Resisting The Devil

[00:00:00] This audio sermon is provided by AnabaptistSermons.com and may be freely copied and distributed. You may not sell or edit this sermon. Our prayer is that you would be blessed by this ministry. Good evening, it's good to see so many of you here tonight and I trust that you're looking to the Lord for something that he would want to say to us tonight. I'd like to turn to Ephesians 1, which you, if you have your Bibles, please turn there and we'll start with verse 18. [00:00:40] Now, the two pastors from this church have already heard this message at the pastor's retreat. But the message of the Word of God isn't just for pastors. It's for the rest of us, too. And so, I trust that you'll be blessed through it. Have you got it? Ephesians 1.18 The eyes of your understanding being enlightened that ye may know what is the hope of his calling [00:01:14] and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints and what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us who believe Alright, now there's three things here The eyes of our understanding we start to see with our minds And we see three things. We start to understand the hope of his calling. And you think that one through. The hope of his calling, what we have in Christ. And then the second one, the riches of his inheritance in the saints. [00:01:48] What we as Christians have, our inheritance from Christ. Think that one through. And then the third one, and what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us who believe according to the working of his mighty power. The hope, what would we do without the glorious hope we have? Our inheritance that we're in Christ, that he took us into his family, isn't that inheritance? And thirdly, the exceeding greatness of his power to usward. [00:02:21] We know he's got exceeding great power. But he says that we might know what is the exceeding greatness of his power to usward who believe according to the working of his mighty power. Okay, let's go on. Verse 20. Which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead and set him on his own right hand in the heavenly places. Far above all principality and power and might and dominion in every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come, [00:02:53] and hath put all things under his feet and gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all. And chapter 2 there, And you hath he quickened, which were dead in trespasses and sins. He has made us alive, quickened. Look at verse 4 of chapter 2. But God, who is rich in mercy for the great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. [00:03:35] Again, three things here. He's quickened us together with Christ, and that's, he made us alive, we're alive in him. And the second thing, he has raised us up together with him. And thirdly, made us sit together with him in heavenly places. Where is Jesus Christ seated today? Why, it's at the right hand of God. And it says, we are seated with him in heavenly places. [00:04:05] Now, where else do you want to be? All right, and then he says the exceeding greatness of his power to us for it. We've got the power. But we must appropriate it and we must see it. Oh, if the whole church would come alive with the power of God and the hope and the inheritance. But we have that position. And where is that? Far above all principalities and powers and might and dominion and every name that is named. [00:04:37] So we're seated. Our authority is above these principalities and powers and might and dominion. And so this is a tremendous truth that God has for us tonight. And I'd like to illustrate it with my experience there in New Guinea as a missionary. There was a large Saharan village, close to a thousand people there. They'd run me out the last time I came through there. I was scared to death. And the first time I was there, well, it was just kind of a fact-finding mission. [00:05:12] They had called me now to come. And I, you know, felt tremendous. In a way, I was afraid, you know, these could be the wrong motives that they call you. And I asked the young man Nimrod to come with me. I paid him to, he'd come with me, carry my pack, my stuff that I would need. And we're going through this swampland now. He said, you walk first because your feet are so slow. [00:05:45] If I walk first, there will be two different parties, so I'll just follow at your speed. But when you go first, you get all the spiderwebs. You get all the dew from all the branches of the narrow path. You get soaking wet, and the snakes. I mean, those guys can see them better than we can. They come falling off the trees sometimes. I was in my little fiberglass boat one time and going out on a small river and this snake came down, slithering down from the trees. [00:06:16] I saw him coming. No time to steer away from where he missed my boat by about, oh, four inches, about that much. I was so glad. It was a good-sized snake. Man, if he had gotten into my boat, what would I... Well, I always carry a very sharp machete. I'm not a very strong man, but when I get scared or something like that, man, look out. And I'm so glad he wasn't in the boat because I would have chopped at that thing [00:06:50] and maybe put a hole right through that fiberglass boat and we'd both been gone down into the place with the crocodiles. Let them, you know, let them all fight it out together. So, these things, and friends, many things like that scared me so. But I had gotten a hold of this, and the Lord was giving me courage, and we have that power. And I sure prayed that I'd be filled with the Holy Spirit. [00:07:21] It says, if you ask to be filled, He will fill you. It says, if we know how to give good gifts unto our children, how much more will He give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him? And I did that that morning because I thought this could be problems in that village. There were no Christians there. All these thousand people have never heard the gospel. Ever. Everyone that's ever died there has been lost. And so, Satan isn't going to give up that easy. [00:07:53] Believing, he's going to fight for every soul he has. And that's why we must be right with God and have him filling us and believe in these things that we have read. So we walk through that swamp, oh it's miserable, you walk on these slippery logs and I always slide off because I wear tennis shoes, they have bare feet and so on. They somehow stay on them but I don't, I'm too tall. I had this long stick, you know, a hardwood stick. [00:08:26] That's for protection for whatever comes along, but it's more for my balancing. Sometimes in places I had two sticks. They called me the old woman. He walks like an old woman. He's got two sticks. And, oh, they made fun of me, but I went on. But I had one stick with me that time, and I'm sliding off the logs and catching myself with this stick, And I'm going into the mud, you know, half at a time and climb back on the log. He says, you know why you're so tired? You're always riding these logs all the way down into the muck and then you climb up on the next one. [00:09:00] You're always going uphill. Get off the first log so you don't ride it all the way down. That means you almost have to run on them. And my coordination is poor. And my balance is bad. Why did God call me to be a missionary in