I want to deal with one thing that I dealt with last week. And I want to give my perspective on this,
just in case maybe you didn't understand me clearly. I just want this really clear.
So turn to page... it's jumping ahead a little bit. Turn to page number...
The whole scripture is found in page 37, Matthew 12, 43 through 45.
We're not going to deal with that yet, but I want to pull something out of it.
Verse 44, when the unclean spirit has gone out, it wanders and then it comes back
and it says, I will return into my house from whence I came out.
Now the thing it really wants is a human body, and we'll discuss why.
But excuse me, what it really is after is the body of a human being.
However, jump over to page 40.
It says, verse 44, then he saith, I will return to my house from whence I came out,
and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished.
So that's the King James Version I'm using there.
The word house, in the strongs it refers to a dwelling, a family,
or literally, figuratively, can also refer to a home, a literal home or house,
household, like a family, or a temple.
So there's strongs definition.
Go to Ther's, next one down, house in Ther's Greek English lexicon.
It says a house.
Well, our temple is a house, but you know what?
We're all going to go home to a house tonight also.
1a is an inhabited house or home.
Well that would, see as long as I'm in my flesh, it's always inhabited.
That would be referring to like a physical structure place, as a house.
2nd from the bottom, the house of God, there's the church.
Which was referred to, strongs didn't refer to it, only Ther's does.
The house of God, so a congregation can have a demon.
Any dwelling place, page 41, can be the human body, as the abode of demons that possess it.
Number two, the inmates of a house, all the persons forming one family, or a household.
So there are family demons.
The demon affects the whole family.
And when it gets cast out of the family, it's going to come back around, try to gain access,
not to the person, to the whole family.
Because that was the house it was dwelling in.
To A, the family of God, or a Christian church, the church of the old and New Testaments.
There are churches now that have demons.
The congregations got them.
Or it can be your family line, and here it turns into generational stuff.
Number three, your stock.
It's an old way of saying your descendants, your family, the descendants of someone.
So, let me make my point again, so it's kind of plain, and then I'm going to give you a story.
Then we'll open up for questions and answers.
Nathan had brought up a question last week.
He said he works, and he goes into various people's houses, and he asked if he has
authority to go in there and, you know, he feels things in there.
He knows things are in there that are not God.
Does he have the authority to cast them out?
I said, no, you don't have the authority to do that.
Because it's not your house.
And if you want, I can bring a little study on authority.
Scripturally speaking, authority is always given.
It cannot be taken.
If you are not given authority by someone in authority over you to do something,
you cannot take that authority from them and say, I'm going to do it anyway.
That's called rebellion.
Authority is always given.
If he has now, if he's invited into a house and the person starts saying,
you know what, it just feels evil in this house.
We bought this house two years ago and we don't sleep well.
It just feels evil.
I've heard of demons and stuff like that.
I don't know, maybe there's a demon here.
Do you know anything about that?
Could you help us with that?
Oh, now we're getting into a whole different realm.
They may give him authority to deal with it.
But just to go in there blind and say, he's not talking to anybody,
just doing his job, but he feels demons.
Does he have the authority to cast him out?
No, he does not.
Authority has not been given to him.
So now let me make application one point further.
So he mentioned to me that a couple of you told him,
well, you should try it anyway, just to see if they'll go.
Okay, so now I have a question for you.
Out of everything we've talked to this point,
you know the answer to this.
So this is a test.
Why would that be a bad idea?
The concept of, well, give it a try.
I mean, there's nobody home.
Just stand in the middle of the house and cast them out.
See if they go, give it a shot.
Even though you may not have the authority, try it.
They might go.
Why is this a bad idea?
We just read it to you.
Demons can occupy a physical house.
They're called haunted houses.
And the physical house has demons in it.
There's a reason the demons are there.
And the person who owns the house can find that reason
or can take the authority.
They own it.
It's their house.
Exercise their authority and kick the demons out.
Here is the big question.
And if demons, if they have anybody in their group that's smart,
because demons can be really dumb.
Of course Christians can be really dumb.
So it's like, whatever.
Demons can be really dumb.
And just stand their ground.
And there Nathan is in this strange house
and he's trying to cast them out.
No, we're not going.
If they have a smart one in the bunch.
He's going to say, come on guys, everybody out.
We're running.
Why?
Because he's going to come back.
Why were they there in the first place?
Why were they allowed to be in the house in the first place?
The people living in the house are not holding the ground of the house
or the spirit wouldn't even be there.
If he casts them out, he is doing these people a huge disservice.
Because it's only a short period of time.
They're going to come around
and find the house empty, swept and garnished.
These people have no concept of what happened
or how to hold the ground.
And he will have loaded that house up seven times worse.
So, I'm not saying that to rebuke anybody.
I'm saying people, I've taught on this for at least three nights already.
We got to start adding two and two up here.
There's not... you go ahead and do what you want.
But you're going to answer to God for it.
I'm just kind of coming from the angle of think this through.
These demons are living in this house.
Well, let's just kick them out.
Let's see if they go.
That's a bad idea.
Because if they do go,
they're going to come back and find that they can get right back in
because the people they were living with
either don't know they're there
or don't know how to hold the ground to keep them out
or get them out.
So, they may take you up on it and just leave.
And two weeks later, come back and destroy that family.
And it's Nathan's fault.
Because Nathan did something he should have never done.
This is not a game.
This is not who's the most powerful.
Let's see if we can overpower them.
This isn't a game.
There are principles and rules to the road on this.
And we really have to watch it and be careful.
I'm going to save my story
for now because I took a while to explain that.
If it fits, I'll share it different time.
Let's go for questions and answers.
Mike's going up there.
So, let's start right in.
There we go.
Before Thanksgiving, you were going to share with us
what strongholds or demonic flavors
that are on the cities here.
We had a homework assignment.
And we never got back to it.
So, I just want to...
Excellent. You brought it back.
Let's start right there.
How many of you have been trying to sense
what's over Princeton?
