The goal of the devil’s empire is to take prisoners, to subjugate them, to oppress them, to rob them of every gift of God and, finally, to destroy them. Satan uses slavery to cut the wings of the spirit with which we soar to the heights of God. The devil governs through a spiritual city called Babylon, which opposes the heavenly city, the New Jerusalem. Babylon is the devil’s general headquarters; several spiritual regions arrayed under Babylon combine with it to compose his kingdom of terror and death. The woman you saw is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth (Revelation 17:18).
JESUS CAME TO SET THE CAPTIVES FREE
Jesus not only came to save us from sin, but also to rescue us from our captivity and from all that implies the kingdom of darkness: sickness, death, brokenness, anguish, poverty, etc. The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me, because the Lord has anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound (Isaiah 61:1 NKJV).
The captivities and prisons to which this passage refers are not physical, but spiritual. God does not set criminals free who have been sentenced to jail. The Kingdom of God respects order and a nation’s criminal justice system and acknowledges the right exercised by the law to incarcerate those who do evil. Still, His anointing can set free those who are innocent prisoners, as in the cases of Peter (see Acts 12:5-10) and Paul and Silas (see Acts 16:22-26). The reality is that the kingdom of darkness is formed of thousands and millions of prisons, where satan holds the human race captive. I, the Lord, have called You in righteousness; I will take hold of Your hand. I will keep You and will make You to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles, to open eyes that are blind , to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness (Isaiah 42:6-7) and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death (Hebrews 2:15). The problem is in thinking that captivity is only for persons who have “social problems.” Drug addicts, prostitutes, and alcoholics are not the only ones occupying Satan’s prison chambers. We also err by assuming that, once Satan’s captives give up their vices, they leave their prisons and are free from slavery. In reality, the matter is much more complex than that; the end of troubling behavior does not necessarily indicate the end of captivity. Again, these issues are not restricted to certain groups of people; instead, they concern us all. The truth is that any person can be captive— Christians included. The Bible shows us how even God’s prophets, such as King David, lived as captives in spiritual prisons. Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise Your name; the righteous shall surround me, for You shall deal bountifully with me (Psalms 142:7 NKJV). King David was never in a physical prison. However, the man whose son would build the most extraordinary temple of worship ever constructed told God he couldn’t worship because his soul was in prison. This is the reality of millions of people who are unable to worship or function in other areas of their lives. There are people who are happy during the Sunday morning service, yet are defeated by sadness, rage, and anguish that same afternoon.
Millions of Christians cannot find their breakthrough when it comes to the areas of health, character, and finances. One day they are at their peak; the next day they are in the valley. This is so because Jesus’ victory over captivity is almost an unknown subject in the Church.
Jeremiah 13:15-Hear and pay attention, do not be arrogant, for the Lord has spoken. Give glory to the Lord your God … before your feet stumble on the darkening hills. You hope for light, but He will turn it to thick darkness and change it to deep gloom. But if you do not listen, I will weep in secret because of your pride; my eyes will weep bitterly, overflowing with tears, because the Lord’s flock will be taken captive.
God is reforming all things and taking His pioneers, apostles, and prophets from revelation to revelation. This is one of those revelations. So, let’s understand how a faithful Christian, who loves God, can experience a prison of the soul from which he can find no escape.
THE FRAGMENT OF THE SOUL
The soul and spirit are ultimately connected and made of a substance that can be fragmented. Our souls contain the information defining who we are as spiritual beings. There is a parallel in the physical realm: Inside the nucleus of our cells is found a substance called DNA, which is a chain of amino acids. It works like a file in which all the genetic information about the physical being is found. If we had the technology to accomplish it, an entire body could be reproduced from a single cell. Likewise, a single fragment of the soul is all that is needed to capture us spiritually. The devil does not need to possess the entire soul to take a prisoner in the spiritual sphere. He only needs a fragment to establish in it a region of his kingdom and from there afflict it. In order for this to happen, the devil must shatter the soul through circumstances, causing deep fear, trauma, or acute pain. In addition, he can divide the soul through participation in the occult and sin.