a place where I have such poor balance? I could never make my hands and feet go together. Anyway, I went on praying for this village. The chief had called me to come. [00:09:33] His men could come to my village, but they couldn't accept the Lord because they don't do anything without the chief's permission and he has to go before them. So, the chiefs are the hinge of the whole thing. And so, now the chief told the men to come. And so, I'm struggling through this swamp and miserable. The path is very, just cut through there. It's thick forest in this swamp. Huge trees, vines around the trees, I mean, thorns everywhere. [00:10:10] Bad place. It's, it's, you don't get much sun because the thing is so cut so high and then you got the canopy of the branches overhead. That's where you get everything coming down on you, see. That's, so I'm going on. We went about an hour and all of a sudden Nimrod screams at me. Nimrod was a young lad that came with me. He screamed at me. He says, Tuan, you dummy, you're, not only your feet are dumb, your eyes are dumb. You didn't even see the snake. Look at that. [00:10:41] And I looked behind me and this big yellow snake, about as big as, and his head was in the swamp and his tail on the other side, laying across the log that I had walked on. I had, well, I was struggling across branches and roots and what have you. And finally, when you get tired enough, you don't look anymore. And I say, God, I'm tired, too tired to look anymore. and more. You're going to have to do the looking for me. And if you don't, it's all over, you know. And God protects us and he's with us and he does. So, but that's, you still look, don't you? You still, even though God's taking care of you, still look. And I never saw that snake. I just plowed on and on, you know, trying to get there. It was a two and a half hour trip to that village. [00:11:39] And it wasn't that far, but in those conditions. So, I looked at that snake. Oh, they'd warned me of that snake, that yellow snake. That's Hohoi's snake. Hohoi is the plural word of the demons. That's the demon's snake. Well, in the Garden of Eden, we know that Satan spoke to a snake. But they said, they hadn't crossed that snake for a long time. [00:12:13] They had avoided it because they said, if you cross that snake, the demons will get you. They'll attack you. They'll scream at you. And so I looked at that snake. I thought, I've done it now, you know. But now I'm a Christian, and I've asked the Holy Spirit to fill me. Does that make a difference? Well, it does, folks. It does. But those dear people could not, they had no way to combat the powers of Satan and the powers of the demons. [00:12:48] And I got my stick and I started beating on that snake. If he'd only turned himself over and on his belly, I might have been able to do some damage, maybe even kill him. But I beat on him and beat on him. I was already tired enough before I started fighting with that snake. and finally he laid still and I said, Nimrod, come on, let's go. I think he's dead. I wasn't sure at all. And he says, ah, too, and it's even worse crossing a dead one. Oh, and he stands there watching me beat on that thing. [00:13:23] Good night. He says, do you want me to leave the pack here? I'm going home. I'm on the home side. Isn't it nice to be on the home side? And I said, you don't leave the pack on here, and you don't go and leave me in this swamp alone. And he says to him, I'm not crossing that snake. And I said, detour. And he went back and went into the jungle. I don't know how far he went. I'm sure the snake wasn't that long. He come out ahead of me. [00:13:53] Now he's a black man, and he is pale. It's pale. He's scared. He says, how can this be? You crossed them and I didn't. I says, come with me. Let's go. My Jesus is stronger than the hohoi. He says, have you ever met this cross of the snake before? Proved it? No. He says, how can you say it? I said, because the book says so. He says, that's what you always say, the book says so. Everything the book says so. [00:14:25] But you've never proved it. How can you be sure? I said, because he's God and Jesus is in control of this earth. And it says that and it's not just for my country, it's for everywhere. And so I said, come on, let's go. He says, they're going to attack you too, huh? They're going to scream at you. They're going to scream at you until you have no life left in you. They're going to keep attacking you until you die. [00:14:58] I said, Jesus is in me. And the more I tried to convince Nimrod that Jesus was taking care of me, the more I tried to convince myself that this is going to be true, because, I mean, I've never been here before. And so, he came. He picked up the pack, and he says, well, go. He followed way off. I could barely see him. You know, he was going to have plenty of room if that demon started attacking me, he was going to get away, he was going to be fired up. [00:15:32] And so we went on and I'd look behind me every so often and wave at him and he's still coming. It's the grace of God that he came. And then he shouts, at one point he shouted at me, Oh, you better believe I was doing a lot of praying at this time. You would have too. You confess your sin, right? If anything, make sure that it's all forgiven in case this is the day. And I confess it. [00:16:04] Folks, I look for more stuff to confess. I confess stuff I hadn't even committed, I think. And just trying to be right with God. Have you ever been desperate to be right with God? You see? What do you do now? And so I prayed and kept going. No attack. And finally, he shouts at me, he says, Tuan, I've got to go to the bathroom. You keep going, your feet are so dumb, I'll catch up with you. [00:16:37] And he disappears into a jungle. Of course, there's no bathrooms in those jungles, but you know what I mean. And so I'm alone now. I never thought that, man, I let him go and I'm alone. And the jungle was so thick there, it was hardly any light coming through, double canopy overhead. It's a swamp that's very, very humid and very damp in every way. And I'm in there and all of a sudden in that thing, Nimrod had gone into the swamp the other side. [00:17:11] From this side, out of that wall of jungle came the loudest screaming I've ever heard. It was just like a horror movie, screaming of people choking and dying. And now don't go and listen to horror movies or horror things. Just believe me, just leave it alone. But that's how it was. It was so loud. It took my breath away. I could hardly breathe. My heart was just beating like a drum. I tried to get away from the sound. But my legs were paralyzed. [00:17:45] I realized I couldn't take the next step on this log, so I'm sinking on the log, riding it down into the muck. I thought, man, if I don't get out of here, you know, but I couldn't move. I was stuck. I thought, this is it, I'm dying, can the sound kill me? I mean, my heart was beating so loud, I thought, I can't last long at this. And what do you do? You pray, right? Oh yes, you can pray in the deepest jungle when you're all by yourself and you can pray and he hears you. [00:18:16] Why does he hear you? Because he lives in us. You don't want him any further away than that, folks. You want him living in you. The demons and the powers of darkness, the prince of the power of the air, I