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Well, God bless you, good to see you again. I know it must be very hard for you working and coming out three nights in a row. I hope God blesses you.
Tonight Lord willing I am going to give you some insight into the sign of spiritual manhood as opposed to the sign of spiritual womanhood. As I mentioned yesterday we see a strange things happening in God's church today, physical men who are spiritual women and physical women who are spiritual men, but I will like to assure you, in particular the men that there is nothing to be concerned about as far as your manhood is concerned. The natural order still stands. You are the head of your wife and you are the head of your natural family, and if anyone tells you otherwise it is not true. God must reconcile one's spiritual development with one's natural life. So if you are a man and you see signs of spiritual manhood arising in your wife, I will like to put your concerns at rest if she is truly following after the Lord. Her authority in Christ in no way should conflict with your authority over the family and over natural matters.
Spiritual manhood is just that, manhood over spiritual things. And we must believe God that as the whole church enters into the travail of change, as we go from a natural person to a spiritual person that he who is faithful to do all things well will make the transition as smooth as possible and that all conflict or distractions or concerns should be offered up to the Father, humbling yourself before him, He will do it I assure you he will do it, so be at peace, gentlemen, be at peace. Praise God.
Ladies let me exhort you that no matter what signs of spiritual manhood you find or manifesting in you, they do not give you authority over your natural husband but God has called us to peace. Your authority is in the realm of the spirit. You fight on your knees; you argue in your prayer closet, you win victory in Christ. Let him be the head of the marriage and let him speak to the husband and if your wife is arising as a spiritual man, let him speak to the wife. If there is conflict between any two human beings husband and wife or otherwise, we must immediately know at least one person is not manifesting Christ, at least one person is not thinking with the mind of Christ, at least one person is not speaking with the mind of Christ, at least one person is not feeling with the emotions of Christ.
And if there is a conflict in your marriage, if there is a conflict in your marriage it must be submitted to the Lord but let me say this; if there is a conflict in your marriage women, you automatically must submit to your husband and go into prayer in the event that the man might be making a mistake, the correction must come from the Lord, you cannot turn your family life upside down. I do not want anybody working around after I leave Benin saying Sis Sheila said I am the new head of our marriage because I never said any such thing. I say unto you if you are married be content with your condition and obey the rules of the natural relationship, seek not to be separated from your husband or your wife.
If you are not married be content with your condition, is that not what the apostle Paul said. I hear other things being preached everywhere I go, brethren the word of the Lord to you is that for the current distress, which the Lord call the tribulation which I have called the battle of the war of the minds, I have called it Armageddon or the current distress. Be content with that which the Lord has given you. If you are single and he directs you towards a marriage be married. If you are single and he has not provided a mate for you after you have been praying for 15 years, do not push against the pricks, but be at peace.
And in geographical areas where culture plays a strong role in these areas; I will like to encourage all of you to be of support to your brethren and if you see a woman or man who is not married or if you see a condition in a marriage unless God has really spoken to you for these people be at peace and leave them to their God, leave it to the Lord to deal with their lives, unless they come to you and ask you for prayer, if they ask you for prayer, pray for them, do not counsel them unless they ask you for counsel .If they ask for prayer, pray. If they ask for counsel, counsel. But please I exhort you do not believe that what is perfectly, absolutely, positively correct for you is correct for your brother or your sister because this is not necessarily true, one the Lord calls to marriage perhaps that woman is ordained to bring forth the mind of possible for the Lord has provided a husband for her and it is obvious, but if there is no obvious need let us all strive to comply with the scripture. Paul clearly stated be content with that which the Lord has given you.
If you are single and you desire a husband, I do not want any body misunderstanding me, there is nothing wrong in saying Lord, do you have a husband for me? Lord do you have a wife for me? Lord I would like to get married but do not forget to follow that prayer with; nevertheless Lord your will, not mine, because in all seriousness I tell you that if the Lord does not have a husband and this affect women mostly, it is very rare that a man does not get married although it does happen sometimes and when a man marries there is less of a problem if he is a spiritual man as well as a physical man there is no conflict because he is already the head of his family, but you see when a woman is called to spiritual manhood she must be married to a man who would yield to the Lord and let her do what He has called her to do.
So if you pray yourself into a marriage or if you pray your sister into a marriage and you pray, and you pray, and you pray, you know your prayer can bring forth a man that was not sent by God, you must know that here you must know that .He will fit all of your description, he will be the same height, he will be the same built, he will earn his income in the exact way that you put in the order, everything will be perfect just as you prayed for, with one exception God did not send him.
I tell you the truth you can put your sister meaning well but you see now that I told you if you do it, it is sin unto you. You can put your sister into a marriage that will be torment for her. This is no light thing, it is serious. So brethren let us love one another but let us love one another scripturally and let us not interfere with other people's lives but let us look inwards and let us ask the Lord what he will have us to change, what he will have us to perfect. Praise God.
We are living in the hour of tremendous stress. Change produces stress. Cultural and social change produces stress. And gentlemen, I address myself to you specifically, as God calls you to spiritual manhood you are just continuing on with the mentality that you have been raised to function in, male. The whole culture accepts you as a male, you look like a male, you feel like a male, since you where a little child you have been taught to be a man. I ask you to have compassion on the women who has been put under severe social and cultural persecution because to the carnal mind it appears unnatural. So I want you to know that as these women are called forth of God you can make their life easier or you can make their life harder and I ask you to put the matter before the Lord. There is no threat on to your manhood. There is no threat unto your manhood, unto your cultural or your social position, there is not and there should not be if there is then there is something wrong. You have to petition the Lord as to what the problem is. So I ask you, if I give you this thought would you help these women? And not hinder them, would you at least pray about it? Because it is not easy, okay.
Glory to God, there was one other thing that I wanted to say and it just slipped out of my mind, Lord what was it? Thank you father. Jesus; any other question on this area? Your authority and spiritual manhood is spiritual, it is spiritual, it does not give you authority over any natural order, over parents, over husband with one exception if there is really, well let me put it this way, if the spirit of God moves upon you but be very careful that you have not received the seducing spirit that has told you to taking authority in this natural realm that was not God because if you make a mistake the Lord will reveal it and you will have to repent and make restitution.
Let me address it to the men. If such situation should arise, well the Lord will tell you to go as a prophet to your father. You must obey God, but beware there is not the seduction of the pride of your own mind raising you up as a false prophet because if you go and exercise you authority that the Lord has not given you if you are truly a son He must call you to test on it. So this is not easy. I acknowledge that what I am saying to you is very difficult. I am saying when God sends you, go. But if it is not God do not go and I am giving very little instruction as how to tell when it is God. I will just like to give you one scripture on this.
There was a prophet, well the scripture says there was a man of God and he went to a man in his room and he said smite me on the check, hit me. The man of God said to the Israelite in the street, hit me hard enough to draw blood. Now if I went over to you and ask you to hit me, I am sure that will cause great anxiety in you as to whether or not this was the Lord asking you to do that. Well we are told in the scripture that the Israelite man said no way that I should hit the man of God and no good thing came upon him, he was not blessed, trouble came to him. So the man of God went to another Israelite and said strike me and this Israelite struck him and drew blood and this man was blessed. You know, you tell this story to a carnally minded man and they would run out of the room pulling their hair. This is confusion to the carnally minded man. We must be spiritual brethren, for to be carnally minded is death.
So do not fear and do not be anxious, but lend yourself to prayer, tell the Father that you have heard his word that you desire to go on with God that you desire to be spiritual, that you want righteousness, that you want to do the right thing and when you do that the whole responsibility of imparting this ability to you falls on the Lord. If your prayer is genuine, if your heart is true that you want to do righteousness then he must teach you how. He must give you the ability how, how can the Lord (inaudible) you, If you have cried out to the Lord for this ability and He has not given it to you, He is not a frivolous God, that he will dangle this glory in front of your nose, that he will ask you to partake of it and not give you the ability to do it. No, but there will be some mistakes along the way because we learn by experience. So just be where of pride, the strongest enemy of the spiritual man. Pride! And I tell you that you must make some mistakes, you must, because we learn by experience.
So be encouraged, I hope I have not frightened anybody. Fear is never of God, anxiety is never of God .Quit yourself that man and go before the Lord and tell Him that you want to walk in the heavenlies with him and that when you have done all that he wants you to do, now He must bring you the rest of the way. He will do it. Do not be afraid of making a mistake. What you might want to do before you take any kind of action is to pray. I frequently say to the Lord, Father this is how I see this situation. This is what it looks like to me. Is that your mind? Am I right? Or is that my carnal mind. What, if anything would you like me to do about it? Would you like me to mind my business and forget about it? I see it that means your mind in me showed it to me. What do you want me to do?
