You and I are designed to be a gateway, and a channel, for the life, liberty, freedom, joy, fruit, nature of the spirit of God; and the kingdom of God to come, but people can equally as well open their lives to demonic influences, and then something else comes; there's death, destruction, strife, discord, disharmony, whatever. I was talking to a member of this church recently, and a new person had been appointed in the area they were working, and there was strife and discord; disharmony, problems. People were demoralised, productivity took a steep dive with this person being there. I asked: is there any chance that he's been involved in the occult? He said: actually he is. I said: well what are you doing about it? He looked a bit puzzled about it. I said to him: God put you there, to be a kingdom representative. It is your role to shut it down - not shut the person down, but shut down the operation of spirits, which are working through the person making everyone's life unhappy.
Many times Christians think that the kingdom, or the power or the presence of God, only comes in a church meeting. God wants us to bring and advance His kingdom into our workplace, into the arenas we are; and so I just showed him how to pray, got up and started praying. He came back the next day and said: man, it's got pretty tough at work. It's got really hard. I said: great, the fight has begun. The wimp has stood up [laughs] and starting to take his authority. Within 10 days the person had been replaced; the atmosphere changed, the whole productivity went up, and there was a totally different change in that environment. Subsequently this person was promoted.
Now this is our people in the community, shifting things at a spirit level, and having an influence inside an environment in the work. We can do it. You need to understand, this is our job. We're called to do this kind of stuff. So that's an occultic realm of spiritism operating, and the Bible describes in the Old Testament, a number of places it talks about the realm of the occult; and it talks about the whole area of occult practices and occult powers. In Deuteronomy Chapter 18 Verses 9 to 14, the Bible tells us not to be involved in any kind of occultic practice, that those who practice those things - fortune telling, divination, consulting spirits, calling up the dead - that these are an abomination to God. They bring a defiling around people. We're not to be involved in such things. In fact we are to confront them, because of the harm and the damage that they cause.
Let's have a look at a man who came under a demonic power of witchcraft. It's found in 1 Kings 19, and this is a great man of God. There's no way you can understand this passage unless you consider the reality of spiritual powers; and so we know the story of Elijah. Elijah was a prophet of God, so Elijah was called to come into the nation, stand up in the nation, and to bring a drought on the nation, and to confront the witchcraft and occultism that had come into the nation of Israel, that had defiled it. So he was confrontational prophet. He was to call the nation to repentance, and to bring a spirit of reviving, a softening of the hearts of the fathers; and turn them to their sons, and the sons to their fathers; so he was to bring a national revival.
The Bible says that in the last days, in Malachi 4, that God will again bring the spirit of Elijah into the church, and it will be for the same thing. It'll be to confront controlling powers, to dismantle them, to bring people out of idolatry, to restore fathers into their right places and to restore marriages and families; because in the last days there'll be a major decline in family values, family life. We see that already happening. Now here's this man Elijah. Elijah stood up, had a great victory, wow! Fire from heaven! That's fantastic. That's no little miracle is it aye? Fire from heaven! Awesome - then having called fire from heaven, he then proved that the prophets of Baal had no power whatsoever, having confronted them and bringing the fire of God from heaven, he then put them to death. But that wasn't all. There were some other prophets there, prophets of Jezebel, and they all got together and began to curse Elijah, and send witchcraft curses against him. How do they do that? Well they invoke their spirits, spoke words against him, stood in agreement.