mean, they're all around you, wherever they are, but you want that Holy Spirit living within you. And so, I said, God, help me. It was no time for long prayers. You know, you don't say, Heavenly Father, this and that, and what you're doing, and so on. [00:18:51] Try to impress them with words. You just cry out, help me, save me. And that's what Peter did when he was walking on the water. Remember that? Halfway between a boat and Jesus, and he's sinking, and he cries out. God save me. And so, beautiful thing is that you can be in the furthest jungle. We were a hundred miles up the river in New Guinea. And all the way into that swamp. I don't think a preacher had ever gone this path before. I went there before. [00:19:29] But now Satan is on the defense. He wants, he doesn't want me here. Of course not. He's controlled all these people from A to Z. Everybody's ever died has been lost without God. And so he isn't going to let go of his people very easy. So he screamed at me and I cried out to God, save me. And he says, resist him and he will flee from you. You know that verse in James 4, 7, it says, submit yourself therefore to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you. And then it says, draw nigh to God and he will draw nigh to you. [00:20:11] Well, I want God drawn near to you, but I first got to keep that second one. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. I looked at that wall of jungle and couldn't see where the noise came from. And I was still sinking. And I said, Lord Jesus, what language? Hey, you can pray in any language. You can also resist Satan in any language. It's amazing. [00:20:42] Of course, God knows all the languages. But Satan does too. and resist him and he will flee from you. And I want to say, look, I'm Dutch Reformed by birth. You know, we Dutch Reformed, we hardly even believed that there is a devil and now you want me to talk to him. But you can't argue with God. Hey, when you're dying men, you don't say that you're a Baptist or a Dutch Reformed. I'm a Baptist by marriage. But Baptists don't do a whole lot of talking to God. [00:21:15] And I don't know about you Mennonites, but friends, you don't argue with God and tell him that isn't your tradition or that's not what you grew up with or something. You just do what God tells you. There is a place in all of our lives where we have to obey the word of God and do whatever he tells you, regardless of what you are. And so I thought, well, resist him. Never done this before. But I'd read about it, James 4.7 [00:21:48] And I sometimes read about it and it says, and he will flee from you And I thought, wouldn't it be nice if that was true Because I'm always running from these demon-possessed guys that threaten me I've got a quarter-mile track around my mission station I try to keep in shape as if I could run and keep away from demons No, you can't That's, that's, that's, it's not a physical matter, physical warfare, it's a spiritual warfare. [00:22:20] And so, resist him, flee from him. I thought, well, this is how you juggle, so I used partly how you and partly English to talk to him. I said, hoi, in Jesus' name. Now that's a key, folks. In Jesus' name, I command you to leave me alone. Then I'm supposed to quote scripture, that I have authority from the word of God. When Jesus resisted Satan, he always said, it is written, bread and man's soul that live by bread alone. [00:22:51] You know, I always use scripture. How can I get the right verse in that kind of situation? When many times I can't even get the right verse among people like yourselves. And God gave it to me. I shouted, leave me alone. I resist you. For greater is he that is in me than he that is in the world. Now that's one of the premises, one of the scriptures that we can use when we're resisting Satan. And that noise stopped just, I couldn't believe it myself. [00:23:24] It was so noisy and all of a sudden it's so still and so quiet. It was as if there was a change of atmosphere in the place. As if the atmosphere of evil that drives around and destroys me And now it's an atmosphere of godliness that drew me to him Oh, three times that kind of thing happened Where there was a complete change of atmosphere in the situation And you knew that powers of darkness were defeated and gone And so I'm still sinking in the swamp [00:23:57] But I said, Lord, you've got to give me strength to get out of here And I planted that stick but it was going down slowly too and I pulled my one leg out at a time and got on something more solid but the fear was gone. I'm the kind of guy when I get scared I shake ten minutes later, you know, but at that point I was free. There was no fear left in me. I wasn't shaking in fear. I was just thanking God, praising God and that drew me closer to Christ. [00:24:30] I mean, it was amazing. God gave me the ability to write a song in that. A song on resisting. And I taught it to my natives. Ah, they wouldn't sing it alone. They were afraid of the demons all around. But they'd get a whole bunch of guys together and say one, two, three, go on, they'd all sing. And there was a song which addressed Satan. Satan, we're not going your path anymore. We're not listening to your voice anymore. We're not going to ride in your canoe anymore, nor sit in your village, nor sit at your fire. [00:25:03] We're going Jesus' way. They shouted out, we're going to ride in his canoe and we're going to live in his village and we're going to walk his path and we're going to eat his food. And they just go on and on and on, whatever they did. And they're boldly singing, resisting Satan. And that was their strength. They had such fear before of that. But that came later on. But that's the song. Well, I got on, went through the swamp further. Nimrod caught up to me. I said, Nimrod, did you hear that? [00:25:34] The demon screamed at me from that side. He said, oh, Tuan, I told you. I told you. If that, he's going to go parallel to the path and he's going to keep doing it three or four times and you won't be able to live, you won't be able to stand up anymore and you won't, Tuhan, I'm saving your life, come on, let's go back. Let him go. And he pulls me by the arm, trying to pull me home. There's no Nimrod, we've got to go on. [00:26:06] He says, Tuhan, you're going to die. And I'm not going to be there, because if you're going to go on, I said, Nimrod, you can't leave me here. I said, he's fleeing from me. He's getting further away all the time, those demons. He says, how do you know? I said, the book says so. I resist him and he flees from you. And I believe this book. And I said, don't you feel it? and I had natives sense this atmosphere change in the Hashima church. [00:26:41] It was so clear. All the powers of darkness there and now the change and it was this tremendous spirit where everything was quiet. Well, we had that several times in our ministry and I'm sure he must have sensed it. I don't know. I didn't ask him. Don't you sense there's a difference here? The evil is gone and the good has come. Of course, he's not a Christian yet. So, he followed me. He followed me. [00:27:12] It's amazing that he did. And he followed me but a great distance behind me. And we went on. The more I tried to convince Nimrod that the evil spirits wouldn't come back, the more I convinced myself that this is