What's over Malacca?
What's over Bach?
What's over Cambridge?
What's over Mora?
What... wherever your cities are...
Hang on.
Wherever your cities are, whatever...
Because where you have more people congregating,
you will have...
You'll have more...
How would you say energy working?
You'll feel it more.
Then if...
You can feel it going into somebody's own house.
We'll get talking about this too.
Jesus told the disciples when he sent them out.
He said,
Go into houses, release your peace.
What are they testing for?
Ever think about that?
What do you mean, release your peace?
And if it returns to you, it may settle.
Then you just stay there and eat and sleep
and whatever they give to you is good.
If it returns to you,
you leave, shake the dust off your feet,
go to the next house.
Part of what Jesus is talking about
is what's in that house.
Pay attention to what's in that house.
That's a single house.
Well, you can have a group of 500 houses together
and it's called a little city or a village.
Well, what is the predominant spirit
that rules over that little village or spirits?
You'll feel them if you practice.
Pay attention to it.
You can get a sense of it.
Any of you have been practicing and want to share?
Or do you want the homework to go on?
Walt wants to jump in.
Because we can have the homework go on too.
That's not a problem.
This is specifically one area of a city near where I live.
And when I've driven through there,
and this is multiple times over a period of probably years,
out of nowhere, I'll get hit with this kind of lust thing.
And it won't have been there before and it won't be there after
about this maybe a mile stretch on the highway.
And I just, it happened enough times,
I'm thinking there's something here that I just drove into
and then drive back out of.
And it's the same sort of thing repeatedly.
Yep, you're feeling it.
It's a sexual thing of some kind.
And I don't know what it is in that area
that is behind that.
It's not like I'm not driving down,
I'm say 1st Avenue, Minneapolis,
where all the strip bars are, it's not that.
It's Blaine on a highway.
Yep.
Now, if we could find out what the people in that area are into,
we'd know why it's there.
Because remember it's sin ground,
or it's the sin that we're involved in
that gives spirits the legal right.
So, what happens is if it gets two or three houses,
families, households going,
it will rest there,
and then it will try to multiply out.
And if it can get more families in the neighborhood,
into sexual stuff,
it just gains momentum.
And it covers a bigger area.
And you can literally feel it driving through.
And if you're not on guard to it,
just like you said,
you think it's your thoughts.
What in the world?
Why am I having problems with lust right now?
Well, those thoughts are all being planted
because you drove into a covering
or an atmosphere, so to speak.
Go ahead.
The one thing I did notice in the area
is there's a very large business there
that if I named it, you would all know what it was.
And I sometimes wonder if that had something to do with it.
Not sure.
But it does seem to be right in that area
within several hundred yards of that big building.
Okay, interesting.
Yeah, you never know what goes on behind the scenes sometimes.
But you want to...
Last year, we were able to take the bus
and go out on a prayer journey
and prayed in Cambridge
and then drove up to Moron,
to different schools and in front of banks
and things like that.
But as we were doing that,
sometimes what I do is I'll like map
by names.
You know, like as we're going,
people will pray different things
and what they feel,
what they felt about different cities, right?
You're addressing it.
And no two places were the same.
And so, for instance,
when we got to right near Bach.
Bach has very few people in it
and very much sexual sin,
very drug-infested poverty.
But what I was doing is,
as people were feeling loved by the spirit,
what to pray against or for,
then after we were done,
I would look up the name.
And what does that mean to the name?
It was crazy how many of the names
actually stayed in it.
What's going on in that city?
Or what went awry in that city?
Maybe the name said it's supposed to be
a certain thing
and it's now doing completely the opposite.
But the word Bach actually had to do
with sexual sin.
So I just found that really interesting.
That is interesting.
Anybody else have anything
you want to throw in at this point?
We used to pray a lot at the other church.
So I went to for Princeton
and actually a lot of the things
that went through our prayers
as far as when they would...
There was a real spirit of greed
over Princeton as far
as just the finances and so on.
It just was real powerful over that area
as well as the suicide for the teens.
And the enemy was...
At that time we felt like there was
an enemy keeping Princeton actually
at small like that
just for the sake of the finances
of the leadership there and so on.
Interesting.
To concur with that our feeling
as soon as we moved up here
about Princeton as poverty
one of the big strongholds
over Princeton as poverty
which would go along with greed.
And then the selfishness
was another big one.
I mean that kind of runs together anyway.
Just as a side thought
and I agree with you
a whole different side thought
when it says the love of money
that is not necessary
referring to rich people.
Poor people love money
as much as rich people can
and sometimes more so.
They have very little of it
so the little they have
they really love.
They hold on to it
they wouldn't part with it
unless something really important
is necessary to part from it.
So the whole thing of
of greed
you can be a greedy rich person
and you can be a greedy poor person.
Greed covers both ends.
It doesn't
have these rich people
they're just greedy.
No, I've seen poor people who are worse than rich people
when it comes to greed.
So the whole concept of greed and poverty
they can very well go together.
So yeah, I'm agreeing with that.
We felt that right away.
Cambridge doesn't have the poverty thing
but Princeton does.
Absolutely.
Anybody else want to?
We can keep this as an ongoing homework assignment
we'll go back there for those two ladies
and then we'll switch venue
and go a little different direction on questions.
When we were in the modular
we were assigned to pray the things
that we were talking about on Sunday morning
pray the blessing, the fear of the Lord
the hand of the Lord
to move all those different things
and many times we'd take the service
and face the North
and pray for the North, South, East, West
and we've done that here too
but every time
every time we would face
the East
and address Cambridge
we're just anywhere in that direction
it was witchcraft
and then
I believe that's tied into different
religious rulerships
that even affect the government
in rulership there
in that town
and so as we investigate
as we go push further in
it's definitely there
even though when we began to pray it
to begin with we were like well that's weird
I wonder what's going on in that
because we were new here
and yeah, we've seen
what's going on there.
