November 25, 2006

• Spiritual warfare by Pastor Don – Part 2 Wed Bible study

  Pastor Don was asked about the origin of demons and weren’t demons all destroyed with the flood? So Pastor Don taught us about demons (spur of the moment, as it was not part of his planned teaching) so that we would have an understanding of them for Spiritual Warfare. Remember, that Pastor Don points out that so often we see a demon in every situation, but most of the times it is not demons, but our fleshly nature that is presenting itself.

  In order to know where demons come from we have to go back to Genesis Chapters 6 and 7

  Genesis 6:1-5Now it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose. And the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh; yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years. There were giants on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown. Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

  If you look back at the genealogy in Genesis 5 you will see that this is a line of succession that is all of men, so why would God then signal out sons of God. Those would be the fallen angels cast down to earth after the rebelion of satan mentioned in Isaiah. It is a separate group that is so bad that God decided to shorten the lives of men from the 600-900 year lifespan to 120 years. (Heather’s note, God will shorten that even more as we see in Psalms to 70-80 years). He did that because it protected man from himself.

  Pastor Don pointed out that the word “giants” is found in Strongs as – Nephalim, and I looked that up and found out that that word comes from a word “naphal”, and listen to what that word means: fail, fall down, cast, fall away, divide, overthrow. We have no idea of how these sons of God mated with the daughters of men, whether it be in spirit possession, or if they actually did it bodily, but we do know that they produced offspring that were labeled giants – that were vastly different from others. And we also know that God tells us that they did evil continually.

  When Joshua sent the 13 spies into the land, they came back with a report of the land flowing with milk and honey, grapes so huge that it took two people to carry one bunch, etc. They also reported on the inhabitants of the land.

  Numbers 13:22 And they went up through the South and came to Hebron, Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, and the descendants of Anak, were there. (Now Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.)

  The descendants of Anak are the Anakins, and they were giants like Goliath.

  Numbers 13:28 Nevertheless the people who dwell in the land are strong, the cities are fortified and very large; moreover we saw the descendants of Anak there.

  Numbers 13:33 There we saw the giants (the descendants of Anak who came from the giants); and we were like grasshoppers in our own height, and so we were in their sight.

  This word for giants is the same as what is mentioned in Genesis, Nephalim.

  Pastor Don then asked why David picked up five smooth stones when he battled Goliath, and the answer was because Goliath had four brothers and David was prepared to take all of them out.

  Archeology and History has shown that there are 8′ and 9′ tall people back in the days of the Old Testament. So we know that in David’s time, after the flood, the Nephalim were still on the earth And they are still here now.

  What does the New Testament say.

  2 Peter 2:4-5 For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgment; and did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly.

  God did not spare the angels or the people on earth whose bloodline was perverted by the nephalim. The only ones saved were 8 people who had not defiled themselves.

  Jude 6-8 And the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day; as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. Likewise also those dreamers defile the flesh, reject authority, and speak evil of dignitaries.

  When it mentions that the angels did not keep their proper domain, this is referring to the sons of God and the daughters of men and the sexual immorality that passed between them. There was a massive judgment on those angels, and they were chained until the last days. But their ungodly offspring were still on the earth, and an example of that was Sodom and Gomorrah, where there was sexual immorality on the earth. And we shouldn’t kid ourselves, the times of today are worse than what occurred in Sodom and Gomorrah.

  Jude 9 Yet Michael the archangel, in contending with the devil, when he disputed about the body of Moses, dared not bring against him a reviling accusation, but said, “The Lord rebuke you!”

  This is what spiritual warfare is all about. Demons were once mighty angels, who rebeled against God, and they were cast out of Heaven. God has a place prepared for them at the end times. So their time is limited and they know it. They are trying to upset God’s plan for salvation, and are seeking any way to pervert the line of descent from Adam to Jesus, and their tactic was to mate with the daughters of men and produce ungodly offspring. They almost succeeded, so that is why God reduced the age of man to 120 years, to prevent man from succumbing. He also had to destroy the ungodly offspring to preserve the line of descent.

