The Bible tells us in Zechariah 3 that Joshua the priest was standing before God and the devil at the same time was standing at his right hand to resist him. But Zechariah was lucky because the Lord rebuked the devil on his behalf. According to that passage, the problem of Joshua was that he was wearing a dirty garment and because of that dirty garment, the devil was able to resist him even though he was standing before God.
Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, satan desired to sift you like wheat but I have prayed for you that your faith fail not.” This simple declaration by Jesus meant that everything was going to be all right for Peter as far as his faith did not fail. My prayer is that every spirit of faithlessness must be bound, in Jesus’ name.
The title of our message this week is the “Power of the emptiers.” What the title implies is that there are certain forces which drain things. Nahum 2:2 says, “For the Lord has turned away the excellency of Jacob as the excellency of Israel, but the emptiers have emptied them out and marred their vine branches.” Sometimes emptiers are referred to as destroyers.
Beloved, be informed that you cannot experience much of God’s power until you become spiritually violent. Another important truth is that violence is allowed in the spiritual world. The reason violence is allowed is that the powers that are working against people’s lives are stubborn, therefore Christians must be spiritually violent. This is the time for every believer to stir up himself and begin to remove every spiritual fat from his spirit and start fighting. This is the time to drop all idols and throw them into the fire: An idol is anything you place before God or beside God. The problem with having an idol is that it opens the door to the devil to come into a person’s life. And when the devil begins to live inside a person, he assumes ownership of the person’s life. The devil outside is easier to battle than the one inside. The devil inside is worse because he would operate from within. He would speak words of defeat, diseases and failure from inside. It attacks the mind and then disarms the person. At this stage, such a person cannot continue the external war because the devil inside would have weakened his inner man. So, as a believer, you must not give up at all, you should rather become violent and disarm the devil.
You may be wondering how you can become violent. The only answer is the word of God. The devil fears the word of God. Some people feel uncomfortable when they hear others discussing about demons. Such people need deliverance because God says we should not be afraid of demons. When you use the word of God to command a demon to loose his hold over a person’s life, or you command the spirit of infirmity to leave and never return to the body, you will be amazed at what will happen thereafter.
The devil does not understand nice words, phonetics or good grammar. One of the greatest men of God that ever lived was one man known as Smith Wigglesworth. On a particular day, somebody invited him to a hospital to pray for a man dying of cancer of the liver. When he got to the hospital, he suddenly jumped upon the sick man and gave him a powerful punch on his belly and the man instantly fell down from his sick bed. The shocked doctor yelled at Smith Wigglesworth: “You have killed him,” but a calm Wigglesworth told him to shut up and just watch him. Suddenly, the man’s swollen belly came down and he jumped to his feet. The doctor was by now truly amazed. Before the doctor could recover from his shock, Wigglesworth had gotten to the fourth bed in the ward. Beloved, this man called Smith Wigglesworth did not have any educational qualifications.
The reason many people cannot exercise their faith and therefore experience the power of God is because they are too educated. Instead of exercising their faith, they think academically and examine things scientifically and logically. For example, a highly educated man will not dare hit that sick man in the belly. But when the Spirit of God asked Wigglesworth to do so, he did it without looking back. He used violence in that hospital and by the time he left the place, the beds were empty of sick people.
Beloved, you must begin to change your mode of praying. You have to learn to command rather than beg. If you are still under the bondage of fornication, you have to command the demon of fornication to leave you alone. If it is infirmity, command the demon of infirmity to depart from your life.
There is nothing wrong in your laying your hands upon your own body and declaring, “I am the temple of the Holy Ghost. So, you spirit of fornication, you have no room here, you are trespassing. Get out now, in the name of Jesus.” You can lay hands on your chest and say, “My mind is the mind of Christ. Satan, I am not going to think what you want me to think.” When you deal violently with negative forces like that, you become a terror to them and they would start to fear you.
