Our Father in heaven, we thank you because you are El-Shaddai, You are the Jehovah- Jireh, the Jehovah-Shamah, and Jehovah Shalom who has all powers in His hands. Thank You for being our provider, shelter and rock. We thank you for the promotion, provision and breakthroughs you have given us. Glory be to Your holy name. Do wondrous things in our lives through this message, in the name of Jesus. Thank you Lord Jesus, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Beloved, life is like a journey in three parts. There is the beginning, the course of the journey and the end. God has a divine purpose for us as a church. Apart from that collective purpose, God also has a divine purpose for us individually. What I mean is that God is not in the business of messing about. He has a divine purpose for putting you somewhere. He has a reason for allowing your father and your mother to give birth to you. He does not engage in useless activities. One of the most terrible and effective ways of amputating a person’s life and his destroying potentials is what is known as satanic diversion.
WHAT IS DIVERSION?
A diversion is turning aside from a course that is to be followed. A diversion is a change of direction or an alternative route. It is also something designed to take away attention from the main course. Simply put, it is a change of direction.
Jonah 1:1-2 says, “Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it for their wickedness is come up before me.” That was a straight forward message to a man of God from God. Verse 3 says, “But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord and went down to Joppa: and he found a ship going to Tarshish so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD.” Jonah paid his fare to go into bondage. He sponsored himself out of the will of God. That is, a person can use his money to buy diversion, or divert his journey from where God wants him to go. Verses 4-5 says, “But the Lord sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea so that the ship was like to be broken. Then the mariners were afraid, and cried every man unto his god, and cast forth the waves that were in the ship into the sea, to lighten it of them...”
We can see how a single person who was diverted put other people in trouble. All those traders threw their things into the sea because a single man who had been diverted was on board. “...But Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship, and he lay and was fast asleep.” The Bible says that he slept deeply, even though he was in disobedience and diversion. So, you may enjoy yourself as you are being diverted. Verse 6 says, “So the shipmaster came to him, and said unto him, What meanest thou, O sleeper? Arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not.” After all the other people in the ship had tried their little gods, they woke him up to call upon his own God, who might be more effective.
Verses 7 - 17 say, “And they said every one to his fellow, come, and let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon us, so they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah. Then said they unto him, tell us, we pray thee, for whose cause this evil is upon us, What is thine occupation? and whence comest thou? what is thy country? and of what people art thou? And he said unto them I am an Hebrew; and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, which hath made the sea and the dry land. Then were the men exceedingly afraid, and said unto him, Why hast thou done this? For the men knew that he fled from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them. Then said they unto him, What shall we do unto thee, that the sea may be calm unto us? for the sea wrought, and was tempestuous. And he said unto them, take me up, and cast me forth into the sea, so shall the sea be calm unto you; for I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon you. Nevertheless the men rowed hard to bring it to the land; but they could not, for the sea wrought, and was tempestuous against them. Wherefore they cried unto the Lord, and said, We beseech thee, O Lord, we beseech thee, let us not perish for this man’s life, and lay not upon us innocent blood: for thou, O Lord, hast done as it pleased thee. So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea: and the sea ceased from her raging. Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice unto the Lord, and made vows. Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.”
The question is this: What was the spirit that told Jonah, a man of God, to change his destination after God had told him to go to Nineveh. The fact that somebody is a prophet does not mean he cannot be diverted.
WHAT ARE THE CHARACTERISTICS OF EVIL DIVERSION?
Major evil diversion takes place in darkness because deception is very easy in darkness. Sometime ago, I was going somewhere but suddenly there was power failure and everywhere became dark. It had been five years since I went there last, so I was unable to find my way. The major evil diversion of human lives takes place after the enemy has succeeded in dragging them into darkness. Therefore, the longer a person stays in darkness before he runs to Jesus, the deeper the enemy will work in the person’s life, and sometimes, the longer it will take to clean the person up after he has escaped.
I know a certain man who was in a cult for 30 years before he gave his life to the Lord. When he handed over his evil powers, he forgot that a long time ago somebody gave him some eggs which he swallowed, and right inside his stomach the eggs had hatched into chickens, and these chickens inside his stomach had helped him to kill people. He began to pray fire prayers like: “Holy Ghost fire, come upon my life, in the name of Jesus.” Anytime he prayed the prayer, the birds got agitated, picked at his intestine and started to eat it up. And as a result, he was bleeding and could not eat. One day, he remembered the birds. Some brethren prayed for him until he vomited them alive. But before he vomited them, they had done a lot of havoc on his intestines, and a teaching hospital had to do a surgery on him to join them together. So, the longer one stays in darkness, the deeper the enemy will work in his life. And if the devil sees that if you escape from his kingdom you would become dangerous to him, he would try and leave enough mark on your life. Darkness is an easy place for evil work. Your best friend can give you a big punch in the dark and because you cannot see him, you would not know. This is why God does not open the eyes of Christians who have bad temperament, because if He does and they have insight into the things of the spirit, they can kill.
