In this sermon, the preacher shares a powerful testimony of a man from India who came to receive Christ after witnessing a supernatural event. The man belonged to an extremist group and had planned to disrupt a Christian meeting, but he was unable to do so because of the presence of shining beings around the believers' vehicle. Instead, he decided to attend the meeting and was deeply impacted by the power he witnessed. The preacher then goes on to discuss the topic of principalities and powers, explaining their nature and how believers can stand against them. The sermon concludes with a promise of victory through Jesus Christ and a preview of the topics to be covered in future sessions.

Some of you know that I've been with some missions and are wondering what am I doing now. I'm freeloading. But I have a card that I put some on the piano, if we can help you. I'm with the International Center of Biblical Counseling. This center was started by Mark Bubeck, who wrote The Adversary and Overcoming the Adversary. He was now my pastor, who just resigned last Sunday after coming back from Africa as the pastor of our church there and coming full-time with our counseling center. The emphasis of the center is to be a training center more than just a counseling center because there's no way. We turn down, I told you, sometimes as many as 40 to 60 people a week. And the answer is not us doing it. Our answer is helping others, training them, pastors, so this can be done in the local church and prayer groups in the local church that can stand and pray with those that are going under attack. That's the answer, is getting the message out. So that's our desire. I didn't share any promises this morning. I forgot about them. And I got thinking so much about the armor that I have to share two tonight, so you've got to give me two. The first promise is in 1 Corinthians 15, 57. Just a tremendous promise that is mined in Christ. It says, But thanks be to God, which gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Isn't that wonderful? The victory is in Calvary. I can hardly wait until tomorrow morning because I was wishing he was singing it tomorrow morning because I almost switched messages, but I can't because we have to finish the armor and we want to go into principalities and powers and what they are and what they do and how we can stand against them. But tomorrow we want to look at something very important. The note you got tonight, I don't know, I thought tomorrow was my last day. And I think he said tomorrow was my last day if I wasn't any good. So I extended it a day. I don't know, my mind, anyway. Somehow I thought it was flying home Thursday. So I hope my wife doesn't wait all day at the airport. But since we are going to be here tomorrow morning, we want to look at my position in Christ. That's so important in spiritual battles to know who I am. But Calvary's love is so interesting. I don't know if you are aware. Did you know that demons were involved in the crucifixion of Christ? If you did not know that, come tomorrow. We'll look at it in Scripture. It talks about it in Scripture. It's awesome. I never knew that. I never saw it. All the time I was in Bible school and taught in Bible schools. In fact, I went to Bible school for I don't know how many years. And you put it all together, at least I've spent 10 or 12 years of my life in Bible colleges, either teaching or being there. And all the churches that I've attended, I have never in my life ever heard a message on spiritual warfare. We had chapels every day. Never heard a chapel speaker ever speak on Ephesians 6 or anything. It was never ever dealt with, ever. Now, I've never heard a message on it. Maybe you have and you're fortunate, but I was surely ignorant of a real area there. And then the other one, you just turn the page, in 2 Corinthians chapter 2. I love this in the King James. I don't know how it says it in the other versions. I didn't look at it, but it says, And thanks be unto God, which always causes us to triumph in Christ. Isn't that tremendous? Always. We can always triumph in Christ. I want to... Some of you maybe weren't here this morning and we went through the armor and we talked about the first piece being the belt of truth and how that every attack of the enemy has a lie in it. And that's why God says you must put the truth on. Then we talked about the breastplate of righteousness, which is the imputed righteousness for Christ and how the enemy, the accuser, can find no fault with it. I'd like to tell you a story about this. I was thinking here. Most of the stories I've told you have been always victorious and wonderful and all of that. I used to teach marriage counseling in a Bible college and premarital counseling and I would start the class and I said, All of you probably heard of Cinderella. Cinderella got married and she went to the castle and she lived happily ever after, but she's dead and people don't anymore. And I don't want you to give you the idea that everything that I do is just marvelous and wonderful and it always turns out right. Almost everything. But I'd like to share something that was just unbelievable. I do not get involved in any other counseling except counseling the demonized because there are so many people across America that do marriage counseling and teenage counseling and all that. I don't do that anymore although I've trained many, many counselors across America that are doing that. And I had a call and they said, If you ever get a cancellation, we'd like to come. I want to go to seminary and my wife and I would like to come. We're having a little bit of marital struggles here and I'd like to come and we'd like to talk about marriage. And I said, Well, you know I don't do this, but if you had a cancellation and nobody could come in, we're not that far. We're in a state that's not that far. We could drive over and have counseling. So this couple canceled out for some reason and I called this couple and I said, Come on over. We'll be there about ten, but we'll have to leave at noon because it takes us three hours to get there and three hours to get back home and we have babysitters and all of this. So they were there and they were talking about their marriage struggles and going to college. Now, I wasn't real attentive. I didn't pray God's protection. If you come and talk to me and you want to talk about something other than the demonic, I don't pray God's protection. You know, and I don't give you the demonic prayer that I go through. We just pray and ask God to give us wisdom and so on. I don't see every situation, every counseling situation as the enemy. And so they were just talking about simple marriage problems. Well, not simple, but a lot simpler than the demonic stuff. What's really exciting is when you have two demonized people having marriage problems, married to each other, it gets really exciting. You put that dimension to a marriage problem, you've really got something going. But we were just sitting there talking and my room is set up with a couch and they sit on it and a love seat that kind of come together. And my desk is at one end. They're kind of narrow offices, but they're soundproof. So the fellow was sitting on one side and the wife was sitting on the other kind of in the corner and I would just turn my chair around at my desk because when I do deliverance, I always, if it's a fellow, I hold his hands and pray and just have that contact with him or my wife will put her arm around a woman or give him that assurance as we're going through there. We're right with them. We're close