Beloved, as you read this week’s message which is entitled “The private enemy,” believe the Lord for outstanding breakthroughs.
The first thing you need to do is to address yourself because the greatest hindrance to God’s touch upon you is not the devil or household wickedness. When the prodigal son talked to himself, then he began to make progress. You will call your name and say, “Whatever will disturb you as you read this message, let it go so that you can be blessed, in the name of Jesus.”
2 Corinthians 12:7 says, “And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure.” That was Paul talking. The messenger of satan was assigned against him.
Matthew 12:43-45 says, “When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out, and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. (What he is calling his house are human beings.) “Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there, and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation.” (His going to gather more wicked spirits means that spirits operate on different levels of wickedness).
Several years ago, a man who was practically at the point of death came to me for prayers. As he came in and sat down, I could see in the spirit, a lady waiting outside the door carrying a small coffin. So, I said, “My brother, somebody followed you here.” He said, “No. I came alone.” I could see that he did not understand so I then started to describe the lady carrying the coffin and he said, “Yes. That description fits a former girlfriend of mine whom I jilted and she promised to deal with me.” I started to pray but the Holy Spirit said, “Don’t worry yourself. This one is already gone.” I asked him why he jilted the girl and he said it was because his parents said he must not marry from the girl’s town. I also asked him why she was so angry and he said it was because she aborted five pregnancies by him and he still did not marry her. So, I asked him to go. All these took place on a Saturday and by the following Tuesday, he was dead, destroyed by a private enemy following him about.
The messenger of satan was specifically assigned to Paul and he was following him about. I want you to understand that when evil spirits are against a person, they can operate both within and without. Some spirits within a person could be telling the person to go and die, jump into the lagoon, drink poison, kill himself, twist the books, tell lies, etc. Just as some operate inside, some operate from the outside. It is not possible for an evil spirit to take over the life of a Christian who lives the kind of life God wants him to live. If however some evil spirits have found their ways into your life, you need to expel them. With the external ones, you fight and resist them.
Ignorance can be a very terrible thing. Many years ago, when I was studying for my degree overseas, a Cameroonian classmate of mine had malaria-fever. The white doctor who had never seen a case of malaria tested him and didn’t know what was wrong but we the Africans around, by just looking at him, knew what was wrong and we told the doctor that it was malaria. We advised that he should give him some chloroquine. But the doctor said, “No. We can’t just give a person drugs like that." The man’s case got really bad. They took his blood, sent it to a laboratory to detect what was wrong. The result took a long time coming and the man’s condition was deteriorating, so we Africans held a meeting and decided to carry out a protest at the hospital. We told them we would set the hospital on fire if they allowed the boy to die because we were sure that he had malaria. The doctor then asked us to sign an undertaking that if anything went wrong we would be held responsible. The fifty of us signed, and gave him the drug. After about half an hour, he began to sweat and three days later, he was discharged from the hospital. The ignorance of the doctors would have killed the man. So, if physical ignorance can be so bad, the spiritual one is worse.
No battle has ever been won with just a strong defence. If the only thing you want to do is to defend yourself, you can never win. Nobody has ever won a battle that way. Any boxer in the ring that is only defending will end up being knocked out. You cannot outgrow spiritual warfare. You must learn to fight so that at the end of everything, you can say, "I have fought a good fight."
The enemy ensures that failure takes root in a person’s life but failure cannot take root in your life without your permission. If you say you don’t want to fail then you won’t fail. The fact that you are even struggling now shows that you have not been defeated yet. A defeated person cannot do anything.
Spiritual warfare normally surrounds the birth of a miracle. Whether you like it or not, you are already part of that battle. You cannot be neutral. Jesus said, "He who is not with me is against me.” It doesn’t matter whether your name is John or Joseph, if you are not with Jesus, you are against Him. He also said, “He that does not gather with me scatters.” So, we are the territory the enemy is fighting over. The enemy has designed his own programme of action. If he could put six thousand demons inside just one man it doesn’t cost him anything to assign a demon to anybody who is not serious.
