Deliver Us From Evil, Part 9

 

April 26, 2019

 

We will continue the discussion today that we began last week in dealing with the words that appear in Scripture that define witchcraft, or its tentacles.  If I didn’t mention it last week, let me say that there are seven words used through Scripture that translate out to “witchcraft,” “sorcery,” “necromancy,” and all the varieties thereof.

 

People today – and especially believing Christians – have no idea of the things they accept as “normal” in today’s world that are some variant of witchcraft or sorcery.  By the way, we generally use the word, “witchcraft,” when we are referring to women or the feminine usage of manipulation.  “Sorcery” refers to the masculine or male activity in this realm.

 

We will be digging into a specific aspect of witchcraft in this series which addresses the Spirit of Jezebel.  The various forms of sexual perversion we see in society today are a direct product of this specific spirit.  The entire LGBTQ grouping of people are victims of this spirit – and they are totally oblivious to it.  We will get to that discussion in the weeks to come.

 

Before we get too far along, I know that the word, pharmakeia, conjures up visions of pharmacists – and it is the word that “pharmacist” comes from.  Let me say that I’m not suggesting that pharmacists are sorcerers who practice witchcraft – not all of them, anyway.

 

(Hehehehehehe……….)  I have very close friends – committed Christians – who have been in the pharmaceutical world for many years, and they are anything but sorcerers.

That said, there is much of the medical industry today that people overly rely on that falls into the category of sorcery.  We refer to it as “Big Pharma.”  This is a personal opinion so take it for what it’s worth.

 

Let me give you an illustration of an application.

 

Our youngest son, Joshua, got himself into some fights when he was in junior high and wound up in juvenile hall for a time.  A psychiatrist was assigned to him, diagnosed him as “hyper-active” and prescribed Prozac for him.  We knew nothing about the psychiatrist, or his diagnosis, or his prescription until we got a phone call from Josh.  He was talking really slow and sounded horribly depressed – not the norm for Josh at all.

 

We asked him what was wrong and he said, “Nothing.  The doctor gave me some medication, and it is making me feel really funny.”  Della immediately called the institution, and they referred her to a psychiatrist.  When he told Della what he had prescribed, she demanded that he cancel the prescription on pain of a lawsuit.  He hemmed and hawed around, and finally admitted he was “experimenting” with Joshua to see if he could cure his “hyper-activity.”  He agreed to cancel the prescription, but told Della that we would be held responsible if Joshua “commits any acts of violence” in the institution.

 

It was the use of fear to force our compliance with his “experimentation,” and we made it clear to him in no uncertain terms that Joshua was not a violent person, and that his prescriptions were entirely unacceptable.  (I’m putting it nicely, if you know what I mean.  Hehehehehehe………..  We didn’t use any “colorful metaphors” in our discussion with him.)

 

We went through a similar scenario with Serena – our then-two-year-old granddaughter – when she was in critical condition after being stricken with Transverse Myelitis.  She had different doctors and different nurses prescribing and administering drugs they hoped would help her – and the nurses who were supposed to be watching Serena couldn’t be bothered to follow the doctors’ instructions carefully.

 

So one of them decided on her own to administer a sedative – on top of the cocktail of medications already being administered!  Serena would come out of her unconscious state and moan, and the nurse didn’t want to tend to her.  Her solution was to keep Serena in an unconscious state.  As soon as we found out what had happened, we filed a formal complaint and the nurse was fired.

 

Well, I’m sort of off track here, but I wanted to give you some illustrations of how drugs are used to manipulate emotions and feelings by some within the medical community who have no sense of care and concern for those under their care and keeping.  It’s witchcraft – pure and simple.

 

There’s another illustration of pharmakeia as witchcraft and sorcery that just about everyone can relate to: heroin, coke, PCP, marijuana, methamphetamines, etc., etc.: the drugs that have invaded our society with a curse beyond all comprehension.  Men and women who take these drugs have their minds and thought processes so altered they open themselves up to demonic activity, and frequently commit criminal acts of heinous nature.