A certain man prayed the following prayer point: “Oh Lord, deliver me from every foundational problem and reveal the secret of my life to me, in the name of Jesus." He soon fell into a trance, and found himself in a courtyard where he stood as the accused, and his seven year-old daughtter called Folake was the judge looking at him sternly. He asked her what he had done wrong and she said, “En, when you give me cowskin (ponmo), you give my sisters good meat and liver.” The man said, “That is not a problem, I will start giving you liver as from now.” The girl said, “Too late, you are already here.” They hit him on the head with a big stick and he woke up and ran mad. When he was cured of the madness eventually, he remembered the vision. The spiritual world is like that. Those who you sometimes think are your best friends, may be your worst enemies, when you know who they really are, you will adjust. That is why the Bible says we should walk in the light. When you walk in the light, you cannot be diverted.
Many are on the wrong road now because when they were in darkness, the enemies who saw the goal of their lives, diverted their journey into the wrong road by satanic intelligence. Although they are now Christians, long before they got born again, the course of the journey of their lives had been diverted.
CLASSES O F EVIL DIVERSIONS
a. Conscious evil diversion.
b. Unconscious evil diversion.
c. Inherited evil diversion.
d. Transferred evil diversion.
e. Evil diversion acquired by personal decision.
I pray that your ungodly journeys will be terminated today, in the name of Jesus. When God says that somebody will be a bricklayer, but his parents want him to be a medical doctor, they will force him to study Medicine and he will make mistakes. He will become the doctor that would forget scissors and cotton wool inside the stomach of patients, he would do wrong abortions and his patients will be dying and many people will be running away from him. There are many counterfeit doctors like that. There is no way a fish can be blessed when it is out of water, neither can a crab become a boxing champion when he is on top of a tree.
WHY DOES THE ENEMY WISH TO DIVERT A PERSON?
Many years ago, a woman came to me for prayer and the Lord told me that she was a principality. I asked her what she wanted and she said that her husband was never balanced. I said, “Is that all?” She said, “Yes.” “So, what do you want me to do about that,” I asked. She said, “Pray for me so that my husband will be balanced.”I went straight to the point and said, “Sorry, are you saying that you don’t know you are demonic and that you are a principality.” She said, “Oh, so you can see. All right, now, I will tell you certain things.” Then she gave me a one hour lecture on how the powers of darkness operate. Among other things, she told me how they foresee the future of people the very day they are born. I asked her what they do with such information and she said, “Ah, knowledge is power. Once we get the information, we can divert the journey of their lives, confuse them, and that is it.” The enemies of the souls of men know the hidden potentials in people even before such people realise it, so they rejoice over such information because it helps them to carry out their evil plans.
These days, in so many churches, demons rejoice because the praise worship is being led by somebody from the river, the usher is from the tree, and the pastor is from the lagoon, while normal people are busy dancing and beating drums.
THE PURPOSE OF EVIL DIVERSION
1. To take the individual far away from God.
2. To ensure that the purpose of a person’s life is not achieved. Evil diversion is an usher of failure. It ushers people into failure.
Make the following declaration: “I know that I shall not be ushered into failure, in the name of Jesus.”
3. To open avenues for demonic pollution and domination.
4. To hold others in bondage by diverting the deliverer. The enemy can divert the journey of a deliverer so that those needing deliverance will not get delivered. For example, if somebody who is going to preach somewhere branches at a bar to greet his friends and they offer him palm-wine and he drinks, he would be diverted.
5. To push people into hell fire.
6. To prevent people from reaching their goal in life.
7. To remove people from their place of divine blessing.
8. To waste lives. What does it mean to waste? It means to use wrongly or not to use at all.
Sometimes, evil diversions look bright and good. The fact that a place is good and enjoyable does not mean that you should be there. The Bible says there is a way that seemeth right unto men but the end therefore is death. The way of diversion is sometimes the way of least resistance.
There was certain man who called himself the lion of Judah. When I was a small boy, I used to call him a hero because he was more intelligent than my teachers in school. He could play the mouth organ excellently, but he was a mad man. He knew music, mathematics, history, etc, but he was useless.
WHAT IS A WASTED LIFE?
A wasted life is a life without purpose. It is a life that has been diverted from its divine purpose, and until the person is delivered, life will have no meaning for him. There are so many people in the world today who are very busy, dedicated, influential, respectable and even admired by everybody, but deep inside them they are frustrated, confused, disillusioned, depressed, aimless and unhappy. This is why the issue of purpose before getting a partner is very important. This means you should discover what God has sent you to do on earth before you begin to pray for a life-partner. Some people do not understand. They want everything fast but God is saying, “Find out the purpose for your life first.”