to them. They're not cut off and isolated. So this was the space and they were talking about their marriage and it came up, she said, you know, I've had a very immoral past and I just don't really feel that I could be a pastor's wife. And I said something, you know, we all have things in our past that we wish weren't there. And in about two hours, it only came up three times. That's not real. I mean, now I look back, but at the time it didn't seem real significant. It just kind of fell out in the right place as we were talking. So we're all through the marriage counseling because they had to go and I said, you know, I just really love to pray with you guys and so I scooted my chair over just to be kind of close. We'd be close together. And she said, Mr. Logan, I just really feel that because of my past, I just don't see how I could serve the Lord. And I said, you know what you need is the breastplate of righteousness. That's God's imputed righteousness that will cover your heart and mind. And when I said that, she screamed, no, no, no! And she jumped up and grabbed me and tried to throw me to the floor. Just trying to pull me off the chair. I mean, this was marriage counseling. And I'm going, ah, ah, ah! And the husband's going, in the name of Jesus, keep it up! Ah, ah, ah! Ah! I mean, I was so, it was just a little thing. I was so taken back. And then she fell on the floor and she's writhing like a snake and a voice comes out of her and says, she's dirty, she's dirty, she's not righteous, she's ours, she's ours, she's ours. Isn't that horrible? But how the enemy hates what? The breastplate of Christ's righteousness. I just, this woman came unglued. And so did I. And it was amazing. After that she left, a spirit of fear came on me. And I thought, I've never been attacked. I mean, you know, people are threatening my lives all the time and no one's ever touched me. And here I was grabbed by this little lady and was everything I could do to keep myself in the chair. She had a lot of help that you couldn't see. So I'm walking the neighborhoods saying, Lord, I'm out of this. And then on Monday, I had to meet Bill Gothard and we're going to do Wheaton College. And I'm going, I'm not going to do Wheaton College. I'm not going to do anything. I'm through with this. I'm going to do something easy like be a JARS missionary or something. No more of this stuff. I just can't handle it emotionally. I'd had it. But I knew I couldn't let them down because I'm on the program for all these pastors and I've got to show up. So I tell you, I could hardly sleep at night. And here I'm so dumb. You think I resist the spirit of fear? No, I just let it do a number on me. Really fearful. I just can't do this anymore. I'm through with it. I've done my share. God, I did my term of duty. I'm short-termer on this and now I'm going to find something else to do. Sunday, it didn't help. I flew to Gothard's headquarters Sunday and they met me and they said, we have a guy that's coming in we'd like you to talk to on Monday. And I'm going, great. I just quit Friday. I don't want to talk to anybody Monday. Well, he was a pastor and I thought, well, it can't be too bad. And a missionary, so it can't be too bad. And he just wants to talk about something. Just any old thing. And I'm going, that's not so bad either. So I agreed to sit with this fellow and I'm still under this cloud of heaviness. You ever had that cloud of heaviness? Come on you. It's just awful. Oppressed. Just terrible. And I'm sitting there talking with this fellow. I didn't pray God's protection. I didn't pray the angelic force. I'm just, what's your problem? And guess what happens? He's taken over by wicked spirits and he starts speaking in a foreign language, which was his foreign language. And it was so neat because instead of being afraid, I mean, here I got again, I didn't do anything and this guy's taken over with spirits. My heart went out to him so bad I reached over and I grabbed his hand. And immediately the spirit of fear left. As I reached out and loved and grabbed it, I was so concerned for him I forgot about my fear. And it's left and it hasn't been back. That's just a free little illustration about the breastplate of righteousness. But I'll tell you, it's amazing how God can move in in a marvelous way and meet needs when, he said, three days Logan, you ought to rebuke that thing. And I never thought about it. I just thought about letting it work on me rather than resisting it and he would leave. Let's turn to Ephesians chapter 6 and let's look at the rest of the armor because it is so significant. Let me share. We talked about raising up the shield of faith. If you look at the Roman shield, you will see it's different than the normal shield. The Roman shield was about four feet in length, three feet in circumference. They were really unique. They were wooden framed. They had leather shielding on them that they would wet to quench the fiery darts. These shields were made to interlock so that they could interlock them and kneel behind them and have a fence or as they approached a city, they could interlock them with others and walk to the city with this shielding over their head against that which would come down on them. As I was sharing this with a bunch of teenagers, I said, that's probably why you need a prayer partner because you come with them and they can lock their shield with your shield and you've got twice as much protection. Isn't that a neat idea? Locking your shield with someone else when they're under attack and providing twice as much protection that they would have by themselves. An interesting way that those shields work. The next one we want to look at that we want to talk about here and that is the helmet of salvation. Literally, it's the helmet. It has nothing to do with being saved. He's writing to save people. Remember, he said the two places you don't want to receive a wound was either in the chest or in the head because in those days it was all over and the helmet was to protect the head. Literally, you could write there the helmet of the hope of salvation or the helmet of the hope of deliverance. When I go into battle, I need to put the helmet on because the major attack of the enemy to us is that our situation is what? Hope what? Hopeless. This is hopeless. And when I get the mindset that my situation is hopeless, I'm in serious trouble. Can you see that? This is hopeless. Do you remember Mary? When I preached my very first message, I was so nervous. It was at Christmas time. And I brought a message on Mary. You know, Mary was the mother of the Lord Jesus. And I brought a message on Mary and I was so worried I'd forget something that I would have to stop and look at my notes. But you don't just stop and look. You must say something. So I'd stop and look and I'd say, you know, Mary was a good woman. And I'd go on and I would stop and say, Mary was a good woman. Well, I got through my marvelous message, the first one I ever preached when I was in Bible school. And a number of Biblical students were taking me home and my wife. And I was waiting to hear how marvelous that message was. We got in the car and no one said anything. And someone said, you know what? Mary was a good woman. Well, at least they got my point. But you remember Mary's situation when the angel came and said, this is God's plan and on and on and on. And she said, Lord, this is what? Impossible. And he said, Mary, that's what I specialize in. See, God specializes in what? Hopeless situations. He specializes in impossible situations. And the enemy wants me to give