Episode Transcript
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I was met at the altar by a young woman who was in a deep
state of torment. Standing next to her was one of
the staff pastors at her church who began to explain that while
at a weekend retreat, the young woman had been speaking in
multiple different voices while sleeping one after another after
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another all night long. As we begin to pray, it was
quickly evident that this young woman was under a significant
degree of demonic torment. While we prayed and rebuked the
enemy, in only a matter of moments, she was gloriously set
free. However, sometime later I
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returned another year to hold another set of meetings at the
same church along with my wife, and when we arrived the pastor
said that he had a special prayer request for a young woman
in their church. As he began to describe her
situation, I looked up and said wait, but we prayed for her last
time we were here and God set her free.
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The pastor immediately responds,Robbie, things are worse than
they've ever been before. That first night of revival, she
came forward for prayer. We barely begin praying before
demons began manifesting, and asthey did, this time the battle
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was more intense. But again, it seemed that she
had achieved a a great level of freedom.
The next night she was completely out of her head.
When she arrived at church. She was spitting on other
students. She was crawling around on all
fours, licking the bumpers of people's vehicles, seemingly out
of her mind when she came forward for prayer that night.
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I'm not proud of this, but I didn't even go over and pray for
her because I felt that somehow prayer was actually complicating
her situation. I remembered that Jesus said
that when the unclean spirit goes out of someone, it wanders
through dry and arid places seeking rest and does not find
it. And then it decides to go back
to its original habitation. And when it gets there, if it
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finds that house empty, swept and and ready for him to return,
he takes seven other demons morewicked than himself, and the
latter condition is worse than the first.
And I thought to myself, are we literally somehow multiplying
this young woman suffering times7 each time we do this?
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I reached out to my mentor Abel,and explained to him her
situation. And he responded, Robbie, there
may be nothing you can do to help.
And I remember saying to him, I'm simply not willing to accept
that possibility, Abel responds.If that's the case, you're going
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to have to ask the Holy Spirit to tell you what the key is that
you're missing to her deliverance.
That next night, as had been, she shows back up to service,
still deeply tormented. When she comes forward, I stand
to the side praying quietly, butmy wife goes over to pray with
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her. I didn't know what God was
getting ready to do, but today Irealized that in that moment, I
was about to learn one of the most vital keys to deliverance
that I would use for the remainder of my ministry.
I'm Doctor Robbie Willis. This is the deliverance
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dialogues. This is now the third episode
that we've devoted to the subject of demonology, seeking
to understand the tactics and the origins of our enemy in
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order to be more effective in the warfare that God has called
us into. Today, we want to venture into
another realm. When someone has been living in
open rebellion against God, having placed themselves under
divine judgement, how do you discern if what someone really
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has are demon problems or do they have God problems?
Maybe sometimes it's both. That is, what the individual may
be experiencing that's troublingthem and causing them to reach
out for help is harassment from a demon spirit.
But as deliverance ministers or as exorcist, it's vital to know
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that if an individual is in direct, intentional rebellion
against God, until they humble themselves in repent, it will be
impossible for them to find lasting freedom, peace and
deliverance. Because at the end of the day,
when we set our hearts in animosity against God, the
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demonic torment that we experience is the natural result
of essentially kicking God out of our lives.
In the Book of Revelation we read Babylon the Great is fallen
and has become the haunt of every unclean spirit and every
unclean animal, beast, these kinds of things.
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The image there is that when thepresence of God is no longer
dwelling somewhere, what happensis that demons move in.
He reminds me of the story from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,
one of the Chronicles of Narnia books by CS Lewis, when the
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young man used to scrub who has been in the thorn, a thorn in
the flesh of everyone, finds himself overcome by greed,
personal pride, and selfish ambition, thinking dragonish
thoughts day after day. And one day he wakes up and
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realizes he has been transformedinto a dragon.
Now, of course, that's a little bit of Lewis's fantasy and
mythology, yet it brings a powerful realization that there
is a tendency for us to be gradually transformed into
whatever we're focusing on day after day.
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And when we develop a lifestyle of rebellion against God, we
live out the truth of the book of Psalms where we read the
people in all nations that forget God shall be turned into
hell. That is when you forget God and
shut him out of your life. There is a metamorphosis of
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nature into the very nature of the hell that begins to overtake
us. Now we're going to look at a few
biblical stories to illustrate this point and then we're going
to kind of unpack this as we go.I'm joined by my Co host,
Timothy today. You can't see him waving at you
across the desk. That is invisible to you.
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But first of all, Timothy, let'sdiscuss King Saul, the first
king over the nation of Israel. His story is kind of a tragedy.
I mean, when we meet him, he's avery humble man.
He's hiding himself, not even wanting people to see him, but
yet we see a real transformationhappen in his life.
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When you think about Saul, what what jumps out to you about his
life? You know, we, we were talking
about this a decent bit yesterday and one of the, the
biggest things with Saul is that, I mean, he starts off as a
pretty humble man. You know, he has humble
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beginnings. He, he's from the smallest tribe
of Israel. And, and, and when God makes him
king and, and Samuel comes to anoint him, the, the picture
that we're given is a pretty upright, upstanding, you know,
follower of God, a good Israelite who becomes a
benevolent king. But as his reign continues, more
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and more, we see Saul become obsessed with pride with, with
himself really. And and ultimately, the thing
that gets Saul's Kingdom stripped away from him is pride.