  Pastor Don mentioned that when we think about these descendants of Anak, we might want to consider mythology. Maybe some of the myths that have been around about creatures like cyclops, giants, medussa, loki, etc have some basis in reality. For they might be products of ungodly sexual immorality.

  When God decided to intervene, look at Genesis 5:29 And he called his name Noah (which means rest) saying, “This one will comfort us concerning our work and the toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD has cursed.

  Noah was part of God’s plan for man’s salvation. Notice the plural “our work” which is another indication of the plurality of God (God, Jesus, Holy Spirit).

  Genesis 6:6-8 And the Lord was sorry that He made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. So the LORD said, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD.

  The repenting that God had was not the kind of repenting that we think of, for God is not a man that He should sin – it is more a compassion that God had for the mess that man made of his life, and we notice that Noah found grace in God’s eyes, and God made sure to preserve Noah. Why did Noah find grace?

  Genesis 6:9 This is the genealogy of Noah. Noah was a just man, perfect in his generations. Noah walked with God.

  When it says that Noah was just it does not mean that Noah did not sin, but it means that he was perfect in his generations. That means that Noah and his offspring did not fall into the trap of satan of mating with the sons of God. His lineage was undefiled by the nephalim, so Noah’s bloodline was pure. So when the Messiah was born, he was not from a defiled bloodline, but a pure bloodline from Adam. Noah resisted the temptations of satan and was 600 years old. God came through at the 11th hour for mankind, for there were only 8 on the ark, the rest of mankind was destroyed in the flood.

  God’s plan of Salvation was not destroyed by this ruse from satan and his demons. Even through to today satan is bent on destroying the bloodline – of killing the Jews, so that there will not be a second coming of Christ. Satan is getting desperate because he knows his time is short. He tried with the Romans in 70 A.D., and he tried with Hitler to destroy the Jews, but God has preserved a remnant.

  We can see that satanic influence in the gods of mythology. In all of mythology the gods are not trustworthy, honorable, faithful. They are capricious, risking stuff, and when you go to one of them they mess with you, do what they want with you and then throw you off in a heartbeat.

  We then talked a bit about dragons and how they appear throughout history. How all the great heros battled dragons, dragons appear on pottery, and other archeological artifacts. They are examples of Spiritual Warfare.

  There are laws to follow, and the ability to enter into spiritual warfare shows up after Noah. Before Noah there is no where that Spiritual Warfare is mentioned in the Bible.

  There are a limited amount of demons on the earth, these fallen beings have no place in heaven or hell, so they wander the earth looking for bodies to inhabit. They crave bodies, and they know that once Jesus Christ comes again to rule and reign on the earth, their fate will be the Lake of Fire. Their desire is to experience life again. Pastor Don mentioned the movie, The Pirates of the Caribbean to give us an idea of what their life is like. They do evil, they don’t do any good, and they want to experience life, but can’t.

  The will power of a person can dominate a demon and enable a person to throw off a demon. The problem is that many people are comfortable in their sin and have no desire to throw off the demons.

  The demoniac of the Gaderines had a legion of demons, (which made people realize how small they are), and they were so hungry for a body that they asked Jesus to put them in the bodies of pigs. The pigs became wild and destroyed themselves. That is what demons do to the bodies they possess, they drive the person to destroy themselves then the demons are out looking for another body.

  So, back to the brother who stole from his brother (justified or not, see yesterday’s Bible study notes), his sin opens up the door for the demonic influence. The demonic beings do not always stay with one person, they wander and cause havoc. When a person does something that attracts their attention, the demons come back to torment. And what happens is that the demon might not show the same sin that opened the door. The thief might have a demon of worry, and then that will open the door to an obsessive/compulsive behavior demon. So when we are dealing with a person who has a problem of worry or obsessive/compulsive behavior, we have to ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to us the cause of the problem and then we can address the root cause.

  Once satan gets in, he finds ways to open up the door to more demons. For example, a person arrested and put in jail for a minor drug bust, is now in a place where there are other demons from other crimes, and the jailed person will come out with more than he went in with. In our situation now there are  tv ads that advocate medicine to prescribe drugs for situations that may not even have happened in our bodies. These drugs can alter our being so much that it also leaves an opening for demons to come in.