When a whistling kettle placed on fire reaches its boiling point, it will start whistling. To stop the whistling, you may decide to quench the fire or remove the kettle from the heat. Your actions are geared towards stopping the whistling not to destroy the kettle or its content. The power of the emptiers will not quench the fire or put down the kettle from the fire, they will rather pour out the content of the kettle.
The emptiers empty good things from peoples’ lives. They would not kill the person. Their intention is only to empty. Sometimes, the emptiers would wait for the cup to be filled before they turn it over. Sometimes, as soon as any thing enters a person’s cup, they pour it away. Victims of the emptiers find it difficult to prosper, unless God comes to their aid. Unless they become violent and deal with the emptiers, they will remain poor.
Sometime ago, a man brought his daughter to me for prayers and the daughter told me that any money the man would ever make in his life had been tied to the top of an Iroko tree since fifteen years ago. This is the power of the emptiers in operation. They did not kill the man. It was not necessary as long as he remained a perpetual pauper. All the nice and kind children that could have looked after him have been poured out. These evil powers replace good children with contaminated ones in order to put their parents in trouble. Such parents have been emptied.
Beloved, that your former boy friend or girl friend might be responsible for the kind of predicament you find yourself in now. I know a man who consulted a so-called prophet concerning a girl he wanted to marry based on some people’s counsel. The prophet prayed and told him not to go ahead because the girl was a snake. So, he broke the relationship without the girl’s consent and the girl insisted that he must marry her whether he liked it or not. The man thought it was a joke. By the time he got to the office the next morning, a sack letter was waiting for him. The next day, some security men were sent from his company to eject him out of the company’s house where he was living and also to withdraw the company’s car in his possession. Things turned rough for him. Then after two months of suffering he started looking for a new job but couldn’t find any. Eventually, somebody advised him to go and beg the girl. He went to her and apologised. And the girl said, “Fine, now you are wise.” The next day, the company where he was sacked recalled him and things began to move again. He was now forced to marry that snake. That was the power of the emptiers.
Another time, they rushed a pregnant woman to me who was long over due. Before I could make two or three sentences of prayer, the Lord said, “Keep quiet. This woman has a sin to confess.” I asked the Lord what kind of sin and He said, “Adultery.” I opened my eyes and told her what the Lord said. She said, “Ha! Do you think somebody like me would do that?” I said no problem. I closed my Bible and said goodbye to her. She begged me not to go and she narrated her story. I then told her to kneel down and confess her sins to the Lord. She did and then she was able to give birth to her baby. The power of the emptiers pushed her into adultery. The father of a popular American singer who shot him dead was pushed by the power of the emptier. That father is alive now but has been emptied. All these are the operations of the emptiers.
They are behind all the horrible dreams that people have. For example, eating with dead relations, playing with snakes or being harassed by snakes, spiritual marriages, etc. They are behind incurable diseases, setback in businesses, broken marriages, homosexuality, lesbianism, drug abuse, alcoholism, etc. It is difficult to stop these things or break away from them because there are demons attached to them. Some people hear strange voices disturbing them or ugly thoughts permanently on their minds harassing them. It is the work of the emptiers who do not want them to concentrate on profitable things. When a believer is having trouble reading the Bible, worshiping the Lord, sitting down to listen to the word of God, or praying, know that these powers are at work. Some people have things moving all over their body, some sense or see dark things or sometimes they experience a black out. The power of the emptiers are at work in those lives. If you are the type of person who loses self control whether in thinking or in anger, or you find it difficult receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit, or occasionally you think of suicide, all these are the operations of the emptiers.
There is something we call “automatic failure mechanism.” It operates like a trap which trips off when it catches a rat. A person under the control of this mechanism would succeed at nothing because spiritually, he is being manipulated by some powers which are bent on making sure he remains a failure. Many people make the mistake of believing that no other world exists apart from the physical one because that is the one they can see with their physical eyes. They do not know that the spiritual world is as real as the physical one.
