We are going to read a Scripture that is very important for you to hear. In John 16 Jesus is speaking to the disciples. Listen very carefully: “But now I am going to Him who sent Me.… But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper shall not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you. And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin, and righteousness, and judgment; concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me.” Verses 5, 7–9. No one will ever be eternally lost because of his sins, but because he did not accept the provision that God made to forgive him of his sin.
“And concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you no longer behold Me.” Verse 10. The world has no concept of righteousness, only of soulish religion; but it takes a revelation of Christ to see what righteousness really is and make it available to us—that we can become His righteousness (II Corinthians 5:21).
“And concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged” Verse 11. Now that is important. The enemy has been judged. Satan has been judged. When Christ was on the cross, He was doing more than just suffering for your sins; He was redeeming the world to Himself, and He was exposing a victory over principalities and powers.
Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. II Corinthians 5:18–19.
And when you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having cancelled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us and which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him. Colossians 2:13–15.
The work of the cross is very extensive. It was a perfect provision for us, for all time, and it does not have to be a process or something that is delayed for a long period of time. If we get this revelation that the prince of this world has been judged, we begin to understand that when we use the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and we stand on the authority of that name that has been exalted above every name, then we can claim His provision, appropriate it and experience it, and it doesn’t have to be a process.
This has to get in our thinking: it does not have to be a long process! It can happen just the minute that you believe. Do you believe that the minute a person says, “I believe in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior,” he is saved? Do you believe that you can just have faith to receive the Holy Spirit? Someone can lay hands on you—or pray with you or anything—and you can receive it right then, right there, just like that, because the provision is there; the procedure is there. But you see, there are some things that we are slow to grasp, and I wonder why. The 149th Psalm tells us that the saints are to bind the kings of the earth in fetters and pronounce upon them the judgment that is written. It is already written; it is already accomplished. It is a thing that we are to believe.
What I want to get through to you is very simply that what we are doing now, on this level of spirit, is a procedure for appropriating and applying the Lord’s perfect provision for ourselves. If it is provided for us, let’s get it. And let’s not get it in a package that says, “Do not open until Christmas.” Let’s get into it now! It is for now.
I asked the Lord, “Give me a simple list that all of the people can get ahold of right now, that will show them the spirits that are behind what they are going through.” If we believe that the prince of this world has been judged, then it just becomes a matter of taking authority in Jesus’ name over the enemy that is behind what is happening to us. Now here is a list of twenty-two points.
1. There is a spirit behind the feeling that this will be a prolonged battle. The day the enemy makes you feel that you have to win the war is the day that in unbelief you have rejected the fact that the victory has already been won. You cannot believe that it is going to be a prolonged battle. Believe that the victory is yours. In some way, demon spirits come and constantly bombard you with the idea that it is going to be a prolonged battle, just like Sanballat and Tobiah did to Nehemiah: “Come down and we’ll talk this over; we’ll battle this out” (Nehemiah 6:1–3). But it’s all over; the battle is all over.
2. There is a spirit behind physical afflictions. I think some of you accept ill health. You may have done that in the past; but now you’re going to think victory, because by His stripes we were healed (I Peter 2:24, KJV). That is what the Word says. These physical afflictions that hit you often are not really valid. What is really behind them are spirits of infirmity that hit you.
3. There are spirits of hindrances. In the Scriptures you read where Paul talked about how he wanted to do something and Satan hindered him (I Thessalonians 2:18; Romans 1:13; 15:22). There are hindrances that are not just accidental circumstances. They are spirits that are hitting you. Leapfrog over the problem, hit the spirit that is blocking you, and then go ahead.
4. There are spirits that delay. The enemy can delay you from getting into an answer. You can waste ten years and then say, “Now I’ve got the victory.” You had the victory ten years ago, but you accepted a spirit from the enemy that convinced you that you should accept delays. Get to the place where you have no more tolerance for the devil.
