Text: Psalm 80:1ff
God saves by turning on His strength. The ministry of turning begins with Christ. You cannot be said to have met Christ except He has turned you. The Lord teaches you to turn you. The Lord commissioned Paul to turn believers by causing their eyes to be opened (Acts 26:17-18). Paul was to be delivered so he could deliver. This is vital because the destiny of every believer will not be realised until he/she turns. Being turned by Christ is preparation of the saint to be turned by God. What they are to be turned from is called “the power of Satan”. This power of Satan is less than Satan himself because it is what he uses.
Laying on of hands or conducting deliverance services cannot deliver a man from Satan’s power. In fact, there is no deliverance that is being conducted for men from Satan’s power. The power of satan is connected to the blindness of men. The opening of the eyes, which is Paul’s commission is not that which blind Bartimeus experienced. After physical eyes have been opened, there is another eye that must open, which is the eye of understanding of believers. It takes some time for these set of eyes to be open.
It is possible for a believer to go to heaven and not have experienced the deliverance tied to the opening of the eyes of believers. Fasting and prayer do not make the word of God powerful; what it does is that it causes the preacher align with it. Unfortunately, many ministers have not even found the word of God. The gospel of Christ is the power of God (Rom. 1:16, 1 Cor. 1:24). Preaching anything lesser than this is preaching something else. A believer asking God for His power is asking for Christ.
Jesus has many names. One of it is Jesus, another is Christ and then the Son of the living God (Matt. 16:16). Who Jesus is, as the Christ, is something the body of Christ at large has not come into fully understanding yet. Even His name as “Jesus” has not been fully exhausted. All the apostles before the emergence of Paul taught Jesus. It was Paul that brought the revelation (understanding) of the Lord as the Christ and by the energy of Christ, laboured more abundantly than those who were apostles before him.
The operations of the Lord as Jesus and as the Christ are different. The operation of the name of Jesus gets demons cast out and get believers baptised in the Holy Ghost, among other things it can accomplish. Most herbalists and many men who have charms are those who have employed the services of demons for protection and other things. The name of Jesus is strong enough for issues around those matters. The early Pentecostal revivals that swept across Nigeria were demonstrations of the powers in the operation of Jesus’ name. The operations of the Lord (as Jesus) holds the powers of the earth. Examples of men who foreshadowed this in the Old Testament include Elijah, among others.
The deeper we go, the more difficult it becomes to accommodate unbelief, because we are moving from unsure zones into assured zones in the spirit. John the baptist had powers of the earth higher than that of Elijah at a different voltage. He did no miracle but was able to turn hearts. In operation, he was the closest to that of the Lord Himself. Elijah is a compound name for the “Lord” and “God” and he did turn the hearts of Israel to God. The Lord opened up this name much more than John the baptist did. Jesus fulfilled His ministry on the cross when He died.
In eternity past, He was the Word that was made flesh. It was when He grew that He became Jesus. As a man, He was limited and not perfect. Jesus was made like “us” in all things. Christ, however, is another kind of Man that is not from the earth. Christ was a new invention and the bridge between Jesus and God. These things are statures in the spirit. The last Adam was Jesus. It is not all men that have the stature of Adam. All men are born flesh. Unfortunately, most men never grow out of being flesh.
Jesus, however, refused the path of flesh and took the path of Christ. Christ is the Man-Spirit of God, not just the Holy Ghost. He is the spiritual man. The deliverance from being just a man is Christ; He is the escape from being flesh. The next escape from flesh is journey into Christ. It is in Christ that you cease to congregate with flesh for you have become spiritual. The purpose of the New Birth is to defeat flesh development. Unfortunately, most men get born again but do not change. Christ is God’s surety that men can inherit Him.
The strategy of Satan to keep men as flesh is to install his power in men. If the power of God is a Man, the power of Satan is also a man. A godly man embodies the power of God because he has been made so by Christ. The power of Satan is an ungodly man. An ungodly man is he who has refused to allow God take part in his development. If God does not make you, Satan will make you. An ungodly man can pray and have a form of dedication to God. This world pours accolades on men who are ungodly and celebrates them.
An ungodly man was raised by the counsel of the wicked man (Satan). All men have tendencies to become ungodly except Christ is introduced. This ungodly men are the “sinners in the congregation of the righteous” that David spoke about (Psalm 1:5). Because it is written that “the ungodly shall not stand in judgment” when the judgment of God (which Christ is the beginning of) starts. It casts such souls into tribulation. The essence of this tribulation is to scatter the ungodly formation in such souls. man is the ungodly man.
Christ is the provision of God that the first man (Adam) can accommodate. Without the preaching of Christ, there is no way to save the ungodly man or judge the ungodly nature. An ungodly man can end up becoming Satan. The christ of Satan is the ungodly man and it is that which Satan wants to birth in every man. This ungodly man has married every facet of the lives of men. He has suggestions and counsel concerning every issue and matter that pertains to our lives; education, marriage, culture, etc.
The ungodly man created lesser idols that men bow to. Idols like Sango, Obatala, among others, are lesser creations of the ungodly man. Real ungodly men have outgrown idol worship; they live by their visions/ambitions. The ungodly man lives for what to eat, drink and put on. They live by the lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh and the pride of life. The ungodly man is a fearful man for he, like “the wicked runneth when no man pursues” (). He has his own Urim and Thumim by which he forecasts the future, in which God is not found.
There is such a thing as the judgment of the righteous. This is not the Great White throne judgment; it is speaking of the dimension of God that the righteous will be admitted into after having done the will of God. The wicked will not be admitted into this dimension of life. When God comes to the congregation of the righteous, it is because He wants to make them divine. This judgment will not come to the earth until the house of God is ready. This house of God is a company of men who have obeyed the syllabus of godliness.
There is another Man after Christ. He is the Son of God. The first man is Adam (who has power on the earth), the second man is Christ (who can mediate the two realms [earth and heaven]) and the last is the Son of God. This last Man is the Word which has been from the beginning who was also equal to God (John 1:1). When Christ is communicated, unlike when Jesus is manifesting, there may not be outward uproar. Most of those who claim to be working with Satan have not even seen him. You can never get the truth from any demon; the only Man that you need is Christ.
The Son of God is the most powerful out of these three men. He is far beyond a heavenly Man; He is the Man of the world to come. It is at the gaze of this Man that both heaven and earth will flee. This Man has not been preached; neither has He been understood. It is to Him that God said, “Thy throne, O God is forever and the sceptre of thy Kingdom is righteousness; because You have lovest righteousness and hatest iniquity, therefore God thy God has anointed thee with the oil of gladness above your fellows” (Hebrews 1:9). You can never exhaust teaching/preaching the Son of God. If books are to be written about Him, they will be exhausted and there will still be so much to write about Him.