Notice here he's saying specifically to the Hebrews, when they go into the Promised Land, not to bring into their home objects which have been used in idolatry. The reason they would bring them into their home was because often these things were quite valuable, they were carved with silver and gold or porcelain, and they were quite expensive objects. I prayed for a businessman in Taiwan not so long ago, and he had over a million dollars worth of objects. When he became a Christian he destroyed all of them, the whole lot. That's a lot of money isn't it - because he didn't want to have hooks into these things. So you notice it said: lest you be snared, or be caught in a trap. Now let me just give you a couple of examples, just from our own ministry experience.
When we first went to Dannevirke, I'd got filled with the Holy Ghost, we went and stayed in a school house, and we'd been there only a matter of a week I think it was. I'd gone and we'd talked with the Pastor of the local church, made a great connection there. We now felt like we had a home to go to, to talk about spiritual things. That night Joy went to bed and went to sleep, and I just stayed and watched a bit of television and went back to bed, and no sooner lay down in the bed, I was just lying there, just thinking about things, and this tall, about seven foot tall dark figure walked into the room, and freaked me out is the only way I can describe it. I could not speak. I was frozen in fear. I was absolutely terrified - it was a spirit being, a demonic spirit. So this thing absolutely terrified me. I felt every hair on every part of me just rise up - aaah! I felt like I couldn't even breathe, the fear was that much.
Then Joy woke up praying, and the thing seemed to divert it's attention onto what she was doing, and I felt free, and I could get up, so I got up, turned the light on, got the Bible out. Oh! [Laughter] Where do we start! I'm too young a Christian to know what to do so one, I got the light on. That was a big help! [Laughter] I'm a bit scared of the dark. [Laughter] And then I read Psalm 23: The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures... I was pretty - didn't know much to do then, but anyway that was enough for the night, and we were okay for that. [Laughter] But we had to actually realise there was a spirit in the house, and we needed to cleanse the house, and get the spirit out of it. I then discovered that there were heaps of them in the school as well, and so once I'd learned what to do, then I began to go over - sometimes I'd go over at night to the school, and I'd walk through it in the dark [Oooh!], and pray in tongues, and decree the authority I had over all of those demons, and I overcame totally all fear of the things of the dark. [Laughter]
I used to be terrified to go and put the things out at night, and want to run back to the house. [Laughter] It was bad - so anyway we had that spirit in that house, and that was a bit of problem later on. One of our babysitters, we came home and she was weeping because she was absolutely petrified, because she'd heard footsteps walk up and down in the hall. Anyway we prayed, and got rid of this thing out of the house.
When I came first to Hastings we had some neighbours not far from us, and they said can you come and help us, we've got major problems of oppression and sickness in our house? I said I'll come over tomorrow. I prayed and I felt the Lord say to me: they've got some masks from Fiji, so I went over and I said: have you got any masks from Fiji? They said yeah, we have, we brought some back. I said don't you realise they pray over those things, and impart spirits into them? Your problems began when you got the masks in the house, so we prayed. I told them to destroy the masks, but then he came over the next day, he said: I tried. I poured petrol on them but they would not burn - and they were wooden. Isn't that interesting? I said okay, well next time put some petrol on them, and I said that's a good start, then pray and bind the spirits, and decree destruction on that object. Well he came back the next day, and he said whoa! [Laughter] It went off with such a big bang we nearly all got burnt [laughter], and they just burnt to cinders, just burnt right out like that.