Instead of being a whole person, the shattered soul consists of many jagged and pierced pieces. In biblical symbolism, when the Lord talks about Judah, it often has to do with the human soul, whereas when Jerusalem is talked about, it often has to do with the human spirit. The people of Israel in the Old Testament serve as a symbol of the spiritual condition of the Church. Taking this into account, let’s look at the devil’s devices to fragment souls in the Scriptures. Let us go against Judah and harass and terrify it; and let us cleave it a sunder [each of us taking a portion], and set a [vassal] king in the midst of it, namely the son of Tabeal (Isaiah 7:6 AMP). All of us have been victims at some time or other of terrifying or painful situations. These are moments in which something breaks in the depths of our being. Expressions such as, “I’m broken up,” or, “They broke my heart,” reflect the injuries inflicted upon the soul during fragmentation. The devil takes advantage of moments of great suffering to capture a piece of us and take us as prisoners in his kingdom—even when most of the soul has been healed through Christ. Once the soul has been broken, Satan makes us “good for nothing” in that area of our lives, or in every area in some cases. King David clearly understood that he had a spiritual enemy who stalked his soul in order to destroy it.
Psalms 35:7-For without cause, they hid for me their net; a pit of destruction without cause, they dug for my life [my soul]. … 17 Lord, how long will You look on [without action]? Rescue my life [my soul] from their destructions, my dear and only life from the lions!
1 Peter 2:9-But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation [city], a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light.
When the devil breaks our soul, it is as if our inner city becomes desolate and in ruins. Therefore, when we first come to Jesus, we need to begin a process of restoration and deliverance. This is a rebuilding of the old ruins. We all need to be rebuilt so that the temple of God can be constructed within us. We need the designs of the devil to be destroyed in our lives so we can be set totally free. This is what the Lord says—your Redeemer, who formed you in the womb: I am the Lord, who has made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by Myself, who foils the signs of false prophets and makes fools of diviners, who overthrows the learning of the wise and turns it into nonsense, who carries out the words of His servants and fulfills the predictions of His messengers, who says of Jerusalem, “It shall be inhabited,” of the towns of Judah, “They shall be built,” and of their ruins, “I will restore them” (Isaiah 44:24-26). It is the work of Jesus to completely destroy the work of the devil through the anointing of the Holy Spirit. This is a process that does not end with the announcement and acceptance of the Good News of the Gospel. The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on Me, because the Lord has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent Me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of His splendor . They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated; they will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations (Isaiah 61:1-4). I have set the key words in bold in this passage because I want you to appreciate the liberating work of the Lord. God wants to raise us up as kings and priests for God the Father. The kings of the Kingdom of God have shining cities. There is no king without a territory, without abundant riches, or without authority. Everything the king says is law. But as long as Tabeal governs, a part of each of our souls will be useless. We will not be in control of our lives; we will live with confusion, terror, sickness, and the feeling that we are powerless to overcome. And you will be called priests of the Lord, you will be named ministers of our God . You will feed on the wealth of nations, and in their riches you will boast. Instead of their shame My people will receive a double portion, and instead of disgrace they will rejoice in their inheritance; and so they will inherit a double portion in their land, and everlasting joy will be theirs (Isaiah 61:6-7). The apostolic anointing is what opens our understanding, enabling us to take authority—as the kings we are in Christ—over the gates of hell. As Jesus told Peter, “The gates of hell will not prevail against the Church” (see Matt. 16:18). Behind those gates are captive kings, sons of God, who are unsuccessful at being who they are meant to be because the devil has rendered them useless. Spiritual and material treasures are also being held back from those kings. But God is raising a generation of men and women with understanding, with the anointing of Cyrus, King of Persia, to restore and raise kings andset the prisoners free. Thus says the Lord to His anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have held—to subdue nations before him and loose the armor of kings, to open before him the double doors, so that the gates will not be shut: “I will go before you and make the crooked places straight; I will break in pieces the gates