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The following message was preached in response to and in explanation of the spiritual warfare which occurred the previous night as I brought forth the message entitled “Ye Shall Take up Serpents.”
Just a closer walk with thee, grant it, Jesus, is my plea. Daily walking close to thee, let it be, dear Lord, let it be. I am weak, but thou art strong. Jesus, keep me from all wrong. I will be satisfied as long, as I walk, let me walk close to thee. Though this world of toils and cares, if I falter, Lord, who cares? Who with me my burden shares? None but thee, dear Lord, none but thee. When my feeble mind is o’er, time for it will be no more. Guide me gently, safely o’er to thy kingdom shore, to thy shore. Just a closer walk with thee, grant it, Jesus, is my plea. Daily walking close to thee, let it be, dear Lord, let it be.
Praise the Lord. OK.
I would like to start off tonight by trying to impart some understanding of the purposes of God in these meetings, in any meeting that he has arranged. And I would like to try and relate his purposes to the individual, one of us, each of us. You see, God has a plan. The Lord has a plan, and that plan is to deliver his people out of the bondage of Hell and death, and the way by which he is going to do this is by giving us his name. Now that sounds real simple, and we think that he is just giving us a piece of paper with his name, but his name signifies his Spirit, brethren.
And we need to understand that there is a Spirit of God in this world and that there is a spirit of this world, sometimes known the spirit of -- known as the spirit of disobedience; sometimes he is known as anti-Christ; sometimes he is known as Satan. He takes -- actually, she is a she. She takes many names, but the bottom line is that there is a war going on in the heavenlies, and this war is between the Spirit of Christ and the spirit of Satan, no matter what name she is taking. There are two spirits in this world, and the war goes on at every level. The war goes on in the mind of the individual who will be -- which spirit will be revealed through you at any given moment. The war goes on at every spiritual gathering such as this. Which spirit is going to be the spirit which is being revealed through this meeting? The -- this goes on even between people that do not know the Lord, except when people do not know the Lord, it is always -- it is the spirit of this world unless a believer comes along.
This war is going along on every level, and what I would like to try to impart to you tonight is that words are only an expression of spirit, and we find that we can have both spirits speaking the same words. And when the spirit of this world speaks those words, the result is death and destruction to God’s people. When the Spirit of Christ speaks the very same words, the result is life to God’s people. The Scripture says that the Lord tries the intents of man’s hearts. That means he is looking for your motives, but not in the way that you think. Well, he is looking for your motives, but it is deeper than that. He is looking to see what spirit is appearing in you, not to kill you, not to punish you, but to do whatever needs to be done to assure that every time you open your mouth, that it is the Spirit of Christ that is coming through you. And we need to know this, Lord -- we need to know these ways of the Lord so that we can guard ourselves against a spirit of this world revealing himself through us without our being aware of it.
This is a great mystery, brethren. There is now no more condemnation in Christ Jesus to those who are called according to his purposes and are attempting to walk according to his Spirit. But there is a deception in the world; there is a deceiver. That is why his name, in some instances is anti-Christ. You know, anti-Christ does not mean against Christ; it means instead of Christ. There is a deception in this world. That is why we are warned, try the spirit, brethren. Every spirit is not of God, and you do not try the spirit by what he says, you see, and this is something that the Lord is trying to impart to all of his believers. Well, of course, you know if someone curses Christ that it is not Christ, but anti-Christ, the spirit who comes to steal your life, the spirit who comes to steal your salvation, the spirit who comes to destroy the faithful through trickery, he says the same words that Christ says. He says the same words, and I remind you that the serpent in the garden said almost the same thing that the Father said, just changed it a little bit.
So I am really commenting, again, on what happened last night because I think I did not make it clear as to what happened. We had a war here last night, and I am not in any way blaming anybody or condemning anybody. We all need to know what happened here last night. There was a war here. Another spirit came into this meeting, a spirit that was not Christ, and he was speaking words that Christ would be speaking, and he sounded the same, but those of us who are trained to discern spirits realized that another spirit had come in. And some people were confused as to why my attitude changed or why it appeared that I was responding differently to something that had been going on for three weeks, so I am trying, if God will just help me, to help you to understand that something radically changed last night, and that which changed was not the words but the spirit that came in here.