  Pastor Don mentioned that he has been studying the root of modern disorders and finds that it is a reduction in our immune system, our defense system. There is an onslaught of auto immune diseases. Pharmakia (excuse spelling) is one of the ways the end times forces are going to cause us to open the doors to demonic forces. Worry, fear, and other negative emotions wear down our autoimmune system and leave us open for a bevy of diseases. Some discussion by nurses and counselors in our Bible study show us that there is an increase in certain diseases in our day and age.

  The devil wants us to believe that we can’t resist. That we are at the mercy of our lustful impulses. That is why nephalism is alive and well today. It is quite possible that only 1/3 of the planet will be preserved in the endtimes because they will be the ones that are not polluted by nephalism.

  In Spiritual Warfare, we have to discern who we are dealing with. Many deliverance ministries are really stir up ministries. They cast out demons who then go right back to where they were cast out from. The deliverance ministers cast out the demons, but don’t teach the people how to stay free, so the demons go back into the host until the next time they are cast out. When a deliverance ministry comes to a church sometimes the demons show up and enjoy putting on a show for the people.

  In order for someone to be free from the demonic activity in them, the person has to be taught to exercise their willpower and that they must fill up the empty space the demon occupied with godly things. If not, the room is swept clean and the demon returns with seven of his fellow demons.

  We have to know what we are fighting, everyone who has demons does not want to be set free from them. Some are comfortable with the sins that open up the door for the demons. Others do not really want to be healed for whatever personal reason they have.

  FIRST STEP OF THE BATTLE: Define who the enemy is.

  Islam is not the enemy, but satan is using Islam to cause havoc. Denominations that do not agree with our denominational beliefs are not the enemy.

  We have to have the RIGHT BATTLEFIELD. Our weapons are not carnal. 2 Corinthians 10:4-5 For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.

  Back to Saul.

  1 Samuel 16:24 And so it was, whenever the spirit from God was upon Saul, that David would take a harp and play it with his hand. Then Saul would become refreshed and well, and the distressing spirit would depart from him.

  The change in Saul’s demeanor must have been apparent to the people in the court. Yet when Saul was freed from this spirit, he never closed the door on sin.

  1 Samuel 18:7-11 So the women sang as they danced and said: “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands.” Then Saul was very angry, and the saying displeased him; and he said, “They have ascribed to David ten thousands, and to me they have ascribed only thousands. Now what more can he have but the kingdom?”  So Saul eyed David from that day forward. And it happened on the next day that the distressing spirit from God came upon Saul, and he prophesied inside the house. So David played music with is hand, as at other times; but there was a spear in Saul’s hand. And Saul cast the spear, for he said, “I will pin David to the wall!” But David escaped his presence twice.

  Saul got angry at the accolades given to David, and he sinned in the emotional realm. It did not have anything to do with demons, but that sin opened the door so that later on the demon came in and affected Saul. Saul had a spear at hand and chucked it at David twice. Remember, David was already anointed as God’s next pick for a king, but he stayed humble and faithfully served God’s anointed, Saul,  even though it is now life-threatening for him to do so. David could have resorted to anger as well, but instead he chose to honor God, and did not react in kind to Saul.

  1 Samuel 18:12-15 Now Saul was afraid of David, because the LORD was with him, but had departed from Saul.Therefore Saul removed him from his presence, and made him his captain over a thousand, and he went out and came in before the people. And David behaved wisely in all his ways, and the LORD was with him. Therefore when Saul saw that he behaved very wisely, he was afraid of him.

  When we walk in righteousness, evil people are afraid of us, of who we are in Christ. So, what we need to do is 1. Do not be afraid and 2. Do not worry. Worry and fear give openings to satan. We need to walk in love, and make sure that our thoughts fill our minds with things of God. For our weapons are not carnal.

  Hoping you have a blessed day.

  Heather

  • 12:22 am
  • 21 Comments