 

The drug culture today has invaded the body of Christ in several ways, and there are – unfortunately – many Christian young people who get deceived into “trying” marijuana or some other supposedly harmless drug, not realizing they are opening themselves up to demonic activity.  Because the drugs cause an altered state of consciousness, the individuals are no longer in control of their minds, their wills, their thoughts or their moral and spiritual anchors.  It presents what I’ve come to call “open doors” for evil spirits to take control – if even for a short time – of the individual’s thoughts and actions.

 

Open those doors often enough, and leave them open repeatedly through the use of drugs (AND hard liquor), and you’ve presented Satan with an invitation to take control of your life in ways you would never normally and rationally allow.  The folks at AA treat alcoholism as “drug addiction,” and indeed it has the same effect.

 

During the 1960’s, I worked with David Wilkerson in Teen Challenge (the nationwide ministry that treats drug addicts) in the San Francisco Bay area, and in Los Angeles; and we treated alcoholics in virtually the same way as we treated drug addicts.

 

There are many would-be Christians who imbibe regularly in hard liquor, and think nothing of it.  “After all, I don’t get drunk very often, and I don’t drive when I drink.”  What a rotten excuse!  Since when do we take our inspiration, or our relaxation from stress (stress is something no Christian has a right to) from distilled “spirits.”  Brother, talk about an apt description of hard liquor!  It is “spirits” all right!  Evil spirits.

 

Isaiah (28:7) talked about it like this: “But they also have erred through wine, and through strong drink are out of the way; the priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink, they are swallowed up of wine, they are out of the way through strong drink; they err in vision, they stumble in judgment.”

 

Obviously the Lord was addressing the fact that the leaders of His people were leading folks down the primrose path because their ability to hear Him had been contaminated.  What they were hearing was something the Lord wasn’t saying.  It was coming from “other spirits.”

 

Now I know you are saying to yourself, “what does any of this have to do with witchcraft?”

 

When you boil down every aspect of witchcraft or sorcery, it all has one very simple purpose: to manipulate; to alter one’s normal decision-making process; to take control of a person’s thoughts, and by consequence, his or her subsequent actions.  Witchcraft, therefore, is simply Manipulation and Control of an individual, either through taking over their thoughts through drugs, drinks, potions or music, or playing with the circumstances surrounding them in such a way that they believe a lie and act accordingly.

 

I wish this were all there were to pharmakeia, but there’s more.

 

The body of Christ has fallen into the trap of pharmakeia through the subtlety of its slow and systematic intrusion into our modern society in ways most folks don’t think a thing about.

 

Let me ask you a question.  What’s the first thing you think about when you get a headache?  Do you rebuke the headache in the name of Jesus and take authority over it, or do you head for the medicine cabinet for an aspirin tablet?  Don’t answer that!  I don’t need to hear the answer; I already know what it is.

 

What’s the first thing you do when you start to get the sniffles and you think you’re coming down with a cold?  Declare the promises of healing in the Scripture (“I will put none of these diseases upon you……for I am the Lord that healeth thee;” or “By whose stripes ye were healed,” or “But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings,” or “who healeth all thy diseases,” etc.) or head to the drugstore to pick up some cold remedy?

 

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not condemning anyone for using aspirin or anything else.  What I’m saying is that we have been programmed through pharmakeia – witchcraft – in our society to trust the substitute, the counterfeit, instead of taking Jesus Christ at His Word!  Our thoughts and our decisions have been programmed by lying spirits.

 

I refer to aspirin and various medical remedies as “counterfeit” because they don’t heal you.  These medicines simply make you feel better in the midst of your sickness or affliction.  Your ultimate healing still comes from the Lord instead of the medical profession.  The problem is that we’ve been programmed to follow a routine of heading for the medicine cabinet instead of declaring our health and walking in it by faith.  Pharmakeia becomes the substitute for faith.

 

Have I stepped on enough toes yet?  Ouch, anyone?

 

II Chronicles 16:12: And Asa in the thirty and ninth year of his reign was diseased in his feet, until his disease was exceeding great: yet in his disease he sought not to the LORD, but to the physicians.

 

That was NOT a compliment!  The following verses make it clear that, although he was descended from David, he did not get buried in the graves or sepulchres of the Kings.  Instead he was buried in his own grave, AFTER cremating him!  It is one of the very few examples in the Word where a leader was cremated instead of being buried with honors.  He had, in fact, succumbed to the Spirit of Witchcraft in the form of pharmakeia, which was overtaking the land.

