Satan was here when Adam walked in the garden. Deception and lies were his first weapons used to steal Adam’s birthright, and thus his legal rights to have dominion over this earth and his own life. When God spoke the prophecy about the coming Messiah being born from a woman, Satan knew he was in big trouble. He had used murder to prevent the Messiah from being born, many different times throughout the pages of the Bible. He even used Herod to kill thousands of innocent babies as a last attempt to prevent the birth of Christ.
Satan hates God for kicking him out of heaven to the earth. Many scholars believe that he was responsible for the destruction and chaos that God had to bring order to at creation. When Satan saw God form man and create him a living soul, he became livid, with one mission in mind; to destroy everything about man. Since man gave Satan legal authority over this world through his disobedience, the devil is known as the ‘Ruler of Darkness’, the ‘god of this age’ and as the ‘Prince and Power of the atmosphere’.
When Daniel prayed for his people, it took God’s angels 21 days to break through this ‘prince of the air’, with the answer. We are not given the details of how this warfare is carried out in the atmosphere around us, but we know from both Scripture and personal testimony that it is a very real battle between good and evil.
God created man with a living soul, as a spirit being who is capable of having fellowship with Him as our Heavenly Father. Fellowship that will be forever denied to Satan. How would you feel if you lost your high position of authority as heaven’s choir director, only to find that a mud ball was now going to sing those praises that you once did and dwell in beauty and wonder that you will never see again?
Most times when we do wrong we automatically point the finger at Eve, or as Satan, at God. Since Adam and Eve sinned, we all are now born sinners, making it impossible to be good enough in our own selves to attain heaven. We need a Messiah, who can pay the price of His Blood for our sinfulness, making access to our Father viable once more as it was in the garden. Jesus said this is accomplished through faith in Him and by being Born Again of the water and of the Spirit. Our spirits died when Adam lost fellowship with his Father outside the garden. Our flesh cannot be born a second time, but our spirit can have the darkness removed so we can fellowship with our Father in the Light of His Son, Jesus Christ.
Israel, in the Old Testament, had a constant temptation to serve false gods and idols instead of serving Yahweh. He constantly had to reprimand them for disobedience. He loves them and has chosen them to be His children but they continually fail at keeping His Law, thus breaking His fellowship with them, and bringing forth His judgment upon their sins. God is Just and Holy and cannot dwell with sin and disobedience. Yet man insists on practicing sinful lifestyles that keep him from the Father’s love and fellowship.
We need a Savior, and this is what Paul says about the Law. It was a schoolmaster teaching us our need of just that, a Christ. Christ came to fulfill the Law and now we have total righteousness by faith in Him alone. It is not by our works but by His Grace that we are saved from God’s judgment on our sinful ways. His Blood has to cover our sins before we can be pure enough to fellowship with our Holy Father. If there are no sinful ways, then there is fellowship with our Father.
When Satan was cast out of Heaven, he took 1/3 of the angels with him. He also tempted other good angels into becoming involved with the daughters of men. The result of this produced offspring that were giants. The spirits of these giants, after death, gave the world it’s demonic population of evil and unclean spirits. Jesus came off from a forty day fast and immediately began an attack against these demons, saying that He saw Satan fall as lightening from heaven. He came to destroy the works of the devil, and said that He had bound the strongman of this world, Satan, and spoiled his house. Jesus did this when He descended first into the lower parts of the earth and took from Satan the keys to death, hell and the grave. Satan is a conquered foe and waiting for his sentence in the Lake of Fire to be carried out. He now expects His church to do the same, by telling the devil to get out of our families.
But most people do not know this, not even most Christians. We have been taught that Christ defeated Satan and now all we have to deal with is conquering this carnal flesh. We don’t talk about the devil or demons. These were left behind in the days of the Apostles, or they are very rarely manifested today. We thus have bought into the devil’s lies and deceptions, the same ones that he used on Eve; ‘We have become our own gods, knowing what is best for us without anyone else telling us’. In the meantime the world is going to hell in a handbasket while we are busy entertaining ourselves with our degrees and technology.