He believes himself to be higherthan God in a way.
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And, and it's unrepentant pride.He never once, he never once
begins to repent for what he's done.
He just, you know, you mentionedearlier he when Samuel tells him
the Kingdom has been stripped from you, he's like, OK, but are
are you going to go sacrifice tothe people for me?
So they're like me, you know, because he's only concerned with
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the self-image. That sin of pride is is truly
one of the original sins of humanity and and if you accept
the fallen angels narrative of of demonic origins, it may even
be one of the original sins of the angels as well.
Lucifer says in essence, I will ascend above the throne, that
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the the I'll ascend to the holy hill, I'll ascend above
everything else, and I'll becomelike God himself.
Right in the garden, the serpenttempts Adam and Eve, telling
them you're not going to die like God said you would if you
eat this fruit. But God himself knows, then the
moment you eat of it, you're going to become like God or
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you're going to become like a God in that moment.
Reflecting on these types of realities, first, John says that
all that is in the world is the lust of the flesh and the lust
of the eyes and the pride of life.
That's what happens when Adam and Eve are standing there at
the tree. They begin to gaze on this
forbidden fruit. They start to see that it's good
for food. And the next thing you know,
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they believe the narrative that we can do the thing God said not
to do without experiencing the consequences.
He assured us we're going to follow.
Right. And so, so talking about this
idea of whatever you focus on becomes who you are or what you
are, right? Come back to CS Lewis and his
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his fiction novels for children.When Eustace is obsessed with
the dragon horde and he turns into a dragon.
I, I, maybe since we're focusingon the same things that the
demons are focusing on in a lot of sense, we open ourselves up
to possession. And in that case, that's what
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happened to Saul, is he became possessed by this evil spirit
that made him want to go hunt down and kill his own
son-in-law, and in one case threatened to kill his own son.
Right, yes. So let's let's read what what,
what first Samuel actually says about this.
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So first Samuel chapter 15, verse 10, we read then the word
of the Lord came to Samuel saying, I regret that I have set
up Saul to be king because he has turned back from following
me and he has not carried out mywords.
And it grieves Samuel and he cried to the Lord all night.
Now what I want us to notice this, that Samuel the prophet
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spends all night in intercessionfor Saul, but Samuel's
intercession can't undo Saul's rebellion.
These are decisions Saul is making.
Verse 12 When Samuel rose early to meet Saul in the morning, it
was told Samuel saying Saul cameto Carmel and set himself up a
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monument. Then he turned and passed on
down to Gilgal. In other words, lest we miss
that Saul is returning from battle having directly disobeyed
God, and he takes time to set upa monument for himself to
commemorate his victory. He's not concerned with obeying
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what God says, but he is concerned with making sure
everybody remembers what a mighty military general he was.
So when Samuel meets in verse 13, Samuel came to Saul and Saul
said to him, blessed are you of the Lord.
I have carried out the word of the Lord.
Saul is not just lying to Samuel, he's lying to himself.
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And that's very evident when youread this passage.
He's in a severe state of self deception.
We're going to move down to verse 16.
Then Samuel said to Saul, stop, and I will tell you what the
Lord spoke to me this night. He said to him, speak, Samuel
said, when you were little in your own sight, were you not
made the head of the tribes of Israel, and the Lord anointed
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you to be king over Israel. So in other words, Samuel's
reminding him, Saul, you didn't become king because of your
skill, you became king because of your humility and what God
saw in you. But now pride is getting the
best of him. And Saul, Samuel asks the king,
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does the Lord? Verse 22, Does the Lord delight
in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as obeying
the voice of the Lord? Obedience is better than
sacrifice, a listening ear than the fat of Rams.
For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft and stubbornness is
as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the
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word of the Lord, He has rejected you from being king.
Wow, those are strong words. Rebellion is like witchcraft.
Stubbornness is like idolatry. It's easy to say, well, thank
God I've never practiced witchcraft, but have I been
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rebellious? It's easy to say, well, I've
never worshipped a God other than the one true God.
Have I been stubborn? The Bible says that there is any
that these two things are are the same in essence.
That hurts my feelings right, right.
That bothers me a lot. So what we see following, if you
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read the rest of the chapter, you'll see that basically Saul
is Saul does say I've sinned against God and he asked Samuel
to pray for him, but there's no real repentance.
Regardless of what Samuel says, Saul's tunnel vision, he just
wants Samuel to go back out and make him look good in front of
the people. That's all he cares about.
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Now here's something we need to know.
Obsession with self-image, addiction to rebellion, and
insistence on stubbornness are solid pathways to demonization.
What do we see in the next chapter?
Verse 14 of the next chapter says, now the spirit of the Lord
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departed from Saul and an evil spirit from the Lord terrified
him. So what we see following in
Saul's life is really troubling.More than a few theologians have
gotten stumped on this whole issue of an evil spirit from the
Lord, and more than a few atheists have used it as ammo
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against Christianity. To see, we'll look at that.