up. And let me tell you, if you don't put the helmet on, you're going to get discouraged, depressed, and want to give up. It's just too big. It's too overwhelming. I can't. And put on the helmet and protect your mind. The next piece of armor that God wants us to use is the sword of the Spirit. Now, this is extremely important. I've already talked about it being the rhema and not logos, which is very important. In fact, we have a real neat page of material that we didn't bring, but if you would want it, it would be of help to you, especially if there's teenagers here. It's how to get a rhema from the Word of God. It was developed by Bill Gothard for his teenagers. It's excellent. And we have it in our office. And if you would want it, take a card and write us, and we'd be glad to mail it to you. How to get a rhema from the Word of God, especially for young people. How to sit down and get something from God's Word that they can hang on to in the day of battle. Scripture verses that are not empowered by the Spirit of God are only words. I want you to hear me. Scripture that is not empowered by the Holy Spirit is not the sword of the Spirit. It's only words. Every word in this Bible, you can find in a dictionary. And it's saying here that as the Word of God is empowered by the Holy Spirit, it becomes an effective weapon against the spiritual forces of darkness. But if it is not empowered, it is nothing but words. People do strange things. I remember after the film The Exorcist, there was all kinds of poltergeist type of things going on. And they said, oh, if your bed shakes, open to John 3.16 and put it on the bedside table and you'll be protected. Or if the bed is quaking, slide the open Bible under the bed. You might as well give them a crucifix. It's the same thing. You'd be amazed that Christians that somehow open the Word and they do this and they've gotten rid of spirits out of a house. And we laugh, but I can't tell you. It's a tragedy that somehow they think that there's something. You know, I've heard more Scripture quoted by demons than by usually the people that have come. And they quote it. We're perfect. And they can give you the reference fore and aft. The enemy knows this book and can quote Scripture quite accurately. And so you want to be sure that when you get into spiritual battle, you have to have a right relationship with the Empowerer. And He will empower the Word and it will be effective against. Otherwise, you're just saying words that will fall down if they're not empowered by the Holy Spirit. It is so important. I can't tell you. A spiritual battle needs men and women who know how to operate in the Spirit in the battle. Do you see what I'm saying? And there are people who are being defeated because they do not have a right relationship with the Spirit. Ephesians chapter 4 tells us something very important. Grieve not what? The Holy Spirit. Before, He talks about what? The spiritual battle. Ephesians chapter 5 tells us what? Be filled with what? The Spirit. Now, I can talk to you about what? Spiritual warfare. I cannot come against the enemy in my flesh. It won't work. I cannot be grieving and quenching the Spirit and have victory in spiritual battle. I must have a right relationship with God's Spirit. And He will empower the words as they go from my mouth and they will accomplish great, marvelous things as we share the word against the forces of darkness. We'll see marvelous things happen. Now, often people will put a period there on the armor. They say, that's it. But let me tell you, there is another weapon. There are two offensive weapons. One is the sword of the Spirit and the other is what? All prayer. I believe when He's saying here supplications in the Spirit, I really believe what God is telling us to do is to pray in harmony with the Holy Spirit. Now, let me share something. Men who have come that are struggling with sexual lust that's out of control. Now, lust is normal. A man struggles with lust. And it can just be a normal fleshly thing that he has to deal with. But if the enemy's got in control of it, it's unbelievable. It's like a wildfire that's out of control. And men that have had tremendous bondage and lust and wanted to be free of that bondage, they have found this simple thing of prayer targets being extremely helpful in walking in victory. Now, let me share prayer targets with you. When you come under attack by the enemy and you quench it with the shield of faith, now you want to aggressively come against the enemy and the forces of darkness with these prayer targets. There are three kinds of prayer targets that you can have. You want to assign one prayer target to each particular type temptation. And I'll go over it again so that you'll understand. The first prayer target, let's say that you have a problem with anger. It's very easy for you to get angry. And you realize that it's not just normal anger. There's really the enemy involvement here with this anger and that it's one of your areas of attack. When you sense yourself coming under attack of the enemy and you use the Scripture verses and come against that, then you want to come against the forces of darkness and one of the prayer targets could be someone that you know who is unsaved. That if they would become a Christian, they would do great damage to Satan and his kingdom. And so every time, let's say it's your father. So every time you are tempted to get angry, after you deal with that, you immediately attack the enemy by praying for the salvation of your father. That he would do great damage. That you would bind the enemy. That the light of the Gospel would shine to his heart and when he becomes a Christian, he would do great damage to Satan and his kingdom. Another prayer target you can have is for someone you know who used to be very dynamic and is now backslidden. And you assign that particular person to another area and every single time the enemy tempts you in that area, you turn around and you pray specifically for that backslidden person that they would turn around and do great damage to Satan and his kingdom. And then the third prayer target is to pick someone you know who is a believer that God would empower them and they would boldly, like Paul said, pray for me, I may speak boldly, that they would boldly do great damage to Satan and his kingdom. Do you see that? So every time the enemy attacks you, what do you do? You turn around and you attack the enemy. I shared this in Africa. You know Africans get excited. The area director for that whole western Africa jumped up and said, Do you hear what he's saying? Of course they all heard it. They're all sitting there. We can attack Satan. And they all were excited because they were always being what? Dodging, and they never thought of turning around and coming against the forces of darkness and starting to spoil his kingdom. When I'm attacked, I'm going to turn around and it's a reminder to what? To attack him and attack him specifically with individuals that you've assigned as your prayer targets. And we have seen it's unbelievable the great victory that has come in the lives of men. We have documented testimonies of men, especially men, that have used this and the new freedom that they have in their life as they turned it around and came against the forces of darkness. That's the armor. I want to share a testimony with you of one of the board members. One of our board members of our office there is Dr. Ed Murphy. Does anybody know Ed Murphy? Do you know Dr. Ed Murphy? Dr. Ed Murphy is the vice president of Overseas Crusade, which was Dick