Most of the time a prayer will come out of the realm of the spirit and the Lord will pray it through me and there is victory .About the woman I told you about yesterday, who believe that the angel of God will turn in her back and clean her up in the middle of the night. I prayed for her, on daily basis, for months. I said Lord, what would you have me to do. Look at this woman, deeper relation in the word of God, and she bound and she had second testimony that she will be preaching and suddenly with no warning her voice was changed to a deeper skin masculine voice and she put it right into her newsletters, that brethren came to her and said sister, you have a demon. And she boldly said Christians cannot have a demon. I prayed for her with all the strength I had and the Lord was silence. And I want you to know that I took her material and I put it in a file. I blessed her, and I forgot about it. Do not take the Lords business into your own.
You will make mistakes, you have to make mistakes but there could be little mistakes and there could be big mistakes. So the more you commune with the Lord and the more check your discernments, the more you talk to him about your opinion before you act on them the more likely are your mistakes are to be small so humble yourself before your God, become as little children and submit yourself to this glorious education that He has invited you to, glorious, absolutely glorious. And you will walk in the high realms of the spirit with Him.
Getting back to the signs of spiritual manhood and spiritual womanhood, these signs are spiritual signs. Amen. That makes sense; right? They have to be spiritual signs. So I will like to start by defining some spiritual signs for you. Now the most obvious spiritual signs that we know about in the church today are the signs of the presence of the Holy Spirit. You probably heard it explained that there is a baptism with the Holy Spirit. I will like to say that those who have received the baptism of the Holy Spirit there is a fine difference which I will not give to you tonight but I am trying to be faithful to what the Lord has shown me. I have a tape on it if you will like to borrow it from xxxxx but she does not have it yet. It is called THE TRUTH ABOUT BAPTISM.
So for those who have received the Holy Spirit, there are signs that follow. Tongues, Interpretation of tongues, prophecy, discerning of spirits, you know all the signs? Let me give some information about these signs. The signs that follow those that have received the Holy Spirit we know are given without repentance. The gifts and the calling of God are given without repentance. Let me express that for you in another way. These signs are given to men and women who have a fallen nature. These signs are given to men and women who can be easily unrighteous in their dealings with other men.
These signs and wonders including healings and casting out of evil spirits and the discernment of spirits, all these glory, do you know someone can be very spiritual and their nature can be reprobate, their relationships with other men, reproachable before God, totally contradicting the word of God. How can this be? This can be because the nature of God which is the primary sign of spiritual manhood has not yet been imparted to them. So what am I saying, the primary sign of womanhood, spirituality without integrity. I condemn no one, as I told you yesterday, in our humanity we are born either male or female and we are born an infant and we grow up to be a mature either male or female. But in Christ we are born an infant either male or female, and we grow up to be a spiritual man. It does not matter what your body is in Christ because there is no male or female.
So if you are a person who moves in the gifts and the integrity which is associated with the matured nature of Christ is not yet being revealed to your relationships with your brethren, I do not condemn you and you should not condemn any one and if this is your condition do not let any one condemn you because it is a measure of your spiritual growth.
You do not expect from your infant that you are carrying on your back or in your arms, you do not expect from them what to expect of a10 year old child and you do not expect of a 10 year old child what you expect from a 25 year old man but you see we have a problem in the church today, those of us who are carnal even those of us who are spiritual, we look in a persons body and we make a judgment about their spiritual condition. It is like looking at my fingers and making a judgment without how healthy I am, it can not be done but we do it, we do it because we are carnal, and we do it because this is how we have been evaluating people all our lives. We look at their sex, we look at their age, we look at their education, and we look at how much money they have, we look at how many children they have, we look at their prosperity.
Brethren these signs has nothing to do with spiritual man hood, spiritual womanhood or spiritual prosperity. Do not be deceived, but more often than not the signs of spiritual manhood, spiritual womanhood and spiritual prosperity are in direct opposition to the persons natural life, frequently, it does not have to be that way but the scripture says few are rich, few are rich, few are wise, few are educated that is what my bible says. So we are not to condemn those whom God has blessed but do not rule out those who do not appear to be blessed with the natural things of this world.
So to get back to our topic, the primary characteristic of the spiritual man is not signs and wonders. It is integrity, it is morality, it is honesty, it is decency and fairness in his dealings with other human beings and the after test is how you treat the brother who is younger than you, who is weaker than you, and over whom you have authority. The after test how you treat the man who can do nothing for you but who you can break or make. That man who can not give you anything but you have it within your hand, is nothing to you, to bring him through a difficult time or bless him, it does not have to be money, am not just talking about money. It could be mercy, it could be compassion, not money, I mean it is money but money is just the first layer, it goes way beyond that.
So in the church today, we see some very gifted people and in the United States we have many believers who fall away, they backslide sometimes completely out of the church when they find out what that anointed man of God is like when he comes down out of the pulpit. They get to look at his dealings and they are so devastated, they backslide right out of the church. That is idolatry. Brethren the only one you have to worry about is the Lord Jesus Christ, He will never fail you. Men will fail you, women will fail you, spiritual men will fail you, apostles will fail you, prophets will fail you, evangelists will fail you, I will fail you, I will let xxxxx speak for himself but when men fails, you go before the Lord and ask for direction to his replacement. Amen
We have the signs of primary sexuality, integrity in a man and lack of it in a woman. Both spiritually gifted although the man. (inaudible) of that spirituality taking sometimes the same form but sometimes not. Let me clarify that for you. The spiritual man can do every sign and wonder that the spiritual woman can do, but the spiritual woman cannot do what the spiritual man can do which is above and beyond the gifts. This is a basic scriptural principle, brethren, that the man is complete. The woman is incomplete. Now women do not get mad at me, I am a woman. God set this up; I am not the one who set this up. When He cursed this creation he said Eve your desire shall be unto your husband. You are going to be panting after him for the rest of your life. When he is out pursuing his career and doing his thing and you are home waiting for him. That is life down here in hell. That is what it is like; did I tell you the truth? Is that not the truth? It is the truth. I will always tell you the truth. Praise God.
So when we see somebody manifesting the gifts, we have to ask ourselves questions. First of all, we have to ask is the spirit, the spirit of God. If we perceive a witness that the spirit is of God, then we have to wait. We must exercise patience. We must say to the Lord Father is this person a man or a woman. And then you wait for God to bring an interaction with that person into your life. I do not care how good that person looks, you will not know whether their godliness is a religious work or the real thing until you step on their toes. And when you step on their toes and they say excuse me brother, you know you got a spiritual man. But if you step on their toes and they pick up a sword and jab it in your back, you got a woman on your hand. Do not get mad at me. I am a woman too. It is just the truth. It is the way God set up the nature of men and women. But in Christ you can be a spiritual man.
You know this is a hard word, ladies but to be a woman down here in hell is a measure of hell that men do not experience. Can you here that? Do you hear that? That is the truth. But in Christ, you can be resurrected out of this measure of hell into a measure of the glory of God that is not available to any woman anywhere on this earth outside of her union with Christ. So do not take a negative attitude towards what I am telling you but see it from how I am trying to present it to you. You must know you condition to ascend out of this level of hell. There is deliverance right here in this life right now. There is liberty, there victory, there is glory, whether you are married or whether you are single. The victory is in your mind. The victory is in the union with Christ that takes place in your mind that no matter what happens down there, you deal with that problem in victory and victory comes into your whole house hold.
The most glorious marriage you can hope for is where the man and the woman are spiritual man. Where Christ is the head of the marriage and you are flowing together. But if that does not happen to you, be content with what you have received brethren. bless your mate and serve God. You have to have troubles, you see, there has to be tribulations in your life. why? Because, the trouble will reveal the truth of your nature; so if you have a wife may be she does not even know the Lord or may be she does not even come to church with you. Bless her if she is contented to live with you, live with her. Manifest Christ to her, do not manifest the culture that you have been delivered out of , show her that in Christ you become a new creature and that you are not guilty of the mistakes that many have made over the century across the world towards the weaker vessel.
Every difficulty in your life is an opportunity to show the glory of God. If your attitude is right, if our attitude is one of selfishness no good thing can come out of it brethren. If all we want is for our life to get better, if all we want is for that pain to go away, if all we want is for that discomfort to go away, every thing you are trying to get rid of will fall on you triple, because you have a wrong attitude. You are supposed to be an over comer. You are supposed to be looking outside your self. You are supposed to be having mercy on the people that do not have what you have, that do not have the knowledge of Christ that you have, that do not have the relationship with Christ that you have, that do not have His glory in their life, that do not have His wisdom in their life. It is supposed to be producing mercy in you. How can you have mercy if somebody does not wound you? How can you have patience if somebody does not try you?
