I suppose the number of church-affiliated people who told me that they believed in God, in comparison to the non-church-affiliated who said they did not, could have been as high as ninety-five percent. That figure is purely a guess on my part. In any case, I was quick to learn that it did not really matter. Of those ninety-five percent of people, perhaps eighty percent could have been categorized with the unbelievers anyway, because of their failure to accept the entirety of the Bible as God’s revelation to man.
It was true when they said they believed in God – but they did not believe God. Believing in God changes nothing. Believing God changes everything. I stood at the door of a church-going lady who told me she believed in God. She also told me she had a bad heart. I mentioned the biblical revelations on divine healing. She said that she didn’t think God would heal her and closed the door to any ministry He might have given her. She believed in God, but she did not believe God. She may as well have called Him a liar.
The same applied to an elderly man who was some sort of influence in his church given the story he gave me. He told me he had an earache. I offered to pray for him on the spot. He was reluctant at first, so I challenged him on his belief. Pride got the better of him so he allowed me to pray. I saw him at the local shopping strip a week later and asked him about his ear. He told me it was much better, “but it probably would have gotten better anyway.” He didn’t believe God either. He too may as well have called Him a liar.
These are simply two examples from those street years. I could site scores of others, but the repetition would become boring for the reader after a while. The gospels tell us Jesus had the same problem Matthew 13:58. In the New Testament, the word “believe” means: ‘to have faith (in, upon or with respect to a person or thing), to entrust (especially one’s spiritual well-being to Christ), commit (to trust), put in trust with.’ Jesus tells us that there’s no way we can believe God, if we reject the word of God. Therefore, believing in God has never been the issue.
Even the devils (demons) believe in God and the Scripture tells us that they tremble or shudder James 2:19. In God’s presence, tremble, they most certainly do, but never in the presence of an unbeliever – Christian or otherwise. Now, it’s one thing to disbelieve God for a physical healing, but it’s something else all together to disbelieve God’s word for a spiritual healing. The Bible tells us that our problems are more than physical or mental – they are spiritual. In other words, man’s problem is in his spirit and it needs to be released.
Released from what? The power of God’s adversary (and ours), Satan the devil and his henchmen (angels). The world has always disbelieved such a reality, that is to be expected – but it should not be so in the professing Christian church. Somebody asks, “Why isn’t the church more effectual in the world?” The answer is unbelief. Too many Christians simply do not believe the written revelation of God. They pick and choose what they will embrace and reject, little knowing that when they do so, they might as well reject the lot. They are telling God that He is a liar.
And we’re told all Jesus-centered biblical Scripture will be rejected by the time of the reign of the Antichrist. So, the fault doesn’t lie with God, it lies with us. The Bible declares that the Lord Jesus Christ has infinite power over the mighty power of the devil and his angels. It’s important to note that the devil is a created being. There is only one of him, therefore, he cannot be in two or more places at once. But he has millions of agents under his command carrying out his work – real, live, immaterial beings or persons.
From the Bible, it seems that these beings were sympathetic to the cause of Lucifer when he tried to exalt himself above God. And when God threw him out of heaven, millions of sympathizers went with him. They are called demons, devils, or evil spirits. They are numerous, they are powerful, they are perverted, petty and unclean. They lie, they steal, they kill, they cheat, they pervert and they possess – both people and animals. They have an intense desire to live in a human body so that they can use it for their own purposes as well as the purposes of their master.
Satan’s purposes are to steal, kill and destroy and he doesn’t care how that happens in any man, woman, child or baby. He despises God and will go to any extremes he can to get back at Him. Jesus defeated him at the cross and at His resurrection. He came to destroy the works of the devil, opening the way through Himself, to bring each one of us back into a relationship with God, whereby we can experience supernatural life – God’s life – a life which does not die with our physical death. That is why Jesus said He came to bring us life.
Jesus not only defeated these beings, but the command to His church is to go and cast them out in His name. Some of the most destructive demonic powers I evidenced in people during that time – Christian or otherwise – were: addictions (sexual, drugs & alcohol), breakdowns (mental & marriage), bitterness, chronic sicknesses, control, depression, domination, gluttony, hatred, idolatry, intimidation, immorality, lust (material & sexual), lunacy, manipulation, molestation, murder, obesity, occult practice, oppression, perversions, pornography, rejection,revenge, selfishness, self-pity, schizophrenia, spiritism, superstition, unforgiveness, and witchcraft.
Many of the Christians at that time told me that they saw spiritual darkness as simply a life-style. Because of their biblical unbelief they failed to see it as an evil power that holds people (including themselves) in it’s grip. One of those people was a church-going lady who shared an horrific story of her husband and his fifteen years of mental and physical violence upon her and the children. Two weeks earlier she said he tried to strangle her and their eleven year-old son came to her rescue. He got knocked to the floor, kicked in the head and in his spine, while she got smacked in the mouth.
I asked her for the opportunity to meet with him but she was reluctant for that to happen. So I explained briefly that she was up against demonic evil more-so than human evil and told her to come against the spirit of rejection, fear, violence and a couple of others, in Jesus’ name. I told her also, that some of us from our church would pray, fast and exercise spiritual warfare in the meantime. That was the extent of the help we could offer her. The next time I saw her she thanked me, telling me that she was still praying in the manner I suggested, “and he hasn’t bashed me or the family for some months.”
Don came from a religious family. The only problem was their religious practices screwed them up. His mother went mad, his brother shot himself in the bungalow out the back of their home and Don himself was addicted to drugs, alcohol and sexual perversion. He came for ministry asking to be released from them, but as time went on it showed up that he loved the demon of sex too much to let it go. In the end, there was nothing we could do for him in the drugs and alcohol area either, as a result. He’d given the devil a legal right to have his way with him. He slashed his wrists and ended up in a mental home.
Peter came for ministry too. Among the many demons gripping him were deep rejection and sexual lust. His family background was awful, but he said he believed in Jesus as the only one who could spiritually and mentally deliver him from these demonic powers. We invested many hours in Peter and over time it appeared he was being set free. We took nothing for granted however, based on Satan’s nature as that of a liar and deceiver. He turned out to be just like Don. Basically he was unrepentant – he would not let go of the spirit of sexual lust. Jesus honored his decision. Later he began to express belligerence and accusation, just like his father the devil. He went away after some weeks.
Ani believed God. She came from another church some miles away whose leadership did not practice the deliverance ministry. Over the phone she shared what it was that held her in slavery. Among the most powerful were the demons of sexual perversion, gluttony, spiritism and witchcraft. She made a decision to fast and pray for four days till the time of our meeting. We did similar. On the day of ministry we all had the pleasure of witnessing the Lord cast those demons out, along with a few others. It took nearly four hours, but at the end she was set free and released to come into whatever God had for her in the future.
In my experiences, I have learned that it is not that a person can not believe God, but rather, they will not believe God. The issue to believing is very rarely intellectual – it is moral. When one comes face to face with the biblical Lord Jesus Christ one clearly knows that there is an expectation for one to change. Most people don’t want to change and will go to any extremes possible to justify why they can’t or don’t need to. This applies to Christians, pastors, priests, bishops, elders and deacons – as well as unbelievers. “Now He could do no mighty work there, except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them. And He marveled because of their unbelief……..” Mark 6:5-6.