So before we go to the next question
let me add to that facing East
I learned this
Jess and Kristen
have been on their walk about
and they came back for Christmas
so they're living with us now for that period of time
and we got talking Sunday night
they came in Sunday morning I had to go to church
couldn't talk to them so Sunday night we talked quite at length
and I'll share
something different he said in a bit
but I'll share this right now
he said do you know
that Wisconsin
has the most
registered with the state
They have more registered Cubans in Wisconsin than, you know, we always think of the UK or Britain as, oh man, they're creepy. There's more in Wisconsin than there are in Britain.
It's extremely full of witchcraft, which Mary said facing east. It was always.
Man, when we prayed toward the east, it always came back to witchcraft, nail witchcraft, and it's like, yeah, I'll agree with the city of Cambridge, but if you go long term out, you're facing Wisconsin.
So that would make sense. Okay, right over here you had a question. Yep, go ahead and use the mic so it gets on the recording. Please put it in front of your mouth.
There you go. Good job.
If you're praying for someone and you bind something up or tell it to go, I mean this is not with the person being there.
Okay.
Are you endangering that person too?
Are you in agreement with them or what is happening? Is this led by the Holy Spirit?
They're not in my presence.
Okay.
They're not there.
Okay.
As long as you're just binding it up or commanding it to cease operating so the person can be free of its influence long enough to see reality, I think you're okay.
If you're trying to cast it away from them, there again we're back to the same principle. Be careful of that.
That's good information.
But you can bind it up. Like in 2 Corinthians 4, 4 says the God of this world has blinded the eyes of the unbelievers.
Well, we have authority to shut the God of this world down so those unbelievers can see clearly the decisions that need to be made.
Call those blinders to be left in it.
Yep, that's different than trying to cast the demons out of the unbelievers.
Great. Okay.
So, you know, separate those two.
Yeah, that's good.
But yeah, that's good. Mary, you want to add something to that?
Yeah, I'm trying to remember if that's the same scripture that talks about the scales on their eyes.
And people quote that a lot. The Amphiphite says right after, right as part of the concept, it says the scales coming off their eyes, which comes through repentance.
I don't know if it's the same scripture or not. We could look it up.
Yeah, because there's something key about the demonic being shut down enough that you can see the need to repent.
And when you repent, right, now you can really see now the blinders, now those things are off the person's eyes.
Okay, so before we go to a new question, let me just share this.
And I was so proud of Jess and Kristen because they got talking about, they said,
I said, well, you're getting a chance to see different cultures.
And, you know, they went west, south, ended up in California and then came across the south to Texas someplace now is where their RV is setting.
I said, well, you got to see a bunch of different cultures and how different people are and so forth.
And he said, boy, are there different demons out there.
I said, really, so I acted dumb, you know, we've noticed it too.
But what do you what do you find?
He said, man, you drive through some of these areas and there is a wickedness.
There's an evilness that feels like this or feels like that.
And you drive out of the area and it leaves and you drive in a different area.
It's totally different, but it's just smothering.
And then he named one little city in Arizona that is kind of a tourist town.
And they wanted to stay there because it was a beautiful setting.
It had a good campground. The campground was cheap. He named the city.
He said, we only stayed a few days. It was so evil.
He said, now, we stayed long enough to find out that originally it was set up as a brothel town for the miners.
So that was the main thing that happened in that town was brothels.
He said, I don't know if that's still it or not.
He said, but the evil is so thick in that town when you're not used to living there and you drive into it.
He said, for instance, he said, our kids saw shapes of people walking through the camper at night in that town.
And it was the only town that ever happened.
And we couldn't sleep and we were restless.
And he said, when the sun went down, it's just like a thick darkness of evil just tried to drape across you.
He said, we just got out of there. It was beautiful physically, but spiritually it was horrid.
And I thought, that's really good that they were paying attention and noticed that as they were going.
Okay, new question.
Yeah, I just have a question about when you called on Michael, Archangel Michael, I'm assuming.
Would you ever call on another angel without God's permission?
No.
Thank you.
We have no authority to tell angels what to do.
Except for, the scripture says in Psalms that his angels who are ministering spirits or spirits of flames of fire
do the bidding of the word of the Lord.
That's exactly how I believe the King James states it.
They do the bidding of the word of the Lord.
Angels are not under our authority.
They're under God's authority.
We have no authority over angels.
Only God can tell them what to do.
Now we can activate them.
And Brother Hagin used to teach this a lot.
We can activate them if we will start speaking the word.
Because their job is to do the bidding of the word of the Lord.
Okay?
So now if God gives us a rama, scripture or word, you begin speaking that all the angels around will go into motion
to fulfill that because it is though God has spoken, because the Holy Spirit spoke it to you.
It's a living word in you and you spoke it out, so God has just spoken.
And they'll go into action for that.
Or if he gives you a personal rama, like he told me, call him, tell him this.
Well now I have the right to do that, because I am giving the word of the Lord.
If he would have come and I would have said, can you help me with this?
Nothing would have happened.
I had to say exactly, and that's what the Holy Spirit said, say exactly this.
The Lord says you are to serve vengeance on this spirit.
That was the word of the Lord that he did the bidding of.
But that is a big misconception to Christians.
There's a lot of Christians who think we can tell angels to go here and do this and do that and do the other.
And I just send my angels out to take care of that storm.
And they will listen to me and it's like, you're no Jedi.
You don't got that power.
Now if God gives you a rama word to speak to that storm, you can speak that word out.
And then like Brother Hagin says, give the angels the assignment.
The word says you're to fulfill the word of the Lord.
He just told me to go that, boom, I'm putting it out there.
Go deal with that storm.
They'll be all over it.
But they obey the bidding of the word of the Lord.
Not the bidding of the word of Verne or Ken or Molly or whomever.
There is no scripture whatsoever that I have ever found that gives me the authority to tell angels what to do.
There's none. I've never found it.
So if that disappoints a bunch of you, I'm sorry.
