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Authority Over Demons and Disease
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How could that be true? It is true because the Lord has given us authority on the earth. We have
a right to be here, and these things are down here on the earth. If He is just going to intervene
and keep the devil from doing things in your life, He ought to do it for everyone else, too. Where
does our will come in? Where does our authority come in? He has given us authority.
You
resist
the devil. Who? You! You resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
What if you don’t do it? What if you say, “I’m waiting on the Lord to do it”? He didn’t tell you
to wait on Him to do it. “I’m praying that He will make the devil quit.” He didn’t tell you to pray
that way. He told you to resist him yourself, didn’t He? He told you to do something about it. He
told me to do something about it.
We will look at another one. Paul is a witness. James is a witness. Peter is a witness. We are
reading out of the New Testament. Let’s not believe tradition instead of Scripture.
First Peter 5:8 says, “Be sober, be vigilant,” be on the watch, “because your adversary the devil,
as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.” Why would you need to be
vigilant if there’s nothing you can do about it? Because he’s seeking whom he may. That means
there are those he may not. What determines those he may and those he may not? How can you
be sure you’re one of the ones he may not devour? Who is going to resist him? You are, and I
am. He tells us in the very next verse. “Whom resist steadfast in the faith.” Resist him and what
is going to happen? We just saw that when you resist him, when you stand against him, he will
flee from you.
We haven’t majored on this or camped on this enough. We haven’t thought about this enough.
We’ve lived too much in the natural. We talk too much about the reports, too much about the
symptoms, too much about what we feel and what has happened, and other people’s experience.
We’ve lived too much according to our senses and our feelings, not realizing there’s a spiritual
world.
There is a devilish energy in disease, isn’t there? You can see it under the microscope. What
makes it grow? What makes it develop? What makes it try to develop and choke the life out of a
human being? It’s not the life of God in there. It couldn’t be. What is it? It’s the enemy. It’s not
something for us to get superstitious and spooky about. It’s for us to get up and get adamant
about, and say, “No! Not in my life! No! Not in my body! Not in my child! No! I’ve been given
authority and power over all demons and over all disease!”
This is how Jesus operated. Put all of the examples together, read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and
John, and you’ll see not just once or twice, not just a half dozen times, but again and again, He’s
casting out devils. He’s rebuking sickness and disease. With Peter’s mother-in-law, He did the
same thing with that fever that He did with that demon just a few verses earlier. She had a great
fever, and when they told Him about it, He went in there, and He rebuked the fever. (Luke
4:38,39) That’s not the way most Christians think, do they? “Y’all pray for me.” For what?
“Well, that God would heal me if it’s His will.” But what about all of these scriptures? Why
don’t we immediately jump up on both feet and say, “Fever, get out of here! Infection, get out of
here! Disease, get out!” Why don’t we think like that? Oh, the devil hopes we don’t find this out.
He’s tried to keep us in the dark. He’s kept millions in the dark for centuries, but no, it’s too late!