So you see these things, they must need be, but I do tell you that you can enter into a realm of overcoming right here and now in your life, right now, you can do it. When you are moving so in the grace of God that you are actually enjoying the victory in the conflict, no matter what they do to you. I tell you the joy that floods your soul when you love them anyway is indescribable unto you. When I first read the scripture that says, happy are we to suffer for Christ. I said those guys must have been crazy, but they were not. They had ascended to a realm. Well I tell you because I have experienced it. I do not experience it a 100% at a time but I have experienced it and I am experiencing it more and more that there is such joy in praying for my enemies. That there is such joy in blessing to those who hate me that it transcends any joy that I know of in this world. It is real, what Jesus just told you about is real. You may not be experiencing it now but it is real, but you got to go through this tribulation to ascend to that place in the spirit. Well, it is real.
You know, about 10 years ago, I was in an area in New York where there was a lot of witchcraft being practiced. I was a disciple at that time. I went with my pastor and the whole church into this area and there has been a lot of publicity that we were coming and every witch in the area must be coming to see what was happening or to try the spirit on this man that I was studying under. A word of knowledge came forth about me; he was calling me up for prayer by a word of knowledge. The way the word of knowledge came out, it was some one that was a repentant witch (inaudible).
He grabbed my arm, as he stared into my eyes, with his fingers and he sliced my lifeline. Do you know what I am talking about? Let me tell you, that was the greatest fear I have ever experienced in my life. I cried all the way home and I am not ashamed to tell you and after about an hour and a half I stood up and I said this is ridiculous. What he had said to me as he stared in my eyes was, and how long have you been a Christian? It was retaliation for coming to the Lord. Well after crying for about an hour and a half I said this is ridiculous I can not spend the rest of my life crying and Lord if you let him kill me then let me die, this is no way to live. Well, I did not die as you can see.
About a year or two later I went before to the Lord and said Father, Whatever happened to that man? I would really like to know your mind. What did you do to this man that cold bloodedly tried to kill me because he must have thought that I was deep in witchcraft, which I was not. He thought I was a repentant witch and he wanted to punish me, what have you done to him. Is he dead? Did the curse go back on his life? Well shortly there after that I went for another evangelical meeting and as I walked down the isle of the church there was this man praising God. with glory on his face and I want to tell you that the Lord set me up because He wanted this man to do it to me so that He could forgive him and bring him to the kingdom.
Now what natural mind do you know of that would conceive something like that? Only God; this is why we never know what his plans are for us. We never know what His plans are for other people. That is why we must not move in prayer unless we have had a specific word from the Lord. You can bless all you want. Your warfare should be completely controlled by God. I tell you the truth, if you make a mistake you are hurting somebody and if you judge and that will be judging before the time then it is coming right back on you, no good thing can come out of it.
Only the men fight. Women do not go to battle brethren. The women and the children stay home, the men have the weapons and they go out and they fight. If you are a spiritual woman you should not be engaged in the warfare, unless you are under the direct authority of a spiritual man, but since we cannot tell what a man looks like or what a l woman looks like we have got a bit of a problem here. Okay let me go on with this. That which a spiritual man can do that a spiritual woman cannot do is prophecy. Now prophecy is different than the gift of prophecy, did you know that? And this is the major difference. I do not know if you recognize this expression here or not but in the United State, we have a phenomenon right now called channeling. Do you know what that means? Let me tell you what it means.
Somebody in the occult makes himself available to a demon, they will go into a meditation, and this demon will arise in them and speak through them and he will say what ever he want to say, we have a demon that has written about 10 books today he calls himself Seth, and he appears through this woman, whose name I cannot recall her name , I just remember the demons name, I cannot recall her name at the moment but he manifest in her mind and he dictates to her and she types down what he says, but the books are called the Seth Series . What is the content of these books? The content of these books is spiritual information that is right out of the pit, but he is calling himself God. This is called channeling, one gives up their mind. One gives their mind over to a spirit who expresses himself through that person.
Well that is what the gifts are brethren, when the holy spirit prophecy, well of course there is a clean spirit, do not misunderstand me. You must know here that everything that God does the unclean spirit does. You know that, right? This is what the gift is you do not have to know anything. You do not need any education. You do not need any understanding. You do not need any wisdom. You do not need any integrity. But you feel there is an anointing come on you and you yield yourself to it. Why do I say that because the spirit is subject to the prophet. You yield yourself to it and the Holy Spirit speaks to you. Sometime you understand what he is saying. Sometimes you agree with what he is saying, sometimes you do not know what he said until you here it on the tape afterwards.
When I first was a young disciple and I had the gift of prophecy, I never remembered anything that I said until you listen to the tape, I know no knowledge of it at all. That is the gift of prophecy, and I am not in any way belittling the gifts of prophecy. It is a valid gift of God; it is a valid stage of maturity in Christ. It is good but there is more, there is more. The prophecy as opposed the gift of prophecy, includes or intertwines itself with the personality of the prophet. Prophecy also sometimes called the oracle of God is an informative utterance which the prophet as personal understanding of.
If there was a problem that the Lord wanted to address with you right now and there was somebody in this room who had overcome in the area of that problem, who understood the intimate detail of that problem and what the solution was and the Lord has to choose between speaking through that person and someone who he could channel through, He will pick the more matured prophet. Because it is the Lords desire to communicate with you as completely as possible.
Now when the spiritual man prophecies, he does not say thus saith the Lord, thus saith the Lord-------. So that even if you do not know what the gift of prophecy is, you will say to that person who brought you to the church and say what is wrong with that person standing up and yelling thus saith the Lord and yelling on the top of their voice, and you will tell her this is the gift of prophecy, and that is how it comes forth. But Prophecy, the spiritual man when he speaks the oracle of God, his tone of voice does not change, is that not right? He does not say thus saith the Lord. You are talking to somebody in a conversation and all of a sudden it is not him, speaking but it is the Lord, and there is only one way that you can know that is no longer your friend but that it is the Lord and that is by discerning that the spirit has changed.
Now if you do not have this ability, remember nothing that I say to you is to condemn you. If you do not have it, ask for it. Do not let the Lord tell you that you have not because you ask not. Contrary to a lot of what is being preached around the world very little is automatic, if anything is automatic. The Lord wants you to be active participant in a relationship with him. Ask, if it is a godly request, you got it. Maybe not the next day but if it is a godly request you got it. You may have to wait until it is built into you. Lots of time He will not give it to you unless you ask, why? I will tell you why, because He is creating circumstances in your life that will force you to ask. Because every time you ask, your mind is getting more intertwined with His mind.
You see He wants you to grow up out of the gifts. There is nothing wrong with the gifts. When you are 2 years old, it is great to be a 2 year old, but if you are a 30 year old man with the mind of a 2 year old, you have got a problem. He will not give you unless you ask, because it is going to be His way and not our way. It is going to be His way. You see, you can not stay babies forever.
I do not know about Benin but back in the United States you have got a lot of people that the Lord has shown me they just do not want to grow up in Christ, it is really easy being a baby. Your mum carries you around and ride everywhere you go, every time you cry she feeds you, it is not such a bad life.
I have had people come to me and say to me, I am not going to do this; I am not going to try this spirit, I am not going to judge righteous judgment. You have got to be off. For all of these 15 years that I have been in the church the Lord has told me everything I needed to know. But strangely enough you seem to not be doing that anymore this is what people say to me and I will tell them He is pushing you out of the nest. You can wait for the next 20 years and He is not going tell you to do that thing. I am telling you! I am telling you, in the word of the Lord. He wants you to make a decision based on everything that he has taught you over your last 20 years in the church. You have got to get that diaper off of you and start functioning like a man.
So we have babies back in New York, I guess you have here too. They want God to tell them what to do. They do not want to have to make a choice. Why? Because may be you will make a mistake. And if you make a mistake, you have to admit it or you have a pride problem. So a spiritual man, prophecy. Spiritual man and woman have the gift of prophecy and all the other gifts.
Now let me talk about gifts for a minute. We are told that the gifts are in parts, and when that which is complete is come the gifts will disappear. What does this mean? We have some ministries in the United States that forbids prophesying, that forbids speaking in tongues. They have made a judgment that they are matured and they do not do this anymore. Brethren this is a religious work. When the very life of Christ starts to appear in you, you will find that you will start speaking in tongues less, you will be exercising the gift of prophecy less. That which is the reality is now manifested through your nature.
You can not do it your self; it has to fall away naturally as the very nature of Christ comes forth in you. Do not forbid anything that is of God at any time, do not forbid it. Everybody is not where you are, you cannot make a rule, if you come to this house fellowship, you can not believe that anymore or you can not do that any more because if you come here it has to mean that there is a certain degree of maturity. You can not do that to people. People grow at their own pace. Is every 2 years old the same? No, some are more mature at 2; others are less matured at 2. Some are retarded. But God can do every thing, amen. Some are very slow, but do not make the mistake of despising the slow learner. You may be in for a big shock, amen.