 

Let me tell you, it takes the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, and the transformation of our thought processes to redeem us from the witchcraft and the control of our minds and thought processes that has invaded our society.  It is nothing less than wicked!

 

God’s people today are regularly deprived of the promises inherent in our relationship with Jesus Christ by virtue of the fact that their minds and thoughts have been programmed into believing the lies that pervade western culture.

 

We trust the doctors and the medicines more than we trust the Lord.  We trust the banks and credit unions more than we trust the Lord to help us in our finances.  We’ve accepted Mammon as God when it comes to operating in a financial realm because “this is the way things are done.”

 

We have a society living beyond their means and capabilities by virtue of the credit card mentality we’ve had shoved in our face year after year after year.  It’s easy.  You bet!  And it teaches us to sign our lives away and put us in bondage to others who control our financial destinies instead of being free to use our resources as God directs.

 

Witchcraft?  You bet!  Our minds have been altered.  Our thoughts have been altered.  Our dependencies have been altered.  Our trust has been altered.  When it comes to things like health, healing, finances and the like, the promises in God’s Word become almost mythical in the face of the expectations we’ve grown up with.  We don’t expect to be healed.  We expect to take an aspirin, or maybe a penicillin shot, or a flu shot, or some other such thing.

 

We don’t expect God to prosper us.  We look to our employer and our weekly paychecks as our sources.  The Word of God and God’s promises to us have been shuttled into oblivion.  I’d be willing to venture that three-quarters of all Christians on the face of the earth – Nawwww…..make that 90 percent – have no clue what their inheritance in Jesus Christ is, nor do they even conceive of Him having an inheritance in us.

 

It get’s worse, folks!

 

The witchcraft has so permeated the body of Christ that we have preachers who laughingly and mockingly refer to any teaching or preaching on God’s promise to bless His people as “the Prosperity Gospel.”  They ridicule it, and they ridicule the Word in which John makes it perfectly clear in his third epistle to the Body of Christ.  If this teaching is so ungodly, then why did John write the following:

 

III John, V2:  Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.

 

Of course it is conditional!  Of course there are requirements for that to be a nonstop lifestyle.  Just because there are requirements does not negate the truth of it!  The very fact that God has made so many promises concerning His desire to bless and prosper His people above all the people on the earth ought to be a non-stop focus in the lives of believers to achieve those promises in reality in their daily lives!

 

The fact that so many believers do not accept that truth is proof of the fact that they have been lied to and deceived by the Enemy.

 

Lots more to come, folks!  See you next week.

 

In case you are missing out on real fellowship in an environment of Ekklesia, our Sunday worship gatherings are available by conference call – usually at about 10:30AM Pacific.  That conference number is (712) 770-4160, and the access code is 308640#.  We are now making these gatherings available on video using ZOOM.  If you wish to participate by video on ZOOM, our login ID is 835-926-513.  If you miss the live voice-only call, you can dial (712) 770-4169, enter the same access code and listen in later.  The video call, of course, is not recorded – not yet, anyway.

Blessings on you!

 

           

Regner A. Capener
CAPENER MINISTRIES

RIVER WORSHIP CENTER
Temple, Texas 76504

Email Contact: CapenerMinistries@protonmail.com

 

All Coffee Break articles are copyright by Regner A. Capener, but authorization for reprinting, reposting, copying or re-use, in whole or in part, is granted –provided proper attribution and this notice are included intact. Older Coffee Break archives are available . Coffee Break articles are normally published weekly.

If you would like to have these articles arrive each morning in your email, please send a blank email to: AnotherCoffeeBreak@protonmail.com with the word, “Subscribe” in the subject line.  To remove yourself from the mailing list, please send a blank email to AnotherCoffeeBreak@protonmail.com with the word “Unsubscribe” in the subject line.

 

CAPENER MINISTRIES is a tax-exempt church ministry. Should you desire to participate and covenant with us as partners in this ministry, please contact us at either of the above email or physical addresses, or visit: http://www.RiverWorshipCenter.org.