Seeing the Supernatural

by Jennifer Eivaz

  As an individual, you will be most effective in your purpose when you understand the city-church-angel connection and align yourself with it. In response to your alignment with your city assignment, God will release and activate the city angels to their assignment. You can discern the difference as an increase in angelic activity, just as the lack thereof also tells us where things stand. That does not mean you will not have any ministry or angelic help past your city borders. I just shared with you my own experience in Chengdu in this regard. Still, God has ordered your steps on purpose, and you are in your city for a purpose.

  Test the Spirits

  When my immediate family and I became Christians and officially left the LDS church, we had one relative consider making the same decision. This relative, too, was in the LDS church and was clearly being drawn away from its control by the Holy Spirit. That is, until a deceiving spirit disguised as an angel appeared to the person in the middle of the night, telling her to remain in the LDS church. Keep in mind that Mormons actively believe in angelic messengers, and they take the appearance of an angel to heart. They also don’t know that they should test the spirits, nor would they know how. As a result, this relative remained in the LDS church and closed her ears to the truth from then on.

  The apostle John wrote this: “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1). When angels appear, test them. And when someone tells you he or she has seen and heard from an angel, be prepared to put that person’s words to the test. The success of the gift of discerning of spirits is not that you have just discerned something, but that you have discerned it well. You not only saw or discerned an angel, but you also tested the spirit and found that the spirit passed the test.

  The apostle Paul wrote, “By this you will know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God” (1 John 4:2 ESV). How, then, do you test the spirits? I have read some authors’ very long lists of spiritual tests for such things, but my main test—actually, my only test—is to determine if the angelic experience is in agreement with the Bible. As the apostle Paul wrote, “All Scripture is God-breathed . . .” (2 Timothy 3:16). Did you read that? All Scripture is God-breathed; therefore, we can bank every encounter against the written Word of God to see if it holds true or not.

  In Paul Cox’s book Unwrap the Gifts, I read the story about Christina, a professing Christian who was searching spiritually after a near-death experience involving her brother. He appeared to her in a dream while he was in a coma, and when he came out of the coma, he somehow repeated the details of the dream to her. This strange spiritual experience opened Christina’s heart to search out more information about such things, especially things involving near-death experiences, mediums and communication with deceased loved ones.

  “I had communication with what I thought was an angel,” Christina said. “The angel was a comfort. It felt caring. It came to me first with words in my spirit, speaking in my mind.”5

  Christina grew to depend on “her angel,” even asking this angel for help. Soon, however, she began to be tormented, hearing evil voices and seeing ugly creatures. Repeatedly, she was physically attacked, with red marks to show for it, but nothing physical ever touched her. She sought help from some mature deliverance ministers, who figured out that the angel she was so attached to was really a demon, a demon that was eventually broken from her life.

  Christina became deceived because she did not understand the Scriptures. We don’t rely on angels more than we rely on God; this is what opened the door for Christina’s deception and possession. We don’t reach for the angels for comfort; we reach for the Comforter, the Holy Spirit.

  Joseph Smith, founder of the LDS religion, was born in Sharon, Vermont, and then moved with his family to western New York, a place of religious revival during the Second Great Awakening. Smith supposedly began having visions of God, including a visitation from an ostensible angel named Moroni. The angel directed him, Smith said, to a buried set of ancient gold plates containing the Christian history of ancient America. These plates Smith translated into the Book of Mormon.6 I believe Smith’s claims could have been falsified; rather than seeing some vision he thought was from God, he might even have made up the whole angel story. But Mormons are taught this history as absolute fact. Regardless, the Bible says clearly that we are not to add to the words of Scripture (see Deuteronomy 4:2; Proverbs 30:5–6; Revelation 22:18–19). Any angel directing you to find so-called “lost” Scriptures is therefore not an angel, but a demon.

  Louis (not his real name), age 21, was disillusioned with church and struggling in his marriage. He was the product of a divorce and had been raised by an emotionally unattached mother who did not demonstrate any verbal or natural affection toward him. Louis was passionate about the things of the Spirit, already showing signs of a prophetic gifting, but frustrated that he had nowhere to develop it. As his marriage was struggling, Louis began to fill his lonely places by watching dark spiritual shows on television at night and listening to dark, somewhat occult music.

  “At night I began to feel a spiritual presence,” Louis said. “A dark, motherly angel would come in and comfort me at night so I could sleep peacefully.”

  This brought Louis a comfort he had missed his entire life, but only for a season. Louis began to hear the voice of this spirit in his mind—soft words that would turn into swear words and then explosive anger. As the spirit began to take over his personality, he realized that a false angel had deceived him. He began praying with an intercession team weekly, and the spirit began to lose its grip on his mind, until he was finally delivered of it in a prayer service. “I could hear the Holy Spirit so clearly once it left,” he said.

