“The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” (Matthew 6:22-23)
Translation: The illuminator of the body is perception. If your perception is clear, your whole body will be transparent with shining light (think of Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration). But if your perception is corrupt, ill, diseased, distorted, your whole body will be full of darkness. Therefore, if what is being made manifest in you is shady and obscure, how great is that darkness!
“You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering: the sardius, topaz, and diamond, beryl, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, turquoise, and emerald with gold. The workmanship of your timbrels and pipes was prepared for you on the day you were created. You were the anointed cherub who covers; I established you; you were on the holy mountain of God; you walked back and forth in the midst of fiery stones. You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created, till iniquity was found in you. By the abundance of your trading you became filled with violence within, and you sinned; therefore I cast you as a profane thing out of the mountain of God; and I destroyed you, O covering cherub, from the midst of the fiery stones. Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor; I cast you to the ground, I laid you before kings, that they might gaze at you. You defiled your sanctuaries by the multitude of your iniquities, by the iniquity of your trading; therefore I brought fire from your midst; it devoured you. And I turned you to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all who saw you.” (Ezekiel 28:12-18)
Once upon a time there was a beautiful Archangel by the name of Lucifer (Heylel in Hebrew meaning bright and shining one). He was a being created by God, full of wisdom and revelation, full of light. He betrayed God, wanting to be worshiped and revered like God and was cast out. Lost his place in heaven, lost his sonship, lost his timbrels, his wisdom, and every precious stone. Luke 10:18 “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” What was it that got him cast down? Ezekiel says that his heart was lifted up. It wasn’t just that he had a thought or a desire that he wanted to be greater than God. He had decided in his heart that he would be greater than God.
“How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, you who weakened the nations! For you have said in your heart: ‘I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation on the farthest sides of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High.’ Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol, to the lowest depths of the Pit. Those who see you will gaze at you, and consider you, saying: ‘Is this the man who made the earth tremble, who shook kingdoms, who made the world as a wilderness and destroyed its cities, who did not open the house of his prisoners?’”
Before he was cast out, he managed to convince some of the other created beings that God was maybe holding out on them. That maybe He was holding them back from becoming like Him. That they were deserving of more and that God was just trying to control them. Sound like a familiar scam? (“Oh Eve, God knows that the moment you eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil your eyes will be opened, and you will be just like a god yourself. He just wants to keep you under His control.”) All that God created was good. Every being He created was good, and their nature was good. When they chose in their hearts to rebel against their Creator, they took on a darkened nature that was opposite God’s nature. They were all cast to what is referred to in the Bible as “the dry place” to roam.
“When and unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest, and finds none.” Seeking rest, why? Because they are in torment. These unclean spirits have every impulse and urge of their nature with no means to express it because they have been disembodied. Not only did they lose their heavenly bodies when they were cast out of heaven, they lost their names too. They have no names now. They are only known by their nature. And they are in torment as long as they have no vessel to express themselves through. That’s where you and I come in. They want to use us to express their nature and fulfill their desires. They are at rest when they are tormenting us.
What does that look like? Well, a spirit of bitterness, for example, might be expressing itself through me by reminding me of something someone did to me over a decade ago. That person might not even be around or even alive anymore, but every time I think about them, I feel anger and resentment at what they did to me. And I blame them, I want them to suffer, I think that they owe me something. Not only does that affect my soul and make me feel miserable emotionally, but that also affects my body. Over time my body might begin to exhibit things like arthritis, diverticulitis, high blood pressure, chronic pain, and certain cancers.
See, the nature of God is forgiveness. When we are aligned with God’s nature, when our perception is clear, our body is full of light. Unforgiveness is the nature of a spirit of Bitterness and the fruit of that spirit is darkness, disease, and death. And all it does is whisper thoughts to us. When we choose to agree and receive those thoughts into our hearts our perception becomes obscure, and we take on the personality of the spirit and manifest according to its nature. That is how sin is fulfilled in us.
In short, unclean spirits come to tempt us through thoughts to allow them to manifest their nature through us. We have learned to follow these unclean spirits. We have been taught to reason by these spirits. Proverbs 14:12 says “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.” This is why we need to have our minds renewed, to unlearn everything we think and learn to follow Jesus that it would be His nature that manifests through us. That is what He came to restore us to. Right thinking, right living, right health and wholeness.
Everything evil that exists today originated from these fallen beings. “That which has been is what will be, that which is done is what will be done. And there is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9) The agenda is to bring mankind to the condition where there is no knowledge of God. To bring the world to absolute chaos and anarchy. Why is all of this important to know? Because we are caught between two kingdoms. There is Satan’s kingdom and there is God’s Kingdom. We serve one or the other. If we don’t know the war that we are in, if we don’t know who our real enemy is, if our perception is darkened by obscurity, we are running blind on the battlefield.
I want to share some good news with you though. Colossians 1:19-20 says “For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross” It pleased God the Father that He would sacrifice His Son Jesus to bring us into reconciliation through the blood He shed on the cross. We can be at peace with God, with ourselves, and with each other because of His blood. Colossians 1:13-14 says, “He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.”
And the good news just gets better: Colossians 2:13-15 says, “And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.” He disarmed principalities and powers! Jesus tells his disciples in Luke 10:19 “Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you.” He has disarmed the enemy and given us authority over them in His NAME! “Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth.” (Philippians 2:9-10) If the name of Jesus is above every name, how much higher is His name over those unclean spirits who don’t even have names anymore?
Jesus has given us all authority in His Name. God has given us His Spirit of Truth. He paid the price for all of us to be reconciled to Him. He has given us His righteousness. His love, salvation, righteousness, forgiveness, it is all a gift. He is not willing that any should perish. But we do have the choice to follow Christ or follow sin. If we decide in our heart to follow Christ, He will help us. “He who began a good work in you is faithful to complete it.” (Philippians 1:6) It won’t be an overnight transformation. But it will be more glorious than a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly.