But if you show it to me in the word, we'll work with it, but I've never seen it.
Okay, right there first.
What does unsaved humanity's future look like? Do they go to the lake of fire?
Yeah, now we're going back to the same question.
Unsaved humanity's future. Let's go to the word.
And we'll go to...
Let's go to Revelation first. We'll go to two places on this.
Let's go to Revelation.
Let me go there and see what I want to find here.
Chapter 20, let's start there.
And I'm reading out of the NIV here.
It says verse 11, Revelation 20.
Then I saw a great white throne. This is the last big judgment.
And him who was seated on it, and the earth and sky fled from his presence,
and there was no place for them.
And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne.
And the books were opened.
Another book. So there's all kinds of books on people's lives.
Your life, my life, there's all kinds of books.
But there's one big book.
Another book was opened which is the book of life.
That's the book that contains the names of those who have made Jesus their savior.
The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books.
You know, this is interesting.
The way we're living on earth is being written down.
And if you do something really horrible or evil and ask forgiveness of it,
the big eraser comes out.
And it's forgiven. Never to be remembered again.
It's just a blank spot.
But our whole life is recorded.
The only thing that's not there is what we get under the blood, so to speak,
or washed by the blood.
The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books.
So we all have books written about us and at least one or more about this life.
And our judgment is going to be on this day in 2005, on August 1st,
you did this and you said that.
And you never dealt with it.
Well, what are you going to do?
I mean, there it is. There's the proof.
The verse 13, the sea gave up the dead that were in it.
And death and hell, Hades, gave up the dead that were in them.
And each person was judged according to what he had done.
So everybody who has ever lived is here.
Now the saints have been judged in 1 Corinthians 5 previously.
Anybody who died as an easy Christian already went through what's called the Bema judgment
or the judgment seat of Christ.
And we've already been judged.
This is not our spot.
I think we'll be in attendance.
But it's not necessarily where we get judged.
But all of humanity who wasn't saved when they died are going to be here.
We know that because of the way it's written.
And even hell gave up everything in it and so forth.
Verse 14, then death and hell or Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.
And the lake of fire is the second death.
If anyone's name was not found written in the book of life.
And if you study that through, the way you get your name written in the book of life,
you come from death to life is by...
If you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth.
Repent of your sins, make Jesus your Lord.
Your name will be written in the book of life.
If anyone's name was not found written in the book of life,
he was thrown into the lake of fire.
So the name has to be in the book.
Or that's where they end up.
So now I want to take you one other spot as an interesting place.
Go to Isaiah with me.
Isaiah chapter 66.
This is a prophecy by Isaiah dealing with what happens after what we just talked about.
If you go to chapter 21, the first thing John says is I saw a new heavens and a new earth.
And now we're off into the future of the human race without sin.
Well, Isaiah saw that.
Verse 22 of Isaiah 66, the last few verses of his book.
As the new heavens and the new earth that I make will endure before me declares the Lord,
so will your name and your descendants endure.
From one new moon to another and from one Sabbath to another,
all mankind will come and bow down before me says the Lord.
Now, of course, all mankind there is referring to those who are in heaven.
All mankind in heaven.
There are those in the lake of fire that don't seem to be part of this.
Because of the next verse.
And they will go who, the ones who come and bow down before God,
they will go out and look upon the dead bodies of those who rebelled against me.
Their worm will not die, nor will their fire be quenched.
And they will be elosome to all mankind.
So literally the people who end up in the lake of fire,
from time to time, doesn't say how often,
it just says from one new moon or one Sabbath to another.
So however that's set up in the new heavens and new earth,
there will be periods of time where everybody who is not in the lake of fire
will be brought and shown the people who are in the lake of fire.
And we'll know why they're there.
That, I believe, is a deterrent to future sin ever happening like it happened with Lucifer.
Because now we have a living example of human beings
who are in the eternal state of punishment in the lake of fire.
And we know that came from rebelling against God.
It would be good not to do that.
If anybody gets a crazy idea like Lucifer got, let's not go there.
Because that's the end result.
So I bring that up because it says their worm won't die.
In other words, the life in them won't die.
The fire of the lake of fire won't be quenched.
That's where they end up.
So back to Revelation.
It says that Hades gives up all of its dead.
But their name isn't written in the book of life.
Do they have a second chance or do they just get thrown?
I don't know. I hope so.
I don't know.
Nothing is indicated in Scripture that says everybody's guaranteed a second chance.
It would be best to get it right the first time out.
Just to be sure.
If God wants to give second, third, fourth, fifth chance, that's good with me.
He's God.
But don't count on it because there's nothing that guarantees it for anybody.
That's the best answer I can give for that one.
Another question, right up front.
I want to go back to when you were having the wrestling match and you called on Michael.
If that gentleman said to you that he had that angel with him
from the time he was a child.
The one that was tormenting him?
The one that was tormenting him.
Would you not think that there was a plan for that man
that that angel was going to be used somewhere for a special encounter?
Probably.
Well...
You think...are you alluding to that maybe that night was the encounter?
Yeah.
Could have been.
I am because I'm curious.
I was just processing and thinking how his life went.
So there had to be a reason.
There had to be a purpose in the whole thing.
That's a good thought. I never thought of it that way.
That that spirit might have been there for the purpose of using him to bring down the church.
I'm not asking...I'm not trying to be nosy too much or anything.
I was thinking...I wonder what his life was like.
What he was...if he had a call on him, if after that and I mean he...
If he hasn't yet, he may yet.
Because that's a pretty big...
That was a pretty big deal.
Pretty big thing, yeah.
Yeah.
I don't know if I have enough information to be able to answer that question.
I don't know if you want to speak to it, Mary, or not.
You don't have to.
I don't think I have enough information to be able to answer that.
All I know is he said, after that night, he was never troubled by it again.
And he knew he had approached me before we ever had that night.
And he said, I've got demons just so you know.
I know they're there. I can feel them. They torment me this way, that way.