Okay, I hope I have made this point now. Both spiritual man and woman can exercise the gifts but the more matured the man is, the less likely he is to manifest the gifts. Why? Because every thing that God wants to offer you through him, he has experienced. So he is not only giving you the word of the Lord coming through him as a channel but the word of the Lord plus his experience. He has more to give you, more depth to give you. His experience, his wisdom, every thing he learned is going along with the word of the Lord, his personal experience. So he is less likely to exercise the gifts. Well then, under what circumstances will he exercise the gifts? On the circumstances of which he has no experience.
I barely really speak in tongues or exercise the gift of prophecy but I still do it and when I feel the anointing on me, I yield to it but it is always in the area when if God left me to my own devises I would not know what to say. If someone comes to me with a problem I generally do not know what the answer is for that person. I have never experienced it; I have nothing to base counseling on. If it is the word of the Lord He will respond to that person in prophecy. It is Him alone. The greater anointing is His glorious word plus my personal experience.
So since we are all in part in this hour I do not know of any fully manifested spiritual man, what we are going to have to do is to make a judgment as to someone who is an in part spiritual man. There are in part spiritual men, you can call them man but their not fully matured men, and there are men. They have got enough of the life of Christ, that you can call them men. They have got wisdom, they have got knowledge, they have understanding, and they have integrity. They are not perfect but they are doing every thing they can to be fare to you in every circumstance.
Let me give you a testimony. I made a purchase for our office back in New York and the dealer, the shop keeper that I made the purchase from quoted me the wrong price. I purchased a file and it had six drawers from the floor and the shop keeper did not realize that (inaudible) starts to record the price (inaudible) . So he recorded me a price of 1/6th of what the price should be and after a week after they have delivered the file, he called me up on the phone and he said to me, you know I made a mistake and I am loosing money over this. Will you come down and pay me five times what you have paid me? And I tell the truth, I am going to be perfectly honest with you. You know the thought went through my mind, why should I pay him? I have got the filling cabinet, what is he going to do? Got a big rock on my door, he can not get in.
But let me tell you, the Lord told me in that split second that sinful thought entered into my mind, the Lord spoke to me and He said you better pay that man. I want to tell you that I rose up and ran down to that store with that money so fast that I felt the breeze on my head. I said here take the money, it is not worth compromising my relationship with the Lord, take it. Now that does not mean you let people walk into your house and move all your furniture out. It has to be a legitimate debt. Righteousness is not foolishness. Okay, glory to God His righteousness must begin to appear in us.
I wanted to talk about prediction and vision. Prediction is a sign of spiritual man. You know prophecy is merely the word of the Lord, the Lord has something to say to you and I am faithfully repeating what he wants you to hear. It is prophecy, what I have been saying all night to you is prophecy. It is Christ in me preaching to you. You have been hearing prophecy from the first word that I stated. Okay, I declare to you that it is prophecy. You can say nay and you can say ye.
Prediction is the stating of a future event or the predicting of some thing that will come to pass in the future. This is not a gift. This is a manifestation of spiritual maturity which is found in the very person of Christ even though he may not be in full stature. Did I make it clear that the woman has the gift of the Holy Spirit and the man has the Christ which is being formed in him, that is the difference.
Prediction is a very great responsibility. To move in prediction, prediction is not a gift. Prediction is knowledge of future event. It is not a word of wisdom; it is different than the word of wisdom. A word of wisdom and a word of knowledge is an occurrence an individual, isolated occurrence of something which is a continuing state of being in the spiritual man. I am going to say it again. The state of being of the spiritual man is that, I have an ability; I am a spiritual man if you have not guessed that, that is what I am telling you here. I am a spiritual man because if I am not I should not be teaching you, and I should be silent in the church. So I hope I am spiritual man. Praise God, Hallelujah.
The quality of prediction of speaking future event is resident in the nature of Christ which is attached to my soul. He is there and he can rise up in Christ. Christ in me that mind that was in Christ Jesus is in me. He may not be in full stature but He is in me. He can rise up anytime He wants and predict future event. He can either speak to all of you or selectively, to me only. The gift of the word of wisdom is an isolated event or a lesser manifestation of the condition which produces prediction. It happens when the Father has a desire to state a future event and the person in whom Christ is being formed is not available. He will move upon somebody who has the gift of the Holy Ghost and channel through them. That is what the gift is.
My primary dream is Christ, that I should be joined with him, that there should be no separation. But I want to experience traveling in the spirit; I want to travel in the spirit. I would like to experience it, but God has not let me experience it as a gift. We have had great men of God in the church. xxxxx for example, he traveled in the spirit but he did not have an indwelling Christ. How do I know? Well, read his doctrine, the man is dead; I am not coming against him at all. He was a great man of God; he did great things for God. But he celebrated pagan holidays; in his doctrine was not the hidden manna. What does that mean? He was a natural man who had received gifts from God without a conversion of his nature. And one of the gifts he had received was traveling in the spirit.
Now, God has not given me that gift. I have to wait until the Christ in me is matured enough that traveling in the spirit becomes a natural occurrence of my state of being. Do you understand what I am saying? If you do not understand me, do not worry about it. You will listen to the tape. Do not worry about it. I am giving you a lot of information and most important thing is that the anointing here tonight falls on your heart. If you do not understand everything I am saying, do not worry about it. What you need is the seed of Christ being implanted in your heart, so that the eyes of your understanding will be opened. If you do not understand me with your intellect, do not worry about it. There is no blessing to understand with your intellect, it could be a hindrance to you. Pray that the Lord open your spiritual eyes of understanding and when you faithfully submit yourself to meetings like this without understanding, God will surely honor you. Do not be distressed, be at peace. Hallelujah.
Okay, prediction is a sign of a spiritual man. Let me give you a testimony, I will give you an example. I had an experience just this week in Benin. I was sitting in the room with a couple of believers and a thought flashed through my mind that to me was totally off, where would this thought even come from? It had to do with a sister traveling to the United State but from what I knew about her life, I said oh, I am no going to say anything about this, what if I am wrong. That is pride; I said I am not going to say about this. Well, the next day she said some thing to me and it was a true condition in her life and it looks like the Lord may be using me to accomplish some thing that he wants to do in her life.
You see, God does not predict future events because He likes to play games .when God tells you about a future event; He has a purpose in it. And He said it to me because apparently, He had something for me to do. So that is the gift of prediction. If you have knowledge, you will eventually know all things. But the gift of knowledge is when the Lord will tell you when an unconverted man would give you a piece of information because you need it to accomplish something that he want you to do. But when you have Christ being formed in you, you have all knowledge; nothing is hidden from you, when you are in full stature. But as you increase in Christ, you will find yourself knowing things about people's lives that an unregenerate man should not know.
This is a great responsibility, to know secrets about people's lives. You must be trained how to deal with this, if you condemn them, they are condemned. Do you know when Christ is being formed in you, you have spiritual authority. You may not say a word but if in your mind you condemn them, they are condemned. You can bring destruction into their lives. If God tells you something about someone you are supposed to pray for them, you are supposed to help them; you are not supposed to condemn them. Okay, I think that covers prediction, there is not much more to say about that.
I will like to talk about visions for a few minutes. Visions, prophetic dreams, visions can also be called trances. Dreams, you all know what dreams are, that we can hear from the Lord in a dream. There are different degrees of dreams. Some dreams are called night vision. But what is a dream? The whole implication of a dream is that it is a fantasy; it is just a picture of something that is going on. But a night vision, you actually enter into the realm of God's Spirit. You actually enter into the realm of God's Spirit, when you go into a condition that we call sleep but which really is a deep trance. If you enter into the realm of God's Spirit you are in a deep trance. And different things can happen in that condition. Some people travel in the spirit, they are sent to someone. God is not flying around like an airplane, If he is sending you in the spirit He has something for you to do, either you want to pray healing for somebody or you want to cast out a demon, or you want to give out a word of knowledge or you want to bring comfort, God has no time for games, if He send you, you have an assignment. Okay.
Trances: Three kinds of trances. We were told in Act chapter 10 and Act chapter 11 that Peter went into a trance with his eyes open. He saw a whole scene open up in front of him that had nothing to do with the world he was living in.
And if you look upon somebody that is in a trance, they look like they are staring into space. I would imagine if most of you here in Nigeria are familiar about that. Pastor Vitale-Is that true? Is that true?
Comment: Inaudible
But it is valid in God, it is valid in God. The way God expressed it to me is that, it is a displacement of the mind. It is a displacement of the mind. Your body is standing here and to all intent and purposes you look like you are standing here but your mind is some place else. Your mind has been caught up. Some people say the third heaven but I looked up those words in the Greek and that is not what it really said. You see, he was caught up beyond this realm of time, beyond; he went beyond the ability of this mind. He entered into a mind where there is all knowledge; he entered into Christ in the form of a gift. If it was not a gift, when you enter into Christ that fully, you will abide there forever. So if you just have an experience whereby you enter so deeply into Christ that you can get the kind of revelation that John got, it is only a gift if you can back out. So do not think you are in full stature if you got a vision, okay.