It says that God himself sent anevil spirit to torment Saul.
There's a few things that I wantto point out here.
First of all, the the progression is very clearly in
the text. The Spirit of the Lord departed
from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him.
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So what we're supposed to see isthat Saul's torment began when
this when the Holy Spirit left him.
There are theologians, even evennoted theologians that study the
the the passages in the Bible about demonic activity, that see
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Saul's story as something different.
That is that make the claim thatthis is not clearly a demon in
the New Testament sense, but rather that this is evidence of
a psychiatric breakdown that he's having because of the
absence of God's presence. And in a sense, I can almost go
there. The trouble is the language of
this passage really looks like there is something that is
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actively tormenting Saul. So much so that they hired
David, who's later going to become king of Israel, to come
and play the harp. And when David will play the
harp and sing to the Lord, the the evil spirit will leave Saul
and he gets some temporary relief.
In other words, David's anointedmusic and worship brings relief
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to Saul who is suffering, but itdoesn't undo Saul's deeply
demonized condition. As I look at this, the way I
understand the language of an evil spirit from the Lord is
that Saul is under divine judgment because of his
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rebellion, and that judgment is giving access for evil spirits
to torment him because the Holy Spirit is absent from him.
Wherever God is not, hell is. Wherever God is not, demons are.
There is a tendency of evil to infest these wounds that are,
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that are afflicted because of our sin against God.
Demons are like an infection that sets up inside an open
wound that can only be cleansed out by the presence of the Holy
Spirit. But God is not going to dwell in
a place that is filled with constant rebellion,
stubbornness, idolatry, witchcraft.
That's not how it works. So Saul's refusal to humble
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himself allows the demonic torment to continue.
I couldn't help when reading this earlier of thinking how
many people are coming to churchand suddenly feeling relief from
their demons while they're hearing the great music and the
great singing. But then they leave saying why
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is my life not changed? Church isn't working for me.
Well, maybe it's like David playing in the presence of Saul.
There was no deficiency in David's music nor his worship
leading. The problem was that Saul
refused to humble himself and repent.
Being around the presence of Godis not sufficient.
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There has to be a heart change that invites the presence of God
in. So Saul's story, if you follow
it further, doesn't end well. Saul never sees Samuel the
prophet face to face again. In fact, Samuel dies having
never gone to see Saul. Saul is so tormented, but he
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refuses to humble himself. In the end of Saul's story, he
goes to a witch at a place called Indoor, asking her to
practice necromancy and summon up Samuel's spirit.
Saul knows that he can't go to God because he won't repent, so
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he tries to bypass God. By literally going to a witch to
call up Samuel, hoping that he can guilt Samuel's spirit into
talking to him. Now that's a wild story.
I'm going to be honest with you,it's a hard to know what to make
of that story when you read it because it really sounds like
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Samuel himself shows up and tells Saul.
By the end of the day, you're going to be as dead as I am.
Now, some people say clearly that wasn't Samuel.
You can't call somebody's spiritup like that.
Others say clearly that was Samuel.
He's prophesying like Samuel. Here's what I'm saying.
Clearly it doesn't work out wellto go to a witch to try to hear
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from God. So regardless of what you make
of this story, here's what you see is that Saul starts out as a
humble man who God looks and says that man could be a king.
But his pride, his stubbornness,his refusal to humble himself
drives him from God and to witchcraft, and it results in a
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tragic death. And his son never sets on the
throne. There's high stakes for
rebellion. And you mourn for Saul.
People love Saul. David, the next king, loved
Saul. Samuel loves Saul.
Here's the reality. Having godly people that love
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you is not sufficient to get youout from under demonic torment.
There's got to be a willingness to change your heart.
Think about it. Saul had in his corner God's
prophet and the next king, and that wasn't enough to liberate
him. So sometimes we say, I just wish
my grandma was here to pray for me again.
I wish my dad would pray for me.God is calling out to us saying
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I will liberate you, but there'sgot to be a willingness to
humble yourself. Help me unpack this, Timothy.
What does this say to you, not only about Saul, but for us
today and on this whole topic ofdemonology and spiritual
warfare, I. Mean it.
It reminds me of when, when you were first teaching me how to do
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deliverance and I cast demons out of people.
You would tell me if somebody doesn't want to repent and they
don't want to renounce whatever it is that has gotten them into
the situation in the first place, then there's nothing you
can do for them, right? Which is hard.
That's, that's difficult. That was really difficult for me
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to, to accept. In fact, I, I don't know if I
did fully accept it until recently.
I had, I had a situation. There was a friend of mine who,
Long story short, his girlfriendwas battling with some extreme
torment, bad nightmares, lots oflike things moving in the house.
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And then ultimately this thing that had revealed itself to her
and given itself a name, it named itself after an Egyptian
God. And he wanted me to come cast
the demon out of her. And I told him I would if they'd
meet with me first. And, and so we talked and
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ultimately she said like I foundout she was both practicing
witchcraft and she refused to forgive a certain person in her
life. And what I told her very
reluctantly for me, because I, Ilove these people, I wanted to
help them. What I told her is there's
nothing I can do for you until you're willing to repent of your
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witchcraft, until you're willingto forgive this person, there's
nothing I can do. And and that's really, that's a
lot like the story of Saul. David wanted to help him, Samuel
wanted to help him, but neither of them could make Saul repent
for what he'd done. These are the hard realities is
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that we want to reach down and help people, but we got to know
that our compassion is not greater than God's compassion.