And he listed it off.
He says, I need deliverance.
Well, it wouldn't seem like there were a lot of...
Could you give me the mic?
Like there were a lot with fallen angels.
No. No.
They generally do what Ephesians 6 says.
They stay in the heavenly places and rule from there.
But this one was a setup.
Boy, thank God that he had mercy on me.
Because that could have really went crossways for a long time.
That would have been a big assignment.
Yeah. That would have been.
Yeah.
Go ahead, Ken.
I have a question.
I don't know.
But I remember back when I was in India
and working with a pastor there.
And it was just, it seemed amazing to me
how committed his people were
and how hungry they were.
And I mentioned that to him.
And he says, yeah, that's a good thing.
But he says, remember,
before they got saved,
anything that they declared to be a God
could be a God for this, a God for that, a God for this.
Especially in India.
And he says, the problem is,
they got saved and set free,
but they still have all those items within their house yet.
Would that be leaving the door open for them?
Yeah, the Holy Spirit is going to work with them on that.
Because the way it works in India
is anything that is a God,
they will worship it and serve it.
Because they don't know who is God.
So they just line them up
on little idols on their shelves.
And they might have 20, 30, 40 of them.
And they'll try to be obedient to all of them.
Because when they die,
they don't know who is actually God here.
But now they were, his church,
they were born again, spirits.
Would that still carry over?
I'm sure there's a time of sanctification,
but at the same token,
they're going to have to,
as the Holy Spirit leads them.
You'd almost have to cleanse the house.
They need to clean that shelf off.
Before they could get totally set free.
Yeah.
Thou shalt have no other gods before me
is the Old Testament reference.
The New Testament is I am the way.
In my thought,
when I asked him that question,
and he responded,
I thought,
how many people in the United States,
how many idols do they have,
they don't even recognize that they are.
Yeah.
Yeah, other cultures, man,
that's all different stuff
than we deal with here.
But very real.
I wanted to address the,
the demonic in churches
where there's a certain,
of course we know the word spirit
can be a demon or demons
of the same type,
and or can be a way of thinking.
So,
we have grown
and then gone backwards,
grown and then gone backwards,
sometimes through
through the beginning of the revival
for this church,
starting in our home,
we had the miraculous healings
and all kinds of different things,
but we've always had people
from all different backgrounds
because we're not an established church
that would be like Lutheran Baptist
or whatever and been here forever and a day.
So, now,
there are surges of time
that we need to be aware
that as new people are coming in,
they can come in with the
way of thinking,
but they can also come in
with the effect of the demonic
of the church they left.
And when that takes place,
you'll see little spurts of strife,
you'll see, you know,
all of a sudden manifestations,
other ways that that'll take place.
And then as long as the services
stay hot and under the anointing,
it cleans it up.
And that's why we back up at all
with our praise and worship
and just really inviting the anointing,
the demonic from other places
and the strife that they've felt
or even the ways of belief system,
like poverty or things like that,
will move its little way in here,
in a heartbeat.
They're always looking for an opening.
And I think we need to be aware of that
because it is, it's like a jump.
It's going to jump.
They might even be trying to get away from it.
People like, I'm done with that spirit
at that church, yet they're carrying it
because they were a part of it.
So, I want to pick up on that
and give a...
I'll now give that other story
and this we can end with this.
Page 41.
The definition of house
when a spirit leaves.
The lexicon definition.
Page 41, fifth line from the top,
letter 2A.
The family of God,
Christian church
or the church of the old or new testaments.
Churches can have
spirits that are
over that corporate body.
And it's very common.
It's not uncommon.
It's very common.
And their whole purpose is to stop
the moving of the spirit.
That's their whole...
They're going to be there to shut down
what God's trying to do.
The first church I pastored in,
I went there as assistant pastor
and I was assistant pastor for
a little over a year.
During that period of time,
about six or eight months into it,
I know the Lord opened my eyes
and I saw the spirit
that was over that church.
And it was that church had kind of
the peak ceiling this way.
High ceiling, maybe 21 feet or so.
Really high ceiling.
And had big platform
and then the pulpit was right underneath
that peak and so forth.
And right at the peak,
above the pulpit,
I saw
what I guess I would refer to
as a gargoyle.
It looked kind of like that.
Really dark gray.
No color to it whatsoever.
Really dark gray.
And it was...
perched up there.
Really not hanging on anything.
Anything just perched up there
straight above the pulpit.
And the first time he showed it to me,
I was walking through the sanctuary
and I looked up and I saw it.
And I thought,
what in the world is that?
And the creepy part was
as I walked,
the only thing that moved on it
was its head.
And it watched me go.
Everything else was perfectly still.
And that just creeped me out.
It was like,
that isn't ugly. That's got to be a demon.
And he's staring right at me.
And that was the only time
I openly saw it.
So I talked to the pastor about it.
Well, he wasn't sure what to think about it.
He wasn't poo-pooing it.
It's not like he thought I was nuts.
But he wasn't sure what to think about that.
That was still when we were
in the state of mind
that Christians can't have demons.
So why would there be a demon in the church?
It has no right to be in the church.
This is God's church. We dedicated the building
to God and blah, blah, blah, blah.
Well, I wasn't going to make waves.
He knows more than me. He's been in the ministry
way longer than me. So whatever.
I just did my job and informed him.
Well, then he ended up resigning
and moving. And then they voted me
and his head pastor.
Well, the first thing I did was God,
you showed that to me for a reason. I want that out.
So I went after that thing.
And it took a while.
It took a few months.
I'm going to say three,
maybe four months
for that thing
to where I could walk
in the sanctuary
and it wasn't there.
You could feel it was gone.
It's not there.
And the only reason
I could deal with it
is because now I was the pastor.
I had been given the authority.
So I don't know why it was there.
But it was there.
So
got rid of it.
And within two months afterwards,
we had this huge revival take place
where all kinds of people got saved.
All kinds of supernatural things happened.