actually true. Because it was the first time for me. And we went on, and the longer we went, the bolder I got, and we went another hour, and I was thanking God and praising Him, and all the way into the Saharin village, across the little river there, and I smiled at Nimrod, he didn't know whether to smile or still be scared, he wondered what was going to happen in the village. [00:27:52] We got in this house, the biggest house that they could find, and these three chiefs, the main chief and the two lesser chiefs, sat right in front of me across, right, while I'm, I can't stand up there because the spear racks and the arrow racks are too low, so I'm sitting down, I don't want to stand up anyway in a situation like that, after a trip like that. and Savo, the main chief, says to him, if you're going to talk, talk. The whole house was packed full of men. Not a woman could get in. [00:28:22] All the men, there's so many. It was such a big village. And before I had a chance to speak and tell him the gospel, Nimrod sitting beside me spoke up. He says, you know what? He crossed Hohoi Snake and he's still alive. He, the demon, screamed at him. And he's still alive. And he says they're fleeing from him. Well, I don't know whether they sensed that because there was no evil spirits present in the meeting there. They somehow were still fleeing from us and wherever I was that time, they weren't there. [00:29:00] Even though they're demon-possessed people, they were quiet and totally still and wouldn't show themselves. Wouldn't it be nice if we could resist the devil one time and they'd flee and the demons would flee from us the rest of our lives? Wouldn't that be nice? We'd get it all over with tonight, wouldn't we? We'd do it and be free. Well, wouldn't it be nice if you could pray once and ask God for his blessing on everything the rest of your life from A to Z and you would save all the time you wouldn't have to pray anymore? But it isn't that way folks. We're in a spiritual warfare. The warfare has many battles. Each battle must be contested. And so we must always draw near to God. And we must always keep right with him so that we can face every battle that comes. Otherwise we'd get careless, wouldn't we? [00:29:53] And we'd get easy and, hey, so we're sitting in this house and Nimrod makes that speech. He says, he's got a power. He's got a power that is stronger than the hoi, than the evil spirits. His power is stronger. He doesn't have to be afraid. He can cross the snake. I think you can go anywhere and do anything because the power that he has is stronger. [00:30:27] And if we get that power, then we won't have to fear those demons anymore. Oh man, can you imagine, he had their attention, didn't he? And they're sitting there, oh man, if it only worked, if that verse was only true. It reminded me of reading James 4, 7, Resist the Devil, and saying to myself, if that verse was only true, wouldn't that help me a lot? And now they're saying that kind of thing, if that's true. [00:30:58] And so they're waiting for me to speak, and I speak the gospel of Jesus Christ, how he died for them, and so on, that simple gospel message. And whose message do you think had more effect on that crowd, Nimrod or mine? Nimrod. He wasn't even a Christian. But he really, he's one of their own people. And so I said, is there anybody here that is ready to let Jesus control his life? Oh, I made it very clear. [00:31:30] Many times I said, you must do three things. You must believe. You believe that he died for you, that he washed your sin away and everything about Jesus that I've told you. That's one. Two, you must repent of your sin. You must shun your sin. You must get rid of it. You must confess your sin and turn from sin, too. I said, and then the third one is, you've got to let the great clean spirit of Jesus come into you, into your maju, [00:32:01] and give him control so that he tells you where to go, what to eat, where, everything. Control, spirit-filled. I said, I looked at Sabo, the main chief. I said, Sabo, are you ready to do this? Oh, he said, stirriatuon. Now Sabo was a dying chief. He was old. He had malaria so bad, elephantitis. His arms were swollen, big with all this. What is it, all the larvae, all the, in there, and his thighs were so big, and then his scrotum was as big as a volleyball, and he was a dying man, he couldn't last much longer. [00:32:48] So he had commanded his men to call me, and I said, Sabo, what about you? I knew the chiefs had to go first. If they don't accept Christ, there's no use talking to the other men. And I said, Sambu, do you want to? He says, yeah, I do. And I said, you pray to Jesus. Close your eyes and say, Jesus. And he said, do on Jesus. But he didn't know what to say. He says, do on help me. And I said, okay, I'll pray it. [00:33:22] I'll say it, and then you say it right after me. And I, you know, confessed, I believe, I believe that you died for me and so on. He said it after me. I heard a man who was definitely demon-possessed pray to Jesus. Now, figure that one out. The only reason is because the demons were still fleeing from him. They had no power in that meeting. And it was quiet. They could all hear me. And so he praised that prayer. And then I said, okay, confess your sins. [00:33:53] And then he says, well, the first man I killed was from Itchi. The second man was from Kiki, and the next one, Abagay, and Abahoy, and Jufo Permay, and Jufo, and Kiki. And, oh man, Saharin, Yahachu, Amarachu, he clapped, that was ten. And he says, then he got his right foot up there, started on his big toe, and this, this, from Ogur, and all these names. He remembered his sins. He got his 15, he got his left foot up there, and when all the toes, now he's up to 20, and he says, they can't count more than 20. [00:34:30] See, he only got so many fingers and toes. And then he said, and all of a sudden he grabbed my thumb. And he says, that was the last one to him. Can your Jesus wash my heart clean? What's the answer? Twenty-one murders. And I didn't even ask him about other things like lying and adultery and all kinds of evil. I thought, God's hurt this much, I'm sure he'll be happy and he'll cleanse him. [00:35:05] So I said, okay. I said, then you ask Jesus. You tell him you believe, and he did. And then I said, now you repent, and he confessed all these murders. And then the third one, very interesting what happened now. Now, the third one. Now, I said, now you must receive into your maju, into your heart, into your innermost being. You've got to receive the great spirit of God, the great clean spirit, we call it. We couldn't go black and white. That would never work. [00:35:38] The great clean spirit has to come in and save you. And I said, ask him. He says, oh Jesus, let your great clean spirit come into my heart. And he said something more that I never told him to say. And he says, and all you wicked dark spirits, get out. Because you can't both be in here. You'll be fighting inside of me. [00:36:09] That's what he said. So at the same time when he asked the Holy Spirit to come in, he commanded the demons to get out in Jesus' name. I learned something. From then on when I led people to Christ, that's the way I do it. Believe, repent, confess your sin and ask the Holy Spirit to come in and tell the demons to get out. I never cast