That is the most obvious kind of trance, the open eye vision. And there are two levels of closed eyes trance and we read about that in:
Daniel, Chapter 8, Verses 17 & 18
So the angel came near where Daniel stood and when he came, Daniel was afraid. KJV
Let me remained you of what I told you last night. The angel is Christ. When Christ approaches a carnal man his automatic reaction is fear.
And he was afraid and fell upon his face.
He fell upon is face, what that means is he laid down and his eyes were closed but he was not in a deep sleep, have you ever experienced that? Some times I used to experience it when I would get slain in the spirit back in those days. You go down, sometimes you are just lying on your bed or you are sitting in your house and your eyes closed and the Lord starts to speak to you. You do have some awareness of what is going on outside of you but your attention is completely captivated by the Lord, you know what I am talking about? Okay that is the first level of trance.
I was afraid and fell upon my face but He said to me, understand oh son of man, for the time of the end shall be the vision. Now as the angel was speaking to Daniel, Daniel was in a deep sleep;
...on my face toward the ground. This measure of a trance locked out all awareness of your surroundings. It is more like the night vision that I described earlier. And I will like to point out something to you here that is very exciting. I want to read you the next few words. But he touched me; the angel touched Daniel and he set him upright. Now what does that mean?
First he was in an ascended trance, then he was in a deep trance and now he is upright. Boy! This bible really confuses me sometimes. What I want to suggest to you brethren is that for Christ to arise in you, now remember we have got two minds. For Christ to arise in you in the fullness of the manifestation that was imparted to Daniel, let me remained you, Daniel was receiving a prophecy for us. It had to be perfect; there was no room for mistake. His carnal mind had to be completely, completely suppressed. Now one thought of the carnal mind could get through, and what the angel did to him was completely shut down that carnal mind and the manifestation of the mind of Christ came up in Daniel, and the scripture said he was set upright, he was set up right.
Now every body here is doing great. It is not at all uncommon for people to sleep through my messages, and I tell every body not to be though they are all doing fine, I only see one person sleeping but a lot of people sleep because what happens is that when I preach, I am preaching by the Christ in me and He is crushing your carnal mind, He is crushing your carnal mind. The eyes of your understanding can not be opened, until your carnal mind is wounded. So the fact that you are all up is very encouraging, is very encouraging.
You know when I was here last year, I was in a cab with a Nigerian man but he was a Christian but a little bit carnal, he was a carnal Christian. He was a very nice man, he was taking me out to lunch and something he said in the taxi made me pray to the Lord, I said should I give that a spiritual response or should I not? Because I knew he was a carnal Christian and I felt to give that a spiritual response and as soon as the sentence went out of my mouth he went to sleep. I am telling you the truth. At first I was not sure whether I upset him with what I said, and he did not want to hear anymore but as I watched him his head was just rolling around and he slept for 15min (laughs). I am telling you the truth, and when we arrived at the restaurant he woke up and he was absolutely embarrassed. Praise God.
Okay, so I have given you some insight into the signs of spiritual manhood and spiritual womanhood and I will like to give you a few more signs. We are going into the Book of:
Joel, Chapter 2, Verse 28
And it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out of my spirit upon all flesh and your sons and daughters shall prophecy and your old men shall dream dreams and your young men shall see vision. KJV
The Hebrew word translated sons, it can mean a young son, or it can mean children of any age and these are the believers that I was speaking about, both spiritual man and spiritual woman who operate in the gifts. The Hebrew word translated daughters refers specifically to spiritual women. So Just your young children all are hard to tell when they are very young whether they are male or female. Young Spiritual men are very difficult to recognize when they are mixed with spiritual women because they are still very young but they are still male. So how do you tell? You ask the Lord, who is that person, who are they? Is there anything you want me to know about them? I do that all the time, why do you have to wait until they stab you in the back.
Do not take what I have just said wrong, you know the more of Christ that is revealed to you, the more the carnal mind is trying to kill you. It is a fact of life; it is trying to kill your spiritual life, in every way it can, and they will manifest through any human being who lets him through. And many human beings are ignorant of this fact and they are used for evil purposes by the god of this world. Is that not true? Many Christians are used for evil purposes by the god of this world, why? Because they are spiritual women and they cannot see the enemy and even if they can see the enemy, they have no weapon, I guess I missed that one out.
Spiritual men have the weapons, the weapon is Christ. The Holy Spirit is not the weapon, the Holy Spirit have the gifts. I would like to express it this way; the Holy Spirit is curative. Christ is defensive and warlike. If you get sick the Holy Spirit can cure you. If you find yourself with a demon, Lord willing the power is in the Holy Spirit to cast it out, but it is not strong enough to prevent you from getting sick nor is it strong enough to prevent you from getting that demon. But Christ on the other hand; He is life unto your bones. He will prevent disease; He will prevent demons within or demons from without. And of cause we have the example of Paul shaking the snake off of his hand and the venom of the snake had a no effect on him.
Christ in him was to such a degree of maturity that He was defending his flesh. And I stand here, I openly tell you, I am a spiritual man but I do not believe that Christ is defending my flesh. I am not going to go out and letting a snake bite me. See, every time I get threatened with manifesting pride the Lord says that to me; I have got the snake ready for you. I am a very, very young male. But I know that I am a male because I have weapon. I wage war in the spirit and when I fight I am victorious. You know you can have the weapon and the carnal mind can have you so frightened that you do not use it. You see, if you have the weapon and you are willing to fight you can not fail, you can not fail.
You might get hit a couple of times, you know. You could get hit, you can get some discomfort but you got to practice, you know. You got to play those war games. You are not going to be a top warrior without practicing. You got to practice, so if you get hit a couple of times just tuck your pride under your belt and get up and brush yourself up and get back into the battle. Because you can not be a general until you are a private. And let me say this; women frequently do not even have a revelation of the battle. Why? Because God is protecting them; if you do not have the weapon, what do you want to see the battle for? The Lord does not want these wicked carnal minds of men or demons or whatever you want to call him; I am not going to get into that tonight. He is not the one that is coming after you when you can not handle it, now may be you think you can not handle it, but if God thinks you can handle it you better fight because you are a (inaudible) no cowards in Gods army.
So all of you people, who are praying for Christ and praying for the weapons, get ready for the attack; you know I am making a joke out of this but this is a real thing. This is war. You may not take it seriously but the carnal mind is taking it seriously. He is taking you more seriously than you are taking him because it takes a while for us to really know who we are in Christ. You know, we really are unbelieving. We like to believe all men are wonderful, and good and peaceful and that they are nice people and they are. But we must know that if Christ is in that person and Christ is not operating as a regulatory law, remember what I aid about that last night, if He is not regulating you carnal mind, the carnal mind of that person.
The carnal mind of that person can rise up against you; you have got to know that. Did not Jesus say; daughter against daughter-in-law, the members of your own house hold, did He not say it? Did you ever wonder why He did not say husband against wife? Did you ever wonder why? Because once you come to the Lord your true husband is Christ and He will never come against you.
So your sons and your daughters, they are going to have the gift of prophecy and they are all going to look alike just like your 5 year old boys and girls look alike. I am going to skip your; old men for this moment. And your young men shall see visions. Now this Hebrew word that is translated young men is talking about mature young men who are old enough to be married but who are not married but living a eunuch life. And I want to suggest to you that there is a spiritual union. If you are not yielding to your carnal mind, do you know that yielding to your carnal mind is spiritual adultery? You know that, do you not? You know that.
If you are not yielding to your carnal mind, if you are beating on him every time he is trying to make you do something ungodly. If you are exercising your authority in Christ against him, and you are not letting him have the use of your mind and your emotions and your body and your mouth, let us not forget your mouth, you are a spiritual virgin. You are a eunuch, because you are not really married to Christ yet, but by faith we are married to Christ. If the joining were complete, we will be in full stature.
So that is what this word; young men mean and they are heroes, they are fighting this war and these are the ones who are seeing visions. These are the ones who are having trances; these are the ones who are getting intense relative knowledge. Now let me talk to you about this for a minute. Words of knowledge and trances, if they are truly the spirit of God, the chances that abound to a personal life are very small. When God starts to call you into his kingdom, He is fully intended to expand your consciousness to the entire body of Christ and the world system that you live in and His plan and purposes for this world and His body.
Now He can give you information about your personal life, but it is not likely that He is going to do it when you are first starting out why? Because He is trying to wean us away from immaturity; that wants that knowledge; that wants that dream; that wants that prophecy. Brethren, if you have a continuous lust for it; I know I used to have it. I grew up in a church where the pastor was anointed in the word of knowledge and at the beginning of every service, he would go around, he was very anointed, definitely of God and he would pick up between 5 and 10 people and he would prophecy over them or he would meet their need and every time that service started, I find myself saying; oh I want it, I want it, I want it, and I almost never got it.
