Spiritual Dominion - John G. Lake

The following in an excerpt from the book: John G. Lake - His Life, His Sermons, His Boldness of Faith

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When I went to South Africa years ago, I attended a great missionary conference a short time after I was there. It was a general conference of the Christian missions of the country. On account of our teaching the Baptism of the Holy Ghost and the power of God to heal, we were a peculiar feature in the conference. We were bringing a new message and they wanted to hear us, and get us sized up and classified.

Among the difficulties they discussed in that Conference was the tremendous influence of the native medicine men over the people. They call them witch doctors. I have seen shocking things take place at the hands of witch doctors, things that nobody would believe unless they beheld them.

On one occasion two men had become extremely jealous of each other, both native chiefs, and they lived sixty miles from each other. One time, as I was in the kraal of one of them, I heard them discussing this difficulty with the other and it was decided by the chief that the next Sunday morning he was going to set the other fellow on fire. I wanted to see this phenomenon and I got a horse and went across the country to be there on Sunday morning.

The chiefs go out and round up their cattle and heards, look over their flocks, etc. It is a sort of Sunday exercise. I rode along. We had not ridden for more than an hour when I observed this fellow was becoming very hot. Within half an hour he was absolutely purple. I knew somewhat of medicine; I would have said the man was likely to have a paralytic stroke from blood pressure. After a while he began to complain of terrible pain, and finally he became exhausted, got down and lay on the ground, and passed into a state of terrible exhaustion. I believe the man would have died. I had heard about these sort of things, but this was taking place under my own eyes. I saw that unless the man got deliverance he would die. When it got to that point, I said to the brethren, "It is time that we prayed." I stepped over and laid my hands on, and called on God to destroy that damning psychic power that was destroying the fellow, and God shattered it.

I talked to the Conference about this matter. I said, "It is a strange thing to me that in all the years of missions in this land that your hands are tied on account of witch doctors. Why don't you go out and cast out the devil out of these fellows, and get the people delivered from their power?"

They took a long breath and said, "Cast the devil out? He will cast the devil out of you!" The secret of our work, the reason God gave us one hundred thousand people, the reason we have twelve hundred native preachers in our work in Africa, is because of the fact we believed the promise of, "Greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world" (John 4:4). We not only went to seek them, but challenged them separately and united, and by the power of God delivered the people from their power, and when they were delivered the people appreciated their deliverance from the slavery in which they had been held through their superstitions, psychological, spirit control, and they are most terrible. "God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind" (II Timothy 1:7).

Whenever I got in the presence of one of these fellows and wanted to cast out the devil, I always felt I wanted to get his eye. I search to get his eye. The eyes of a man are the windows of his soul. In teaching a class of children I asked them what the eyes were for. One little chap said, "Your eyes are for you to look out of." Do you get it? It is not a poetic expression, they are the windows through which you look out. It is wonderful the things you see when you look out. Sometimes you see fear, and the spirit of darkness, and you see the devil in the the other life - marvelous things that you see with your inner eyes.

The world laughs at our Pentecostal people because they sometimes talk about seeing by the Spirit, and sometimes we talk about seeing phychically. We see all the time naturally, as you and I do now.

God anoints your soul. God anoints your life. God comes to dwell in your person. God comes to make you a master. That is the purpose of His indwelling in a Christian. The real child of God was to be a master over every other power of darkness in the world. It was to be subject TO HIM. He is to be God's representative in the the world. The Holy Ghost in the Christian was to be as powerful as the Holy Ghost in Christ. Indeed, Jesus' words go to such an extreme that they declare that "Greater works than these shall he do" (John 14:12). It indicates that the mighty Holy Ghost from heaven in the life of the Christian was to be more powerful in you and in me after Jesus got to heaven and ministered Him to our souls than He was in Jesus.

Beloved, who has the faith to believe it? Who has faith to exercise it? We cannot exercise anything beyond what we believe to be possible. Listen: "God hath not given us the spirit of fear."

Fear of the devil is nonsense. Fear of demons is foolish. The Spirit of God anointing the Christian heart makes the should impregnable to the powers of darkness. How I love to teach men that when the Lord Jesus Christ anoints your soul and baptizes you in the Holy Ghost, that the almightiness of the Eternal God, the Father, by the Spirit, and Jesus Christ combined has come into your soul.

What I want to bring to is that the Spirit of God, the divine master, the eternal power of God, the combined life and presence by the Spirit, of the Father and the Son, is given to you...not to leave you a weakling, and subject to all kinds of powers of darkness, but to make you a MASTER, to give you dominion in God over every devilish force that ever was.

"God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind" (II Timothy 1:7). The Spirit of Power is the Holy Ghost, bless God. And not only of power, but of LOVE and of a SOUND MIND. Not a craziness and insanity, but a sound mind, by which you can look in the face of the devil and laugh.

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Father, I thank You for HELPING US to see YOU IN US. Help us to walk in the anointing that we have been given to walk in VICTORY every day of our lives. You have let us know in Your Word that we are not to give any place to the devil and that the only place he is to have is under our feet. Thank You for reminding us to take and USE Your Word, the Sword of the Spirit, to put the enemy in his place every place we go. In Jesus' Name.