One way or the other, especially in this part of the world, there is a personal demon assigned to you by the devil. The job of that spirit is to derail and disturb you. This personal demon causes a lot of strife, derails and distorts. When two people are quarrelling, it is their private enemy that would be telling them not to agree. And when they start to fight, the two assigned demons will start laughing. So, the devil has given personal assigments to specific demons to harass and afflict people.
I know a person who took an examination seven times before he could pass it. The first time, somebody in the examination hall cheated and the examination was cancelled. The second time, some students beat up the invigilator, so, again everybody was failed. The third time, the examination question papers were found in the bag of one of the students and because of that everything was cancelled and so on and so forth. There was a demon assigned to that brother. The purpose of the demon was to ensure that he did not pass that examination. So, anywhere he went, the demon would cause confusion. Paul had a personal demon assigned against him. He was not demon-possessed. The mission of the demon was not to possess Paul but to kill him and cut short his ministry. Therefore, everywhere Paul went to preach there was always an uproar and chaos. Many times he had to be smuggled out of a place.
You may wonder why Paul was under constant harassment. It could not be because of the sermons he preached. If you study your Bible very well you would find that somebody like Peter preached harder messages but he was not harassed like Paul. In fact, Peter took his wife along to wherever he went to preach but if Paul tried that, they would first of all kill that wife before they descended on him. He himself was not safe let alone having a wife around.
Many so-called prophets deceive people who go to them for advice. Somebody may go to them and after they have prayed for the person, they would tell him that he is a witch, or that he has familiar spirit because they could see the person surrounded by witches or familiar spirits. Most times, they actually receive correct visions but the problem is that they cannot really discern the correct situation. If somebody is being attacked by witchcraft and is completely surrounded by witches, it does not mean that the fellow is a witch. So, instead of praying to release the person from the grip of witches, the person is handled as if he is a witch. If for example, you employ a person like that as a househelp, although the person is not a witch but because he or she is under serious witchcraft attack, there would always be a traffic of these kinds of spirits in your house.
These demons that are specifically assigned to people may have friends or playmates who are more wicked. They would invite these more wicked spirits to come and help them to harass those they have been assigned to. They hunt people like a hunter’s dog. They know all our weaknesses. They know what it takes to upset you. The greatest attack of these powers happens when you are at the edge of a great breakthrough. The attacks could become unbearable especially when you are on your way to achieving greater things for the Lord.
They can destroy things. They can spoil machines and ruin things just to disgrace somebody. I used to have a friend who was a very intelligent pilot. He was highly respected and had excellent records. People kept recommending him for jobs until the President of his country got to know about him. He had been flying for eleven years with excellent performance but the only day that the President said he should fly him, this pilot made terrible mistakes. Immediately he landed, the President said to him, “You must never show up to me again.” He broke down and cried. His personally-assigned demon had seen to it that he was finished. If such a demon follows you to the examination hall, or on your business trip, you will fail. If it follows you in your ministry, it will spell failure. So, what you should do is to deal with it. At this point, I want you to close your eyes and take the following prayer point: “Every private demon harassing my life, die, in the name of Jesus.”
A certain girl was convulsing and fainting regularly, so her mother ran to a prophet for assistance. Although the prophet boasted before he got to the woman’s house; when he got there and saw the girl, they recognised each other. The girl was the head of their team in the spirit world. The girl said to him, “You are crazy. What are you doing here. Didn’t you know I am the one here?” The prophet prostrated and begged her. She then said, “I have been assigned to destroy this family and I am completing my assignment tonight. Run out of here.” The girl’s parents were amazed when they saw the prophet running away. He was a fake prophet.
This private demon messes up the husbands of sisters and the wives of brothers. It comes from the pit of hell and stays with a person 24 hours a day. That is why Paul calls it “The messenger of satan.” The original meaning of the word ‘messenger’ is also used for angels. People who have a deep feeling that there is something out there which knows more about them and knows what it takes to shut them down will understand this better. This demon uses your weak points to attack you. Paul was a man of faith, yet this thing was harassing him. It is the reason why some people have to fight so hard before they achieve any measure of success. Personally-assigned demons cause people to fail at the edge of great success. It operates through the spirit of almost-there in such lives.