This is a craving for witchcraft; I am telling you the truth. This is the spirit that sends you to someone to read your fortune. I am telling you the truth; I have it. I was bound with that, fortune tellers and Astrologers; I went to them; I had a weakness for it that was probably why I was never prophesied over. You see, God does not increase your weaknesses, He strengthens you. He said what do you need that for? I talked to you directly, what do you need that for? What is wrong? What is wrong? What does this mean? That you need someone to prophecy over you; when you have a direct line of communication with me.
Now there is a valid legitimate place for prophecy, for word of knowledge, for the whole thing. If God has something to say to somebody, and that person does not have that open line of communication, God sends a prophet or a son. You know the five fold ministry is in the son. If you truly have Christ being formed in you, you have every one of those five offices. You are all; you are a teacher, you are a pastor, you are an evangelist, you are an apostle. The signs of these ministries will be revealed or make manifest or make evident as you minister to Gods people. The son has the whole spectrum of the ministry.
So, but every body does not have Christ being formed in them and every body that has Christ being formed in them are not necessarily matured enough to have this open line of communication. So God will send you to the person that needs a word. It is legitimate, God does it; but if you have a need for it, you better check it out. You have got an opening; do not give any place to the devil. You have got a vulnerable area, you have got a wound that is easy to rob poison in than to get it sealed off. Ask the Lord if you need deliverance, ask the Lord, what the problem is.
So there is a place for everything in God but there are abuses in God. There are abuses of His gifts. There are abuses of His authority. There are abuses all through the church today but we are only responsible to God for our self. If somebody is abusing somebody and you see it because you are matured enough to have your senses exercised to discern between good and evil, you do not take matters in your own hand, you go to the Lord and you say Father, I saw it and if you want me to do something about it you will have to tell me because this is the last I want to know about it. Do not take matters into your own hands.
Okay, there are two more categories in the next verse of:
Joel, Chapter 2, Verse 29
And also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days when I pour out my spirit. KJV
This really does not have anything to do with spiritual manhood but I just thought I give it to you. This Hebrew word translated; servant is talking about the servants of the king; ambassadors of the king. I am just going to share you what the Lord told me, if you do not believe me that is okay. It is no big deal. There is going to be a first fruit company. You all know about that, is that not what you call it? There is going to be a first fruit company of people, through whom Christ will be revealed in the fullness of His manhood without sin. And when these first fruit company appears in the earth our whole world system is going to change in this respect. There will now be only two categories of people in this earth, those who are in full stature and those who are not.
Wherever you are in your development in Christ, if you do not find yourself in full stature when the first fruit is standing, you are in the other group. Now do not be discouraged. When you go out to check your tomato plant in the morning, you have a couple of red ones and a couple of green ones, nothing to get nervous about; you will mature and you will ripen and you too will stand up but for that initial time, you have been cast into the category of not a son of God. There will be authority and there will be subjects. Now the subjects, those who are not in full stature will be broken down into three categories; People who have nothing to do with the Lord, unbelievers.
People who are handmaidens, they will be servants of the Lord. They will recognize the sons of God, they will recognize the full stature, they will submit to them, they will put their pride down, and say well, I did not get taken in this group but I am going up next and I know a good thing when I see it and I am submitting to their authority, and if I have a carnal ministry I am shutting it down and I am sitting under them and in dew season they too will ascend to full stature. Praise God.
Servants; and the other group are group of people who will recognize the sons of God, everybody will recognize the sons of God because they are going to be too powerful to deny it. But the other groups are people who are just not called to full stature but they will recognize the sons of God, they will receive the blessings of the sons of God and they will live out their life time under the protection of that anointing that is flowing.
And just to fill you in on the old men who dream dreams. I do not really want to take too much time on this but the dream that these old men are dreaming are not godly dreams. They are dreams that are received from a criminal spirit and I want to tell you who they are, they are carnal Christians who have refused to acknowledge that Christ is appearing in His fullness. They refuse to acknowledge that there is a full manifestation of God in the earth. They refuse to acknowledge that they are in the other category. They are having an experience similar to Saul's experience. They still think they are in the ministry, they still think they are great men of God and they will not believe that the anointing they have is gone. But they keep seeking spiritual things and brethren, if you keep seeking spiritual things and it is not the Lord answering you, you better believe it is another spirit answering you. You are crying out more and someone is going to answer you. I am telling you the truth.
So that is what the old men are. They are the old order Christians, unconverted Christians, the men who have the gifts but not the nature, most likely because of pride. They could not acknowledge the sons and submit to their teaching in the hope that they too would ascend to full stature in dew season, but their pride was too strong and they refuse to admit that the anointing left their church. Do you know anybody like that, the anointing is gone, the people gone, the money is gone and they are walking into the church everyday saying Oh Lord bring a revival and there is nobody there. Some people are very stubborn. We are our own worst enemy. Paul said about these people, they are the one who oppose themselves. What does that mean? It means that you have Christ and that you are carnal and that you are not living out of Christ, you are living out of your carnal mind and you are opposing your true self which is Christ. You must resist and wage war against your pride; it will destroy everything God has given you.
Okay, any questions right now?
Question: What do you say about witchcraft? I understand you talk about somebody trying to practice witchcraft on you. In one of your cassette you also mentioned about witchcraft going on in a believer, you know a Christian having the capacity to also practice it. Please can you throw more light on that?
Pastor Vitale: Witchcraft is a spirit. There are different levels of witchcraft. Now the witchcraft that you are most familiar with to the best of my knowledge here in Africa, is the kind of witchcraft where witch doctors or people, witches, they are charmed or sometimes they draw the blood of animals or use herbs, is that correct? That is what you know to be witchcraft. Okay, that is a particular realm of witchcraft. But the power behind it is a spirit that is in the persons mind. Now I am going to tell you some thing now, I do not want to shock you; if you do not understand me I will say it again okay.
In every realm of spiritual power, there is the power of God and there is the power that is not of God. The power that is not of God is called witchcraft. The kind of spiritual authority that we see described under the covenant that God had with Israel correspond to the realm of witchcraft that you see here in Africa. What I mean by that, okay, it is the spirit of God, but it is a realm of spiritual power where there is incense, where there is blood, where there is sacrifice, flesh sacrifice, where there is rituals, where there is words enchanted, you see what I am saying. But the spiritual authority that takes all of these together and brings to pass certain results is a spirit that is in the mind of that person. Whether it is the spirit of God or whether it is the spirit of Satan, the power is not in animal's blood. The power is in the spirit that is in the persons mind.
So what we see a lot in the United States, from what I heard it started here in Africa. As people give up these outward expressions of witchcraft because they get convicted that they are wrong, their ancestors did it, they confess the sins of their ancestors. You know those of us who have a lot of European background also. There is a lot of witchcraft in Italy, in Eastern Europe; there is a lot of witchcraft over there. So we call it psychic heredity. That spirit that was in the mind that was giving power to the ritual is still there. Then one mile of generation, they stopped doing the rituals because they find out that it is wrong but the spirit is still there and we all have to know this, that resident in our carnal mind is a potential to harm others and this spirit has a name and it is called witchcraft but when I say that I am not talking about the witchcraft with the witch doctors where he actually knows what he is doing and he goes out and he says his chant and he tries to kill somebody.
That is not what I am talking about. I am talking about people who are descendants of people who have practiced this kind of practice, finding themselves with the spirit in their mind, who are not being aware that they have this spirit in there mind. So when they give reign to hating somebody if they have inherited this kind of power that hatred can do great damage. Did Jesus not say if you hate your brother, you have killed him? See, He was not just giving examples that really were realistic. What He was saying to us is that as we grow in Christ we are going to increase in spiritual power and if we misuse that spiritual power which we get in Christ or if we have a hereditary spiritual power which we are not aware of Jesus is telling us you can really hurt your brother. You can harm him and you have to know this why? Because Christ in you must be a regulatory force; he must be a law which is controlling your carnal mind.
Because all witchcraft, all illegal spiritual power is in the carnal mind. And people who have ancestors engaged in these carnal activities have a potential that if they do not know about can be very damaging. That was my case. No ancestor that I knew, but I find myself with a lot of problem when I first came to the Lord, which was the direct result of witchcraft. I have had all kinds of deliverance from witchcraft. And really all that I did was read a few terra cards as I told you earlier and really I was not very good at it. I did not do it very much. But I had all these psychic heredity and it was killing me because God curses witchcraft. If not in this generation, there will be curses on you. I was sick because I was at the end of the line, maybe it was 3, 4, 5 generations back. It all fell on me for whatever reason. It fell on my whole generation.