Now every double-minded man, which is all of us, including me, has two spirits. If we have two minds, we have two spirits. So what happened last night was that, in a couple of instances, the spirit or the mind which was not Christ came to the surface. Now this, brethren, is a wonderful thing. How could it be a wonderful thing, Sister Sheila? That was a wonderful thing. It was forced by the Spirit of Christ. What does that mean? The Spirit of Christ wants all of us to know how to recognize the enemy. How can we fight this war if we cannot recognize the enemy? And the enemy hides from us, brethren. He looks like us; he tries to sound like us; he tries to talk like us and walk like us. And the Scripture clearly says he comes as an angel of light. The Spirit of Christ will expose him in that, after a season, after a period of time that the Spirit of Christ is revealing himself, he will put -- well, the whole time that the Spirit of Christ is revealing himself, he is putting pressure on any other spirit, and all of us have them.
All of us in this hour, we are in this war, that Christ should arise in us and take authority over anti-Christ and put anti-Christ underfoot because only one spirit can be in charge at a time. Only one spirit can be thinking through us or speaking through us at a time, and if we cannot tell the difference between which spirit is speaking through us because both spirits are saying the same words, we are at a disadvantage, and we will find ourselves, eventually, overtaken because -- when I say ourselves, because the true us is Christ, you see. Now this may be confusing. Let me explain that. As far as our actual condition is concerned, the true us is fallen man, which is the devil. But as far as Christ is concerned, we are his beloved; we are his saints; we are translated into the kingdom of his dear Son by faith. It is just a matter of time until the work is done, you see.
So I say unto you we, who are saints in Christ, must learn to recognize that other spirit which we were born with, when we are born of a woman, because if we cannot see him, if he can hide himself from us -- the Scripture in another place calls him that man of sin. He is inside of our mind, and he looks just like a Christian. He acts just like a Christian. He talks just like a Christian. He sounds just like a Christian, and if he has got you believing that he is Christ, he is going to come up more and more and more while you are not looking, and he is going to take authority over the Christ in you and put the Christ under your feet, and you will be deceived. And in that day that the door opens into heaven, perhaps you might not enter in.
So the Lord says to us through the p- -- through Paul, we are not ignorant of the devil’s devices. Let us understand his devices, that he is in the minds of his people, that he hides, that he is subtle, that every place he can, he will come up and speak and try to destroy what God is doing without us knowing that he is doing it through us. We see that when Peter told Jesus that he should not go to the cross and Jesus rebuked him and told him that Satan had revealed that through him. Satan spoke right through Peter’s mouth, and Peter did not know it.
Brethren, we have got to learn to recognize the serpent in ourselves because, if we do not recognize him in ourselves, we will never recognize him in somebody else. I am here to tell you how the war progresses and how the war works. There is a war going on. There is two minds in you, and they both want you. The two minds in you want you, and the two minds in me want me. They want us to stop being Christ, or the carnal minds want us to stop being Christ. They want to reveal themselves through us, but they are sneaky because they know, if they tell us that they are the carnal mind, we will tell them no, so they try to trick us and deceive us.
Therefore, an essential part of the end-time teaching, which you really do not hear in very many fellowships -- I know, in the United States, it is hardly taught at all, and I -- from what I have seen, it is not taught really here. It is not really taught that much. We need to know that one of two spirits can come out of every believer so long as we are double-minded. There is no shame in it; there is no condemnation in it. The Spirit of Christ here has flushed here and put pressure on anti-Christ, that he should be revealed in your mind. How would he be revealed in your mind? Negative thoughts.
You come into a series of meetings like this, the power of God is putting pressure on your carnal mind, and the way your carnal mind will respond is by thinking evil thoughts into your mind. If anybody woke up this morning angry at me, hating Sister Sheila, wishing she would leave Lagos, maybe hating somebody else -- you see, he is sneaky, the carnal mind; he is never honest. But it always -- you can recognize the negativity. He may be lying to you about who he is mad at. You might think somebody else is mad at you. Two people in this fellowship might have been angry at each other. If anybody experienced anger today, you need to know that it was a residue of the warfare from last night.