Well, my opinion,
the only reason they hadn't had that sooner
was because of that thing.
It was shutting it down.
So what kind of things
can cause
a demon to take
residence
in a church?
You ever thought about that?
Now think back to what we've taught
at this point.
Demons only have right
if they're sin.
So they give them legal right
if there's some kind of sin.
Now you've got a demon in a church
which means
somehow the congregation
sinned.
Because this isn't a single person
who's bringing this thing in and out.
This thing dwells there.
It stays there. The congregation
somehow gave this thing right.
Now for
or the pastor could have
a previous pastor.
So now those of you
who've been in churches
for any lengths of time
what kind of
let's just be blunt so we're not here all night
guessing game. What kind of
ungodly things can happen
in a congregation of a church
that would open the door
to demons?
Controlling the pastor?
Well yeah, he's supposed to serve God, not man.
That could be part of it.
Say what?
Division.
Where you have division and strife
you have every evil thing.
That's what Paul said.
That to me is probably
the biggest one.
If you've got a divided church
you can't keep that thing in unity
you're going to pick up evil spirits
that are going to try to shut you down.
Anything else?
How about pastors who are having affairs?
Pastors who are having affairs
we had
when we got TBO
that building had demons in it
specifically in the sanctuary
it took us months to clean that place up
after we owned it
we couldn't touch it until we owned it
but after we owned it
it took us months to clean that up
because there was all kinds of
we found out later sexual things
that happened in the sanctuary
even on the platform
and it's like
well that didn't help any
I don't know
what else could have opened the door
sooner
but let me give you
let me give you
I grew up in church
it was my life
I grew up in church
church I grew up in had a huge
demonic stronghold
it was rare
Rare. The spirit of God moved. Occasionally something would happen. But it was rare. That
something supernatural would take place. People got saved, but that's not necessarily the earmark
of God. His approval is on the church. Because you know what? Wherever the word is preached,
people can get saved, and people get saved. You can go into a bar. You can go into the strip in
Vegas. You can go into the whorehouse, and you preach the word, and the conviction of God comes,
somebody will get saved. Because the word will produce its own fruit. So just because while we
people getting saved, we must be okay. That means nothing. That is produced by just simply the
release of the word will produce salvation. I'm talking about supernatural things where people
are having visions. People are having supernatural encounters. I'll give you a couple that happened
in the church I grew up in. Because they were so rare, we remembered every one of them that happened.
There was a special speaker there. He was a missionary. The message he gave was
to call people into missions. It was like we need to go be missionaries. So he had an
altar call afterwards. People come to the front. Everybody come to the front to pray,
and so forth. One person, I won't say who it was, whatever, but one person, a young person,
he was probably a teenager at that point. He might even been younger than that.
So he went up there with everybody else. And all of a sudden he went stiff. You could see him.
He was just standing, and all of a sudden he just went stiff, like this. And as my memory
serves me, the only thing that was coming out of him was speaking in tongues. And he started wobbling.
Like you'd stand a board up. He started wobbling. Like this. And of course, this stuff is so odd
to this church. Nobody knows what to do. It's like, folks, he's in a trance. He's standing up.
Somebody be ready to catch him. That never crossed anybody's mind. He went over face first,
like a board. Hit the floor. They had no carpet on the floor. Hit the floor. He bounced
with his face. Boom! Just as if you'd stay totally straight and just bam, hit.
And he didn't have any injury. That was God being merciful.
Didn't have any injury. He stayed down there, stiff as a board for, I don't know how long it was,
half hour, 45 minutes. Just in a trance, just rattling on in his prayer language.
And when he got up, he was called to be a missionary. He said, I know where I'm supposed
to go and I know what I'm supposed to do. See now, that is a supernatural encounter.
That kind of thing happens so rarely that it kind of scared people when it happened.
And in that particular church, in my opinion, the thing that was largely responsible for letting
the demons in was the church business meetings. Man, did these people fight? Because that group
wanted it to go this way and that group wanted it to go that way. And the pastor most time
was a hireling. So he didn't want to take anybody's side because then they'd vote him out.
They'd gain steam, we'll kick him out, we'll get somebody to agree with us.
So he just would stay neutral, which it's like saying the wolf's here and the shepherd's standing
over there going, well, let's see how you do with that wolf. He didn't step in to deal with
anything. And year after year after year, and then there'd be hard feelings and the
people on this side, it was only two sides, people on this side, some of them would never
talk to the people on that side. And it was just division and strife. There were some other
things that happened too, but that was in my mind, one of the main things that happened.
And the amount of seeing, there was demons in that church, you could feel them coming in,
you'd have guest ministers come and they would say from the pulpit, folks, there's evil
spirits in here somehow, you've got to get them out if you want God to move. They'd say it from
the pulpit, they could feel them. And all the people who went church every week couldn't feel
them. It's like, well, I don't know if he's right or not right. It's like, he's right.
And there was just so rare to have a move of the spirit of any kind.
So I'm a sophomore, junior in college, going to be a minister. So I'm home for a weekend and
one of the ministering teams from the college had come to minister that week and they would send
out teams to do certain things. And I'm home that week and I wanted to see the minister in this
time. So I'm sitting there, minding my own business. And all of a sudden I start shaking.
I'm going, what? And I tried to stop it. My whole body started shaking.
And so the guy from the Bible college is up. He knew me. I went to his classes.
He's up there speaking. He's in the middle of his message. And I'm shaking and I'm looking at him
and he's noticing. Now he knows the things of the spirit. I don't. I'm still dumb as a rock
to this. I'm going, something's wrong. I'm shaking and I can't. He got violent. I was
sitting in the pew and I was shaking like this. And then I started weeping.
And it just came up from inside of me. And I'm sitting there bawling like a baby out loud.
Just embarrassed. Like and just crying. And he stopped and he looked at me.
He said, Burn, is anything going on?
You think? I don't know what's going on. He said, whatever's going through you right now,
come up here and share it because the spirit of God is on you and he wants you to say something.