I had two sisters, we were three daughters. One sister died at 47. My only sister is now 60, but she had been ill since she was in her 20s. She has been in total torment and I would have surely been dead in my early 40s if the Lord did not save my life. I have been delivered from at least three curses of death. I would have died at around 42 probably. And I was sick for many, many years, and this is my healthiest I have ever been, the curse seems to be really breaking, it is really breaking, it is broken. It is broken but it is still manifesting. I am a realist, you know, I am a realist, I believe that it is broken but it has not completely manifested in my life, but I am doing better now than I have ever done, I give God all of the glory. I expect to be fully delivered. You know I had a prophecy years ago that I will go around the world and I was so ill that that it inconceivable. So when the Lord gave me this ministry, I said, well my tapes will go around the world, there is just no way I can travel. And as I told xxxxxx, two and a half years ago, I completely collapsed and it seemed I could not understand what God was doing. But He seem to let this infirmity just play itself out, until I was at deaths door and then He raised me up, I did not completely die but I was at deaths door and He raised me up and I am just getting stronger and stronger and stronger and stronger. Praise God.
So witchcraft is in the mind and I will give you an example of how I found out or one of the ways I found out that I had this power. There was a woman in my family who, she decided to do some thing with her life that I would have liked to have done, I was not a believer at that time and I did not have the gut to do it and I was so angry, it was like envy, anger whatever. It was like she had the gut to do it and did not. I was really upset over that and I said well I am not going to let her know, I was not a believer yet but I really was not a person to go out and deliberately hurt people. I said, I will not tell her, I will not tell any body, I will not do any thing, and nobody is going to know that I feel this way, except me. And then we were fellowshipping one night; she was a member of my family and she happened to be a spiritually sensitive woman and she gave me her story that she was going to sleep the other night and as she laid down and closed her eyes, a spirit came out of nowhere and grabbed her throat and she said; I know it was a woman, and the second she said it, I knew it was me. I knew that it had to be the Lord convicting me even though I had not been with the Lord at that time and I was very upset over it, I had no intention of hurting her.
So we have to know that our carnal mind have this potential, you know to make people sick, if you are strong enough you can kill people now do not get scared at what I am telling you. Fear is never of God, you have to know this. You have to start monitoring your carnal mind; you have to police your carnal mind. You can not let this wickedness have free reign thinking that nobody knows about it. And as you increase in Christ, your spiritual power will increase. And the more spiritual power you have; this is a great mystery, I do not understand it myself but it functions either for Christ in you or for your carnal mind.
If you develop in Christ to a certain point, when you are really powerful in Gods spirit; If for any reason you backslide, that power does not leave you, it is taken as a spoil of war by the carnal mind and to the fullest extent that your carnal mind is living through you, he has power directly, proportionate to your power in Christ. And on the contrary if you have a strong psychic heredity and you come to Christ, Christ takes your psychic heredity as a spoil of war and you become a spiritual person much more quickly than the person that does not have this heritage. He who is last will be first and he who is first will be last. The worker of witchcraft who repents and comes to the Lord will move into spiritual power in Christ faster than the person who did not have witchcraft on their family line. Now my carnal mind says that is not fair but I did not make the rules that is the way it is.
You see it is a question of spiritual development. If you have witchcraft on your family, you are spiritually developed; it is just a question of who is using your riches. Who is using your riches? Christ or the carnal mind? You see we have something that is valuable. Jesus describes it as; the flees of the Sheep. Did you ever wonder about that? Flees on the sheep, It is something that the sheep grows without really trying to do it, it is just there. And a man that has the skill can come along and shave it off and use it or sell it. Use it to benefit himself, or sell it to make money and the sheep does not miss it, it just grows more. When we have a spiritual quality that Jesus likens to the flees of sheep, it is a spiritual potential that is valuable to the spiritual world that wants to be revealed, that wants to be expressed through soul, which is man and is revealed to this visible world. Is every body following me?
We have something valuable and it is a spiritual potential and there is a war going on between Christ and the carnal mind as to who is going to have the use of our spiritual potential and I want to tell you, if you are not in the war, you are not passive. If you are in the war, you are a prisoner of war and being used by the carnal mind. Do not get scared, the truth is going to set you free. Now the fact that you have been raised by a parent or that your life has been influenced by Christianity, even before Christianity, you have to have parents that have taught you.
Every society in this world has basic laws in it. You do not steal, you do not kill your brother, you, respect your parents. Almost every society across the world has basic rules of how people relate to one another so there is no chaos in the society. And the degree to which the rules of a particular society line up with the rules of God, and many of them do. I just said it, all across Africa, all across Asia. There are many societies where they respect the elderly, they take care of their children, they do not rob from their neighbors, and they are not Christians, Is that not true? It is true. So to the fullest degree that you are raised in a society where the rules line up with Christianity to that degree, your potential for destruction is modified. Why? Because, the law of God is universal.
See the law of God is not a man sitting up there, passing judgment on each individual. There are spiritual laws in this world, likened to the physical laws which exist in this world. If you go up into a 6 story building and you jump out the window, the chances are that your body will break; you are going to fall down, right? It is called the law of gravity, Right? There are spiritual laws in this world. You reap what you sow. if you murder your parents, you are cursed. The worst crime you can commit is against your parents. Honor your father and mother and live long on this earth.
For everything you have been taught, no matter how far family was from Christianity, some how they got this information, I know how God put it in there but we are not going to get into that tonight. To the fullest degree that you are willing under a social code that is lining up with the righteous behavior of God, your potential for destruction is modified, anybody understanding me? But now, now that we are growing in Christ, we have to understand that we must watch our carnal mind even more strongly. You know, when you are sitting in a meeting like this, you are being spiritually developed. That potential that is placed in you, that which is of spiritual value to you, it is being built up, it is being developed, it is being increased. And you can not stay a sheep because sheep are not very smart. The carnal mind is going to lay hold of your riches and he is going to use it for his own purposes and when the judgments of God falls upon him, he is in you and it is going to fall upon you too. So we can not stay sheep, we have to become rams. We have to grow up brethren, we have to grow up.
And we looked into Daniel 12, back in New York we looked into the message in Daniel 12 and we found out that the Lord is saying that in these last days, the whole population in the world is about to have a spiritual increase, Christians and none Christians alike. The world knows it; there are people in the new age movement, predicting that we are moving into a spiritual age. The world knows it sometimes more than the Christians. Is that not what the Bible says? The children of darkness are wiser sometime than the children of light. All of humanity is maturing. You see, we may not look like it but we are a spiritual creation. We are spirit, we are spirit; this flesh is just a garment.
At the beginning the internal one was a living soul and at the end He was a quickening spirit. This whole creation is maturing and in our maturity we are becoming spiritual. We are told in the book of Daniel; in that day there shall be a resurrection from the dead. Some shall be raised up unto life of the ages, and others shall be raised up unto damnation. So the whole human race has some spiritual potential which is increasing. Brethren, this is the trumpet that is sounding. You have got to get the weapon; you have got to learn how to use it, because the schooling situation is not going to last forever. Do not let me scare you. God want to try you, that is why you are hearing this. You have to know what is coming up on the earth.
And I want to tell you something, that here in Africa; you have got some very strong minds. I am telling you. I deal with witchcraft all the time in New York but it is nothing like when I come to Africa. I have the most interesting experiences. I am telling you the truth, I am making a joke out of it but I am telling you the truth. You see, when people do not like me; I do not even know who it is. I do not know whether is some witch doctor out there that some spiritual message that some Christians preach here or whether it is some Christian brother that does not like me because he does not like my doctrine is probably no difference. But you see when your mind is strong, and you are not policing your mind and your letting that dislike or that animosity, you are letting it release from you without any restraint, especially if that person is a spiritual person, you have got a war on your hands. And if they are not a spiritual person, they can have an accident, they can get sick; they can loose their job. I want to tell you, I met some demons in my sleep these last couple of weeks, I am telling you the truth. Interesting.
You have to know this; as Christ matures in you it is going to be happening to you. You have to know what to do. And the training starts with the very basic level that you must learn to distinguish between Christ and your carnal mind in your own mind. That is where you start, if you can not tell the Lord that you will like that ability. Resist all fear, it is never of God and know that the Lord is in control of every thing. He is not going to let more than what you bear can come upon you. But he will let you have experiences that will build your muscles. You see, but you are not here alone, you are not here alone, He is in control of everything.
But you have to know that spiritual power that is not under the control of Christ is witchcraft no matter how beneficial the prayer sound or no matter how good the motives appears to be, if Christ is not staring up that spiritual power or that spiritual warfare, it is witchcraft. Do not misunderstand me, I am not accusing anybody or suggesting that you are practicing the kind of witchcraft that you are seeing here in Africa, I am not saying that. I am saying that it is a spirit of your mind, you probably do not know that you are doing it or who ever is doing it probably do not know they are doing it. There is no condemnation in Christ Jesus but you have got to stop, you have got to stop.