Moses was a man of God who had a sense of his destiny even at a young age. He knew that one day he would deliver his people from bondage. Though he grew up in the palace of Pharaoh, he did not lose sight of that. In anger, he grabbed an Egyptian and killed him to save a fellow Israelite. He tried to fulfill his destiny by his own power but he failed and had to run away. All that while, that tiny personally- assigned demon of anger was following him about. While Moses was calling fire on Mount Sinai, this demon of anger stood afar off watching him. But when he got to the edge of the Promised Land, the demon now moved in. Moses, after eighty years of moving with God, of seeing the kind of signs and wonders that modern men would see and faint, his personally-assigned demon of anger came in and robbed him of his breakthrough. The assignment of the demon was to make sure that Moses did not reach the Promised Land and it succeeded. God said to Moses, “Because you failed to sanctify me before this people, you shall see the Promised Land with your eyes but shall not enter therein.” Moses is actually the greatest example of a victim of the spirit of almost-there. From that time until Moses died we did not read that Moses got angry again. The demon had finished its assignment and was gone. I pray that you will not be derailed, in Jesus’ name.
Many people are operating below their capacity. Many know that they are working but it seems as if they are not because at the end of the day, they get little or no result. Sometimes, some people who are troubled by private enemies go for deliverance and do all sorts of things to eject evil spirits from their lives not knowing that the enemy is fighting from outside. When you say, “Father, in the name of Jesus,” the demon runs far away and waits till the day that you are weak and then comes back. No wonder the Bible says, “If you faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is little.” (Proverbs 24:10) This is why the beneficial potentials of so many have been dragged to the cemetery.
THESE PERSONALLY-ASSIGNED SPIRITS DO VARIOUS WORKS:
1. They invite evil visitors.
2. They magnetise bad aura around you. You just notice that it is only the wrong people who come towards you. As a businessman, only the wrong customers would be coming to your shop. These evil spirits are the ones inviting them.
3. They divert good things away from people. When a good thing is coming to a person, they scare it away.
4. They cause unpardonable mistakes. For example, if you are asked to answer three questions out of four in an examination, they will make sure that you see and believe that you were asked to answer only one. And when you come out, you would say that the examination was very easy only to realise later that you have committed a serious blunder.
5. They generate strife against people. This explains why some people notice that they are always harassed anywhere they go, even by people who have never seen them before.
6. They sponsor internal supermarket in the lives of people. In such cases, you have demons buying and selling in the person’s life and these personally-assigned demons would be the advertising agents.
7. They cause internal division. They cause strife and problems in the family.
8. They invite sicknesses.
9. They create ladders for attacks.
10.They do what we call 'pregnancy conversion' - they turn the baby inside the womb into something else.
11.They sponsor sudden violent deaths.
12.They communicate to your external enemies and give them information about your life.
13.They act as spiritual spies by reporting your activities.
14.They know your history, geo-graphy, and chemistry and are able to use them against you.
15.They specialise in attacking organs of the body e.g. the kidney, blood, etc.
16. They are spiritual smugglers. They pass out a person’s virtues.
17. They assist internal termites which eat up people inside.
When they create these problems, their victims get confused and won’t know what to do. There was a brother who used to think that the issue of demonic attacks was all a joke until one day, one of the members of his staff who did not know that a secret camera was installed in his office went in there at night, took off her clothes, took a cock from her bag, cut off its head with her hands and poured the blood on his table and began to rain incantations on it. She did not know that the security men were watching her. They allowed her to finish and got her arrested there with the cock and the blood in the brother’s office. They held her there until morning. When the brother came to the office and saw her, he almost fainted. He still did not believe them until they showed him the film and he saw the activities that took place in his office. He came and told me that he wanted to change his office. But I told him that changing his office was not the solution because certain things have been planted. This kind of activity is sponsored by personal private enemies.
18.They kill, steal and destroy destinies.
19.They can share the lives of two or more persons, that is, they can harass two persons together.
20.They are responsible for the spirit of error.