5. A spirit comes to bring deception. Isn’t it amazing how much deception comes to us? We get deceived about so many things. You can go into a problem, and the enemy can throw a spirit of deception on you and you will walk along self-condemned, hating yourself, thinking that you are a failure, thinking a thousand things, because of the deception of the enemy. All of that gets away from the fact that you are somebody. You have accepted the Lord Jesus Christ. You are in the family of God. Don’t let that deception get to you.
6. A spirit of division comes. People can really love each other, and yet the enemy will hit them with a spirit of division. Here they were, just loving each other like crazy, and the next thing you know they are ready to bite each other’s heads off. How does that happen? How does that spirit of division hit?
We could talk about every one of these points for weeks to come and begin to realize that our enemy is not ourself, because we are accepted in the Beloved (Ephesians 1:6, KJV). We are totally accepted by God. Oh, what a lie the enemy brings! When did God ever bring delays and deception and divisions and hindrances and physical affliction and prolonged battle? And yet, how many times have we accepted those things as being from God? This has to end it!
7. There is a spirit behind self-condemnation. Here God gives us all of this provision in the Word, and He tells us: “Who is he that condemneth? It is God, rather, that justifieth” (Romans 8:33–34). God is trying to justify us, and we, like a bunch of dummies, bite on that demonic spirit of self-condemnation. We condemn ourselves. The Scripture says that Satan is the accuser of the brethren (Revelation 12:10), and we don’t realize how many times we have really bitten on that and walked into self-condemnation when there should not have been any.
8. There is a spirit of intimidation. That thing really operates, especially when you have the ministry of the Body working. The leaders can feel unsure or intimidated, and so they may come on heavy, or they may withdraw. Then the people feel intimidated, and they don’t know what to do. What a mess! For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound (or disciplined) mind. II Timothy 1:7, KJV. Where did that spirit of fear come from? Not from God!
9. There is a spirit behind the heaviness and depression. When depression hits you, how does it affect you? You can’t make decisions; you are not motivated; you are no longer a self-starter; you are waiting for a mood to hit you that never hits you; you are depressed. Heaviness hits you. You should get up in the morning and do like a dog that has been thrown in the water—just shake yourself! Say, “I throw this off in the name of the Lord! I refuse this spirit of heaviness and depression, because I see that that is what is behind it.” You get to thinking, “I’m lazy,” because you can’t get moving.
10. A spirit can hit that distracts you from your focus. Why is it that when you are so focused in God and everything is going right, all of a sudden you get so distracted that you cannot even remember what you were trying to pray for? A spirit can hit you that will distract you from your focus. Have you ever had that? Face it. Don’t just say, “Oh, I don’t have any concentration. I can’t do anything right.” Face what did it. “The devil made me do it!” Okay? That is the truth.
11. There are demon spirits behind our circumstances. You get the feeling that you are just unlucky. You go back to a human way of thinking: “Well, what can I expect? Maybe if I had more education, maybe if I had the breaks, if I had some pull, if I just knew somebody that knew somebody, I would make it.” That is not the way to think. Daniel didn’t think that way. He was a captive slave in Babylon, but God gave him favor no matter who came against him. But he knew what was behind the people who came against him. He knew the spirits that were behind them. He kept seeking God, and God exalted him over the land (Daniel 1:17–20; 2:48; 5:29; 6:1–28).
Begin to think; the things that happen to you are not by accident. It is not because Lady Luck is frowning on you. The things that happen to you have a spirit origin; something in the spirit world started the things that happen to you. You can choose either to accept them or reject them.
If you reject the bad circumstances and you accept the blessing of the Lord, you know it is the will of the Lord that you prosper and be in health even as your soul prospers (III John 2). I don’t mean that He wants to make us millionaires. Maybe He does; we wouldn’t resist it! But I want to have faith to believe in the blessing of the Lord, in the complete provision He has given us. I want to see what He can do for me.
12. We could call this a spirit of tolerance. This is the spirit that is behind the tares’ detente. It is one thing to have a compassion that never fails to love and never fails to believe God for other people, no matter what they seem to be going through. But there is also that thing which comes to make you be religious and tolerant of what the devil is doing.