I know that I experienced this anger today. It rushed through me like a windstorm shortly after I awoke this morning. It was a great rage. It was the wrath of the enemy because he does not have very long before he is completely destroyed. But, brethren, I sit here, and I tell you openly that Satan expressed wrath through me this morning. He was in my mind, and he went through my emotions, and I had to rebuke him, and Sister June and Sister Celia had to pray for me. I am not telling you anything that does not apply to myself also. There is a spirit in this world, and he is in the minds of the people, and his intention is to knock Christ out of you.
So if I leave one thing behind me when I go back to New York, if I leave you with an increased awareness of how to recognize a wrong spirit, I -- this trip will have been successful. You see, doctrine is wonderful; we need it. The doctrine of Christ is important; it is an integral part of our ascension in Christ. But there -- we cannot ascend on doctrine alone. It has to be the doctrine that is being preached by the Spirit of Christ because our salvation is in union with the Spirit of the Son. He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit. We are not saved by doctrine, neither can we lose our salvation because of false doctrine. The reason I preach against false doctrine is that that false doctrine is being brought by a spirit in which there is no life. So if you receive the false doctrine, you have received the false spirit. We must receive the true spirit, and the true spirit must be revealed through us.
So I just -- I encourage all of you. I give you a homework assignment. Go before the Lord, not now, but -- you know, unless you have questions now. After this meeting, tomorrow, whenever you go into your prayer closet, remember what happened last night. Ask the Lord to show you how to identify the warfare. Most people perceive it in their emotions, but they do not understand what is happening. They are getting distressed in their emotions. Their peace is gone. Sometimes they feel anger. Sometimes they feel criticism. Sometimes people cannot identify what they are feeling; they just feel distress. You see, you need to know that another spirit came in and tried to d- -- exercise dominion over this meeting. You need to know that so that you can pray against it so that the Spirit of Christ prevails over the meeting and so that no ungodly spirit can reveal himself through you.
I do not know how to make it any clearer that there is no condemnation in this. It happened to me this morning. We are not in full stature yet. It does not happen to me too often, but it still happens to me. Usually, I am so practiced that I see that wrong spirit. I see him down the road, and I see him trying to express himself through me, and I usually can knock him out before he succeeds, but I do not have 100 percent dominion. And what happened last night was that the spirit of Leviathan, the spirit of pride, came in, and it was a major assault on every individual here, and I would expect that he- -- everybody in this room last night was touched in some way by that attack, and I encourage you to go before the Lord and ask him to show you, even if it was the smallest stirring in your emotions or a thought in your mind, how that warfare touched you, because we must all learn how to recognize the devices of the enemy as he operates in our own mind because, eventually, you have to do what I just told you I do.
I see the enemy coming down the road, and most of the time I can knock him out before he reveals himself through me because, once the enemy reveals himself through you, it is spiritual adultery. A spirit other than your true husband has revealed himself through you, and then you have to confess it as sin, and you have to repent, and if you have damaged anybody with your anger or with your words, you have to go and make it right. It is much easier to win the victory before you fall into agreement with that spirit; that is when it becomes sin. You see, when you see it in your mind, it is not sin. It becomes sin when it expresses itself through you because it must have your agreement to express itself through you.
Either you are in agreement with it or you failed to stop it, and in either instant, when a spirit which is not God expresses itself through you, as far as the Lord is concerned, it is spiritual adultery. Now if you are fighting as hard as you can and it still expresses itself through you, if you want to call it rape, you can call it rape, but the fact is this other spirit has still expressed itself through you. Christ in you has failed to stop it, and that means you missed the mark, which is the definition of sin, without condemnation. You will never enter into full stature if you cannot see the enemy coming because full stature means that your carnal mind never ever expresses himself through you, and your carnal mind has been expressing himself through you for years, since our birth.
