WITCHCRAFT

How many churches do you know where the ministry does not revolve around a select few people that are seen to be more spiritual because they have been “called by God” to full time ministry or they have theological credentials that set them apart?

The New Testament Church based its entire ministry on the priesthood of all believers, not just a select few. They had some who were anointed with the ministry of an apostle or prophet etc and some were set aside for the oversight of the local congregation and were known as elders, but none were addressed as senior pastor Paul or apostle Tom or youth pastor Sam.

In fact the title ‘pastor’ does not appear once in the New Testament.

Every believer was expected to minister and no one who ministered was expected to get the OK from some superior being. Their anointing was their authority and everyone submitted to that.

What most churches don’t realise is that much of what they do is an invitation for Satan to take control of their life and witness.

About 40 years ago, a well known brother with the gift of teaching, spoke to the church about a jezebel spirit or a spirit of witchcraft. In essence, it is a spirit that wants to control. The methodology today of a man who is set apart from everyone else and is paid for the privilege is an open door for Satan to come in and control that church, to the point where it is totally deceived into thinking that it is doing the Lord’s will.

I can’t see how doing the opposite of what the scripture says is doing the will of the Lord. The only explanation I can give for this fact is that Satan controls a persons thinking and thus actions and because he is a liar, he deceives people into thinking that what they do is from God because it is religious.

The fact that it is not endorsed by scripture does not cross their minds or if it does, they choose to ignore it as they might lose their position of power and influence and their ability to control people.

A classic example happened when I was visiting the UK. I went to one of the churches that I used to attend and during the meeting, a woman got up and started ministering. All well and good but after a few minutes I was very aware that she was wearing very tight clothing that showed every curve of her body so that very little was left to the imagination.

After the meeting I spoke to her privately and suggested that if she was going to minister publicly that she wore clothing that was less sensual and less likely to emphasise her physical attributes. She got quite upset at the suggestion and went to the leadership of the church about it.

Later that day I had a visit from them to tell me that I should have got their permission to speak to her first. I asked why as the scripture says if you have anything against a brother you go to them first. Regardless, that was their policy that no one was allowed to do anything without the pastor’s permission bearing in mind he was young enough to be my son.

So here we had a clear case of a church leadership that was prepared to ignore scripture and one that wanted to control what everyone did or said or in other words get their approval as they were the only ones that could guarantee they were hearing from God. Each member was obviously supposed to live out their relationship with the Lord through the leadership.

This is the spirit of witchcraft in action for the simple reason it usurps Jesus authority in his church, which is the very thing that Satan wants to do. He wanted to be boss so he challenged God and ended up being thrown out of heaven.

When anyone in the church believes they are the final authority and others have to submit to it rather than consulting Jesus, they are using a spirit of witchcraft because they are usurping their authority over that of Jesus.

Non one will ever learn to be led by the Spirit if everything is subject to the will of one man. To insist otherwise is nothing less than witchcraft.