In the spiritual world, when you start praying, the prayer may become a ball of fire, sword, knife, or any dangerous weapon to destroy things that have been programmed against you in the spirit world which actually controls the physical. The same way also things like joy, peace, love, blessings, etc are tangible things in the spiritual world. Good and bad things can also be transferred in the spirit world. A lot of people do not know about the spiritual world because they are blind spiritually. Things like joy, peace, etc can be spiritually removed from the cup of one’s life and transferred, or can be stolen. In the story of Naaman in the Bible, we see how his leprosy was spiritually transferred to Gehazi. Gehazi didn’t have any leprosy but when he did something wrong, he received the curse of leprosy. When somebody is made a leper in the spirit world, physically he becomes a leper. If somebody’s peace is disturbed in the spiritual world, such a person would not have peace in the physical world. That was how Naaman’s leprosy was transferred to another person. So it is spiritually possible to transfer somebody’s problem to another person. These things are tangible things. They can transfer somebody’s husband to another person, and transfer somebody’s wife to another person. They can also transfer somebody’s children to another person and transfer somebody’s blessings to another person. That is why I always like to make people understand that spiritual power is greater than physical power. If you are strong spiritually then you are strong in the physical world. But if you are weak spiritually, no matter how bold you may be physically, you are weak.
Jesus said something to His disciples in Luke 10:5 - 6: “And into whatsoever house ye enter, first say, peace be to this house. And if the son of peace be there, your peace shall rest upon it: if not, it shall turn to you again.”
How many people have actually seen peace? But what Jesus was saying is that it is spiritual. In the spirit world, peace is tangible, it can be seen and it can be transferred from one person to another. Jesus said, “If a child of peace is there, your peace will rest on him, but if he is not there, your peace will return to you.” So, the disciples were carrying peace about. No wonder the Bible says in Romans 10:15, “How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and brings glad tidings of great things.”
A person’s brain can be spiritually transferred, to become a dullard. A person’s heart can be spiritually transferred and the person will be having heart problem. A person’s hand may be transferred, and the person will not be able to prosper. A person’s leg can be transferred and the person will always be having bad luck. Progress will stop anywhere he enters. Any company he enters will stop making profit. Even a baby in the womb can be replaced with a contaminated one. The emptiers can even empty people’s wombs.
We must also be informed that even some of the material things that we carry around carry spiritual power. This is an important information. Jesus did something very curious to a blind man when He wanted to heal him. The Bible says that Jesus spat on the mud and made clay out of it and used it to touch the man’s eyes about two times and the man regained his sight. So, the saliva of the Lord Jesus Christ carried power to restructure and recreate the eyes of that man. If His saliva could carry His anointing and good powers in it, then bad saliva too can carry evil powers. Handkerchiefs in the Bible were known to carry power. People prayed on them, placed them on the sick and they were healed. Likewise some materials can carry negative powers. (John 9:6. Mark 8:23. Act of Apostles 19:12)
I cited these examples because emptiers are now using some materials to distribute evil things around and it is the duty of ministers of God who want to be honest, to warn people about these things. A single material of an emptier in a house can completely suck away all the peace in that home. So, you better check the things you put on, especially your jewelry. If your rings, chains or earrings bear the image of a snake, you better throw them away as fast as you can. Or if they bear the symbol of a moon or a fish or have eyes in them, you better be careful for I know what I am talking about.
Sometime ago, a brother told me the story of how an hairdresser discovered a strange necklace of her customer which she forgot at her salon. When the hairdresser was to close for the day, she took the necklace home with the intention of bringing it back the next day for her customer. She placed it on the table in her sitting room and went to sleep in the bedroom. Exactly at midnight, the voice of a little baby started coming from the necklace.
Beloved, we must pray aggressively against these powers so as to put a final stop to their activities.
PRAYER POINTS
1. Let the blood of Jesus Christ wash me clean, in Jesus’ name.
2. Let every garment of iniquity be removed from my life, in the name of Jesus.
3. I bind the spirit of failure, in Jesus’ name.
4. Every power trying to blow up my lamp of joy, I bind you, in the name of Jesus.