God is longing to deliver people, but it requires a humble
heart. When you look at the story of
Saul and David, it it really is a lot to take in because what
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Saul is rejected for as king really looks like less than some
of the things David does. Later, David commits adultery.
He then murders the husband of the woman he's committing
adultery with or has him murdered.
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Then he covers the whole thing up and tries to go on like
nothing ever happened and marries the grieving widow who's
pregnant with his child. And you read the whole thing and
you're going, what just happenedhere?
And then you read 1 simple statement.
But the thing that David did displease the Lord.
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That's the moment in the story when you're going, uh oh, this
is about to get really ugly, this.
Seems familiar. So God sends a prophet, Nathan,
to go and confront David, just like God sent Samuel to go and
confront Saul. But when Nathan gets to David
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after the initial encounter, David says these words, I have
sinned against God. And Nathan responds to David,
God has also forgiven your sin. We read David's prayer in the
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Psalms that many people believe came right out of that moment
where he says created me a cleanheart, O God, and renew a right
spirit within me. He goes on.
He writes, cast me not away fromyour presence and take not your
Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of your
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salvation. When Saul's confront over his
sin, he says, please make me look right in front of the
people. When David's confronted over his
sin, he pleads with God not to take the Holy Spirit from him.
Why is he pleading that? I have a theory because he saw
first hand what happened to Saulwhen the Spirit of the Lord
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departed from him. And this is what David's saying
in essence. I can handle public
embarrassment if I have to, but I cannot live with the absence
of the Holy Spirit. I saw what that did to Saul, and
I am going to repent in whateverways I have to in order to never
face that deeply demonized condition.
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And what's the response of God? Instant forgiveness for a heart
like that. So this isn't the only story
like this. We come to 1st Kings and we have
one of the wickedest kings in all of Israel's history, Ahab.
And there's one place I love it.There's one place when the
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Bible's reflecting on all the wicked things Ahab has done and
it says it's something like this.
And if that wasn't enough, he married Jezebel.
God is fed up with Ahab sin and then he marries a woman that's
wickeder than he is. That overseas the prophets of
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Baal and the prophets of Asherah, arguably 2 of the most
perverse gods in ancient history, Bail, the God of Storms
and his prophets would cut themselves and slash themselves
and let their blood run to the ground as they work themselves
up into a frenzy worshipping himand calling out to him.
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And Ashra, who is worshipped in every perverse sensual way
imaginable. We would not see the kind of
debauchery that was known from the worship of Baal and Asherah
and Molech who we mentioned in the last episode, who is
worshipped through child sacrifice.
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I dare say we wouldn't see that level of debauchery unless we
come to modern America. And here we see such realities
being lived out on the world stage again and it's normalized
right up to the top. But God's not happy about it.
So in first Kings chapter 21, God sends Elijah to go and
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confront Ahab and tells him you're going to die because
you're sinning against me and you're leading the nation in the
sin. Ahab falls on his face before
God repents and sackcloth rips his clothes, which was like a
sign. And in those days of saying my
lineage is cut off, if God doesn't intervene for me,
there's no future for me. And God stops and he says to
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Elijah, see how Ahab has humbledhimself?
I'm not going to bring my judgement on him in his in his
lifetime the way that I said I would because of his humility,
if only that humility had lasted.
When you turn the page, Ahab, the king of Israel is talking to
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Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, and they're having this
conversation about going to battle.
And Jehoshaphat's like, hey, if you talk to God about this and
Ahab is like, I've got this, I got 400 prophets and all of them
are telling me that I will go and be victorious.
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Jehoshaphat says, is there a prophet of Yahweh that we can
talk to? If you're reading most of our
English Bibles, you're not goingto see it like that's going to
say, is there a prophet of the Lord?
But know this, when you read capital Lord in the Old
Testament, most translations do that to notify us that that was
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the name Yahweh in the original Hebrew text, Is there a prophet
of Yahweh? And as I read this, I imagine
they have kind of grown and says, yeah, there's this one.
But he never says anything good about me.
His name's Makaya, Go get him, Iguess.
So they go and get Makaya. Makaya comes up there and Ahab's
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like, tell me the truth. And he says, go and prosper.
The Lord's going to deliver the enemy into your hand.
So Ahab recognizes the sarcasm and tells him, tell me the
truth. I'm going to read you what he
says in first Kings chapter 22 verse 17.
Makaya says I saw all Israel scattered up on the hills as
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sheep without a shepherd and theLord said these have no master.
Let every man return to his own house in peace.
In essence, what he's saying is this Ahab, you're going to die
and your people aren't going to have a king anymore.
So then he says he tells the wildest story and I decided I
wasn't going to read anymore, but I can't, I can't summarize
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this better than I can read it right here.
So here's what Makaya or Makaya if you like, says, says to King
Ahab in first Kings chapter 22 verse 19.
