So this is what Jesus did. He directly confronted the spirit. He said: be quiet, come out of him. The demon struggled violently, threw the man on the ground, and came out of him. Now you can imagine that's actually quite a dramatic thing to happen in a normally quiet church service, very dramatic. So of course the atmosphere is just electric with the presence and power of God. This was an example of Jesus' deliverance, and the people commented, and they said they were amazed, and spoke among themselves, saying: what a word is this, for with authority and power He commands the spirits and they come out. Now this was astonishing. In a country like Israel, the problem of demonisation is widespread. You go through Asia, Africa, through South America, you go through many countries, the problem of demonisation is widespread, well-known, and they don't know what to do, so they seek out all kinds of remedies for it. But we have the answer. We have been given authority to address them.
The church must arise in this area. Now in the west, the problems are still there, it's just they're covered over, they're a little more hidden than you would expect, but the same problems are essentially in people in the west as well. It's just they think it's just me, and so in the west we tend to rationalise spiritual things, and to say it's just me, or try and find a natural cause for it, and don't realise it could be demonic. Now you notice here what they said: He said with authority and with power. The word authority means the rule of government, it's the rule of government. The word is in the original language is the word exousía, so when you read your Bible, sometimes it'll mis-translate it, and it'll use the word power, but they're actually two different words. I want to explain them so you understand completely what they are. The word exousía means a right has been delegated to you, to speak and act on behalf of someone else - exousía a right, a legal right has been delegated to you, to speak and act on behalf of someone else, in this case Jesus Christ.
So if you have authority you have a legal right. It's a legal right. It's got nothing to do with how you feel. It is a legal right, so for example if a family - if the parents die, and there's only one son, unless there is a legal Will that gives the property elsewhere, he has the legal right as the only heir to inherit the property. If you've purchased a building, you have the legal right to own and occupy the building, so if someone else is there, they are a squatter. They have no legal right to be there. You are the person who has the legal right. So in the case of spiritual authority, spiritual authority God delegates to you a legal right which is recognised in the spirit world, to speak and to act on His behalf. Now when the Bible says that the husband is the head of the wife, there many emotional things that go through people's mind thinking about that, but I want to just make it really simple and clear. From the point of view of the spirit world, God has made a declaration that the husband legally has authority in the spirit world, to speak and act on behalf of Jesus Christ in relationship to his marriage and family. It's a delegated right given to him.
Now it's nothing to do with whether the wife is of more value or more spiritual than the husband, it's just an order God has set in place. The demonic world will recognise the order, and do all it can to sabotage it, so a husband may not be as good a prayer as his wife. He may not know the Bible as well as his wife, but nevertheless, from a spiritual perspective, God has delegated to him a positioning in the spirit world. It's not a positioning of ruling over his wife, because the Bible says actually spiritual authority is exercised through loving service, but in terms of the spiritual world, he has a right to speak and to give directions and act, and he can address spirit powers. Now this is something people don't really understand. I'll give you an example of when I saw it most vividly. I had a couple who formerly had been Pastors, and his wife had been deeply involved as a young woman in the occult. She was trapped into it, and I won't go into the details of it, but it was a very horrendous experience, both as a young girl about six, and then again as a teenager about 16. The things she described were horrendous. I had trouble believing it all, because it was so horrendous what happened.
Anyway, she moved out of that whole thing, moved on with her life, married. They got called into ministry and later on it was very clear there were problems that were going on, and there was a strong control sat around his wife, so I got him as the husband to stand up, and I'll show you how to do that a little later - how to stand up and to pray and address the spirit world, and exercise his authority as husband, to position himself as the husband, to make a declaration I am her lawful husband, and to speak into the spirit world. He did it, and what happened was some of the issues around her life came up to the surface, but what I didn't realise was, he kept praying that way. So he kept praying day after day, asserting his authority in the spirit world, and commanding all controlling spirits to release his wife, and what happened was initially the first problems came up, then this whole layer of all this occult surfaced. We had some massive difficulties because of all of these issues.