Do you know what detente is? It is a French word that means, “We hate each other but we are going to get along with each other. We are going to accept and be tolerant of our enemy. We know what they are, but we are just going to live with it.” The world goes for that. The world wants that detente. Coexistence—that is what detente really boils down to: wheat and tares living together. I call it the “tares’ detente.” But you see, the Lord has said that that day is over.
A couple of years ago we said that the bundling of the tares began to take place; and it really did. People can blame anybody they want to blame, but God did it; His angels did it (Matthew 13:24–30, 37–42). He said, “Now there is going to be the wheat, and there are going to be the tares.” And that spirit still tries to get us to go into a morbid acceptance of something that God wants to end. Be not unequally yoked together with unbelief (II Corinthians 6:14). The separation of the tares and the wheat also saw some marriages break up, because God was not any longer in favor of His elect people being saddled in a relationship that was not right—it could not exist that way any longer. It really happened.
13. There is a spirit behind unawareness and unbelief. What spirit is behind unawareness and unbelief? What is it that keeps you from knowing who you are and knowing who one another is? What keeps you from seeing one another as prophets and prophetesses, as men and women of God and bondservants of the Lord? What is it that keeps you from knowing it? It is a terrible thing. If you don’t even believe in what you are, how can you believe in what somebody else is? A spirit hits you. It is a spirit of unawareness and unbelief.
We have had three decades of prophecies coming over people. When are they going to believe them? They believe them a little bit, and the prophecies work. But what would happen if we just believed all of the Word that has been confirmed over everybody? If we became aware of that Word, and had faith in it, what would happen? Just think about that!
14. There are spirits of fear. They will hit you psychically to make you become conditioned to being a fearful person. You will have dreams and nightmares that are fearful. You will wake up and say, “What’s the matter with me? It must be my unconscious mind working, something in the psychic realm.” Did you ever realize that there are spirits which are tormenting spirits, and they can hit you with fear? Stop thinking that you are some strange person who needs to go see a psychiatrist. You’re not. You are the creation of God in the earth. Don’t be fearful. When you find these things hitting you, say, “That’s not mine. I am not going to have that.” The Scriptures say that He gives to His beloved even in their sleep (Psalm 127:2). You should never wake up without finding that God has done something in your heart.
15. There is a spirit of forgetfulness—a spirit behind forgetting things. You say, “Well, I think that I’m kind of stupid; I have a poor memory.” You shouldn’t have a poor memory, because the Holy Spirit comes to bring to mind everything that He has ever said to you (John 14:26). You should never forget a prophecy, never forget a Word, never forget a sermon. But a spirit comes to make you forgetful. Jesus said of the Holy Spirit, “He is going to take of Mine and show it to you. Afterwards the Holy Spirit will show you what I was saying. You don’t know now, but later you will know” (John 16:12–15). The Holy Spirit is to constantly make our memory alive and vital to the Word of God. He interprets it, and shows us things to come, and shows us what God has been doing in our lives.
16. There is a spirit behind dulling the will to possess. You can be all gung ho to go in and take the land, but spirits will come that dull your will to possess and to press into God. It isn’t because you don’t have the perseverance; that isn’t it. God will give you perseverance, but the devil will make you run out of gas. He will dull that will to possess.
17. There can be a spirit of discouragement. It can hit you so fast. You can be doing fine and the next minute something hits you. It is like a mood, and you don’t know where it came from. Have you ever had that happen? There is a spirit behind it. Rebuke it! You have victory over it; you have authority over it, because the prince of this world has been what? Has been judged! This is the ministry of judgment, that you get onto this thing and say, “This is what God has done; this is what God is doing; this is what I’m going to believe. And I’m going to rebuke every devil that tries to tell me any differently.”