The private enemy is a powerful spirit. When somebody who is regarded as a mature believer suddenly commits an unbelievable sin, this demon is at work. A long time ago, there was a certain woman of God who was very serious with the Lord. Before her husband who was also a man of God arrived at a crusade, she was already there doing praise/worship, and miracles would be happening. All of a sudden, the woman began to sleep with the landlord of their apartment and shortly after, we heard that she had gone on pilgrimage to Mecca and had become an Alhaja. A demon was assigned to her to derail her. When you see somebody, who every time he does something bad would say, “I don’t know what made me do that,” know that he is being directed by a private enemy in the form of the spirit of error. When a person falls into the same spiritual trap twice, it is the work of the spirit of error. This same spirit makes somebody who experiences financial breakthrough to refuse to pay his tithe so that poverty can come back and he would start to regret. When he gets another breakthrough, he would repeat the same mistake. It is the spirit of error sponsored by these powers. If you have got to the stage where the word of God no longer has any effect on you, or you know that something is bad and you understand the effect it will have on your life, destiny and your calling, yet something makes you to go ahead and do it, it is the spirit of error. When you go ahead to commit the same mistakes you saw other people make, you have a personal private demon working against you. There are some people who observe the times to obtain information, it is a spirit of error encouraged by this private devil. Some people are still pressing sand in order to know the future - spirit of error. Some are still chanting the names of angels that do not exist- spirit of error.
In the open market, there are some people selling books called ‘Special use of the Psalms.” They tell people to be chanting some strange names after reading the book. It is the spirit of error. After all, the Bible says, “Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image nor the likeness of anything whether it is in the heaven above or in the earth below and don’t bow down to them.” Any form of respect to any image is spirit of error. Any prayer session where a male is washing the naked body of an adult female is a spirit of error sponsored by this private demon. Any organisation where they are sitting or standing on the Bible is a spirit of error.
A long time ago, I wanted to pray for a woman and I saw that she had tied her Bible with a string, so I asked: “Madam, why did you tie your Bible instead of reading it?” She said, “I am mother in Israel.” I told her it was wrong to tie the Bible, that is the spirit of error. Any teaching that supports reincarnation is a spirit of error. Any prayer that involves rubbing somebody’s body with eggs or offering sacrifices, is the spirit of error. Any organisation that meets only in the night is the spirit of error. Any association that advocates polygamy is the spirit of error; baptism of the dead, prayer at the cemetery, praying to God with flowers or perfumed water is the spirit of error. These private demons push people to do these things.
Sometimes when you tell some people what the Lord said they should do, they would tell you that what you are saying is too simple to be true. They don’t want the simplicity of the gospel. They want something else added to it. Keeping or decorating any furniture in white colour specially for God in your house is a spirit of error. Any scraping of hair and leaving a little bit in the centre of the head in the name of religion is the spirit of error. Praying naked and facing the East or West is still the spirit of error.
Why is the enemy interested in confusing people?
The private demon knows that once he pushes a person into the line of error and he begins to make mistakes, God will turn His face away from the person. Then they are able to deal with the person. Pray the following prayer point: “Any private demon assigned against my family, I bury you today, in the name of Jesus.”
WHAT ARE THE FACTORS THAT DETERMINE WHETHER A PRIVATE ENEMY WILL LEAVE YOU ALONE OR CONTINUE TO FOLLOW YOU?
These powers can only prosper depending on certain factors:
1. Your level of secret sins: As far as you are cleverly committing your secret sins, the private demon assigned against you will be strong against you. The Bible says, “He that covereth his sins shall not prosper, but he that confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy.” That sin that you are covering up will make your private demon to get stronger against you. A lady told me she was raped and I asked her how. After her explanation, I said, “A person picked you in his car and diverted his journey from where you were going, and you did not object. He stopped at the market to buy things, and you did not jump out. He drove you to his house and was cooking food, you did not open the door and run away, how can you now say that you were raped? It is not possible. You raped yourself.”
Cleverly concealed sins strengthen the enemy against people. If the Lord opens your eyes to see the laboratory of the hearts of men, you would be amazed what some people are thinking about. If for example you know that I have power to read what is going on in your mind, I am sure you will run away from me. When you naked a woman or man in the laboratory of your heart, the private demon sees that. So don’t be fooled by thinking that nobody sees you.