of bronze and cut the bars of iron. I will give you the treasures of darkness and hidden riches of secret places , that you may know that I, the Lord, who call you by your name, am the God of Israel” (Isaiah 45:1-3 NKJV). The soul that has been broken and locked up in prison is going to be tormented by everything that it sees, feels, and hears around it in the spiritual region of its captivity. It is trapped behind iron gates in regions of evil in the kingdom of darkness. In the story I told about my sister who was imprisoned in the region called “the gate of the shadow of death,” we saw the place that affected her. This prison affected her life; little by little, her soul was impregnated with the death-ridden atmosphere that surrounded her. Inevitably, if she had not been rescued, death would have sucked the life out of her and killed her. My sister was a precious servant of the Lord whose final destiny was Heaven, but who was not destined by God to die ahead of time. The gates of hell could not prevail because Christ gave us the victory. Captivities are strictly spiritual places controlled by the hosts of satan. Willpower is not enough to free souls from these places; we need God’s authority to move against the forces of darkness. There are many reasons why a soul can be captive. The fire of hell traps both the just and the unjust. Anyone can be exposed to traumas, spells, and spiritual traps. For example, when a patient is under anesthesia or when a soul becomes heartbroken while visiting a cemetery, the person enters the regions of death. These regions can also be entered via the emotion of fear or by doing spiritual warfare with insufficient understanding. Another cause of exposure is found in bringing the Gospel to enemy-controlled territories without the laying of appropriate spiritual groundwork. Some are born into captivity because of a parent’s imprisonment. This is a form of generational captivity that relates to our discussion of broken cities as symbols of the soul. They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated; they will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations (Isaiah 61:4). This is the case in children who are born with autism and locked inside themselves in a world assigned to them in spiritual regions. There are other forms of captivity that occur in a variety of ways. Babies can become trapped when parents attempt abortion. Even the fetus who suffers the intense pain of a tormented mother while in the womb can be held captive. Many times these souls don’t want to be born because they are already trapped in regions of death. Phobias such as claustrophobia, agoraphobia, the fear of heights, the fear of the dark, or anything else that scares us, have to do with captivity of the soul. During my childhood, I was traumatized while playing with my brothers and sisters. They caught an enormous moth and put it inside the back of my blouse. I screamed in terror, feeling the animal trapped inside my clothing, but unable to get out. Instead of helping me, my siblings laughed at me. This produced a fear of all butterflies and moths. Even as an adult, I would lose my composure at the sight of one. When I became a Christian, I tried several times to be set free from this form of panic; but no matter what anyone did, I remained trapped by the phobia. It wasn’t until I discovered the principles I am sharing with you that I was able to be set free. As I said before, the soul sees, feels, and hears everything that surrounds it in the place where it is imprisoned. The fragment of my soul shattered after the incident with the moth was held captive in a dark cell full of black butterflies that flew around me chaotically and beat their wings against my face and body. In that place, the horror that I experienced as a child perpetuated itself. As a consequence, whenever I physically saw one of these creatures, my conscious being would connect with my imprisoned soul. The terror I was living in that cell would then flood me and I would lose control. This was not the only captivity I suffered. My soul was broken many times by the enemy. One by one, I had to go to each prison to retrieve my soul. Today, I am a whole person, full of bravery and fullness in every area of my life. The devil can no longer frighten me. Glory to God! The imprisoned soul of a child of God can never totally develop. By the grace of God, it will reach a certain level, but it will never go beyond that point. Many servants of God have died before their time. Many live in slavery to medicines or suffer destruction without reason. Others live from surgery to surgery, in lack and need. It doesn’t have to be this way. Jesus already took captivity captive. Now it is our turn to be set free. So, let’s uncover many of those places that make up the kingdom of darkness. E NDNOTES 1. It is interesting that once the soul has been broken, the devil allows the son of Tabeal to reign over it. There is not much we know from the Bible about this king except from the meaning of his name. In Aramaic, Tabeal means “good for nothing.” From NAS Hebrew concordance. 2. 2870a. lAaVbDfTabeal [370b]; from 2895 and 408; “good for nothing,” Aramaic.