18. There is a spirit behind susceptibility. If you don’t have an immune system, you will catch a cold, get pneumonia, tuberculosis, etc.; many things will happen to you because you have no resistance. Susceptibility means that you are open. And behind that is a spirit. You have more defenses than you know. You have more going for you than you know. We are deeper into the Kingdom than we know. We have been prepared longer than we realize. God has done all of these things for us. What are we going to do about that—just sit around and wait for some cold wind to blow and freeze to death? No! Don’t be susceptible. Behind it is a spirit that has tried to take down your defenses, to chisel away at them until Satan has one little point that he can come in on. And have you noticed that once you get a tormenting thought, or a discouraging thought, or one little thing is said, it just works on you and works on you, and pretty soon you begin to cave in. When you look back on it, you say, “Why should one little thing upset the whole spiritual structure of my life that much?” Behind it was a spirit.
19. There is a spirit behind psychic openness to transference and an unconscious acceptance of it. The enemy tries to hide what he is doing. He wants to hit you and have you never even see the blow. He wants you to accept something and not even know where it came from. Then it would be easy for you to get hit and blame your wife for it—and it wasn’t your wife at all; it was the devil. How can anyone be so deceived as to think that what happened to him came from his wife instead of the devil, or from her husband instead of the devil, and they get provoked at each other? There is a spirit behind it. It is a soulish openness to transference. You accept it and don’t even know what is happening to you.
20. A spirit comes that is a spirit of rejection. Everything in the Scriptures points out that God has accepted you. Everything that God is doing is trying to bring you in. He took those who were near and those who were afar off, and brought them all in to make a whole new creation of God, accepted in the Beloved (Ephesians 2:17–22; 1:6). We have access to come boldly to the throne of grace (Hebrews 4:16). The Bible is full of this one thing. All God is doing is trying to let you know that you are accepted! Then why do we feel rejected? Why do we feel that there is rejection from one another? Why is it that we are always fighting that? “Well, I wonder if he really accepts me. I wonder where I really stand.”
With the coming of this oneness, we had better see that everything which still fights us with rejection is from the devil. It is from the demonic horde. It tries to make us feel, “Well, there are first-class, second-class, and third-class citizens, and I’m down at the bottom somewhere. I’m a peon.” It’s a terrible thing, and it is not true. It really is not true. Until this oneness came, many of you could not accept me as a spiritual father to you. You wanted to, you struggled for it, but you always felt that there was some little inner circle someplace, some group who were “in.” It is true that some work in closer proximity than others, but it is not true that rejection is valid. It is not true. You are accepted. You are in solid. You are all one. You really are! It is the devil who gives you that feeling of rejection. We have to come to the place where we’re going to win because we see the spirits that are behind the things that torment us in our minds and our spirits, and we come to believe God totally and completely.
21. The demonic flow gives a strength to the soul-flesh and it agitates what we don’t want. We want to be dedicated, to give our lives for the Lord Jesus Christ, yet that demonic flow will cause us to fight for self-preservation, to refuse the cross, to give in to greed, selfishness, a religious evasiveness, lust, perversion, pride. All of these things come until we begin to fight for them and hate ourselves for doing it at the same time. You could go on and on with this list—the things of the soul. In your heart you want the cross and you want to be dedicated, but there is a demonic flow that comes to strengthen that soul-flesh. Sometimes we would be better off not to say, “Well, I’m just no good,” but to say, “I want this. I know it is Satan that is trying to prevent me from having it.” Just believe. Resist him.
22. There are spirits that come to keep us from speaking the Word, from prophesying and speaking this authority against the enemy. That is a key that is hinted at all the way through this message. We are going to speak the Word. Just speak it. Speak the Word.
Doesn’t this make you want to talk about these some more? It brings the kind of repentance that says, “I’m going to go after this thing.” Really, you repent for accepting the devil’s lies, and you feel bitterly ashamed of yourself that you ever listened to them. We are free, but we are not aware of our freedom. The cage is open; come on out. Actually, for every one of these things, don’t you feel that we are all as guilty as we can be? You see, we haven’t discerned the spirit world that is behind the whole scene. We haven’t discerned that spirit world. I think we ought to take a positive step. We ought to believe God right now for the gift of discerning of spirits which is so necessary for this transition period, that we will be able to discern the enemy, and see where he lurks. Let’s believe for that.
