Spiritual Warfare #5 - Binding and Loosing

Lightly edited for readability while preserving the speaker’s meaning and substantive statements.

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   Well, good morning everyone. We want to welcome everyone this morning, our students here to our Fire and Grace School of Ministry. This is our second semester spiritual warfare block. This is spiritual warfare class number five. We're going to get into the issue of binding and loosing, basically the authority of the believer against Satan and demon spirits, evil spirits. So, get your Bible out and get ready to take your notes. Let's just refresh Ephesians 6:12 because I want to break down a little bit about uh what it says here. But, Ephesians 6:12 I ought to be very familiar. In fact, this is going to be on your test in the days ahead. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, and against spiritual wickedness in high places. And as you'll see, that can also mean wicked spirits in high places. And that that's really how it could it could be translated either way. Uh that's not wrong, and the other way is not wrong. But, uh remember when you're looking at your verses, we do use the King James Version here. But, let's look at this. Of course, this is the word principality, and I want to uh get into this because I want you to understand what he's talking about because the fallen angels, we have two two different entities we're dealing with. And I'm going I I can't get into all of that this morning, but I am going to say that fallen angels and demon spirits are not the same thing. And we get the hints of that from scripture, and we get a confirmation of that from the Book of Enoch, but we'll look at that later on and we get into the deliverance issue, but I just want to say this morning, primarily we're dealing with the principalities. Now, they are the princes. They are the fallen angels who are in charge over, and there is a a structure that Satan has in his kingdom. Uh there's an order, there's a rank. And he talks about these principalities here is the word arche, which it means, you know, we've looked at this before, chief, order in time, place, or rank. In other words, principality. But notice right here, I want you everybody to see this right here. The principality rule, magistracy, magistrate of angels and demons. Do you see that? Even the your Blue Letter Bible, which compiles again, the Blue Letter Bible is a great resource cuz it compiles not just the Strong's Concordance and Hebrew and Greek Dictionary, uh lexicon, but many different lexicons. So, when you see this outline of Bible usage, it's bringing together Thayer's, it's bringing together Gesenius, it's bringing together a lot of different ones. So, you get the whole picture here. Anyway, this is

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   those who have the first place. So, the principalities are the fallen angels that are chief rank over the demon spirits and even other fallen angels under them. So, there's order and rank. That's why we have arche, you have the archangel. Um that means a chief or prince angel, principality. All right? Now, we get this here from Daniel chapter 10. Let's read this. I want to read Daniel 10, so you'll see he calls uh these angelic beings, uh Gabriel does, that he has to go fight against, and that Michael fights against, he calls them princes. He also calls Michael your prince. So, a principality has authority and power over uh others other angels or fallen angels and demons uh and over regions. So, let's uh look at this. Daniel chapter 10 verse 11. This is where we'll start. And he says, "But he said it to me, O Daniel, a man greatly beloved, understand the words that I speak unto thee and stand upright, for unto thee am I now sent. And when he had spoken this word unto me, I stood trembling." Now, this is Gabriel speaking to Daniel. Then said he unto me, "Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words." And then he says here, so Gabriel says, "I was sent." He says, "But the prince, or you could say principality, the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me." That means fought against me, resisted me. "One and 20 days, but lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, and I remained there with the kings of Persia. Now, I am come to make thee to understand what shall befall thy people in the latter days, for yet the vision is for many days. And when he had spoken such words unto me, I set my face toward the ground, and I became dumb." Now, let's keep reading this. Just so you see. He goes on to talk about it. And he says, "And behold, one like the similitude of the sons of men touched my lips, and then I opened my mouth, and spake, and said unto him that stood before me, 'O my Lord, by the vision, my sorrows are turned upon me, and I have retained no strength. For how can the servant of this my lord talk with this my lord? For as for me, straightway there remaineth no strength in me, neither is there breath left in me.' Then there came again, and touched me one like the appearance of a man, and he strengthened me. And he said, 'O man greatly beloved, fear not, peace be unto thee, be strong, yea, be strong. And when he had spoken unto me, I was strengthened and said, Let my lord speak, for thou hast strengthened me. And then he said, Thou knowest wherefore I am come unto thee. He says right here, And now I will return to fight with the prince of Persia, and when I am going forth, lo, the prince of Grecia will come. And then he says here, he ends it with,

