How To Properly Discern a Religious Spirit?
4 Feb
I know you have heard a lot of talk on religious spirits. If you are new to church (as we know it), or if you’ve been in church for over 40 years, this term may baffle you because you have been taught that – as the song goes ‘Religion SO sweet…’
We all have been lulled into a semi- or fully-delusional state where we are drugged into believing something we know deep down inside ‘just isn’t right.’ We just went to church and went along with the programs to get along. We didn’t want to rock the boat, so to speak, out of fear that we would be labeled ‘rebellious,’ ‘unfaithful,’ ‘unteachable,’ or a host of other names leadership likes to place on thinking people who were blessed with common sense AND wisdom to know game when they see it.
Yet even the most discerning, the most wise, the most street-wise of us check our brains in at the door of a church once we enter therein. We erroneously think that we are NOT supposed to use the wisdom and common sense GOD HIMSELF has blessed us with once we walk through the doors of a church. We erroneously believe that God does NOT deal with our minds at all. So any inkling deep down in our guts and minds that game is being played we suppress that, thinking that it’s the devil trying to get us ‘out of the ship.’
How do we properly discern a Religious Spirit?
Well, for starters, I want to present to you that after we are born again, we should not check in our brains at the door. EVERYTHING that God has allowed you to learn-whether it was via books and a teacher, or on the streets, or by life experience-EVERYTHING has been allowed to happen in your life so that you can LEARN A LESSON from it. The good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful. We have to learn to not have any regrets…even over mistakes.
Human beings are learning creatures. From the moment we are born into the earth, until the hour we breathe our last breath, we are supposed to be in a CONSTANT state of learning, and probably re-learning, too.
If your gut tells you something ain’t right, then TRUST YOUR INSTINCT!
A religious spirit knows how to look holy, righteous. Just by first glance, you can’t tell the difference between a holy person and a religious one. They will look just like the woman above.
But as time goes on, and you start spending time with that person, you will start to notice inconsistencies. Certain things just wouldn’t line up. You will start seeing glaring imperfections and brazen outright sin in their lives…but the more those weeds in their lives manifest, the more they try to COVER IT UP with works of righteousness, more church work, more random acts of kindness to strangers, more religious works.
The more works of religion and righteousness they do, you will begin to notice that their life does not line up with the Word of God. They will sin and not be convicted of it. They will not respond to the conviction of the Holy Ghost of sin and justify sin, or be in outright denial about their sinful state. And the more they do this, the more active they get in the church. They do more ‘church work,’ hold more revivals, conferences, and convocations, preach harder, prophesy harder…all in an effort to gain their OWN righteousness, to atone for their sins on their own. Their mindset is ‘If I stay in church enough, that will make up for my fornicating last night,’ or ‘If I do A & B, then that will make up for my dealing drugs at that school…’
The demon starts to manifest by then. And it looks a little something like this:
By now, the church lady is cussing, drinking, smoking, lying, threatening to cut folks. When she goes to church, she has her hands upraised. Praising God, speaking in tongues, running around the church, preaching….the whole nine. But when you see her in situations that require her to have patience, she has none. This religious spirit has NO patience. It wants what it wants, when it wants it! They gotta preach…NOW! They gotta prophesy….NOW! They gotta get married…NOW! You wanna see if someone has a religious spirit, tell them NO…or WAIT. If they go off in a tantrum, then you got a religious spirit on your hands!
A religious spirit also is very unaware of the very real fact that they are, too, flawed individuals…with sin. They swim in a pool of SELF-DENIAL. They are in self-denial about EVERYTHING. But the one thing they are in self-denial about is the state of their own selves.
A religious spirit is a potentially dangerous spirit, for there is nothing-NOTHING-a religious spirit WON’T do to protect THEIR IMAGE! THEIR IMAGE IS EVERYTHING TO THEM!!! They don’t believe in self-exposure or disclosure. When they fall into sin, drastic measures are taken to COVER UP their sin. If the religious spirit is a pastor, he/she will employ the help of the church to participate in the cover up. They will use fear tactics and mishandle the Word of God to manipulate and control people into doing what THEY want them to do.
A religious spirit NEEDS an entourage. They need a following. If they dont have anyone following them, they feel useless, rejected, persecuted even. This is when a religious spirit-that demonic spirit-will FULLY manifest….right before your eyes!
A religious spirit is a proud one. It won’t ever admit to being wrong, or doing wrong.
When you have discerned that you are dealing with a religious spirit, the only thing to do is to get away from them. Because until the person comes into the realization and revelation that they have something DEMONIC that’s driving them to do things in church, or do ministry, or for a good cause, there is nothing that can be done for them. Religious spirits are SO insidious and subtle that its hard to recognize….at first glance. It takes TIME to observe a person in all their various atmospheres to determine if they have a religious spirit or not.
In ‘Faces of a Religious Demon’ by Pam Sheppard, many faces of the religious spirit/demon are exposed. It is one of the most thorough teachings on religious spirits that I have ever read.
To find out more on how to discern a religious spirit, get your copy today!