There was a certain brother who heard the message of "purpose before partner" but did not take it seriously. So when he wanted to marry, he just picked up somebody. Everyday his wife would smile at him in a sarcastic way, pat him on the back and say jokingly, “You call yourself a prayer warrior.” She did this for a long time. The brother did not understand. One day, suddenly, the sister locked the door, threw the key under the bed and turned into a big snake. The brother jumped on the bed and started crying, “Blood of Jesus, blood of Jesus.” Eventually, she turned back to a human being and questioned: “But you call yourself a prayer warrior, how come you did not know who I am? She then said, "Now that I have shown you my real self, take me to the pastor for deliverance.” We know that the brother cannot divorce her. Even if he does and marries another one, who knows, that one may be a crocodile.
The enemy can divert a person’s journey and the person will not know the right thing to do. He will make the person to live on assumption or on the prescription of the society. And witches and wizards would be trying their new weapons in the life of the person because he is not where God wants him to be.
WHAT ARE THE AGENTS OF DIVERSION?
1. The first powerful agent of diversion is seducing spirit. 1 Timothy 4:1 says, “Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times, some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils.”
Seducing spirits are very rampant now because these are the last days. A seducing spirit is an evil servant from satan sent to perform a particular assignment, and that assignment is to overthrow people and take them into captivity. Once that assignment is completed, they impart another spirit into their victims and they will begin to carry out strange orders unconsciously. So, in a way, a seducing spirit is a forerunner of another wicked. The spirit of seduction will come first, seduce the person, then leaves and opens the person for the next demon to take over. The purpose is to entice people into the wrong things, tempt or lure them into sin, excite them where they should not get excited, make them get interested in what they should not be interested in, fascinate them with what they ought not to be fascinated with, arouse their interest in what their interest should not be aroused in, in order to win them over and bring in another wicked spirit.
In a certain fellowship where I was sometime ago, I spent a lot of time praying that a particular sister should get married. She was thirty-nine then. Then one day, a brother said the Lord told him to marry the sister. I was happy that the prayer had been answered. So the brother went to meet the sister and told her that the Lord said she was the person he should marry. The sister looked at him from his head down to the sole of his feet and said, “You cannot carry my load.” I was shocked. Then I asked her the type of load she had that the man would not be able to carry. This was in 1979 and up till now, the sister is still looking for somebody to carry her load. Why? Seducing spirits have diverted her to the wrong direction.
Spirits of seduction choose their candidates based on their personal weaknesses, then they work upon those weak areas until their victims surrender. If your own weakness is anger, seducing spirits will make you to get so angry that you will annoy God. They make people to talk when they should not talk. They make you to get angry before your divine helpers, so that they would not be interested in helping you. It could be selfishness. It could be pride. They will make you over value yourself and they will be rejoicing. The pride will then lead you to be diverted to somewhere else.
A long time ago, a certain man came to our meeting. Throughout the prayer session, he just opened his eyes and was looking at us as if we were mad, he did not pray any single prayer point. He was very angry. So, I asked one usher to bring him when we closed. When they brought him to me after the service, he was still angry. He asked, “Why is there no music in this place? Where are the drums, guitars, etc? I don’t go to a place where there is no music.” I tried to explain some things to him because I could see that he was under serious satanic attack but he fled out in anger. The next time I saw him, he had gone mad was residing under the bridge at Yaba. Why? He had been diverted.
God says, “I will open the windows of heaven, and pour down blessings that you have not even enough room to take them.” The fact that God pours down blessings does not mean that everyone would be blessed. Those who are diverted cannot share out of God’s blessings when He pours them down.