He is the possessor. In American law, we have a saying: Possession is nine-tenths of the law. I do not know if you have that here or not. In other words, if the landlord were to come to this residence and say to Brother Doton [SP], I want you out right now tonight. It is my building. I own it; I have legal ownership. I want you to pack your possessions and your children and get out. I do not know about here, but in New York, I would tell him get out of my house. You want me to get out? Go to the court. You have to file a claim against me. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. My possessions are here. My furniture is here. I have a key to the residence. You have to take me into court and show good reason why you want me out, and there is no way you can get me out on a moment’s notice, cannot do it because the one who has possession has the majority of the authority.
And on this principle, the carnal mind, through which Satan reveals him- -- herself, has possession because she was here when we were born. Christ is coming and saying, pack your furniture, and get out of this house. And the carnal mind has said, no way, and Jesus said, I will throw you out a piece of furniture at a time. I will throw you out a thought at a time. This is what the war of Armageddon is all about, getting the possessor of Christ pos- -- the one who is illegally possessing Christ’s possession out of the house so that Christ can possess his possession.
And we are not passive bystanders. There is one ministry. I do not know if you get his newsletter or not. I am sure he is a fine man of God, but he preaches we are passive observers of this war of two high spiritual authorities who are fighting to express themselves through us. Brethren, it is not true. Christ is given unto us as wisdom and as a weapon, and we must fight with righteousness, or we will be possessed by the enemy. So how can we fight if we cannot recognize the enemy?
So, praise God, he was flushed out last night. He was flushed out, and I believe that everybody in this room, if God will just show it to you -- if you are not aware of what I am talking about, God will show it to you. If there was a little thought in the back of your mind, there was an emotion in your heart, something recognized the wrong spirit, and God wants you to practice so that we can see him coming way down the road and knock him out before he can damage us. So what happened last night glorified God; God was glorified here last night. I want to tell you this classroom situation in the church is artificial. To just sit in a classroom and sit in a classroom and sit in a classroom, it is artificial. If that is all the Lord is giving you, that is all you can do, but, eventually, you have got to get out of the academy and experience the warfare because we are in a war, and the prize is you. It is you, and it is me. We are the prize. [AUDIO CUTS OUT]
[?As I?] woke up this morning -- I woke at 5 o’clock this morning, and I do not know whether I was having a dream or a vision; it was probably a vision. It was just a face of someone whose tooth was being pulled. I believe that sym- -- dream symbols are universal, and in my dreams, a tooth being pulled is always referring to deliverance or the expulsion of ungodly forces. Christ is added to us; ungodly forces are removed from us. I woke up seeing this vision of a face, and the person was having a tooth pulled, and it was a difficult extraction. Their face was swollen way out like this, and I was aware that there was great pain, at least somewhere, if not in several sources, and the tooth had not been extracted yet.
Brethren, there is something in humanity that must go. Part of it is being cast out. The demons are being cast out, and that which remains is being brought down under the authority of the Christ. I do not honestly know whether this vision was of one man, of a whole fellowship or of the church. Sometimes it is very hard interpreting dreams. I am of the opinion that the most I can hope for is a partial understanding of what the Lord tells me in a dream because most of the time he gives us dreams so that, when they come to pass, we will know that the Lord was in full control.
Sometimes he gives us a warning in a dream, but we must be very careful that we do not fall into a trap of living our life by dreams, OK, which is -- some people in the world fall into that trap. They come under the authority of a spirit of divination. They will not make a move without going to their astrologer or to their card reader. We must be careful that, as Christians, we do not fall into that. Most of the time, the dreams are not of such a nature that if you could just understand them, you could avoid the danger. That is the mentality that comes with workers of witchcraft that predict your future. More likely than that, a dream from God would open up an opportunity for us to pray. Lord, let your will be done. Lord, be glorified. Lord, send -- I just pray for safety. But if -- but be careful that you do not think that you could change the whole scheme of events because God has given you a dream. It is not likely. Now, remember, even Joseph, when he interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams about the thin and the fat kine. It all came to pass. The way Joseph used the dream was to prepare for that which was coming. He did not use the dream to change events, OK, so be careful for that spirit of divination. Many people beloved of God are caught up in that.