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   But I will show thee that which is noted in the scripture of truth, there is none that holdeth with me in these things but Michael your prince. So, there are principalities on both sides, good and bad, angelic archangels that have power and authority. Ones carry the power and authority of the Lord God Almighty, the Lord Jesus, and the others carry the power and authority of their master, Satan, the devil, Lucifer, the dragon, that old serpent, as the devil calls him, or as the Lord calls him, uh, in the scriptures, and as the devil calls himself many different things. Um, but anyway, let's keep going here. I just wanted you to see that passage. This right here is where it says the rulers of the darkness of this world. That That phrase here is this word, uh, cosmo, and and I don't even not sure how you pronounce this. See, cosmoc fetor or something like that. It's just weird. It looks nothing like they say it's pronounced. But the rulers of the darkness of this world, notice that the Strong's definition says, A world ruler, an epithet of Satan, a ruler, and then of course Thayer's lexicon says, Lord of the world, prince of this age. Remember, Satan is called in Ephesians 2, the prince and the power of the air. He's also called in 2 Corinthians 3, the god, little g, of this world. But, the world rulers of this darkness. So, he's again referring to Satan. He's referring to Satan's kingdom, the rulers of the darkness of this world. So, there are rulers, there are powers and authority over all the darkness of this world. I find it inter- interesting because one of the root words here is cosmos. Does that sound familiar? A ruler of the cosmos. I think it's interesting that they use this. I thought And lo- notice what it says here, uh the circle of the earth, right? The cosmos means the circle of the earth. Uh what's in that circle? The stars, the sun, the moon. And they use the stars and the sun and the moon as uh objects of worship and idolatry and all kinds of things to manipulate man. Um anyway, the rulers of the cosmos. Ain't that something? Just thought that was an interesting little fact there, but we're going to move on through this. Just so you see where he says there in heavenly places, the spiritual wickedness in high places, the word here is uh epouranios, uh uranios, I guess you'd say. And it's talking about existing in or above heaven, heavenly, existing in the heaven. But, notice it says existing

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   in heaven, the things that take place in heaven, the heavenly regions, heaven itself, the abode of God and angels, the lower heavens of the stars, the heavens of the clouds. So, what he's saying when we're talking about this, when you talk about spiritual wickedness in high places, not talking about in the third heaven. There are three heavens. The first heaven is the atmosphere of the clouds and the birds and where we live and breathe. The second heaven is actually the solid firmament is called heaven and the third heaven Paul said is where the throne of God sits upon that sea of glass, that firmament. And that's why Paul said he was caught up to the third heaven. Right? In 2 Corinthians chapter 12. So, there's three. So, when he says these are in heavenly or high places, so, you know, a lot of people think, well, oh, they've always taught, you know, cliches, the devil is, you know, in hell. And uh the demons and the fallen angels, they're in hell. Well, yeah, some of them are there. But, most of them are here moving about. Remember what uh Peter said, 1 Peter chapter 5, he said the devil is as a roaring lion walking about seeking whom he may devour. Well, where is he walking about? Here, in our atmosphere, in this second heaven or or first heaven realm, I should say. All right. Let's keep going here. So, you getting it? Of course, this is uh Luke 10:19 and we're talking about Jesus speaking to his disciples. Now, I believe all scripture is given by inspiration of God is profitable. I believe it all applies to us. There's some people that say, well, see, Jesus was just talking to his disciples. Well, let's look at this. Jesus spoke to them and said, "Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy and nothing shall by any means hurt you." Luke 10:19. Now, you know, he's not talking about real serpents and real scorpions. That's not the issue here. He's using these as illustrations of demons, different types of demons, and evil spirits. This is uh an article that's on my website, donald.org, that I wrote a number of years ago. Actually, I've got about 14 chapters of a book on spiritual warfare and deliverance. I just need to finish it, but this is one of the chapters. Spiritual warfare 101 binding and loosing, the whole article is on the website in the articles page, but let's read this passage in Luke, not just verse 19, but let's read this. It says, "And the 70 returned again with joy, saying, 'Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name.'" And he said unto them, "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven. Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you. Notwithstanding in this, rejoice not that the spirits are subject unto you, but rather rejoice that your names are

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