Well, this is what I knew to me. And there was only one thought that was going through me
when I was weeping. So I went up to the platform. I'm standing there shaking.
I composed myself enough. I could talk. And the only thing that came out of me
was pleading with the people to quit fighting with each other and get unity.
You know, stop and think about that was huge supernatural moment for me and them.
But now remember, you got a little church. You got two or three groups in that church.
That's my home church. So I belong to one of the groups in the other groups thinking.
Do you know what came out of that? To the group I was part of, they identified with it.
Yes, we've got to find a way to make peace in this church. We can't keep doing this.
The other two groups, one specifically, accused our group of putting me up to that
and embarrassing the church in front of a guest speaker. Therefore, they excused everything
that was said and actually picked up another offense. Now you wonder why there's a demon there.
You wonder why guest speakers come in and go,
you guys got demons in this church. Do you know that? You know, they're trying to do
the congregation to help. If you're not recognizing it, something's wrong here. You need to get
this out. Division and strife is the biggest door opener. But the biggest sign. Now you can
have a church that looks really pretty. I mean, home church I grew up and was known in the
whole state of North Dakota. We were a little country church and we were the biggest givers
in the whole state in North Dakota. There was churches of hundreds of people
and that little church out gave all of them. Man, special speakers always wanted to come to
our church because they always got a really good offering and all this kind of stuff.
So from the outside, it looked really whitewashed. But the inside had some rotten stuff in it.
I say all that to emphasize that one definition. A church, a congregation can have a spirit
in it or spirits that need to be cast out. And of course, the only way you get spirits out is
you start with repentance. It's attached to sin. So the sin has to be dealt with to get
them out. So this is not just talking about a person or a body. This can be talking about a body
according to the definition. This can be talking about a family. Or this can be talking about a
lineage, your stock, your offspring. So that's starting with a family that will go on generationally
and it can be talking about a church. Now, when you get to the principalities and the powers,
now they inhabit regional areas like over towns and things like that. And we'll talk about that in
the future. But I wanted to throw that in at the definition. And when Mary brought that up,
I thought, well, here's the place to nail that. So we try very hard here. And nobody's perfect.
But we try very hard here not to let a spirit in. Because they're trying to get into this
congregation as much as they're trying to get in any place. And you have to guard it
like you guard your own life or you guard your family. The church has to be guarded.
And it has to be guarded by the people who have the authority to guard it.
And if you have a divided board, and the board is the authority in the church,
and you got a divided board perpetually divided, they don't get along, they're always fighting,
you've got demons in the church. Because where you find strife and division,
you find every evil thing. Unity is paramount. You want something back there, Abby, yet?
Yeah, I have a lot of questions, honestly, but I'll ask one of them.
Okay, now we're done for the night. Yeah. So, back to what happened at TBO when it was the
fish house, right? And you went in there and you sensed a lot of demons, right? Something like
would you say like people had sex on the altar or whatever like that? Yeah.
Besides a bunch of other things that work. Besides a bunch of other things.
Trying to like, because this is, I have a question, I'm trying to like formulate it.
But what I'm like, what I see is it that happening, because I have two things clashing and I'm like,
okay, that happening and that what happened. Is it because something in the church government
was off that allowed that to come into the place that gave us space? Does that make sense?
Yep. Perfect question. Or is it because those two people have a will
and they made that choice at the church? So, was it the responsibility of those two
people or was the government? Or is it both? Or both. Is there something going on? Say example,
someone tries example, right? Okay. Someone tries to come in here and do that. Yep.
I guess for me, I grew up with like, Sanjay and Jules around the place and like nothing, right?
And it feels a little, I don't know, like it feels a little like, maybe I'm wrong,
I don't know. That's how I grew up with, that's the knowledge I have.
Does that make sense? Okay, I got everything to the last part. So let's deal with everything
except the last little part I didn't understand. Maybe Mary did. Okay. Now,
since Mary's the primary pastor of TBO, I'm going to let her answer your questions.
So, when I first started teaching over there, I wasn't the pastor. And that went on for quite a
while. I was probably the only one that was over there because Vern was establishing this over
here. So kind of feeling it out, trying to check out what's going on. You have all different
backgrounds. And it was mainly people coming out of addiction. So they're already under the
spirit of sorcery. And so we came in right after the church that everything blew up and
had all the stuff going on. That church was not under anyone. There was no authority over them.
So that was number one issue. The other part was it was coming down through all the leadership.
There's lies and twisting and ripping off the government and all these kinds of things.
And they had a thing about somebody in leadership felt it necessary that in Cambridge
that the doors would stay open all the time. In case this is the one, and this is tradition of old,
right, is in case someone wants to pray. What could you imagine if we left this open
all the time and somebody just come in to pray, we'd be missing sound equipment and everything
else? Which they did. So the two big TVs that are up in the front, those were stole at one time
and they found them out underneath the trailer somewhere. The police tracked them down.
There was continual stuff because there was no real leadership.
First it was a leadership that went awry. Then what was left, there was no leadership really.
And the person who was running different things did not want to pass through there.
He was just like, I'm trying to hold together these last 12, 13 people.
And I stared teaching anger resolution, which I found was really interesting because
at the root of all strife is that anger and anger says I want something to stop.
So there needed to be boundaries. And so people began to express how angry they were about that.
Then we first got in a spot where we were renting. They asked me to pastor and I said only if it's
under word of life. So that was the first shift where the demonic realm challenged.
We don't own the building, but I set it up where it was like this has to be under word of life.
And the group that was in there has to have its own building they can attend,
but this is a church. And we started to take the building back by getting rid of the couches and all
the weird stuff they had in the sanctuary and establish that this is God's house. Still didn't
own it. So we had some crazy wild stuff you could walk through there. We have people walking
through starting to volunteer and they'd be working in the kitchen and they'd hear people
walking upstairs and there was nobody there. They'd run up and check and there was nobody
there or they go down and you know completely. So we still hadn't had the authority and then
to begin to move in as soon as we signed to buy the place. I mean now I was revved and waiting
because we would have some major prayer stuff going on. I mean about probably four people
because a lot of people from where in life don't even know that we have the bridge or they
they don't come out. And so we had those people and we go out on the sidewalks and
just declare in different areas or go through the building. But it was just... you could feel it.