  The gift of discerning of spirits allows us to discern the angels. I believe this is meant to show us what God is doing so we can more specifically co-labor with Him. The angels are servants of God who do His bidding. God is behind it when angels are present and active. He has sent those angels personally on a specific assignment, or they are there from Him to facilitate an answer to someone’s prayers. God can also activate them in response to someone’s prophetic decree, which is a word from Him spoken through one of His earthly representatives (see Psalm 103:20).

  As much as we need to discern what the angels are doing, we also need to discern what Satan is doing. We are in a battle to advance Christ’s Kingdom on earth, which ultimately leads to the displacement of satanic henchmen and strongholds. We cannot win our battles until we know what we are fighting against. We cannot distinguish or discern an enemy that we have not studied. In the next chapter, then, let’s discuss the key players in Satan’s army.

  Kingdom Principles

  The reason we need to discern the presence of angels is that angels give us an idea of what God is doing.

  Angels do a lot of things, but they function primarily as God’s messengers. They will communicate a message verbally, or even indirectly by means of their actions.

  When we understand the message of the messengers, often observed in their actions, then we can co-labor with God and complete what He has already initiated in heaven.

  You will discern angels most often by seeing them, feeling them and/or hearing them.

  As an individual, you will be most effective in your purpose when you understand the city-church-angel connection and align yourself with it. In response to your alignment with your city assignment, God will release and activate the city angels to their assignment.

  Thoughts for Reflection

  Have you ever discerned the presence of an angel? How did you discern it?

  Is it common for you to be aware of angelic activity, or not very common? Why do you think that is?

  How would your awareness and obedience to your God-given assignment prompt God to activate the angels in your midst?

  What is your purpose in your city? How might God ord
ain the angels to help you accomplish your purpose?

  Why do people fear or reject the active, discernible presence of the angels?

  7

  Discerning the Powers and Principalities

  Adam and Eve failed to discern their enemy. Do you ever wonder how that happened? Do you ever question why they missed the obvious? Satan came to them in the form of a snake. Was it that normal for snakes to talk? And then he convinced Eve, who convinced Adam, to disobey the one clear command of God: “You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die” (Genesis 2:17). Neither of them could discern the truth from the lie. Consequently, the entire human race fell.

  The Bible tells us that Satan works to blind our minds from the truth. “Satan, who is the god of this world, has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe. They are unable to see . . .” (2 Corinthians 4:4 NLT). We have all experienced this in some form or another personally, and we have also seen the spiritual blindness of others. I am amazed at those who have witnessed the hideous acts of cruelty and extremism of ISIS and still leave everything behind to join its ranks. I have watched the Chinese make offerings and bow before ginormous statues in their temples. These idols look like nightmarish demons, by the way, yet they still worship them!

  Jesus referred to the Pharisees as blind guides. “It wasn’t that they would not believe, they simply could not believe,” wrote Dave Williams, minister and author, in his book Skill for Battle: The Art of Spiritual Warfare. “The god of this world had blinded their ‘spiritual’ eyes and they could not see the truth.”1 Dave further explained that the blindness of the Pharisees then spread to the people. The very people Jesus taught and healed for three years suddenly turned on Him, shouting, “Crucify Him!”

  Spiritual blindness can only be overcome spiritually. People will not turn to Jesus until the prayers of the Church have bound the blinding demonic spiritual powers. When the Holy Spirit fell upon the praying disciples in the Upper Room, the scene was so supernatural that it caught the attention of the entire city (see Acts 2:1–12). Peter then spoke to the crowd—the very same crowd who had condemned Jesus—and the Holy Spirit opened their eyes to the truth. They saw their sin and made a full U-turn to Jesus Christ!

  When Scripture says that Satan has blinded the minds of unbelievers, understand that Satan has a rank-and-file army of dark angels who facilitate his evil wishes. In Ephesians 6:12, Paul wrote about what appears to be an organized hierarchy of beings in the demonic kingdom: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” These spiritual beings are not Satan himself, but they serve his wicked schemes against mankind. And they are not just spirits that possess people on an individual level. They actually work in the spiritual atmosphere of a city, region or nation to blind every person under their influence.

  I talked previously about the behavior and deceptive nature of a religious spirit. I also mentioned that a city will take on the personality of the demonic power that controls it; that is, until the Church overcomes it. Until then, the resident souls of those who do not yet know Christ hang in the balance. It is not that they don’t want to see the truth; they actually cannot see the truth because they have been blinded by a demonic ruler.

  In descending order, let’s consider our discernible enemies:

  The rulers, also translated “principalities” (Greek archai), are most identifiable as high-ranking spirit princes, such as the prince of Persia and the prince of Greece, who were both mentioned in the book of Daniel (see Daniel 10:13, 20).

  The authorities (Greek exousia) are spirits that stand behind human authorities to oppose the work of God. Elymas the sorcerer, for example, was someone who appeared to stand under demonic authority as he attempted to oppose the work of God in order to retain control of Sergius Paulus, the governor, and the island of Patmos (see Acts 13:4–12).