He said here therefore the word of the Lord, I saw Yahweh
setting on His throne and all the host of the heaven standing
beside him, on his right hand and on his left.
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By the way, this is the divine council that we talked about a
little bit in the last episode. This is God setting with all the
heavenly beings, the Elohim if you will, surrounding him,
making making decisions for the earth.
The Lord said, who will persuadeAhab so that he will go up and
die at Ramoth Gilead? That kind of takes my breath
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when I read that. You know what God's saying.
Ahab, in spite of his temporary repentance, is continuing to
live in rebellion and he's goingto die.
What divine being? What spirit is going to bring
that about? And one said this and another
said that. Verse 21 Then a spirit came
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forth and stood before the Lord and I and said, I will persuade
him. The Lord said to him, how?
Check this out. He said, I will go and be a
lying spirit in the mouth of allhis prophets.
Move down verse 23. Now, therefore, the Lord has put
a lying spirit in the mouth of all your prophets here and he
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has spoken evil concerning you. Here's what's happening.
So last week we talked about last episode, we discussed this
question of is there a spirit named fear?
Is there a spirit named anger? Now I'm going to ask the
question, is there a spirit named the lying spirit?
And while at one point I want tosay no, on the other, look at
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this little piece of Old Testament demonology, if you
will, a spirit. We're not told where it came
from. We're not told what it is, says
I will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.
How does that happen? How does God allow it?
Because these are false prophetsand this is a wicked king.
We may not like this, but the fact is, when your heart is set
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in rebellion against God, the door is wide open for demons to
come and influence your thinking.
And now these, these prophets, you know what?
You know what? They're not just prophets.
They're trusted advisors, if youwill.
And now this lying spirit, this little demon, if you will, is
corrupting the wise counsel theywould give.
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What does Ahab do? Does he repent and say, Makaya,
thank you for being honest with me?
No, he says. Go lock him up and don't let him
out until I come back safely. Makai responds.
If you come back safely, God didn't speak to me.
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Brutal. I mean, where are the
presidential advisors throughoutmy lifetime saying stuff like
that? There's plenty of pastors that
are willing to stand by an American president and tell them
how awesome they are. Where's the one saying if you do
this, it's not going to end well?
Just a thought to ruminate on aswe move along.
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But here we see this whole imagein Makai.
There's a lot of things that jump out here.
And Tim, I want you to help me kind of unpack this.
I will be a lying spirit in the mouth of the prophets.
What is that? And then again, the Bible
doesn't really tell us Ahab is demonized, but his prophets are.
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Check this. Think about this.
The king himself we're never told is demonized, but 400
people who have submitted to hisrule and authority come under
demonic deception. When you place yourself under
someone who is ungodly, with full knowledge of what you're
doing, you subject yourself to demonic deception.
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Let that sink in for a second. The prophets are deceived in
part because of who they've aligned themselves with.
Now, Tim, that's a lot to process, but what stands out to
you from this? So it seems like what what's
happening here and we've been chasing this thread of like you
said, are these spirits like a lying spirit?
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Is it the lying spirit or is it just acting as a lying spirit?
And I mean, this one in this case, definitely seems like it
says it's going to act as a lying spirit in the mouths of
the prophets. But but what's interesting here
to me is that when Ahab repents,the Lord instills his protection
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there to keep him alive. But then Ahab continues, he
turns around, it's not true repentance.
He turns around and he goes backto being a wicked king, right?
And just like how when earlier in the first Samuel it says that
that the Lord's spirit was lifted off of Saul, and then
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Saul is possessed, it seems thatafter the king Ahab becomes
wicked again, it seems like in avery real sense, the Lord's
protection is lifted from him, and now this spirit has free
reign to sow chaos in his court and cause all kinds of problems,
right? So it definitely seems like
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Ahab's condition or his prophet's condition or the
condition of his Kingdom as a whole is directly tied to
whether or not he has the support of the Lord.
So whether or not the Lord is directly, you know, empowering
the Spirit to go have the ability to lie to his prophets,
or whether the Spirit has that power inherently and the Lord is
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just allowing it to is kind of unclear.
But either way, Ahab is under some sort of divine judgement.
Right. It, it, it's true.
And so for our, for our purposes, I guess what I want
our listeners to understand is, is this, we often think about
spiritual warfare. Is this battle between God and,
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and Satan or between the people of God and the demonic.
And if we've got to have enough faith and we got to stand in in,
in faith to cast this stuff out.And then also we we draw these
lines where we're thinking, well, it's either demonic or
it's mental health related. But you see some really
interesting things in the stories first.
First of all, when we're talkingabout Saul, he's experiencing
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severe psychiatric decompensation or, or
disintegration. So, So when we think about Saul,
he's experiencing severe psychiatric disintegration.
We didn't really go into that, but here's a guy that's raving
out of his mind. He's homicidal.
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He throws A spear and tries to kill his own son.
At one point, he's trying to kill David.
He's constantly paranoid about everything.
He orders the slaughter of an entire group of priests.
This man that was once a good man completely loses it and is
mentally ill in the worst ways imaginable at this point.