Hillis' mission. And he's in charge of evangelism and church planning all over the world. An awesome guy. Tremendous fellow. Dr. Murphy, this year, was asked to go to India. Now, before we get there, I need to share this. Some of you have always worked here, I think, but some of you have been overseas. The more animistic a culture, the more you need a power encounter for that culture to turn to Christ. You know what I'm saying? They need to see an encounter between the powers of darkness and the powers of Christ, and they have to see that there's greater power in Christ than in the enemy they fear. Because you know the mindset of an animist. An animist believes that there was a Creator God, and He created the spirit world. Good and bad spirits. Now, you don't have to worry about the good spirits, right? Because good spirits only do good. You have to worry about which ones? The bad ones. And the Creator has gone away, and He's left everything in the hands of the spirits. And so I must teach my children from very little what not to do to offend these spirits so they don't attack us or come into our babies or whatever. You know, planting and all of that kind of thing. In some cultures, it's very, very complicated. You know that. I mean, in some cultures, you cannot turn right or left without asking demonic permission. You know, once I got permission to go this way, if I'm going to turn, I must ask permission. Something terrible will happen to me or my family if I would go this way and not ask the demons if it's all right if I go. So you can imagine living like that, and then a fellow comes and says, throw this off and receive Jesus. Well, someone put a curse on my grandmother and she died. You know, I drank some water and I aborted the baby. I forgot. Or I stepped over a stream and I didn't realize I was pregnant and I had an abortion. You can't step over streams if you're a woman and pregnant and all this stuff. They've seen the power of darkness. And the only way they will turn is when they see the power of Christ is greater than the darkness that they fear. You know that, don't you? And so, you've got to pray for your translators because one day they're going to come against it. There's going to be that time when they're going to be pushed to shove. Where this is going to be demonstrated. If there's going to be a real turning of that tribe to Christ. A major turning. Well, Dr. Ed Murphy was asked to go up into the hinder part of India, where they had established a church There was going to be a large baptismal service and an open air meeting. And he and some young Indians started this trek into quite a ways into India. And as they were going, many days, they were traveling in a jeep. I think there were four of them in this jeep. And they were traveling up to this rather large town in India, where this church had just been planted. And they got just outside of the larger town just before the town they were to go to. And some people came out and met them and said, you better turn back. There is a group of men here that were Muslim extremists or some, one of these very, very fanatical type branches of one of the religions in India waiting for you. And when you go through this town, they will kill you. That's encouraging, isn't it? Here you are in a jeep going to go through this town. And you know what it's like going through these towns? I mean, if you've ever been to these towns? Oh, we'll protect ourselves. But you know how crowded the little streets are? There is no way you can protect yourself. And a spirit of fear came on Dr. Murphy. Now, Dr. Murphy teaches spiritual warfare. He has a whole series of tapes on him. He taught at Talbot Seminary on loan. And the guy is really excellent in warfare. But all of a sudden, he came under attack. Man, he's going to get killed. He's got a wife and family. And he knows that these extremists are extreme. And they're waiting for them. And so he said, I couldn't turn back. I mean, there was something in him that wouldn't let him go back, but he didn't have a real excitement about going on. And you know what he needed was the helmet. And he said, God, I ask your protection. I'd ask that you put a hedge of protection around our vehicle as we go through this town, which was a large town. And they went through the town, drove through the town, and it was market day besides, which is exciting, just trying to get the jeep through the town without running over something or somebody. And they got clear through the town, and nothing happened. This was just this year. Got on the other side of the town, and they got up to the town where they were, and they were going to baptize in a river. When they baptized in the river, there was somewhere between probably eight or nine hundred and a thousand unbelievers that stood on the banks watching the Christians, each one giving their testimony as they're being baptized. They built a shelter, which was poles and palm branches of shade, so that when they had the after meeting, a thousand people could sit on the ground under the shade. So this was really a big thing. And so, after the meeting, there was over a thousand people, because some people were even outside of this. They couldn't all fit under this open air meeting. And in the back, there were about eighty men from this other village that were in the back of this meeting. They were sitting on the ground. So Dr. Murphy got up, shared a simple gospel message, and gave an invitation, and people came to receive Christ. In the coming to receive Christ was one man from that village. Now what they do in India, when you receive Christ, you immediately turn around and tell why you did it. So they would stand there and give a testimony of why they were coming to Christ. This man came, and he said, you know who I am, and the extremist group that he belonged to. He said, you may wonder why I am receiving Christ today. I'll tell you why. He said, these men came through our village yesterday, and we went to kill them, but we couldn't get close to them because of the shining ones all around their jeep. So we decided we would come here and disrupt the meeting, because we know that believers stand up and sit down when they sing. Have you figured that out? And he said, when they would go to sit down, we would kick the poles, and the roof would fall down, and there would be no service. Now, only these 80 men witnessed and heard what I'm going to tell you. No one else in the crowd heard it. When they stood up to sing, that was ready to do it. There was a large thunder, a crack of lightning. The earth shook, and God seated the 80 men by themselves, flopped them right down on the ground. Then everybody else sat down. These guys were seated first. And you know what they said? There is a power greater here than the power that we serve. And they listened. Isn't that amazing? We want to talk about principalities and powers in those forces of darkness that we are to wrestle against. What are they? How do they work? Let me share some things with you. Let's look in Ephesians again. It's interesting. We're going to do some study in Ephesians tomorrow. It's very important. There are so many wonderful truths here. But you look in Ephesians and you realize there's a progression of truth for a reason. And that's why he put the battle at the very end. Really, in the area of my battling. He talks about his battling and Christ's battling. But my battling comes at the end. So he says, To put on the whole armor of God that ye may stand against the wiles of the devil. And I believe in the Phillips that he read, it's