  The powers of darkness (Greek dunamis) work culturally and philosophically to bind people groups from seeing the Lord. Examples are false religions such as Hinduism, philosophies such as humanism, and political ideologies such as communism and all the other “isms” that deny the expression of God.

  The spiritual forces of evil (Greek kosmokratoras) are the lower-ranking spirits that afflict people through infirmity, fear, rebellion, deception, divination, complacency and the like.2

  In order to discern and overcome our spiritual enemies, we first have to study them. If we fail to recognize them, then we will come under their spell, so to speak, and be harmed. We understand this principle naturally. When I was in elementary school, for example, we were taught what behaviors to look for in strangers in order to identify them as dangerous or not. And then we were taught how to get out of danger. This instruction may have saved my life as a fourth grader, when I was walking home alone from school. A car with an older man inside began slowly circling up and down the block where I was walking. About the third circling, I identified the behavior as dangerous and quickly turned into the sheriff’s home on the block. Today, I thank God that He directed me to the sheriff, and that the sheriff was home! He let me come inside, and he reported the stranger before walking me to my house.

  Just as I was able to identify this stranger as evil, the Holy Spirit is also training our spiritual eyes to identify evil powers and principalities. Let’s now look at some of the most common powers and principalities that afflict and deceive cities, regions and nations, as well as persecute the Church.

  Belial

  Belial is a spiritual power that works to make your life worthless and barren through idolatry and self-sabotaging behaviors. Its name, Belial, means exactly that—without profit, worthless, wicked, ungodly and evil. It is the antithesis of Christ and His righteousness. “What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?” (2 Corinthians 6:15).

  Belial works to ensnare people into distinct sins so their lives are unfruitful and wasted. It partners with spiritual forces of wickedness to infect its territory with unrighteousness. It does not only entice those who don’t know Jesus; it also works to entice Christians who will allow its deception. Either way, it is a reducing spirit that skillfully crafts worthlessness into the lives of its victims.

  The first characteristic of Belial is idolatry. “Certain men, the children of Belial, are gone out from among you, and have withdrawn the inhabitants of their city, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which ye have not known” (Deuteronomy 13:13 KJV). Whole cultures have come under this deception, worshiping false gods and statues, and engaging in religiously false systems. I have also encountered far too many Christians who still pray to others in addition to God, read their horoscopes, do traditional yoga and/or burn sage and other herbs to keep evil spirits away, just to name a few such practices. This is the spirit of Belial at work, enticing people into idolatry, thus shutting the door to the Holy Spirit and drawing devotion away from Christ.

  The next characteristic of Belial is sexual sin. Sexual sin, which is sex in any form outside marriage, has devastated the lives of individuals and entire cultures since ancient times. The Bible says, “But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality” (Ephesians 5:3). Sexual sin has crept into Christendom in the forms of tolerance and acceptance of premarital sex, homosexuality and even open marriages. The Bible makes reference to the sons of Eli the priest in this manner: “Now the sons of Eli were sons of Belial; they knew not the LORD” (1 Samuel 2:12 KJV). Why were they considered sons of Belial? If you read further in the passage, they committed unauthorized worship and routinely had sex with ungodly women in the Temple. While visiting one California city in particular, I was shocked at how many churches displayed the rainbow flag as a statement of their acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle. The Bible is clear about homosexuality, but still some churches have blatantly d
eviated from this truth. This is the spirit of Belial (see Judges 19:22).

  Another characteristic of Belial is drunkenness. We see this connection between the spirit of Belial and drunkenness when Hannah was at the Temple, praying in deep anguish for God to give her a son. As she prayed and wept bitterly, Eli the priest observed her, and instead of consoling her, he accused her of drinking too much wine. She retorted, “Count not thine handmaid for a daughter of Belial” (1 Samuel 1:16 KJV). In other words, drunkenness can be connected to the spirit of Belial.

  Finally, those under the spell of Belial have no respect for authority. Nabal, also referred to as a son of Belial, would not honor David’s request for sheep, even though David and his men had voluntarily protected him and his flocks from outside harm. Nabal angrily refused David’s request for help, even pretending ignorance by saying, “Who is this David?” (1 Samuel 25:10). Then later, Sheba the Benjamite, also “a man of Belial,” worked to divide David’s kingdom (2 Samuel 20:1 KJV). When opportunity presented itself, Sheba blew the trumpet in rebellion against David and called every Israelite to himself.

  What is the penalty for Belial? You become marked for destruction! The Bible says that Nabal was struck by the Lord and died (see 1 Samuel 25:38). And Sheba’s plan turned against him, forcing him to hide out in a city from Joab, the captain of David’s army. When Joab put the city under siege to force him out, an old woman convinced the city to execute Sheba and thus end the siege (see 2 Samuel 20:21–22).