I am rejoicing in the effectiveness that is thrusting us into this place of judgment. This message is bringing such judgment on the whole spirit realm. It is laying the whole thing open. I want to live in this Word, and I want to familiarize myself with just what these spirits are that are coming against us and holding us in this bondage. This is the answer to seeing the whole thing break loose.
This message discerns Satan as a lie, and points out twenty-two areas of lies; and therefore he is defeated because he has been discerned. This is more than just a thing of discernment; it is an execution of our authority. It is an exercising of this authority to reject Satan—of rejecting and more than rejecting, of killing Satan. He is already defeated. We are just saying, “Look, you’re defeated.” We don’t have to submit to Satan’s lie.
What we should do is repent for ever accepting it in the first place. You see, the whole thing is deception from the enemy. He is a liar and the father of it (John 8:44).
Listen to what this Scripture says: In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished upon us. In all wisdom and insight He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him with a view to an administration suitable to the fulness of the times. Ephesians 1:7–10a.
That is one blessed Scripture: “an administration suitable to the fullness of the times.” You see, God intends for this thing to really work. He is saying, “Come on, be administrators.” Hebrews keeps talking about His estate. He died, He gave it to us, He rose again, and now He wants us to administer it. What does an administrator of an estate do? He takes all of the assets and distributes them according to the will of the testator. What are we doing? We have to use the name of the Lord Jesus Christ as the power. It is the corporate seal of the Kingdom of God that puts the final seal on it. Just say, “I have it. He gave it to me.” Come on, let’s do it, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
I have a feeling that we are just starting to name these spirits. There will be more of them that will be discerned, but we start with this; our eyes will be opened and discerning.
Some of these things we have heard in a measure, but now is the time for fulfillment. The Scripture speaks in terms like this: “When the day of Pentecost was fully come” (Acts 2:1); “in the dispensation of the fullness of times” (Ephesians 1:10); “in the fullness of time God brought forth His Son born of a woman” (Galatians 4:4). The Scriptures use these phrases—that there came a time for it—and what we have had in a measure now we are going to have in fullness. It is the time for it! What we should do, because there is new light like this, is repent for not claiming it; however, don’t be condemned because you haven’t claimed it, because it was something reserved for this moment.
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I am going to prophesy something to you. Some of the strongest ministries that are going to come forth will be the sisters. God is going to bless these sisters. We are going to see them prophesying with a boldness that they have never had before. In the first place, if you take this seriously, you are going to reject that you are in the background someplace and that you are tolerated. Remember that spirit of toleration? The devil is behind that thing. Move in. It is time.
As a practical application, different sisters in the church have such a potential. They have a potential right at the present time of moving on a higher spiritual level than their husbands do. It isn’t that the church is being led by women; it is that it will be delivered by women. They are going to have a lot of faith and we should have faith for that.
The Kingdom of God seems to be opened up by women who have such a drive to them. And they are either going to open the door for the men, or the men are going to be like they are shackled. I believe in the ministry that these women can have because I see it functioning. It has been coming up. Now is the time for these women to just move in and take faith, real faith. They can make these services happen. They can fill the house of the Lord with the praises and the power of God by the way they prophesy, by the way they believe. The idea is not to have a female-dominated church. That is not the idea at all. The idea is that there should be a release of the men through the women.
There has been a great difficulty interpreting Paul’s writings. He said that he would not suffer a gune, a Greek word for a wife, to usurp authority over the man. It is misinterpreted sometimes. He said that the woman is to be in subjection, as it also says in the Law. While women have been subordinate to men all these generations in some ways, and have been called the weaker sex, there have been a lot of superior qualities that they have had too. And Paul adds, “Nevertheless, the woman is going to be saved through the bearing of a son” (I Timothy 2:12–15). I have always interpreted it that these women are going to find their greatest deliverance when they deliver a son of God. I am not talking about the natural childbirth; I am talking about the fact that they give birth to it in the spirit. Then the son moves on; it is just a matter of process. None of us can boast and say, “Well, I never needed a woman.” If it wasn’t for some woman, you would not have any life. A woman carried you in her womb and bore you. And in the things of the spirit it seems that God is doing something similar.