He loves you all, He understands. We are all spiritual children. He is here to teach you, He is here to teach you. You must know the power that is in your mind and you must know that if you make a mistake, you can hurt somebody, so He wants to teach you. Just tell Him that you want to learn, that is all that is all.
Question: I want you to enlighten us more about negative spirits apart from witchcraft, because down here in Africa we also know that there are other types of negative spirits, like water spirit and others. I do not know whether this type of spirits exists in America.
Pastor Vitale: Water spirit in America? Is that what you are saying? One followed me back from Africa last year. I am telling you the truth. I had a big hassle with the water spirit last year and one of the ladies in the group in New York said to me; you know when I told everybody, and we all against it. She said, you know I had a vision yesterday. I saw a mermaid jump into the sea and swam across the ocean. If she had only known that it was coming to me she could have told me and we could have forestalled this thing little bit, but she did not understand the vision.
Yes, we have water spirit in New York, yes. We have very high level expressions of witchcraft in the United States but it takes a different form. So to the uneducated person, they look at Africa and they think you have got all the witchcraft but it is absolutely untrue. What we have in the United States is less of the rituals; it is mostly of the mind. Okay and we have got a lot of people especially in the church that if they have not heard this message or when I tell them, they will stone me. They do not want to hear me but it is still true. And we have got a church full of little witches in the United States trying to force their will on everybody, okay. And again I am not condemning anyone, but the calling all men everywhere to repent, anyone, anywhere, who is doing it. We have got to stop.
The spiritual power is a weapon, it is like you are a police man with a machine gun; you have a responsibility, you have a responsibility, a very serious responsibility when you have spiritual power. You have to really offer it up on the altar to the Lord and wait for him to give it back to you. Give it back to you in His way, with His training. Yes we have some very heavy witchcraft in the United States. To tell you the truth I never knew that a certain level of witchcraft was called water spirit until I visited Nigeria last year and then I found out that, that big guy that I was wrestling with was a water spirit. I did not have a clue about that man but we have some really heavy duty witchcraft of the mind; heavy duty, heavy duty.
I got a letter from a Christian, I held the letter in my hand and I knew what the message was in the letter. There was so much soul power that went into the prayer before they sent the letter. Soul power is witchcraft. Every power, every spiritual power that is not of God is witchcraft and I keep saying it over again; the people from Africa; the church from Africa, you have got to really get this understanding, that witchcraft is not just the witch doctor out there and that it is still existing in spirit form in your mind and here in Africa you have a strong psychic heredity. Now that has got two sides of the coin.
If your carnal mind is using your spiritual flees, you really can hurt people, but when Christ get a hold of your spiritual flees, you have a potential to be powerful warriors in Christ, way beyond people who do not have this background, are you understanding what I am saying? You are a weapon, almost everybody here in Nigeria, you are a walking weapon. You have to know it because if you do not know you are a walking weapon the carnal mind can point you anywhere he wants. You must rule that weapon; he can not let it go out without your permission. You have to have the safety latch on it.
Pastor Vitale: Okay, You asked me something about demonic manifestation, spirits outside of witchcraft, is that what you are saying? Okay.
Let me tell you what I believe demons to be, you do not have to agree with me, okay we can still be friends but I will tell you what the Lord has shown me, what demons are.
Demons are the extension or the reaching out of the mind of a man. You see, someone that has spiritual power and hates somebody and give free reign to that hatred; the carnal mind which is spirit has the ability to stretch itself forth. You see, it is not restricted to one shape like we are, it is spirit and it can vibrate out, it goes, it operates beyond time and space. It can go anywhere in the world in seconds and that thought takes on a form that depending on the measure of power in that persons mind, if it is strong enough, it can materialize in the front of another human being, it can talk to them.
Remember what I told you about xxxxx experience? I do not think I told you that one today. Xxxxx, he traveled all the way to Canada from United States landed right in the middle of a padded cell of someone who had been pronounced hopelessly insane, locked up in this mental institution with no hope for the rest of there life. He prayed for the person in the United State, God took him in the spirit, he landed right in the middle padded cell, rebuked the demon, shot back to the United States. The next morning they opened the padded cell to feed the woman, she was in her right mind and they discharged her within two days.
Now that was a vibrating forth of the mind of Christ. You see, spiritual is spiritual, it is just a question of what spirit it is but the same laws apply to all spirits. If a woman jumps off from the 6 story building and if a man jumps off from the 6 story building, they both get smashed bodies. You see, the spirit of the Lord is the male spirit and the carnal mind is the female spirit, the same law applies to both of them. A demon is a thought that because of an indwelling, internalized spiritual authority has the power to go forth and perform its mission. That is what a demon is. It is like you have a whole head; imagine a circle and some thing rises upon the circle and appears above the surface and goes forth, in a measure it separated itself from the whole mass; are you following me? It separated itself from the whole mass, so you give it a new name; it is a demon. It is no longer a part of the whole mass, it is a demon.
Demons are the fruit of the carnal mind. It is good news, brethren, it is good news. You do not want to go around killing people. You are Gods people, you are Gods people. You want to do good. You want to serve the Lord, but you have to learn how to use your gun first, you have to learn how to polish it and clean it. And you have to go to target practice; you have to learn how to hold it without it breaking your shoulder when it goes off. Praise God.
Okay, anybody, any questions on anything before we close?
Pastor Vitale: This person will like to know the difference between a medium and a sorcerer. I think that you mean a victim? Okay.
A medium is an individual who has a unique ability to express spirits. If you are not following me, please wave. There are two different categories of medium. A medium can lay hold of that ability and control it and use it for that person own good, they can make money or engage in occult practice, bring people into bondage or the whole garment of fame. Or a person can be a medium against their own will. They can be victimized by the quality of being a medium, they can have no control over it but the spirits that are passing through them are completely controlling them. The term medium means that your spiritual condition is so developed that spirit is easily expressed through you.
Now I had that experience, I have been spiritually sensitive for lack of a better word and you can call me a medium if you want. Since I was a small child, I did not know what it was and it brought a lot of destruction into my life and as I grew older especially after I got into Christ I had to realize that I had been victimized all my life by other peoples emotions. Peoples rage will pass through me and I will rage. People; It had to be someone that I knew, someone that I had connection with, people in my family, close friends. They will be angry and I will be angry. And as I got into Christ and I cried out to God, I said Lord! All of these emotions, I know that they are sins, where are they coming from? And He started to reveal to me; that was not the term that He used, but that I was a medium. And that intense emotion in people that I had a relationship with, were just passed right through me.
So, if we find ourselves in that condition, this condition of spiritual sensitivity with spirits that is easily expressed through us and we are being victimized by it, we must seek the Lord for deliverance. Now this is not necessarily demons, there could be some demons involved, but in my case anyway; I will give you my own personal testimony, I guess someone must have that problem, if you are asking me that question, you must know someone who has it. The answer for me was for the Lord to mature His Christ in me, and take authority over my old man, we could say. It is the old man who is the medium. The soul which is expressing the carnal mind is the carnal mind which is added control, which has much more authority over an individual that is good for them. And Gods answer for me was to through every thing I had into Christ and what He did for me was to bring forth his son in me, an in dwelling Christ, Christ is being formed in me and He gives me continual victory over my criminal carnal mind who at this point has to really go out of his way to manipulate me. I am not saying he can not do it because if he could not do it I will be in full stature and I am not but we have got one regular warfare going and I dare say that I pretty much have my foot on its head and Lord willing it is going to stay there.
So who ever need this answer, if you are being victimized by spirits expressing themselves through you against your will, you must first of all confess that it is happening to you and then you must repent because your soul can not be in this condition if there was not a history of witchcraft on your family line. To be in this condition is a result of the practice of witchcraft on the family line. It is a manifestation of destruction that is upon you. If you have not practiced witchcraft, it has to be in your ancestors and Gods answer for you is to raise Christ from the dead in you and then once you get your weapon, God will give you the weapon, you have got to start to kill that thing and bring it into subjection. And if you like me to pray for you whoever you are, I will be glad to do it, and just pray for Gods grace on your life. Let us just pray for the meeting, we are all tired I am sure and Lord willing we will be back here tomorrow night and we will do 1 Corinthian 11.
PRAYER
Father in the name of Jesus, I just bless this group Father. I just bless them Lord for their hearts which are open towards you and for their hunger for your life and for the word. And I pray Father that not one of them should be found wanton but that you should fill them Father to overflowing. That you should meet their every need, that you should raise them up in Christ; bring them into the army of God. Teach them everything they must know and make them victorious in Christ. Let them be all that they can be in you oh God. Let all the spiritual male, both male and female say amen and let them be a glory unto God. And those who are spiritual female let them not be bitter towards those who the Lord has called to spiritual manhood in this hour but let every men be content with what he has. And let the grace of God rest upon them Father. And I pray that you keep them safe and their families and that you bring them back safely tomorrow night in the name of Jesus. Amen
07/24/2008 FBA
