Continued from Part 1…

Not so, in third world countries where demons dominate out in the open through witchcraft and in your face physical manifestations. Just ask anyone from a third world country if they believe that demons are real and you will get a resounding “Oh, Yes!”

Why this difference between the two hemispheres? Could it be because of our ‘pride of life’?  In our western culture we have plenty of luxury and distractions, most of which are electronic, to keep us busy and it is not considered as sophisticated for us to believe in superstitions such as demons and witchcraft.

It is appalling to see how many people watch horror movies completely dulling their senses and discernment of the spiritual and fluff it off as it just being fantasy and not real anyway.  Or how we teach our children to celebrate the underworld Halloween with demonic ghouls and goblins, strangled dummies and graves with headstones on our front lawns, witches on broomstick flying into trees, demanding “trick or treat” that if we do not get a treat, we will place a trick (spell) on them, and yet treat it as completely innocent child’s play.  If we do not believe in demons then we must also not believe in God either and this is their advantage.  

In third world countries where most people live in abject poverty and are more in touch with nature, they do believe in supernatural powers and there is little ‘pride of life’ to distract them.  Demons there derive their power from superstitions, sorcery and witchcraft such as voodoo, Santeria, good luck charms, and many other demonic superstitions.  If the people believe that witches and demons are more powerful than ministers of the gospel, then they will stay away from the ministers and their churches out of fear of being cursed by the witches and witchdoctors and this is their advantage.

When I was in Haiti on a missions trip together with my son many years ago, to help build huts for a children’s bible camp, there was a story of a man doing the rounds who had had an accident and the witchdoctor was called to come and ‘cure’ him.  After many potions and spells, he only got worse.  Once he had paid the witchdoctor, he had no more money to pay to go to a hospital.  He was offered for a Christian minister to come and pray for him for healing but he refused out of fear that the local witchdoctor would find out and kill him with a spell if he had accepted.  He died nevertheless a few days later.

These demon possessed witches and witchdoctors have demonic power and demand total obedience, obeisance and submission to their demands or they will not hesitate to place a curse on anyone who challenges them.  One must pay them money to be “cured” of their sickness and they will feign to lift the curse with their spells and their potions.  But it is always only a temporary measure because as Jesus explained, a house divided against itself cannot stand.  Once one is under their control and spell they are doomed.  Their only hope of true release is to have the demon(s) cast out in the name of Jesus.

I believe that this is the real reason why the gospel spreads like wildfire in these countries when it is brought with power of signs and wonders confirming the word because it is so real to these people who live this supernatural realm of good versus evil every day, while here in the west, the reaction so often is ho-hum, like the satiated philosophers listening to Paul on Mars Hill,

And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked: and others said, We will hear thee again of this matter. Act 17:32

Let’s see if we can peek in on the circumstances that led up to the disciples’ unbelief and inability to cast this demon out of the boy.

The disciples were not powerless.  Far from it.  They had just come back from being sent out two by two to go into all the villages to cast out demons, cleanse the lepers, heal the sick, raise the dead and to tell the people that the kingdom of God had come nigh unto them.  They were so excited telling Jesus upon their return, that even the demons were subject unto them.  They had firsthand knowledge of their power and ability to cast them out from experience by their own hand.

So what gives?  They had power, albeit delegated power from Jesus Himself, since they had not received the baptism of the Holy Ghost yet.  Did they suddenly lose their power?  Had Jesus revoked their power and ability without telling them?  No, by the way Jesus responded to them, calling them a perverse and faithless generation, it is evident that He fully expected them to have been able to have cast this demon out of the boy.  Why else would He have been so upset with them?

So what caused them to become so unbelieving, faithless and perverse all of a sudden? Let’s find out by taking a look at the circumstances that led up to this event.

Jesus had taken Peter, James and John up into a high mountain (unknown which mountain but often referred to as the Mount of Transfiguration) where He was transfigured before them.  This left the other nine disciples behind to ‘fend’ for themselves.  Fend?  Yes, fend.  The Master had left them and taken the top three leading disciples with Him; Peter, who was one of the foremost disciples, John the disciple “whom Jesus loved” and James who was John’s brother, the two sons of Zebedee who Jesus had surnamed Boanerges, which is, the sons of thunder.  These were the same three disciples who were with Jesus when He raised Jairus’ daughter and in Gethsemane.  So who was left in charge?  We don’t know but we do know that they had a tendency to argue among themselves as to who would be greater in the kingdom.  So they obviously did not agree on who would be their leader besides Jesus.

Continued…

Franciscus M. Dartee

Grow in Faith | Walk in Power

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