We are becoming a prophetic community. And don’t interpret this wrong, because we are co-creators with God of one another. We are doing that; we are co-creators. We are all working together; we are creating one another. There is a great liberty, a great freedom that is coming for us to stop this lie of Satan that puts the barriers and the walls between us and denies the oneness that God has created. In oneness we are going to make prophetic proclamations that are based on revelation. What God reveals, let’s go after. And don’t interpret intercession as being begging or praying. I have a feeling that some of the women are going to be some of the strongest instruments in the hand of God for the judgments to come.
One of the things that I think you must realize is that when something is missing in a marriage, it becomes necessary for the Body to supply it vicariously some other way. When there is a young man who hasn’t had a father in the family, he will have to get one spiritually. The same thing is true of these men of God. We have to birth them. That is where the son comes to birth—through intercession by the Spirit. Everybody has to feel that responsibility. It’s our responsibility.
We suffer bringing one another forth. In the sixteenth chapter of John is a passage which says that when a woman is in travail she is in severe pain, but when the child is born, immediately she forgets the pain and the sorrow for the joy that a child has been born into the world (John 16:21). And I think we have suffered with one another. Why don’t we just consider that we have suffered with each other, but that the joy before us, as we bring one another forth in the travail of our love and faith, will be so much greater? Let’s rejoice in that.
There is a Scripture which says, “What is this that I see? Every man grabs himself as a woman in childbirth” (Jeremiah 30:6). Travail is not solely for the female, but there is a way that we all travail for one another. The thing you are speaking is what we are to each other.
The male needs to have that female quality of giving birth. We are in travail to see one another come forth, and we carry the Body within us. It is a thing of the spirit. It is a joy that is set before us.
This travail is on everybody. We have been talking about the women and what they are coming into, but it isn’t unique to women; it is men also who are getting into this travail. We have travailed over one another, but this thing of women being second-class citizens is really over. And much of the almost fierce intense drive at this level is going to have a great manifestation in the women. God bless them, because they are going to really move.
The Scriptures talk about how the seed of the woman will bruise the head of the serpent (Genesis 3:15). But then you get to Romans 16:20, where it says, “It will please God to bruise Satan under your feet shortly.” Again, we are facing the fact that while Christ accomplished it on the cross, He has given it to us to execute it. And we had better do it, because it is for us. It is a provision; it is our destiny to bruise Satan’s head. It is a simple thing. In His name you do it, because the victory is already provided. He is a dead snake even before you stomp on him.
The thing all of you should realize is that on the level you are on, you can’t do anything but create. If you speak in faith and speak by the Spirit, speak out. In fact, I think you have a responsibility to do it, because it is just not a matter of saying, “Well, I come to church and I can prophesy a little bit, so I have a duty to prophesy.” No, you have the duty to create people. Create one another. You have to do it. You are going to be on a high level because you create one another to be that. The Body makes increase of itself through love by that which every joint supplies (Ephesians 4:16). Get in there and be a joint.
There is no brother who is not going to be ten times more effective when he gets the faith and the support and the creativity that is going to come forth. You are going to create each other. For instance, we have some brothers for whom I am very burdened, because I sense in the spirit that they can move into so much in the Lord. Where should we work? Work with their wives, because if their wives back them up and strengthen them, they are going to be stronger than ever. That is where to work with it.
The powerful thing is faith that works by love (Galatians 5:6). It becomes that creative force that just brings forth. That encouragement could be so much. Let’s believe for one another. Every time you think of one another, have a little more faith, because it is the Kingdom, and in the Kingdom you work with each other and you bless each other in it. There will be some good things coming, but don’t let the devil lie to you. Go back over this message. Don’t let him lie to you and say that you are not one, that you are rejected, that you don’t have access, that you’re out. We still must have a great deal of faith to just believe that exactly what God said He has done, He has done, and we move on it.