2. Your kind of family background: For example, if your father is a herbalist and your mother is the chief priestess of the water spirit in your village and your uncle is the one that sacrifices slaves to demons, then with that kind of background the enemy would be fully strengthened. That is why we pray at MFM that every seed of witchcraft in my foundation should die. The fact that you ignored it and you are so naïve to believe that those things will not affect you does not prevent them from working against you. When they gave birth to you and named you ‘Osotunde’ which means that a wizard has just arrived, they have simply handed you over. You don’t expect your battle to be as easy as the battle of somebody whose father was a catechist in the church and the mother a prophetess. No, your battle would be different.
3. Consultation with dark powers: The private enemy will be strengthened by any previous consultation with dark powers unless you sit down, take your biro and paper, write down all the wrong places you went to seek solution and begin to break any connection between you and them one by one. Cancel their evil connections and destroy their powers.
When I graduated from the university with a First Class degree, somebody in my family came to me and said, “You are the first person to achieve this in our family and we don’t want witches to eat you up. We have to fortify you.” I told him I was not going anywhere, that the word of God was powerful enough for me. This person started to cry. He cried so bitterly that one day I decided to follow him. When we got to the herbalist, he was sitting on one old dirty bench, and had a big plaster on his hand. He was eating yam with salt and palm oil. The whole place was dusty. I had my New Testament Bible in my pocket. We stared at each other. I was praying seriously within me that: “Oh Lord, send this man that brought me here out so that I can deal with this herbalist.” All of a sudden, the man who brought me asked for the toilet to ease himself. When he left, I faced the herbalist and said, “Mr man, look at me straight in the eyes. You say you want to fortify me and you cannot even afford to buy one egg to eat your yam. Look at the whole of the place you are living in, if you are so powerful, why can’t you make yourself live in a better condition? Look at your clothes. You are just deceiving yourself and will die unless you surrender yourself to Jesus.” The man got annoyed but before I could continue, the man who brought me came back so I kept quiet. The herbalist looked at the man who brought me and said, “This man is very stubborn, get him out of this place.” So, we got out and the man started to cry again. If you have been fortified like that, I pray the Holy Spirit will de-fortify you today, in Jesus’ name. Such fortification will only strengthen the enemy because anywhere you go, you would be recognised as somebody who had received favour from them in the past. The devil has no free gift. He operates a primitive trade by barter.
4. The spiritual quality of your past sex partners: You might do well by writing down the names of all those you have slept with and cancel every ungodly soul-tie between you and them because a person who has slept with a goat is different from a person who has slept with a serpent. Many men who patronise prostitutes are just sleeping with serpents. Many are sleeping with crocodiles and they don’t know. I pray that the Lord will deliver you, in Jesus’ name.
5. Your potential usefulness in the kingdom of God: If the devil sees that you are potentially useful to the kingdom of God, he will try and fight you. It is recorded in history that Jerusalem was invaded four hundred times. Why was the invasion of Jerusalem that hot? It is because Jerusalem has a prophetic calling. So, if you have a Jerusalem in your life, it would be hotly contested by the enemy.
6. Your willingness to be free from the activities and powers of this private enemy: Sometime ago, a man came to one of our meetings. His problem was that he had twenty- seven birds always running after him. He was the only one seeing them and sometimes the birds would defecate on his face and because of that he was always cleaning his face and people thought he had eye problem. After the first prayer point, twenty-four of them disappeared and it remained only three. Then he came to me for prayers to deal with the three and I said, “Let us pray.” As I closed my eyes, the Holy Spirit said, “Don’t waste your time. Ask him the last time he slept with a woman who is not his wife.” I said, “Sir, before we pray against these birds, can you tell me the last time you committed immorality." Looking away from me, he said, “Last week.” I told him that if he did not repent, the twenty four birds that had just left would go and bring seven more each, plus the remaining three and all of them would now be running after him. He said he was sorry and I said, “It’s not me. Ask the Lord to forgive you.” A private demon was in charge of his life.
It is the private demon that pushes a person who has received deliverance to commit sin again so that the problems will come back.
PRAYER POINTS
1. Sing the following song three times:
Let God arise and His enemies be scattered.
Let God arise and His enemies be scattered.
Let God arise and His enemies be scattered.
Let God, let God, arise.
2. O God, arise and let my enemies be scattered, in the name of Jesus.
3. O God, arise and let every satanic messenger scatter, in the name of Jesus.