so neat. Because he says, After you have done all to stand, what? Keep standing. See, when you're fought to a standstill, do what? Keep standing. Because we're standing against these forces. We're not standing against individuals. We're not standing against organizations. Although it can be tools in the hand of the enemy, we're standing against what? Forces behind these organizations. Now let's look at these. And there are, if you want to write it down, there are three areas where you can get the list of demonic spirits in the Word of God. Romans 8, 38 and 39, it mentions them there. Ephesians 6, 10 through 12, it mentions them there. And Colossians 1, 16 and Colossians 2, 15. You get the names of these different spirits. And the names tell us what they do. You have the first, there are three that you'll find that can be grouped together pretty much in essence. Because there is order and authority structure in the spirit world as well as in the, on both sides of the spirit world. You have the angelic authority, we have cherubim, seraphim, so on, and the regular warring angels. And you also have God's structure, I mean the enemy structure on his side. The three that you could probably put together here, at least they're working in this area, and these are the hierarchy that seems to control and direct Satan's work here on earth. They would be thrones, rulers, and dominions. These seem to be the spirits that are associated with extending or holding the enemy territory. These would be ruling spirits. Now we know that spirits rule spirits, and they know their power. And in an animistic culture, they know the power that the different witch doctors, shamans, or whatever have, and they know who has greater power for what. And if you read The Roaring Lion, which was written by Mount Noma graduates, it's been out for years, how that when a demon-possessed girl came into another place in Indonesia, she blew them all away because, I think it was chrysanthemum demon or something, had never been there before. And the people were all frightened, why was this more powerful demon coming in their area, because for generations it had never been there, it had always been in another area. I'd never seen this before. I had the navigators, I said, in the beginning, were bringing students from the university to me, and I said, the one university they're bringing from me has 30,000 students. I said, I can't clean out that university. There is no way. There's just one of me and 30,000 college kids. But they brought these two boys, and they brought a bunch of boys, but they brought this one guy that was in serious trouble. As they were coming on the freeway up to St. Louis, this fellow opened the corridor four times and tried to throw himself out on the freeway while they were bringing him up to me. Well, these other fellows were supposed to be prayer partners, so we had this fellow who was trying to kill himself on the way up, sitting there, and behind me, one of my prayer partners, I didn't realize, was demonized. And so, right in the middle of everything, his demons get in a fight with this guy's demons about who's got the most power. It was the most unbelievable thing I ever saw. And he said, you're nothing but a wimp. And he tried to spin on him. Not me, but this unbelievable guy can't believe this. He said, you're supposed to be a prayer partner. If you don't control that demon, you can't be in here. I said, there's no way that we can have this going on. I never saw that before. I mean, I've read it in mission books. I've read it in all these, but I never saw it with my own eyes. One more powerful one than in another one, and controlling. You go into Satanism, they know who's got the most powerful demons in the group, and whose demons are controlling other demons, and all that kind of stuff. But it's amazing. There are ruling spirits, and you have to realize there are spirits that seem to have more power than other spirits. They have more authority than other spirits. What do ruling demons want to do? Rule. Simple as that. I'm going to Washington, D.C. to speak next year. As I was speaking on this, a lawyer who represents the churches and all that to the Supreme Court was weeping. I didn't know he was a lawyer. If I mentioned his name, you'd know him. He's been on Dobson's program. He is weeping. He said, Jim, do you realize I know what you're saying is true? Do you realize that every week the Supreme Court is affecting laws that are taking away our liberty by the week? You know how they do it? By refusing to see cases. See, when you appeal to the Supreme Court, I forget how many of the judges meet to go over the appeals, and if they refuse to bring them to the Supreme Court, they stand as laws. So they don't have to vote on them. They won't see them. And he was sharing what we were losing. He says, unbelievable what we're losing in freedom. Right now, this is getting off, but you'd be amazed. Right now, just finished in Philadelphia, now they did the first one in San Francisco, the, I forget what you call it, like the AMA Association. There's a lawyer association. Not a Christian lawyers, but a lawyer association where all the lawyers get together for a meeting. You know what the topic of the meeting was this year? How to sue church leaders and missions. And you should have seen the advertisement. I saw it myself. If a man comes into your church, and you preach, and he feels guilty on a new law that was passed to the Supreme Court on application of that law, he can sue the church for causing him to feel guilty. And they've already sued some. What's happening on it is terrible. I believe, and many that I know that are teaching, like I'm teaching, believe that every single ruler has a ruling spirit assigned to him to influence this man in his decisions that will extend the kingdom of darkness. And I believe every Christian ruler has a spirit assigned to him to wear him out, to get him discouraged, so they will not make wise decisions. Now everything there is is in authority structure. Do you know that? Everything. You could draw circles on your paper. I saw this. A fellow taught this. It made so much sense to me. You put circles on a paper, and each circle you could put an area of your life, like your church. Is there an authority structure in your church? It's like a walled city in that a church has an authority structure. The mission has authority structure. The area I live in here has an authority structure. The family has an authority structure. And everything that there is has a structure. The government, so on, local government, U.S. government, so on, overseas government. There's authority structures. Now what the enemy does is he attacks the leader of that structure. And he wants this leader either to not rule at all, or not to rule according to truth, or not to rule at all, or just be a poor leader. And then he comes to those under that leadership, and guess what he does? He tells you to rebel. He tells you to rebel. Look how poor that leadership is. Look what poor decisions they're making. Get out from under that authority structure and do your own thing. We talked about that. And then the enemy attacks those out here. It's a two-fold attack. He attacks leaders to lead poorly, and he attacks followers to set aside leadership. Get out of the protection and do your thing. Because there, rebellion is as a sin of what? Witchcraft. What's witchcraft? Voluntarily opening ourselves up to demonic spirits. Get out of that protection, do your own thing, the enemy will wipe you out. Instead of running down leadership, God