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And he's demonized, but it's allthe result of his rebellion
against God in his case. Is that true in every case of
demonization or mental illness? No, but it was in this one.
So again, here with Ahab, Ahab has set himself in rebellion
against God, and it's resulting in mass delusion of those that
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are trying to support his visionand his mission.
Mass delusion. So you can't cast that out.
There has to be repentance. So as long as someone is under
divine judgment because of theirwillful rebellion against God,
it's not a matter of whether we have the authority to cast that
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out. It's a matter of spiritual laws.
There has to be repentance. So there's this one other story
in the the life of in one of thekings.
This is a Babylonian king by thename of Nebuchadnezzar.
And in this one, it's found in Daniel chapter 4.
And so in Daniel chapter 4, I'm not going to read it all, but
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Nebuchadnezzar has a dream. This dream is really disturbing
him. And in the dream, one of the
things he hears is that the watchers have decreed.
Judgment upon him. Now interestingly enough, this
is the only place to my knowledge in the Bible that we
find the language of the watchers.
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Although if you listen to the previous episode, well, I guess
it would have been 2 episodes ago, we discussed the watchers
in the Book of Enoch. Now, those aren't written at
exactly the same time, but they're not really that far
separated when Daniel is being written in when Enoch is being
written. So it makes you wonder if
there's a similar vein of thought.
(40:36):
But in this case, nonetheless, the holy watchers are decreeing
that Nebuchadnezzar's pride is not acceptable to God.
So Nebuchadnezzar calls Daniel in and asks him to interpret
this, this dream for him. And so Daniel interprets it.
He tells him basically, God the King of heaven has given you a
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Kingdom, He's given you a throne, but now you've exalted
yourself against God. So you're going to be brought
down and you're going to be driven into the fields and
you're going to lose your mind and act like an animal.
And then Daniel gives really good counsel.
He tells him that what he needs to do is repent.
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He tells him you need to seek God in repentance.
So he says, therefore, O king, let my counsel be acceptable to
you. This is Daniel 4 verse 27.
And break off your sins by righteousness and your iniquity
by showing mercy to the poor in case there may be a lengthening
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of your prosperity. So Nebuchadnezzar does
initially, he repents Nebuchadnezzar.
Nebuchadnezzar. OK.
So Nebuchadnezzar. So the king does.
He initially repents, but then after 12 months he walks out
into his palace, and he says, this is this not Babylon the
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Great that I myself has built asa royal residence by my mighty
power and for the honor of my majesty?
And in that moment when in his sinful pride he declares I have
established my Kingdom myself, he hears a voice from heaven.
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O King Nebuchadnezzar, to you itis spoken, The Kingdom has
departed from you, and you shallbe driven away from men, and
your dwelling shall be with the animals of the field.
You shall be given grass to eat as an oxen, and seven periods of
time shall pass over you, and till you know that the Most High
rules over the Kingdom of men, and gives it to whom ever he
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wills. Wow, so Nebuchadnezzar loses his
mind. He begins to act like an animal.
He's literally eating grass. He is insane by every standard.
Is he demonized? It's fair to say yes.
That is an animalistic type spirit or mindset has taken over
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him. Yet the Bible doesn't frame it
in terms of demons. He has lost his rational mind.
He has lost his sanity because of his pride and his ego.
So you know what happens after he, I just got to read this
description, says he was driven from men and ate grass as an
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oxen and his body was wet with the dew of heaven until his
hairs were grown like eagle feathers and his nails like bird
claws. What happened when suddenly he
came back to his mind? He says there is a God that
rules in heaven. So these things have me
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wondering how how often are things we see divine judgement
from which there must be repentance?
So when I have someone reach outfor deliverance and they're
needing help, as we've talked about before, we're assessing
some of these things. First of all, OK, do they need
to see a medical doctor? Do they need to see a therapist?
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Is some of this demonic? But as a pastor behind all of
those things, I'm asking myself,is there any area in which this
person is in need of repentance in a common area to come back
to? The story that we opened with
today is in the area of unforgiveness and bitterness.
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Now, why is unforgiveness and bitterness even a big deal in
light of all the dramatic, crazythings we've been talking about,
what we think? Spiritual warfare is not
necessarily a battle between Godand Satan.
God already defeated Satan rightfrom the very beginning.
(45:08):
God defeated Satan whenever he spoke to the serpent, and he
said to the serpent, you will bite, you will have enmity with
the woman, and you will be against her seed, and you will
strike his heel, but he will strike your head.
At that moment He proclaimed defeat over Satan.
And then at the cross when Jesusdied, the death of Jesus Christ
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and then the resurrection of Jesus Christ echoed throughout
time. And so from the very beginning,
the devil has been defeated. Amen.
Spiritual warfare is not a battle between God and Satan.
Spiritual warfare is a battle between US and temptation.
Wow. Right.
So I think the thing with unforgiveness is unforgiveness
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is a stronghold in a lot of a lot of people's lives because
it's like Jesus said, and I believe it was Matthew 18, if
you do not forgive, neither willyour heavenly Father forgive
you, Right? Right.
So unforgiveness from God, and it's one that makes us unable to
be forgiven, right? And so if God can't forgive us
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for our sins, we, like I said earlier, we lose all our
protection, we lose our divine protection.