And once we owned the building and we were able to do that and we started we started doing
things in the physical too. 16 security cameras went up. That says no, no more thievery.
The doors had locks. No. So you start to actually rule in a place and that demonic
doesn't like that, right? And so then we just kept doing the cleansing. It needs to be cleansed
on a regular basis. Last Saturday night, anybody was at last Saturday night?
You could tell different people in the house were not saved.
Weren't even sure that you know maybe they were being made to be there. You know we get
just we get people walking off the streets that are high. All that. So it isn't like
word of life where you get a certain group of unity and you might have a couple people come in
that are at odds with it. But you have a major core. If we're down to hardly any of our core,
it shows in the services because it's that demonic. What they're bringing into the church
because it's an outreach. Outreaches are built right at the gates of hell. So you know
it's kind of like let's put it right here and invite the people in that are caught right
in there right? Where there's a lot of salvation and things that happen there. But it is definitely
it's a place that if you got a chance to learn this stuff come out and right before service
walk through the sanctuary and pray with us. Because what's going to happen as it continues
to grow. We're always getting new people in. There's always demonic stuff. Two Saturday
nights ago we had a guy manifesting probably for half the sermon right at the front of
the church. It's a point I just put my hand on his head and he's like and doing this you know.
That's a regular occurrence there. Maybe that's why people don't come out because we're like
let her deal with that over there. I don't know but we need the church to come over
and even if just stay long enough to pray. Do that to support because it is a house of revival
as we're pulling people out of the pits of hell. So there were all kinds of things to
blame. And you had to deal with each one of them and start to rule it. Start to rule it financially.
Start to rule it. When we had Dean come in and just teach just a little bit on giving.
I mean it's a place that was a place of poverty. The atmosphere would go so tight he'd be up
there for what three minutes sharing something on prosperity. It was just you could just feel it.
And then I would address it. And that's how it is there. You have to keep
on it because there's constant unsafe coming through the place.
So at this point I would say it's not so much spirits residing in the building anymore.
But it's what people drag in with them that shows up the most now. But going back to
the spirits in the building, Mary mentioned it to me. It wasn't even necessarily the
people who did things on the platform. The government was off. The pastor and the
board was off. And they let things happen that should have never happened. We're totally
ungodly. And that just opens the door. I mean it just the way it works.
So then once we took over and owned it we could set up a different government and start
saying no to this. And they're like squatters. You know these spirits are like squatters.
They got to be driven out. They think they can stay and you just have to drive them out.
And sometimes it takes a little while. It's like peeling an onion, you know.
You got to peel it and get them out. The other one is when we moved in the worship was an
entertainment worship. So they were doing everything from free bird to talking Leonard
Skinnerd free bird. And our Jesus is headed to Chicago and stuff like that. And I'd have to sit
before I'd preach and sit there waiting like all right. So we're going to have to bring
the anointing somehow after these three songs. And you could just feel they had no understanding
of worship. They just had that. So that's how the atmosphere would start the service.
But God was faithful and people would get saved on a regular base. I mean we just had 10 saved
again a few weekends ago. So it is a it's it'll move ahead and you'll be like whoa.
And then you'll feel it retract and I'll move ahead. So if you if you come there consistently
you'll you'll sense that because it's here comes some more unsaved
you know or whatever or people with poor motives. So now I'm going to share one more story.
We're 22 minutes past time. But I think this is important information. So there was when we
were in Colorado and working to get some things going there whole different atmosphere there.
There was a new church that started that by the time we left Colorado that church was probably
about 4,000 people grew like mad just exploded. They bought a huge chunk of land put a great big
building up this that and the other. This is how that church started. Our children knew some
of the other people that went there and they went there and then they come home with these stories
and it's like what can't be. So then one night Mary went to visit just to you know let's see
what this is about. They started their praise and worship service with the song dance with the
devil. They played it very well I guess. The band knew it very well. They did a good
job with the song and then afterwards Mary asked she said so do you I don't know who she asked.
I could probably have her share of the story. She asked you know you to do that often.
Well we're trying to find a way so that when people who are unsafe come in we're
identifying with them and making them feel comfortable. So now we know a little bit about
how demons work in deliverance and we're going you are starting the worship service with dance
with the devil. Now if you back up and just take a surface look at that church you'd say wow God
is moving because they were like 4,000 people when we left. But if you take a close look
I'm not sure that was God that was moving. They had a lot of things going on that were very appealing.
Excuse me. But we met with the pastor because we thought well let's get to know him this that
and the other and met with the pastor and we said what do you attribute to your church growth.
He said well we don't try to do anything that would cause anybody to be uncomfortable
and it's in the numbers. He said we are constantly advertising if you send out a thousand flyers
you'll get two or three percent response on that. So a thousand flyers you get 20-30 visitors to
come off that thousand flyers and he said we try to make it very palatable and comfortable for
them and we have a business plan that by next year we're going to be this size in the
following year we're going to have a building fund and they had it all mapped out how they
were going to grow just on the business basis and this that and the other. But the key
was to not do anything that would cause anyone to not want to come there. Everything was to keep
everybody coming happy including playing that kind of music because they identify with that.
I'm not sure it was God.
Christian church I mean people seem to get saved they had water baptism and this that and the
other but I don't know something about the whole thing makes me a hmm I don't...
How can you start a worship service by dancing with the devil and then
up dancing with the Holy Spirit by the end? How did that work? I did.
So anyway weird things happen and if you just like Jesus said if you judge by mere
appearances you'll never see it. You have to judge by the Spirit. So with that in mind
let's go home. Thank you for spending the extra time.