Seducing spirits are so many around us now. And instead of some people to get serious with the Lord, they are still busy with other trivial matters. I remember a certain sister who got to her office and found a powerful charm on her table. She said, “I clear you off, in the name of Jesus,” and with shaky hands, she threw it away. Then something said, “Why don’t you look under your chair before you sit down.” She looked under the chair and saw another big one attached to the chair with cello-tape. This happened in a bank and in a civilized society. She began to bang the chair on the floor so that the thing could drop since she did not want to touch it. Eventually, she shook it off and threw it into the dust bin. By the time she sat down and worked for thirty minutes, the first thing that came to her table was a serious query from the manager and she had never received any query in her life before. The next day, she was mysteriously roped into a fraud case and was locked up. By the time she was released, she did not go home, she rushed to the church and I gave her some prayer points on sending confusion into the camp of the enemy. She took it home and did not pray. Then the problem escalated. I asked why she did not pray the prayer points and she answered, “Well, as Christians, we are supposed to love our enemies as ourselves. I think we should be praying that they should be converted not that they should receive fire. It does not show kindness.” So I told her to read I Corinthians 13:1. She opened it and read: “Though I speak with tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.” In that passage, we see the qualities of love. I asked her who wrote it, and she said, “Paul of course.” “Do you agree that this man knows about love more than you? I asked. She said, “Yes.” Then I told her to go back to Acts 13: 9 - 11. After she had read those verses, I asked her who was talking there and she said, “Paul.” “So, what is going to happen now?” I asked her and she said, “They are dead.” She could not understand that she was fighting spiritual enemies. If you are fighting with spiritual enemies and there is anything stronger than thunder, you better use it because if they get you, they will not show you mercy at all. It is like appealing to a witch that: “Do not be so wicked. Do not drink blood. Try and be nice, you know that your public relations with people is not so nice.” You will be wasting your time. The enemy has diverted the attention of many people to other things. It has come to a stage now where some people idolise praise-worship as their God, it is diversion.
When the spirit of seduction comes in, he gives a terrible blow to the conscience, and hardens it. Then the conscience will not be able to differentiate between right and wrong. That is why when you tell a woman not to marry a certain man because he smokes hemp, she would tell you that the man will change. It is the work of seducing spirits. Once they are at work in any life, the person will no longer have the ability to discern between left and right. The person would be in total submission to them. This is why we pray an aggressive prayer that, “Nobody will transfer my case file to the demonic world, in the name of Jesus. When a witch dies in a family, she hands over the case file to the next witch in the family and it continues like that.
WHAT IS THE WAY OUT?
1. Try to find out whether all the spirits that come to you are of God. You may say, “But I cannot tell.” The Bible says, “By their fruits, we shall know them.” Notice what fruit is produced.
2. Know the word of God so that nobody will confuse you.
3. Be prayerful.
4. Do not be foolish.
HOW DO YOU DEFEAT THE SPIRIT OF SEDUCTION?
a. Bind the strongman of seduction.
b. Cast out the seducing spirit and command it not to come back.
The last stage is the most difficult stage because when the seducing spirit enters a life, it would have done a lot of damage before the person discovers. Sometimes there is already a broken home or a life that has been thoroughly messed up.
c. Pray for restoration and repair of what the seducing spirit had destroyed.
That is the first class of spirits that cause diversion.
2. Another agent of diversion is a class of spirits called familiar spirits. They are experts at causing diversion. They are the spirits in charge of passing down evil traits from one member of the family to another. They transfer evil genetic diseases or evil inheritance from one person to another. They transfer the problem of parents to their offsprings. If the parents had committed sin, and it is to be visited on the children, the transfer will be done by familiar spirits. All the inherited sicknesses and diseases, evil tendencies, evil habits, are transfered by familiar spirits. They stay in the family line, so when one member of the family who has familiar spirit dies, he would decide which member to give the mantle or what we call counterfeit anointing. This is why if they say, "Hey, mummy wants to die, daddy wants to die and they are calling you," and you know that such a mummy or daddy is not born again, it is not advisable to rush there and allow them to pray for you because in the course of such prayers evil is transferred. If in your family they keep pets, they always have one dog or one cat and everybody knows the cat, if there is nobody to receive the spirit, the cat will keep it for a while, until it can enter another person.
As a spirit-filled Christian, you are supposed to cast these spirits out, un-bind the human spirit, set it free from satanic captivity and replace death and curse with blessings. These are the main two powers of evil diversion. If the business God asks you to do is not what you are doing, it may be the reason you are having problems with what you are doing. If you are doing what He asks you to do, He will bless you. Jesus died to ensure that our journeys go the right way. Today, if you are sufficiently concerned, you must pray, or if you do not know your goal in life.
Beloved, one thing is certain, many people are travelling on the wrong road, many people are in the wrong things, some are in the wrong relationship, some are in the wrong business. Today, you must remove yourself from any evil journey and start the journey that God wants you to travel in. The journey to Canaan would have taken forty days, but it became forty years after the Israelites were diverted.
PRAYER POINTS
1. I command every dark work against my life to be cancelled, in the name of Jesus.
2. I refuse to accept anything from Satan, in Jesus' name.
3. I command every seducing spirit and familiar spirit to stop their operations in my life, in the name of Jesus.
4. Let all the incantations issued against me be cancelled, in the name of Jesus.
5. You the strongman troubling my Israel, I paralyse you, in the name of Jesus.
6. You the strongman troubling the Israel of my family, be paralysed, in the name of Jesus.
7. Every strongman in my family, be exposed, in Jesus’ name.