So we have no weapons anymore tofight the enemy with.
We're unarmed and unarmored. We have no way to fight back,
right? And I think that's why
unforgiveness is such a huge stronghold in so many people's
lives. And unforgiveness and bitterness
is, it's hard to overcome, sure,because a lot of times there's
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justification in, in your bitterness and unforgiveness.
Usually somebody harmed you, somebody did something wrong,
you know, and, and, and you wantto say I'm right, you know, and
this comes back to the pride thing.
You because you think you're, you're right to be angry.
You're right to, to be unforgiving.
In some cases, people who are bitter, unforgiving, will go so
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far to say, I wish they were dead or I hope they burn in hell
like some things come out of their mouth that you would never
think that they would say because they're so bitter,
they're so angry. It's true.
And. I think of it in these terms.
We choose to give ourselves overto 1 mindset or one spirit if
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you will, or another. One mindset or spirit says I
deserve retribution, I will never forgive, I'm going to
become the enforcer. The other mindset says I need
God's grace. Grace is not a force that we
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control, it is the power of God at work in US.
And if grace is released within us, then it flows in every
direction simultaneously. The same grace that liberates us
from the offenses we've committed against God then flows
out of us, liberating others from the offenses they've
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committed against us, not because they deserve it, but
because that's what grace does. And if we want to surrender
ourselves to grace, if we want to experience forgiveness, then
that Spirit's going to flow out of us as well.
Jesus explained it like this in Matthew chapter 18 when Peter
said how many times should I should my brother sin against me
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and I give them till 7 times andJesus says not 7 times but until
70 * 7. There's this whole theological
piece I really want to chase within that we'll have to wait
until another day. Jesus goes on and he tells this,
this parable. There's this one man that he,
he's got a servant that owes him10,000 talents.
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That's 75 lbs of silver per talent, so 750,000 lbs of
silver. The dude is deeply in debt and
he, he goes and begs his master for forgiveness.
So he forgives him. Then he goes over and another
guy owes him like 100 pence, which a pence is like a day's
wages. So like 100 days wages this guy
owes and he begs him for forgiveness.
(49:06):
Now the man that was just forgiven is being begged for
forgiveness but he grabs this guy by the throat and throws him
in prison. When we see it in those terms,
the shock sets in also and the master says, you wicked servant,
I forgave you all that debt. You should have forgiven him
also. We see this in the Scripture.
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We understand it in life. But then here's the reality is,
is that when we we have a decision to make, whether we
want to be right or whether we want to be free.
We got to decide whether we wantto release things to the grace
of God or whether we want to stubbornly try to stay in
control. And here's the reality.
Being in control ourselves in every way does doesn't usually
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work out for us. Bitterness has an effect.
It takes a toll on our heart andour mind.
I'm not saying that means in every case you have to reconcile
with people. Always.
There's cases when somebody has been abused or hurt that it's
not physically safe for them to have somebody back in their
life. So in in those cases,
forgiveness takes on the the form of a posture of the heart
(50:13):
and mind. But we realize that there's
still times when separation has to be there for everyone's
safety and and well-being, even within the within the 12 steps.
When we seek to make amends in the recovery model, we say that
we make direct amends to those we have wronged, except when
doing so would harm them or someone else.
(50:35):
Right. So there's, there's moments when
we realize that that we can't have the entire reconciliation
that we want. But I would say this God works
dramatic miracles and we ought to be real careful about how
quickly we make all those decisions ourselves.
I've heard you, I've heard you say.
Before you said we've got to trust and know that we serve a
(50:56):
just God and that the Lord said that vengeance is his right.
Yes. So somebody who's deeply, deeply
wronged you in the case of like an abuser, we've got to trust
that God has it in his hands better than we do.
That's hard. It is.
Hard because we have real trust issues with God sometimes we do.
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And we were desperately hope that He will forgive us for the
hideous things we've done. But we're terrified that He'll
also forgive others for the hideous things they've done.
That's hard. I I've I've had.
Someone, I had someone at college scream those exact words
in my face whenever they asked me.
Well, you know, my stepdad abused me, would God forgive him
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too? I said yes, he would.
And she starts screaming in my face.
You serve a wicked and evil God because in her mind, ultimate
justice is to see that man dead and the fact that God would
forgive him. She couldn't fathom it.
And here's the reality, the Gospel.
Is so much more complex than to just say God forgave me because
(52:11):
I said I'm sorry. It's that Jesus Christ took the
full punishment for the wickedness of humanity on
himself. And it is through his embrace of
that suffering in that torment that that people are able to go
free. There will be a day of divine
judgment. And that very thought terrifies
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me to dwell on. But I'm thankful for this.
I'm thankful that when we someday stand before God, we
stand before the embodiment of divine justice, and he is the
one that's able to hold mercy and justice together in one in a
real way. This issue of forgiveness
becomes really challenging. And the story that we opened
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with it became a real a real core part of that narrative.
So when this young woman just seemed to be getting worse every
time that we prayed for her, I, I was standing off the side not
praying. Several people gathered around
her and my wife felt like the Holy Spirit spoke to her and we
didn't know these, we didn't know this young woman at all.