out demons. They'll do it. And he, anybody that really wants to be right with God will do what you say. [00:36:44] And you could see the light on his face, Sabo's face, as if he, I mean, he was an ugly looking old rascal. And now he's just a smile on his face. He said, he did it. I said, you did it, Sabo. Did you mean everything you said? He said, yeah, I did. And you could see it. Then the other chief says, me too. Oh, good night. Now I've got to go through the next one. You know, how many toes and fingers will you have to confess them? And I said, he says, I too want to pray. [00:37:19] I said, okay, did you hear what Sabo said? He said, yes. Yeah, and he did the same thing, confessed sin and told Jesus that he believed, that he died for him and asked the Holy Spirit to come into his heart To control Him. Isn't that the key? The Holy Spirit comes in to control us. To be Spirit-filled is the same as being Spirit-controlled. And so, when you sin, you confess it. [00:37:53] And we've got to do that now, when we confess it, and then ask the Holy Spirit to fill us again and control us again. All right? So confess sin and do it in that order. Anyway, the other chief did it. And then the third chief, I looked at him, and he had a stone face. No, no, no, nothing out of him. So the men of the first two clans that were in this house said, Can we too accept Jesus? [00:38:25] Can we too pray? Well, their chiefs had gone before, so they're just following the chief. And I thought, what am I going to do with this whole gang of guys? There must have been 20 of them or more. And I said, okay, all of you that really want to put up your hand like this and saw these hands all over the place. And I said, now, you pray after me, dear Jesus, and I led them through the prayer of believing. And they'd say that, led them through the prayer. [00:38:56] Now, I said, now we have to repent of our sins. We have to confess our sins. Now, all of our sins are not the same, so all of you say that to Jesus. Jesus, I've done this and this and this. And there was all this noise, all confessing different sins in the house. And then I said, now ask the Holy Spirit to come in. Can you imagine what a day it must have been for God in heaven when these, all you people that were so steeped in demonism, all together saying, Holy Spirit, come in. God said this. And then David followed the chief who said, and then you demons get out. You see, what a time it was. Forty converts among those men that day. I'd had two converts up to this point in seven and a half years of walking in Trulio's jungle. And all of a sudden, now, forty of them came to know Christ. [00:39:53] And so I wrote down their names. I thought, well, I guess isn't that what you're supposed to do? I grew up, you know, you're grown up, you want the church role, you want to know who's going to be Christian. Anyway, wrote them names down. And I walked home through that swamp, folks. I had besetting sins in my own life. I confess the same sins to God almost every day. [00:40:27] Are any of you like that? I guess you saw one hand go up, maybe one honest person. But I hope, are you all awake? I confess the same sins and God always forgave me my sin. But that isn't victory. Man, he wants us to have victory in what we read tonight here in Ephesians 1 and 2. We can be overcomers. We can have victory in Christ. [00:41:00] And so, I learned something. I said, God, I've committed the same sins just like they have over and over again. It might not have been murdering so many people and all that, but... and I felt then that I could get the victory myself through the name of Jesus Christ and I sure thought about that and later realized that that's what this word says and I was thrilled walking through that swamp it wasn't a difficult swamp to go through [00:41:31] And you people wouldn't believe this, but I'm a very, very fundamental, conservative Bob Jones graduate of the Baptist persuasion. And we never get excited about anything. And here I am going through the jungle with my hands up and praising God, acting more like a charismatic than a Baptist. I'm glad my wife didn't see me. She would have worried about me. and I'm glad Bob Jones University didn't know it. [00:42:01] They would have taken me off the alumni list. So don't tell them, okay? Anyway, I got home and I was so thrilled. And I said to my wife, I said, there was a real breakthrough at Saharim. And there's 40 people converted. It was a mass movement of two chiefs. She was praising God with me. And I hadn't told her I was resisting Satan at the time. I thought that might be a little too much for her. She's a staunch Baptist, so, you know, she's a good Baptist, you know. [00:42:37] Anyway, I told her later. Two weeks later, I went back again. You better believe I thought something about going through that same place where the demons screamed at me two weeks before. And I made sure I was prayed up. And I started memorizing Ephesians 1 and 2, memorizing Philippians 4 and James 4 and Ephesians 6 and various things so that if the demons attacked me I'd have something to quote, you know, so you've got to learn some of these verses, folks. I encourage you to do that. [00:43:11] And so I walked down there and went through that place and no interference whatsoever. Walked all the way through to Saharim. I got to the little creek, the little river there before coming across to the village. Guess who was there? There stood the third chief. The pressure was on him. When are you going to believe so that we can believe? And he grabbed my hand and he said, I'm going to walk with Jesus from now on. [00:43:43] And he was ready. And we knelt on the sand at the side. And he accepted the Lord and he confessed his sin and asked the Holy Spirit to come into him. And then we together walked, both of us very happy, into the village. Ah, they knew what he'd done. They're watching. What's the third chief? And here comes the clan of the third chief all around. And he said, Tuan, we want to pray it too. All right? And then when I'm done with that, the first two clans came and they said, can our wives also walk with Jesus and pray the prayer? [00:44:23] I said, yes, they can. And here they came bringing their wives. Some brought two wives, some brought three wives. They were all bringing their wives. and they prayed together that Jesus would save them and would forgive them and would fill them and so on. And I counted again, exactly, exactly 40 more that morning. It started to become a mass movement. After that, you know, they came, they couldn't come in the house so we'd have services outside [00:44:55] and more people came and that church started to grow. The village was too big. They moved away from each other because there wasn't enough food in the area. And wherever I went, later on, I found Saharan people who had started the church. Churches where I had never believed we'd have one. Njufo, that difficult village. And there was a church there. I preached in that church. And in various places. I went to the other river, to U River there. And there they were there. [00:45:27] Had moved all the way out there. So the gospel spread through these people that had met the Lord. And, friends, what a thrilling time we had. And then this chief from Amanda Village, he was a shrewd guy. He said, if we listen to