says, run them up. Right? Pray for all those who are in what? Authority. All authority structures are of who? God, he says. And it's for our protection. Pray for those in authority that we might live what kind of a life? A peaceable life. Do you know, if we would pray for the leaderships that we're under, as much as we would criticize them, things may change. That's the truth. The enemy wants me to criticize. God says, pray. So, a Christian who is spirit-filled will not criticize leadership. And if you see a glaring hole, what should I do about it? Share it with the Lord. Right? Share it with the Lord. And if you see a Don't share it with others. The second area is principalities. That tells you what it is. Principality. Right? Prince and a pality. What's a pality? Geographical location. A prince is one appointed. You put them together, what is it? It's a demonic spirit appointed to a geographical location. These are principalities. And these were told again and again. We wrestle our against these principalities. There are 223 or so countries in the world. Every one of them has what? A prince, a pality assigned to it. There are 20. Let me see if I get this right. Yeah, there are 23,000 people groupings, at least in the world. Jesus said, take the gospel to 23,000 people groupings. And 23,000 people And 2,000 years later, there is around 16,000 people groupings without Christ. But there's a spirit that has a plan for them to hold them in darkness. They've been assigned to them. Prince of palities. You say, well, can you support that in scripture? Did you read Daniel? Remember Daniel prayed? An angel came with an answer to prayer, and what met him? The prince of what? The prince of Persia met him. The prince of pality of Persia met an archangel. And what did he do? Hindered answer to prayer for 20 days. Principalities are powerful. And that angel had to get support. And he brought Daniel an answer to prayer. And he said, I must go back to the battle. Why? Because the prince of pality of Greece has joined him. And I must get up there and battle both those principalities as they stand against this. This area is under a principality. Demonic spirits, we told you again, and again, and again. And get this. Demonic spirits are spirits of influence. Do you hear that? Spirits of influence. Their job is to influence me to make decisions or to live my life or to make selfish choices or wrong choices by their influence. If I am living under a principality that I do not understand or recognize, I can be, and if I don't stand against this, it can do what to me? It can influence me. And that is wiping out more missionaries than what we know. Principalities and powers. Because they haven't identified and haven't recognized what is happening and they are being shoved down by this invisible force. The first time I ever, ever experienced anything like this because my inner spirit was not sensitive, is I was asked to go to a Pacific area mission and do a series of meetings of building the character of Christ with their mission. And we were on Maui and the missionaries are coming there and we had this meeting on Maui. They said, would you fly to Molokai and do it on Molokai? And I said, sure. And so I got in the airplane and we flew to Molokai. Now, here is, I mean, I didn't know anything more about warfare at that time than what I had been taught 20 years before in Bible school. I got off the airplane. Any of you ever been to Molokai? I got off the airplane there. The missionaries are meeting me and this is my first thing. How can you stand to live on this island? It is so oppressive. I mean, it was like I got off in the fog, but it wasn't foggy. It was like something was just shoving us down and the missionary's wife said, I cannot stay on this island for more than 30 days at a time or I start getting horribly depressed. I didn't know it was demonic. I didn't know what it was. All I knew is I felt something really awful on Molokai and when I flew off of Molokai and got on Maui, it was not there. It was a different feeling there than I got on that island. There was a different prince over that island doing a certain thing. Did you know when I found out on Molokai that in the high school they have bathrooms for the homosexuals so they can use separate bathrooms than the kids and there are not many people on that island. Heavily into perversion, the children. I counseled a 13-year-old boy that had been actively practicing homosexuality for seven years in a Christian school. His lover would crawl in the window. He was 14 at night. Unbelievable. Lived right behind the missionary. Saw it with my own eyes. He told me he did. Terrible, terrible place. But beautiful. We can get caught up in the beauty of something and miss the what of it? That oppressiveness of the enemy that is there. So a principality. We need to identify principalities and pray against them. If you don't know how, let me share a wonderful illustration. Bill Gothard has never taken a seminar out of the United States before. Different countries have asked, but he said until the government asks me to come, I won't go. So guess which country asked him to come? New Zealand. Now do you know that there's, I think, five percent of the New Zealanders are Christians? But it was amazing. Before the government asked him to come, he got a rhema from scripture from the rising of the sun to the setting thereof. And where does the sun rise first? On New Zealand. The government asked him to come. They said he had three, the three arenas. They said you'll hardly have anybody come and the people come late. The arenas were booked solid three weeks before they started. And they started every night seminar early because everybody was already there. The parliament said we want you to do one for all of parliament. The chief of police of New Zealand, and he's over there right now doing one, or it's next week, I can't, it's right now, close. Every police officer in New Zealand, Christian or non-Christian, must attend a basic youth seminar. Isn't that awesome? And you know what they did? His staff and high school kids were praying against the principality over New Zealand. That God would break it up. That's one of the hardest places to get any kind of a Christian crowd. And they were praying. I've been in those prayer meetings. And here are these teenagers praying against this. The principality over this country. That God would break it. That the power over this country would be broken and the gospel would be free to go in that area. The second, or the third one here, and these two I think are the most significant ones, is the principalities and the powers. Powers are the kinds of sin that are wrecking areas and people. Now, see, powers want to have power over who? Us. They want to exercise power over us. And you can identify the powers if you go to major cities. Because as people begin to live and collect together by their sin, you will sense that power. Okay, let's just think. What principality could be over the United States? What do you think could be over the United States? Materialism. What happens if I live in this country and I don't stand against materialism? What's going to happen? I'm going to be influenced by it. I know some of you have come home from overseas and you were appalled at what you saw. How long did it take before you were caught up in it? Yourself, right? It's strong influence. Let me tell you, it is strong influence. And if I don't stand against it, I am going to be influenced by it. The same way with these powers. You can be going into a strange city, you know nothing about it. For instance, 42nd Street in New York City. If you've never been there, 42nd Street doesn't seem any different than 41st Street, does it? Or 43rd Street, right? 