So I hope I have given you some understanding of what is going on, and I have been talking about false doctrine since I arrived, and I feel that perhaps I did not make it clear. There is much more at stake than doctrine, you see. It is much more an issue of who is right and who is wrong. I have no desire to be right, and, hopefully, none of us have a desire to be right. If we do, it is an immaturity that needs to be worked out of us. Our desires should be for God to be glorified. Our desires should be that the Spirit of Christ should be the ruling spirit, wherever those who honor him are. Our desires should be whatever the desires of the Lord are: the salvation of his people, the breaking of curses that are bringing torment into people’s lives, the impartation of the spirit of life which will improve people’s lot.
You see, I come in here from New York with a very high doctrine, but I hope that I can make it very clear to you that I am not here to tickle your ears. The reason I am sent to a small group like this is because the Lord is raising up saviors in Nigeria, and he is not raising you up so that you should rule over the others. He is raising you up that you should break the bondages starting right in your own life, then going to your immediate family, then going to your extended family, your Christian family, eventually all of Nigeria and then eventually all of Africa.
A call on your life puts you in a position where you must submit to the man of low estate. Brethren, you are not going to be able to take this doctrine to the man in the street. He may not be able to understand it. The doctrine is a part of the procedure which is causing Christ to be formed in you and in Christ is miracle-working power to set free the brokenhearted, to free the captives from spiritual and mental jail, to feed the hungry, to heal the sick, to deliver the demon oppressed. This power is in Christ, and this high doctrine that I come to you with, it is part of the food that he needs to be born in you. I do not come to make you great ones; I come to make you servants. And if you understand this doctrine with the spirit of this world, that is all you have is the doctrine; you will not have the power to set creation free.
So choose your priority. What do you choose? And if you choose to be a great one because of knowledge, I tell you in all humility that your choice is made by your carnal mind because Christ is a minister to the lowest person, and I do not mean that in any negative way. To the illiterate man who is suffering because of leprosy, you cannot bring this doctrine to him, but Peter said gold and silver have I none, but that which I have giveth thee, and he did not say here is the doctrine of Christ. He said rise up and walk.
So I hope I have straightened out any error or misunderstanding that might have been in your minds, brethren, as to why I am here or as to the purpose of doctrine in God’s scheme of things. The greatest amongst you shall be your minister or shall be a minister, shall minister to the others. So humble yourself. We are told by the apostle, James, with meekness, receive the engrafted word, which is Christ, with meekness of heart. And receive the correction with that same meekness that that word, once engrafted, will minister to your own carnal mind, whose very nature is pride. That is our condition. This is not an indictment, nor is it a condemnation; it is truth. And you cannot go out and break the bondages on the people when pride is ruling in your mind, so he must be wounded, brethren. He must be wounded, and that wounding is painful, but joy cometh in the morning. We must understand the calling on our life. Let us just set the captive free. God has not raised you up to go off and forget your brethren. He has not. He has raised you up. He is raising you up to Mount Sion to go back and finish the work.
So, brethren, let us love one another, and let peace reign in our hearts and between all men, and let us forgive one another, and let us understand the purposes of God in our lives, the purposes of God, or our purposes are the purposes of God, not selfish, but for the world. For the world we are given; we are broken for the world. We are broken; we are sacrificed.
Do you think it is easy giving this message to a man in the street? Do you think e- -- it is easy to take this high doctrine and break it down into one word because that is all that man can understand? It is hard, and it takes a training, and it takes putting your pride down and submission to Christ because without him it is impossible to give that man what he needs that will impart a life into him. You see, even i- -- even when we have the ability to heal the disease, that is only a temporary healing. The man will still die eventually. The greater works is to implant the seed of Christ in that man, the seed of eternal life.
And in that seed is this doctrine of Christ, but there is also all kinds of doctrine out there in which there is no eternal life, and all that it does is puff up. And where it rains, where this doctrine rains by another spirit, and the man through whom it is flowing believes that it is Christ, that man remains sterile, incapable of bearing live young unto the glory of Christ. So there is a labor, brethren. There is a spiritual labor. It is tedious; it is laborious; it is painful. But the end of it is life and glory and victory to Christ, and for that to happen, we must die. Our own needs, our own desires, our own wants, our own ego must decrease that he increase in us because in him is life, and in us abides only death. And when the spirit that we were born with ministers anything that sounds like Christ, it is not Christ; it is still death. It has to be his life in us, and that is the issue at hand today.