the missionary, then he will give us better prices from his store and give us free medicine from his clinic. and he likes it when people go to church. [00:45:58] He figured that out. He must have visited the Abahoi church and the Hashema church. And so they built a building but it wasn't big enough for all three to four hundred people. It was just a small building. And he hit that bamboo and all the people were told that when you hear the bamboo, then you come. And the women were on this side. They were real Mennonites there, you know. All the women sat on one side. I don't know what happened here, but anyway, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. I didn't care where they sat myself. And so the women were on one side. And all their babies were screaming and all they were miserable. They were in there so tight. I mean, almost sitting on top of each other. And the men were on the other side. They just had, they didn't have nice pews like this. [00:46:46] They had these wooden sticks all laid over some big beams. They had some posts in the ground, put these big runners on, and then they had these sticks laying loose in there. And they were sitting on them, and I said, let's sing this little song. Yesus, Yezhinani, Hohoi, Yezhibepero, Yesus, Yezhinani. Ah, they groaned. I thought, well, singing is not going to happen among these people. And I said, now let's pray to the God. Now I'm talking to the spirit, the other spirit. [00:47:21] Oh yes, they talked to the evil spirits, but now this missionary, and all of a sudden it got quiet. They wanted to hear. He's talking to the great clean spirit. And that's the only quiet time in the whole church service, because as soon as I got done with that, I tried to preach. I honestly, folks, tried to preach for the first time in this amended church, in this amended place. But this village domestic pig comes crashing through the leaf walls on the women's side. [00:47:53] A big, big pig. And they had gotten it small, and it's domestic now. The walls were made out of roof matting, the leaves. It was only about three feet high. The roof came down to about eight feet, five feet of desperately needed airspace. When you have a crowd like that and nobody's ever bathed it yet, you know, boy, you need air. You just believe it. And this pig comes crashing through that leaf wall, landed on top of the women on the one side. [00:48:30] Oh, man, everybody screamed and they were beating on them. The men over here were laughing. This was entertainment to them. And finally, finally the pig ended up in the middle aisle. It was just a small aisle in the middle. It was so tight, the front row people's feet were underneath my little table that they'd made me. I was almost backed up to the wall of the church here, you know. And finally, that pig got in the middle aisle. [00:49:03] But those, I said, chief, get them out. And these guys, not using their heads, they're all breaking up the benches and all the sticks and everybody's beating on this pig. The owner now has connections. And now, the pig didn't know where to go. They were on the front and the back and on the men's side, so he had to go back into the women's side. And you won't believe how high up they can go. Way up in the air and came crashing down on the women's side. It was a three-ring circus, them fighting. [00:49:37] And now they're screaming and hollering in the women's side again. I said, Chief, finally they heard me. Get them out the door. Come on. Don't just beat on them. There's no place for them to go. and so finally they got him out and he closed the door, tied it with a vine as if he was going to keep the pig out and I tried to think of, well, where was I, you know, in a foreign language [00:50:09] I wasn't doing that good in that language but the men were fighting because half of the benches were broken and beaten they were sitting in each other's place And even though, it's like when you pack a trunk of a car, you get it all in, but if you have to halfway get to your spare tire, you'll never get it all back in. You notice that? It expands, see? And I think that's what happened there. And they couldn't, and I said, stand in the middle aisle. So now I got the middle aisle full of men, that little aisle. [00:50:41] Finally, I said, now everybody be quiet, and I tried to figure out where I was and started preaching again. But that pig came right on, he was around the other side, the men's side, come crashing through the wall there on the men's side. They were beating him, they grabbed more sticks and beating that pig and now the women could laugh, they laughed at them. And finally they got him out again. And then he comes again, that pig, as if he was demon possessed, came crashing through the walls all the time, making a disturbance. Once he came in right up here at the front right next to the post and he coming right at me and I didn't know and I squeezed against the little table and he squeezed through between me and the back wall and he went right out through, crashed through the other side. [00:51:29] And now I know what you're thinking. In the story of the Bible, wasn't it that the gatherings that the demons got out of the man and where a whole flock of, what was it, 5,000 pigs all went down into the sea, drowned. Well, this pig, oh man, what am I going to do with him? And so now, not only the pig inside the church, but the dogs. The dogs, starving dogs, they never feed the dogs. [00:52:02] And they start, one starts like a siren, just howling. And they chose the church area around the church to do their howling. About 450 dogs, they were all out there howling. It was a noise, you couldn't hear anything. You know, I was trying to say. And then all the babies were screaming and crying and so on. And the women talk. [00:52:32] Oh, those women in those churches always talk. There's always noise on the women's side of the church. I don't know whether they talk to the babies or what they talk to. I finally at Aboy Church kicked all the women out of church. I told them, my wife had a, we ourselves paid for another building, church and she was teaching the women. And I think she got more truth in them than I got. She used planographs and pictures and they all listened. Anyway, friends, it was absolute chaos. [00:53:06] There was no way the dogs would keep howling and the pig would keep crashing the walls. Finally I just quit. It was no use. And I said, let's sing that little song one more time. Well, they couldn't sing it anyway, so I shouldn't have even tried. And I said, okay, you come home, you go home. And I told the chief I'd come back every Sunday afternoon, about four o'clock. It was only a half hour through that small swamp. And so I could do that every Sunday afternoon. And I said, I wish now I hadn't told him that. [00:53:39] And I complained to the Lord. I said, God, you have to help me a little bit. I'm out here trying to preach the gospel, trying to do your work, but this was chaos. And I'm complaining to him. And I said, God, Jesus, what would you have done if you had been there? He wouldn't have been so defeated, would he? What do you think? Do you think he could handle dogs and pigs and screaming babies and talking women? [00:54:12] And the answer came two weeks ago on the Saharim Trail. Didn't you learn anything then? That's all