We were visiting ministers and she felt like the Lord spoke to
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her and said she needs to forgive her dad.
So I've often joked that what she did 1st and this is true.
She walked over to somebody thatknew her and said, does she have
a dad? It's it's always, it's always a
good idea to make sure you're hearing from the Lord and not
from yesterday evening's pizza or anything like that.
So she goes and she begins to talk to to this young woman and
she's telling her, I don't know what all's happened, but you
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want to be free. And you forgiving him doesn't
mean he gets away with what he'sdone.
He's still got to answer to God and depending on what's
happening, we have to answer in other ways and we and we can
help if there needs to be help in other ways.
But today it's time to release the sense of bitterness because
it's eating you alive. I'll never forget watching as
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this young woman declared 7 times I forgive my dad.
The first time was kind of through her teeth, almost like a
growl. And then the last time she said
it, and as she broke in tears, she was instantaneously set
free. My wife laid her hands on her
and all those demon powers left and she was restored to her
right mind. I followed up and over the
(54:26):
course of the of the years that followed, she continued to to be
emotionally, spiritually, mentally healthy and absolutely
in love with Jesus. What no amount of screaming and
yelling and calling out to God for help could do forgiveness
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accomplished in a moment. We've got to move out from under
the things that keep us in bondage and and and move under
the grace of almighty God. There's a book that's called
forgiveness and reconciling. It's written by Everett
Worthington Junior and when it when it discusses things that.
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When it discusses things. That come as a result of
unforgiveness. Here's just some of the things
that mentions Fear, anger, hurt,avoidance, retaliation or
revenge attack, withdrawal and submitting, self protection,
denial, justifying yourself by selective perception, rumination
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that is obsessively thinking over certain details of things.
Unforgiveness just has a tendency to impact us in real
ways. And while I'm not saying that
forgiving someone is as easy as just saying I forgive in in
every case, the decision to forgive is a vital step toward
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freedom. So in a moment, as we get ready
to wrap up this this episode, and there's a lot of other
things that I would love to talkabout, but I just want to leave
you with a few things to to think about our our listeners
with a few things to think about.
I just want to leave our listeners with a few things to
think about. What confuses demons?
(56:21):
The answer is repentance and humility.
They can't process it. They don't have a grid for it.
Satan is the embodiment of pride.
You see Saul's pride destroy himand demons overtake him.
I have no doubt that the demonicrealm was just waiting to take
King David out also. But then he throws an unexpected
(56:45):
curveball. He repents and humbles himself.
The demons don't know what to dowith that.
Lucifer's original sin was pride, The servant said You'll
be like God. But yet when we humble ourselves
before God, heaven moves on our behalf.
In that moment. There's all kinds of spiritual
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beings in the world. And we could exhaust these, We
could exhaust ourselves trying to have these conversations.
If time allowed, we could dive into how the worship of Baal and
Ashra and Molech and and and Odin and all these other ancient
demons are alive and well on theearth today.
And people are being possessed and demonized in very real ways
(57:34):
by these entities. And those are conversations
worth having. But for the moment, I want to
leave our listeners with this reality is that Ground Zero for
getting free from demonic torment is getting right with
Almighty God. It is bowing our hearts and our
knees and humble repentance and saying, God, I need you to help
me. Deliver me from my rebellion.
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Deliver me from my stubbornness.Deliver me from my pride.
I choose to forgive. I will no longer function as
judge, jury and executioner. I am choosing now a different
way. I'm choosing the path of grace.
We spoke earlier about a young boy by the name of Eustace from
(58:18):
CS Lewis's book The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Here Eustace is an arrogant, self-serving boy that's been
transformed into a dragon. Lewis writes this sleeping on a
Dragon's horde with greedy dragonish thoughts in his heart.
He had become a dragon himself. As the reality of his
(58:41):
transformation sets in, Eustace gives in to despair.
Lewis writes he wanted to go back among humans and talk and
laugh and share things. He realized that he was a
monster cut off from the whole human race, and appalling
loneliness came over him. As I write in the latter part of
(59:05):
chapter 3 of my dissertation, reflecting on this, I write
these words. Famished, He feasts on dead
dragon flesh. Though his mind was the mind of
Eustis, his tastes and his digestion were dragonish.
Like Eustis, demonized people experience a devastating
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transformation that corrupts their identities and appetites,
trapping them in a self-contained world of
loneliness and heartache. Despite desperate attempts to
free himself from the Dragon's dominion, Eustace's situation
only changes when he encounters the lie in Aslan, a Christ
figure. Aslan offers to liberate him,
(59:47):
and though Eustace is terrified of the impending pain, he
agrees, Describing the moment ofhis of his liberation, Eustace
says the very first tear he madewas so deep that I thought it
had gone right into my heart, and when he began pulling the
skin off, it hurt worse than anything I've ever felt.
(01:00:09):
Then he caught hold of me and threw me into the water, and I
found all the pain had gone frommy arm.
And then I saw why. I had turned into a boy again,
like Eustace. Demonized people can only be
liberated through Christ's intervention and cleansing.
(01:00:32):
They cannot save themselves fromthe dragon.