We are at war with evil, a personal evil, a supernatural evil, spearheaded by Satan himself. The devil is not some funny looking cartoon character with horns sticking out of his head, dressed in leotards and carrying a pitchfork. He is real and he is your enemy. He has sent demonic messengers into the world to stand against you and do all they can to keep you from being the person God wants you to be. The war is not restricted to adult bookstores, bars, and sorcery shops. The war has moved inside governments, schools, churches and homes. Demons are like flies, they swarm to the blood oozing from fresh wounds.
We have already seen the rise of the Occult in New Age teachings and many forms of Witchcraft. There is a flourishing of mediums, psychics, seers, and fortune tellers. Child abuse, sexual immorality, homosexuality, pornography, unnatural sexual relationships, and demonically inspired movies, music, and video games are common nowadays. You can find demonically oriented materials at the local mall, stores selling comic books, role playing video games, all packaged with ancient cultic deities, right along with their fictional characters, themes, and plot lines. Frequent exposure to these materials is the cause of demonic activity in a person’s life. Once the door is opened, other demons soon take advantage and create a stronghold that exerts negative influences all around this individual.
Multitudes of Christians admit to being in bondage to feelings, thoughts, and actions that they know are incompatible with their faith. They feel strongly, irresistibly drawn toward evil, often compulsively repeating sins that repulse them, yet against which they feel powerless. Often this bondage can be traced to one or two areas; sexual immorality or rebellion against spiritual authority, especially parental authority. Frequently it involves both.
When you give in to improper sexual expressions or a disrespectful attitude toward authority, you offer the enemy a foothold in your life. Many Christians recognize that something is amiss. They know, for some reason, that their Christian lives are not working, yet few suspect a demonic dimension to their problems. Unchallenged, the demon’s influences do not go away, but expand their areas of operation, taking away even more ground from the person they are attacking.
I have just recently had my eyes opened to the many ways that the devil is destroying people’s lives all around me. I, like many, had medicated some soul wounds by means of this world, and allowed myself to be lulled asleep. When I began to research into why Christians had such a tough time staying close to their Father, and live double lives, I found six reasons for the hypocrisy.
1-They have wounds deep inside their souls that they have buried and never dealt with.
2-This has led to medications for the flesh to be able to ignore the pain.
3-Demons are alive and well on planet earth and are drawn to the weak and bleeding.
4-Once these demons find a foothold or a portal (see The Portals of the Soul of Man series) they build a stronghold.
5-Once the stronghold is built, Christians live in ways that they know to be wrong, but are powerless to change by themselves.
6-they need deliverance and then sanctification, or set apart, to only have fellowship with their Father and not the world’s pleasures.
This is what this series will be about. Educating about Satan’s war for your soul and about the process of enslavement, as well as deliverance.
The world of entertainment is steeped in sexual, violent, and dark overtones. According to Teen Mania, by the time the average child graduates from high school he will have watched nineteen thousand hours of TV, including about two hundred thousand sexual acts and one million acts of violence. The internet can be, and many times is, an open door to pornography and occult groups. Our young have been involved with objectionable material on the web on a continual basis, resulting in aggressive behavior, nightmares, fear, depression, desensitization to violence; affecting school work, mood and behavior toward others.
There are shows portraying magic, psychic powers, and vampires, as a normal part of life. Many are steeped in Eastern religion and mysticism. Pokemon has around 150 creatures, each having their own magical power. Children are encouraged to carry the card on them at all times, as they give them Pokemon power that will supposedly make them ready for anything.
Many teens view television as an important source of information about birth control, contraception, and pregnancy prevention. They feel TV programs give guidance about ideas for how to talk to their boyfriend or girlfriend about sexual issues and norms for sexual behavior. One out of every four sexually active teens are diagnosed with a STD. 19 million STD infections are diagnosed annually; with nearly half of them affecting teens and young adults between ages 15-24.
This is enough for now to show you that we need to wake up to the destructive lifestyles of our young people all around us. There is more going on than trying to be our own god, deciding our own way. There is another invisible force inputting thoughts and desires into our minds to encourage us to, ‘if it feels good, do it’, knowing that the more habitual that ‘feel-good action’ becomes, the sooner a demon will be telling us when and how much, just like a drug addict with no control of their own.
Click here for Satan’s War for Your Soul-Part Two