he flashed in my mind. What did I learn then? That in the name of Jesus Christ, the powers of darkness could be broken. And I thought, yeah, that's probably right. The demons were in the pigs and in the dogs and in the babies, whatever. So I went home. I'm going to memorize more of these verses of my authority. [00:54:47] Came Saturday afternoon, I thought, I wonder if I can resist Satan and bind him so that he cannot interfere with the ministry tomorrow afternoon. Do you think you can do that? Can you be at another place a time before and take care of it? And that's what I did, and I quoted Scripture more than I needed to. I later found out you didn't have to quote half the Bible. He knows when you believe in the authority of Christ. And so, I said, pray to God, ask the Holy Spirit to fill me, make sure, hey, you don't want to mess with Satan and the demons if you're not Spirit-filled. [00:55:26] They'll laugh at you. They'll turn on you. It's a matter of authority. And the authority is in Jesus Christ and in His Spirit in us. And so, I did that on Saturday afternoon and I commanded the powers of darkness, no interference, that I met the church same time as you met me last week, no interference in any way or form. In Jesus' name, and I have authority. And I, at that time, used all three premises of my authority. [00:55:56] I thought, you know, the more the better, right? You don't have to use all. The finished work of Christ where it says, by his death he defeated him who has the power of death, even the devil, and delivers them who through the fear of death were all their lifetime in bondage. Jesus, when he died and rose from the dead, delivered us from the power of Satan. He cannot have dominion over us anymore. [00:56:27] The second one is our union with Christ. And that's what we read about. We're seated with him in the heavens, far above all principalities and powers. And so we have, that's our standing in Christ. And so we can use that one. That's our oneness with Christ, our union with Christ. And the third one is 1 John 4, for greater is he that is in us than he that is in the world. So any one of those three you can use, but I'm using all three because, man, you know, I thought the more I quote, the better he's going to listen to me. [00:56:59] No, that's not necessary. So, I did that in another church later on and I quoted half a verse and the noise stopped in the church. I thought, I guess Satan realizes that I have authority and that I'm standing on the word of God. And so, I did that on Saturday. I had a great expectation next Sunday afternoon. I was walking to Amanda wondering what was going to happen. If it didn't work, well, then I'd try something else next week. [00:57:32] And so I'm so new on this, I'm still wondering if it's going to work. Hey, friends, it always works. You take your stand against the powers of darkness in the name of Jesus Christ, and they have to flee from you. They have to quit. And so I got to that church, and it was so quiet. All the women on the one side, all the men on the other side. And it was just so still. I could almost whisper the message I had. [00:58:04] And so, I later, after the service, after I gave him the gospel, I looked for that pig where he was in the village. And he was rooting around the way on the other end of the village. Didn't even know there was a church service going on here. Just like a pig that isn't possessed. Isn't that right? And the dogs, they must have found something to eat. There was no dogs and causing noise. And the babies went to sleep and they were all quiet. [00:58:39] And the women, I can't explain this one. No talking. And I preached the gospel almost in a whisper. And when I got done I said, do any of you want to get relief from this terrible fear of the demons and them controlling your lives and you want to walk with Jesus? And this Yaconeus almost ran down there. And he shook my hand, he grabbed both my hands, he says, Tuan, Tuan, I never heard it like this before. [00:59:16] I want to follow Jesus. And I said, no, that's good, now let go of my hands so I can shake the hands of the elders. There was a row of men there, ten or twelve of them, and they all said the same thing. Ah, it's the second service in that church. The first one, total chaos. The second one, total victory. And that started the amended church with those men. And then later the women would come and all sort of... [00:59:48] Ah, friends, today I said to God on the way home, Oh, I thank you for what's happening. I can't believe it myself. Last week I was blaming you for not helping me out. And this week the victory is ours. The powers of darkness are on the run. Isn't that nice? And I said, God, would you do it one more time in the Hashemah church? That's the big, long church. It's a bigger group. I said, would you do it? Because the back half of them can never hear me. [01:00:18] They can only make rafters so long, so it's a deep church, you know. And half of them could never hear me. And always noise in that church. Men beating up on their wives. Ah, you can't blame them. If you had three wives, you'd have to beat them too to keep them all in line. But they wouldn't have to do it in church, right? Anyway, the children, oh, what a mess Hashima Church was. And they all came because I would tell them what the radio said. [01:00:52] You know, I'd always give a little bit of news. They had no way to know what the rest of the world did. I told them President Kennedy was shot and killed. They said, you mean you white men kill your chief too? I said, yeah. They thought all white men were Christians. That's not quite so, is it? And then when I told them that our men were walking on the moon, and they said, no, Tuan. We looked at the moon last night. We couldn't see him. But, Tuan, you're such a good liar. I could have almost been chief. [01:01:25] Your lies, you know what makes your lies so good, they said? because you believe them yourself. Oh, man, I'm saying, no, I don't buy Tehran. That's just another one. And so on. So, I, but they started to believe after this. But in that Hashemite church, I mean, I walked a great expectation on a Sunday morning. And I had to resist it, Satan. No interference with the message from my heart to their hearts [01:02:00] Not from my mouth to their ears No, it's got to go from your heart to their hearts It's got to go in And so I stood in front of that church That long church I looked all the way to the guy sitting on the back And everybody was staring at me and listening to me And there was no interference There was no noise There was nothing They could all hear me You know, we don't have mics in churches like that. And so you've got to be heard. [01:02:31] And so, and here came men. They said, yes, I want to walk with Jesus. And again, there was a crowd of people started that church off. And then one day, I don't know what happened. There was an emergency in my home. And I didn't, I hadn't resisted Satan ahead of time. Sometimes I would do them on the way to church, you know, going through the jungle. But I hadn't. I was thinking about something else. [01:03:03] And I'm standing in front of the people in that church. And, oh man, the noise, the problems. And I thought, oh no, I forgot to do this. And Satan took advantage of them. He was, I guess he was poking