42nd Street is just a street. When I travel overseas, I like to take rich business people with me. Not so they give money to me, but so they can see the Lord's work and start letting loose of some of that to the people that are there. We need to get more people in America. You know, you guys are trying it. They need to see with their eyes. It's hard for an American to give to something he doesn't see, feel and whatever. And so I have these fellows looking at the wealth, working with these children, thousands of children in New York City that are in the most deplorable situation on Manhattan Island. You can't believe. Some of those kids have never been off the island. Never. They've never seen a house, because there's only one house on Manhattan, and the governor lives in that and the governor they had before was single. The only guy living in a house on Manhattan Island was a single governor, and most of the kids hadn't seen that house. The only kind of house they've seen that go like this. We got off in the subway. We got on 42nd Street. I didn't know anything about 42nd Street. We're walking up, and as soon as we came out of the subway, the doctor I brought and the businessman, they were ahead of me, and they turned to each other. And the doctor said, and this is broad daylight, man, I am fearful. And the businessman said, and he has some fingers gone. He said, man, the last time I felt this is when I was on patrol in Vietnam. And the doctor said, And you can walk across 42nd Street and walk over to 41st Street and guess what will happen? It's gone. Has that ever happened to you? Have you ever driven through a city and driven across a bridge and you get a funny feeling on one side of the bridge that you don't have on the other side of the bridge? Or you can cross a street and have a funny feeling on one side of the street, and you go back to the other side of the street and it's not there? These are powers. What kind of power might you experience in San Francisco? Huh? Perversion. What kind of power might you experience in the Hispanic community in Los Angeles? Violence. Our people in New York City can tell you which power is in control of which welfare hotel, because when you walk in it, you can feel it. Just like that. You have all this evil in this hotel, and they pray against it. One of the welfare hotels, when you walk in it, it's absolute despair, and that's the one we went into. I walked into it and I thought, why are they working in this place? It's hopeless. Isn't that really neat? I'm an executive of a mission, walk into their thing and go, what are you guys wasting your time in here for? This is horrible. I mean, it smelled like a sewer. There were all of these creepy men standing there that were selling drugs and using the little girls. They have a whole floor of little girls for sale, and then the older girls, the teenagers up above that, in this hotel where these kids live. These kids see murders, rapes, this stuff all the time. It's horrible. It's deplorable. And I'm sitting there, and guess who doesn't understand warfare, and guess who isn't standing against this power? Me. And I wasn't in there that long, and this is hopeless. Now you see why they rejected me in Wycliffe. Why? I wouldn't have hit the tribe, I would have been home. I wouldn't have stood against it, and I would have been affected by that. And I'm going, this won't work, this can't happen. And boy, it really hit the pants. If I don't what? Live against it. It's amazing how many men who have gone after a particular target group of a particular evil, to reach those people with the gospel, and they themselves became entangled in the very sin they were trying to rescue people out of. And I can name them, and you'd know them. And boy, if you feel God has called you to a particular type of sin, you better live out of against it, you better pray against it, or you could be affected by it pretty soon, or your children, if you don't stand against it. Because it's there to influence. I walked in the Hispanic community in New York City. I wasn't fearful one bit. Right where Nikki Cruz was and everything. It is not a violent area. And so, it's important that we understand principalities and powers. They're the ones that we have to really, really come against. come against. They're the ones that we have to really, really The third area, or I'm running out of numbers, so I tell my wife, my wife would say, you know, you say, now, verse four. The fourth thing I want to tell you about. I don't know where we are, but the spirits of wickedness. Let's see, let's see when Ephesians here. The spirit of wickedness in high places. Many feel these are spirits involved with religions that are promoting religion. Religions all over. That's their job. The religious spirits fostering demonic religions, false religions all over. I want to tell you a story, a couple of them. These are documented. The first one happened at the Navajo reservation. Here, if we could put these things that we talked about tonight together in practicality. A man by the name of William's, Pastor William's, who I believe was partly Navajo himself, was on the Navajo reservation as a missionary and also had a home there. He was sharing the gospel with Navajo Indians. He became ill. Day after day, he got sicker and sicker. His wife became very concerned and said, we need to go into Flagstaff, I believe, was the city, to the hospital because you're not getting better. He said, no, I'll get better. I don't really need to go to the hospital. She said, please, would you do it for me? They called and made a reservation. They got in their pickup truck. If you've ever been on a Navajo reservation, you don't like going anywhere. You just drive in washes. Those are the roads. They drove and bumped all the way. This I'm going to tell you that they didn't recognize until they put it all in perspective. As soon as they crossed the boundary of the reservation, which they didn't think about, guess what happened? He was perfectly well. He told his wife, he said, see, I told you I'd be okay. They went into town. They bought groceries. They put the groceries in the pickup truck. When they drove back across the reservation boundary, guess what happened to him? He became sick again. He went home. He went in the home and he was sick, sick that night, sicker the next day. His wife went and he said, no, no, I'll get over this. That night he heard singing coming out of the cupboards in the kitchen. He went into the kitchen and he recognized it was chanting. He said, in the name and the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, I command this curse to go back to the one who sent it. And he went to bed. He woke up the next morning feeling super. And there was a knock on the door. It was the wife of the witch doctor said, come quick. And he went to the hogan and there was the witch doctor on the floor with his illness. And the witch doctor died. Let me give you a more awesome one than this. Understanding that because the curse did not affect him outside of that boundary. It only worked in that boundary. Let me share something. It's awesome. Do you know Joanne Shetler? Do you know why she is so outstanding? She graduated with me. She's a neat gal. Now she's more dynamic. I mean, I think she's dynamic. She spoke at Moody I think one time and I just couldn't believe it. I just thought, man, has she grown up? And