there is none beside me. Disaster will come upon you, and you will not know how to conjure it away. A calamity will fall upon you, and you cannot ward it off with a ransom. A catastrophe, you cannot foresee and will suddenly come upon you.
Speaker 1:Keep on them with your magic spells and your many sorceries, which you have labored at since your childhood. Perhaps you will secede. Perhaps you will cause terror. All the counsel you have received has only worn you out. The spirit of witchcraft will get you worn out.
Speaker 1:It'll make you weary. You'll feel tired. You'll sleep and not be rested. Remember the lord says, I give to my beloved in his sleep. Sweet sleep.
Speaker 1:One way you can tell about this is your sleep. Let your astrologers come forward, those stargazers who make predictions month by month. Let them save you from what's coming upon you. Surely, they're gonna be like stubble. The fire will burn them up.
Speaker 1:They cannot even save themselves from the power of the flame. These are not cold for warmth. This is not a fire to sit by. Isaiah 478 through 14. So I'm inviting you tonight with a very strong warning.
Speaker 1:When you go into witchcraft, you're committing spiritual adultery against God. Don't mix in this area. Give God your pure heart of love. Don't know the deep things of Satan. Know enough to be able to try to win some.
Speaker 1:But at some point, draw a strong line. In Jesus name, amen.