the people. I don't know what he was doing to them. But they were all upset and fussing and noising. And I thought, oh, this is a waste, it's a long trip to Hashem. So I walked down the aisle of the church, and the chief was at the door. [01:03:34] And he said, chief, don't let anybody out, I'll be right back. Just hang on. He thought I was going to the washroom or somewhere in the jungle, whatever. But I said, I got out of earshot. Well, I could still hear the noise in the church. I hear that. And I said, Satan, in Jesus' name, I command you to get out and get out of that church. It belongs to Jesus Christ. You have no place there. And in Jesus' name, I command you. [01:04:06] At first I said to him, I forgot something this morning, Satan, and you know what it is and I know what it is. But now I tell you, I command you to stop. In Jesus' name, stop and go. Resist you. Jesus binds you from causing trouble. And as I was saying this, the noise in the church goes down. Now, I had to quote some scripture, right? [01:04:38] So I started the first halfway through the first verse and the noise dies down. So now I know that you don't have to quote the whole Bible, Adam. He knows when he's defeated. He knows that you stand on truth and so on. So, and that service went great and other people were again coming to Christ. And that's the way it went everywhere from then on. I wouldn't go anywhere, I wouldn't preach anywhere without telling Satan where I'm going and to be bound to be absent. [01:05:09] No interference in the name of Jesus Christ and quoting the scripture. I knew it ahead of time. And man, everywhere people started to turn to Christ. and it was like a mass movement. It was never, it wasn't trying to win a single man. Just, they coming in groups and turning to the Lord. And I taught my preacher boys later on to resist Satan and to bind the powers of darkness. And they learned, can you imagine a native man who was so in fear of the powers of darkness [01:05:44] now take boldly saying the name of Jesus Christ. I command you to get out of my house and quote in the wrong verse. Ah, God will let him do it. He's still quoting the Bible, and Satan knows the Bible. But this kind of thing. My wife, I taught her, my son, eight years old, came to my bedroom one night, my oldest child, And he said, Daddy, come with me. There's something in my room. I'm so scared. I think it's the demons or something like that. [01:06:23] I said, well, son, resist him in Jesus' name. I didn't go there and do it for him. I want him to get the experience and I'm so glad he got the experience. And he says, yeah, but Daddy, you're a great big missionary, Daddy, and I'm just a little kid. And I said, it's not your power nor my power, it's the power of Jesus' name that gives the victory. And then quote the verse, greater is he that is in me than he is in the world, because he is in you. And that boy went and he was all the way across, his bedroom was on the other end of the house. [01:07:00] Oh, you better believe that we prayed for him, that he would, next morning he woke me up, he says, Daddy, it works, it works. I said, what are we? He says, the demons left. I slept good the rest of the night. They're gone. I said, yeah. It works. And that's how the natives came to my door. He says, two of them, it worked, it worked. They were after my favorite wife. If he had gone after my other wife, I would have just forgot about my favorite wife. [01:07:33] And he said I was so scared I put the grass mat over my head and just shook in fear. And then I remembered what you taught us. Now he couldn't be a church leader, but I was teaching the young men to be church leaders. and Bide was such a good fellow Christian, had such good influence in the village and he said, Tuan, I'd like to learn this. I said, sit at the back of my preacher's class. Just sit quietly and listen. And he'd sit there with my son. [01:08:04] My eight-year-old son would sit there with him and he would learn. and so that's how Bidet resisted Satan and saved his family from attacks of the demons and he says, I've still got all my kids and I've still got my two wives. So, my son became a missionary in Japan, Shimanosiki, a city in the southernmost point of Honshu Island, the main island. The headquarters are the main city of the Shintoism and Buddhism. [01:08:41] They weren't too far from the Shinto shrines that, you know, how to weep and cry and carry on. Other missionaries had been in the city, but now three missionaries, he was one of them, three couples went in, and others had, there was so much pressure. He's got two sons, my two grandsons. He said, they screamed at night, they're so fearful. And they kept us awake sometimes. They were afraid, what are you afraid of son? They didn't know but just dreams and stuff. [01:09:19] And then he said, I remembered from my childhood what you taught me. and he says I address those powers of darkness there in Japan no interference with my sons or anybody in this house sleeping you have no part in this house in the name of Jesus Christ leave us alone, flee from us, go to scripture and he did that several times and there's no bad dreams anymore and the kids slept well and no problems with them [01:09:51] And so, I don't know, there's a lot of kids' fear and screaming and so on in America, isn't there? And the power of Jesus' name can stop all that. So, made a believer out of his wife. His wife grew up as a missionary daughter and she didn't really believe on this talking to Satan. And so, she made a believer out of her when the kids straightened out. That meant a lot to her. So, friends, the power of Jesus Christ is stronger than the power of Satan. [01:10:26] We can be bold in Jesus' name. We learn the scriptures and quote these scriptures that I've taught you tonight. And just address them and say, in Jesus' name, we are under new management. We are under Christ. And He's greater than you are. Alright? Let's pray. O Heavenly Father, we pray that you might give us such a desire, such a desire to have victory, to be overcomers. [01:10:57] We're against the powers of darkness, we know that. And he's causing havoc in churches and havoc in homes and havoc in America and everywhere else. As if he's in total control and he's ruling the place. And Father, we pray that you might help us as Christians to be faithful to you, to take our authority and to put a stop to these things in our own lives when we're tempted, in our families and so on. We pray that you might give every person in this room tonight, young and old, the joy of knowing that powers of darkness are fleeing from them. [01:11:37] Give them that joy so that they might become believers like my daughter-in-law was in Japan. We pray that they might have the joy of seeing Satan flee from them and getting relief and victory and over besetting sins which many are confessing over and over again, oh God, that they might have victory over those things when they resist the evil one in their thought life and in their actions and so on. Father, we might have a measure of victory which we've never had before. [01:12:11] Bless this church, bless these people, we pray. And then for tomorrow we pray that you might bring us together with great joy and great expectation to hear your word. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.