she's gotten old too. But we had a little gal come. We had, I told you, a gathering of men that are counseling with a deliverance that would be very conservative and fit certain. We had 180 of them come and one of them brought this little missionary to us to this conference. He wanted her to share her experience with principalities and powers. Now if you saw this gal here, she had a homemade sewed dress and sewing was not her big thing. She was, there was nothing about her personally that looked dynamic. You got to watch out for those kind of ladies. She went to Africa and in fact, I'll tell you where. She went to Nigeria. Nigeria is a Muslim country. They had a coup when I was there. You ever been in a coup? Isn't that exciting? You wake up in the morning and there's just police and tanks and you don't know what's going to happen and nobody knows what's going to happen. I don't think even the soldiers know what's going to happen. They had a Muslim coup when I was there. A Christian tried to overthrow the Muslim government, but that country, the Christians are being persecuted in Nigeria very strongly by the Muslims. And this missionary was assigned to a Muslim area and after four years she came home and she had possibly two converts. And she thought there's got to be something better than this. Because these people are truly lost. And she heard about principalities and powers and these ruling spirits and she thought I wonder if I could pray against them. So she went back to Nigeria and she picked a city and she picked a mosque and she decided to pick a mosque leader. If you win the leader you will affect the whole mosque. Have you ever seen a mosque? I was there at Ramadan. In Nigeria the mosque all I saw was rear end and bare feet. I mean just as far as you can see. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. The men that were praying. You know Muslims aren't afraid to let you know what they believe. You drive along the road these big semis are stopped and these guys are bowing towards Mecca on their little prayer mats. Out there in nowhere. No one is seeing them. But Allah sees them so they stop the truck and do it. I couldn't believe it. So she is praying for this mosque leader but let me tell you a little about him. This mosque leader is also heavily into witchcraft. This mosque leader has so much witchcraft power that people come as far away from South Africa and look on the map here where Nigeria and South Africa are. They come from South Africa to study witchcraft under this man to hold the people in more bondage. This man decided not only did he want to be the mosque leader he wanted to be the village leader. Three people opposed him. He put curses on him and the three people are walking through the town insane, often undressed. As a reminder you don't oppose this man. Look what happened when these three did. He put curses on him and she made him her prayer target. She began to bind the principalities over that area. The powers in this man's life. She began to pray against the spirits the religious spirits and began to pray that the gospel would come to this man and he would see his need of Christ. The first thing that happened this is so awesome it's hard for me to tell you I get all caught up in this. The first thing that happened is this guy decided to extend his corral if you've been to Nigeria you know the corrals and to do what he had to do to over a Christian cemetery but so what he picked the crosses up threw them away and extended his corral. The corral fence caught on fire and it burned from the top down. This gal kept praying. The next thing that happened was the roof of his house caught on fire and burned from the top down. And then it would go from his house to other houses the roofs burned from the top down. It would skip a house that maybe would go inside of the house and just burn something of value in that house. And as it's going through this large town doing these burnings it skipped houses. Guests who lived in the houses that were skipped Christians. The people were getting so concerned that they bought boxes to put their valuables in and they dug holes in the red dirt there and buried them and put the dirt on top and smoke would come up they would dig them up and everything in the box had burnt up. This little old gal guess what praying against principalities and powers and praying for this man's soul. The people took their valuables to other villages where they had relatives. If they received them into their home the roofs burned from the top down or a bed would burn or something of value and they said take your stuff back you're not wanted. The Nigerian government said this is interesting we must find the gas leaks. And I know one of the professors in the university there and they sent out a team of geologists to find out why these strange fires that burn from the top down. And guess what they could find nothing. One day as this man is looking at all of this stuff that is happening you know what he said? There is a power here greater than Allah. And he went to that missionary and he asked if she could share with him biblical Christianity. And she led that man to Christ. He came back into the town and he saw one of these people wandering around out of their mind. And he thought oh I better reverse the witchcraft. So he went and got his stuff and he thought I wonder if Christians do this. So he went and asked the missionary do Christians reverse the she said no, no. What you do is you burn it. And they had a burning and as it was burning the three people were set free and returned to normal. This gal do you think she was satisfied? She took another mosque leader and another mosque leader. And guess what is coming to Christ in Nigeria? Mosque leaders. When I shared this in Ghana men jumped up and I told you Africans listen really no one jumped up here but boy they jumped up. They jumped up and they said we know him. Logan we know him and he is doing great damage to Satan and his kingdom. And everybody clapped. They were all glad. Isn't that exciting? Just a little missionary gal praying against the forces of darkness and God moving in a marvelous way and mosque leaders are coming to Christ. And you know what effect it has under all those in the mosque? It's unbelievable. Well I'll tell you when you and I begin to understand what Calvary love really means and we stand in the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ and stand against the forces of darkness they will tremble. They will tremble. When we specifically stand against them and pray against them you will see God do marvelous we are documenting testimonies you can't believe from all over it's exciting of people that have got a hold of this and what God is doing just in prayer alone in turning things around. Father we thank you for the power of Christ. We are thankful Father that greater is he that indwells us than he that is in the world. And Father we pray that we might believe that we might have faith in your power and that we can wrestle against principalities and powers and the rulers of darkness and spiritual wickedness in high places if we follow your word and are strong in the Lord and in the power of his might and are appropriating the armor of God. Father I pray that you might give us a glimpse of the tremendous ministry that is ours as intercessors for those who are in very difficult places laboring under tremendous forces of darkness that are opposing every turn the sharing of the gospel. Thank you Father for your word and that the entrance of your word truly gives light. Amen.