Why Churches Can’t Cast Out Demons
4 Feb
Casting out demons 2000 years ago was a lot more elementary and certainly less complicated than what believers have to contend with today. For as the world evolved from an agricultural to an industrial society, so have demons and devils adjusted to the ever-increasing sophistication of modern times. For example, with the advent of the telephone, who would have thought that it could be used to cast out devils? I certainly never considered it until spontaneously, I was compelled to do so and then was shocked when it actually worked!
I believe the year was 2002 when I received a phone call from Doris Wagner, the author of “How to Cast Out Demons” and the wife of one of the well-known evangelical leaders, the late Dr. Peter Wagner of the Fuller Theological Seminary Institute of Church Growth in Colorado. I had requested that Doris write a review of my first book, “To the Curse the Root,” and she did so. A few years later, she called me on the phone with a request that I conduct a deliverance of a minister who lived in my state. At the time, she could locate only two deliverance workers in NY, one in Buffalo and myself.
The minister in question who I’ll simply call, “Rev,” had obtained Doris’s book because he needed to be set free from a demon. Prepared to fly from NY to Colorado, Rev was desperate. Too busy to handle his case, Doris did a search on the web to find someone from his home state and I was the only one online that she could find in New York, besides the man in Buffalo, who did not return her call. So, “I was all she wrote.”
A day or so later, Rev. called me. In short, he was too suspicious of me to travel the 3 hours to my city and that same suspicion would not allow him to accept my invitation to travel to him. So, exasperated with this demon, I simply commanded it to come out of him over the telephone, and I was as shocked as Rev. was. He was immediately delivered over the airways.
Pompous and proud, a bona-fide mega preacher wannabee, the “Rev” boastfully said to me, “Pam, when I get big, I’ll look out for you.” I guess he never got big because that was 16 years ago, and I have not heard from him yet! The truth of the matter, with such a proud spirit, I would not be surprised to hear that demons have re-infested him, in one way or the other.
So I know you are wondering how “Rev. Mr. Big” became demonized in the first place! A single man, the Rev had been sleeping with one of the single women who was a member of the congregation that he pastored. His girlfriend was the leader of the church’s “deliverance team.” On the night that the Rev. was demonized, his girlfriend and the rest of the team were in the church building, casting out demons from someone— when the demons turned on them, very much like is recorded in the book of Acts concerning the sons of Sceva. The demon or demons in the captive used the captive’s body to jump on the members of the deliverance team and “conduct a beat down”.
The girlfriend frantically ran to the telephone—-check this out–and called Rev.
He had been in a deep, coma like sleep and he woke up and picked up the phone, only to hear his girlfriend screaming in fright. Not fully understanding what was going on, all of a sudden, he saw something that he described as “a silver ball like thing,” rolling like a bowling ball down his alley and entered into his chest. Until he contacted Doris and then me, he had been possessed with a spirit of fear for about 6 weeks. He was afraid to come out of his house, and preaching from his pulpit was particularly challenging, to say the least. The fear was so debilitating, that he was anxious to fly to Colorado from NY for Doris Wagner to set him free.
When I suggested that he travel to me, a distance of about 3 hours by bus, train or car, he refused. He was too fearful for that. He could take a plane because he could sit down in the seat and close his eyes. But he could not handle any other kind of transportation. There is a flight from his city to mine, that takes about 45 minutes but we never thought of that at the time. So I offered to travel to New York City but the Rev refused because he was both fearful and suspicious of me, for I was in no way as noteworthy as Doris Wagner. So while he was yet speaking, the Holy Ghost moved on me and I commanded the spirit to come out of him.
It did so immediately.
This may seem like a simple deliverance success story. However, it is not. There is much more to it than meets the eye. So what am I suggesting about this incident?
Rev. was not saved, his girlfriend was not saved, and the demons had taken over the entire sanctuary. If I had travelled to him and attempted to conduct the deliverance in the Rev’s church, I suspect that the demon would NOT have come out of him.
Thank God for the telephone and thank God for Mr. Alexander Graham Bell.
Those who practice Deliverance 101 would boast, “Oh, this case is elementary. Rev. and his girlfriend were committing the sin of fornication, so they became vulnerable to demons. Sins gives ground to the devil. They put themselves in harm’s way by trying to cast out demons from people. Case closed. Simple.
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No, it is not so simple. For there is MORE! This one case did more than just reveal to me that demons can be cast out over the telephone. When I revisit the experience today, I can apply what 16 additional years under my belt have taught me. My experience with “the Rev” confirms what I have suspected for the last decade–a revelatory question that led me to write the next 5 books: Faces of the Religious Demon, Come Out of Her God’s People, the New Idolatry, the Church of the end-time Zombies and the recently released e-book, Be Delivered From Deliverance Ministry.
So here goes, the question.
Have religious devils already taken over the pulpits throughout the entire organized church, perhaps the pulpits of entire nation, perhaps pulpits worldwide?
I suggest to you an emphatic “yes!!!!”
The First Step to Deliverance
Spiritual Warfare Library of PSM 