It is not who is right and who is wrong because that is not even worth talking about, let alone fighting about, does not matter who is right or who is wrong. Paul said suffer the loss. I would not waste five minutes of talk or one breath on trying to prove that I am right, but when I fight, I fight for your life. I fight for the life of God’s people who do not yet have this understanding, that no matter how good it sounds, if you have got the wrong spirit, you are abiding in death, and there is no life in you. And if there is no life in you, you cannot give it to anybody else, and you will die, and everyone else that you try to minister to will die with you.
So I encourage you, brethren. You are called to a high calling. God loves you. If you are hearing this word, he loves you. He has called you to sit with him in his throne of glory, but it must be according to his plan, and we must lay down our own ways. So I encourage you all to pick up the challenge and become ministers of righteousness and of life; become ministers of life. Let your primary concern be that everyone you touch should live, that every sin they have ever committed that you have power over should be forgiven unto them, that you should free them and not capture them, that they should walk away from an encounter with you with a changed life, with chains broken and bondages broken and sins forgiven and a new chance in life.
All of this is in Christ. It is not in the doctrine, you see; it is in the Spirit. That is what Paul meant when he said doctrine puffeth up. Doctrine alone puffeth up. Some fellow- -- we have fellowships in New York that do not even want to get into doctrine. Well, that is not the answer. We need the doctrine of Christ. We need doctrine, but doctrine alone puffeth up. Doctrine that is brought forth by the Spirit of life, which is in Christ Jesus, brings life.
But once that Spirit gets inside of you, everywhere you go, there is war. There is war everywhere. If that Spirit is truly in you, everywhere you go, every -- excuse me, every person you have a conversation with that has an overriding spirit of this world, whose usual state is carnal, will at some point get upset with you. They are not likely to recognize or admit what it is, but they will -- there will be a conflict. They will depart from you, or there will be an argument, depending on your basic nature. They will decide that you are evil; they will decide that you are a false teacher. They will decide you are a very nice person; you just do not know what you are talking about. But the spirit of this world will do anything to get away from the Spirit of Christ. Why? Because the Spirit of Christ wants to kill him and replace him with the Spirit of life.
So Christians that do not understand this say, conflict, conflict everywhere; war, war everywhere; where is the peace that passeth all understanding? Brethren, the peace comes when you win the war. Jesus said you will hear w- -- of wars and rumors of wars. Well, it is true we are hearing about wars between nations, but he was meaning -- he meant much more than that, brethren. If the Spirit of Christ rides in you, if you are the ass which is carrying the Ark, everywhere you go there is trouble. Well, we go believing that the Spirit of Christ will prevail and that he is operating in us and that he is operating in the other person and that along with the war is the spirit of reconciliation and the spirit of love and the spirit of life and that he is dealing with everybody. But do not think that if you are called to this high calling that you are going to have the glory of Pentecost because you are not.
This high calling is associated with war. Look at Jesus in the back of the Book of Revelation. He is on horseback with drawn sword, and his enemy is the carnal minds of men, wherever they are manifesting, and you need to know this so that you can dig in and not let the carnal mind manipulate you. Pick up your weapon, brethren. The battle is raging. Quick yourse- -- quit yourselves like good soldiers, and run this race with endurance and with patience, and endure the hardship, that Christ should be glorified in you and in your fellowship and in everything you touch. May life come forth, everything you touch. I pray that prayer for you. Every relationship you have, every place you go, may a green grass grow after you walk there, in life, in peace, in glory, in victory and in love, after you put down the enemy, brethren, because the carnal minds of men, including your own carnal mind, will never help you, but will war against you continuously without ceasing and without rest, and you need to know this. You will never fight the war without the information.
Transcribed by Verbal Fusion 06/05/16
1st Edit 06/08/16 rh
