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Feb. 18, 2021 - Jim Bakker Show
11:53
Understanding Why The Church Gets Attacked - Perry Stone
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Time Text
Ways of Spiritual Warfare 00:07:31
Why did so many physical attacks hit so many ministries in 2020, do you think?
Well, let me go back to the first question you asked about, I asked my father one day, I said, Dad, how do you explain that you're able to pray for the sick the way that you are and get healings, and yet you suffer with diabetes, and he looked at me, he thought for a moment, and he said, well, I've asked the Lord that question before, but he said, let me ask you a question.
Elijah the prophet received a double portion from Elijah.
Yet the Bible says that Elisha died of the sickness whereof he died.
And he said, yet after they buried Elisha, he raised a man from the dead, and he was dead.
It was his bones.
The bones still had the residue of the power of God in them to where they raised another man from the dead, a dead man from the dead.
And he said, we cannot explain why the same anointing that would raise a dead man would not heal the prophet when he was sick.
He said, you can't answer that.
Then he looked at me and he said, but here's what I want you to always remember.
If anybody ever questions you about why did your father pass away with this disease when he could pray for the sick, you tell them, and his name was Fred, Fred Stone died believing that God is a healer.
That my condition has nothing to do with God's ability.
So, situation, it's like the Lord told me, you got yourself in this mess.
You know, you didn't rest.
You didn't take a Sabbath, which all of us should.
You went, went, and went.
And then here's what happens.
And I want to say this to all the ministers watching.
When you get very exhausted, you will absolutely make the most unwise decisions.
In fact, you will do completely stupid stuff.
And you don't realize it at the time.
And then once you have recovered and once you've gotten better and once your strength has returned, you just look at yourself and say, that was really dumb.
Why did I think that way?
Why did I respond that way?
Why did I act that way?
Why did I work that way?
Whatever.
And so weariness of the body is one of the ways that the enemy gets into the life of ministers and men of God.
Now think about Elijah.
When he became discouraged, he was alone.
He felt like he was the only prophet left in Israel.
And he even wanted God to kill him.
And I've always laughed about that because if he really wanted God to kill him, what he would have done was just stay in Samaria and let Jezebel cut his head off because she was wanting to kill him.
But of course, he didn't want to die by the hands of Jezebel.
He wanted God to be responsible.
But here's the point.
He didn't know that down the road, God already had a chariot of fire with his name on it.
Neither did he know that God had a future plan for him during the tribulation of being one of the two witnesses, Malachi 4, 5.
And so I think, Jim, I'm going to be honest with you, and all the men and every pastor I know, it was either a physical attack, and I mean all of them, a staff attack, an uprising of the staff, a membership attack where the members rose up and split the church, a financial attack, a physical attack.
One of my best friends in all the world, his wife passed away, just devastated him.
They were married, I think it was for over 60 years.
And you look at the attacks, and here's what you have to say.
There is a battle that we are in in which Daniel 7, 25 says, he shall wear out the saints of the Most High God.
And then in Matthew chapter 24, where he talks about people being betraying and they're offending each other, turning on one another, hating one another.
The scripture says he that endureth, and that Greek word means to stand up under or to bear up under.
He that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved.
So we have a combination of several things happening.
Number one, we as pastors and ministers must learn to rest, take care of ourself, and not be addicted to the ministry.
Now, my mistress was the ministry.
I loved the ministry.
I adored the ministry.
I enjoyed the ministry.
I drank, ate, and slept the ministry to my own detriment.
God does not require men to do this.
When you have a wife and family, grandbabies and children, he wants you to spend time with them and have a good balance.
I was a very unbalanced person, and I realize that now.
So that's one aspect of it, is taking care of yourself.
Number two is to understand that we are in a spiritual warfare in which the plan of the enemy is to do what they did during the Civil War.
And let me explain.
In the Battle of New Orleans, Andrew Jackson had found in the state of Tennessee, Kentucky, young men who could hunt deer and squirrel.
And they were excellent shooters, and they could actually shoot more accurately at a distance than most of his other soldiers.
When they had the Battle of New Orleans, Jackson gave an order, take out the officers.
Now, when you were fighting the British, there was a certain protocol that the British established, which I never understood, like everybody get in lines, first row kneel down and shoot the front row of the other guys.
I mean, the guys on the front row are all going to die.
And so the Indians taught the colonists, why are you fighting that way?
It's stupid.
So the Indians taught them how to hide in the woods and come from behind an ambush.
And the British hated it because they were not fighting with honor.
It was all about honor, you know, die in honor.
Well, if you're going to be on the front line and you have a choice of getting shot and killed, or you have a choice of coming up behind and living, which one are you going to choose?
You know, I said I would rather be a live chicken than a dead lion.
So that's my way of looking at it.
So we're in a battle in which the enemy wants to take out the officers, and that is any voice that has influence.
Jim, in your day and now, you have a great influence over many, many people.
Spiritual Warfare Calls 00:04:37
And we have a system, and you know what I'm saying, and everybody can read between the lines here, that has risen that does not like the influence that prophetic voices or ministry voices have.
The enemy knows that because this testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.
So the enemy attempts to attack the leadership of the ministry, and he does it through different methods, and we won't go into all of those.
So we're in a spiritual warfare.
The third element of this is that we are in the time of the end, and the scriptures concerning the time of the end talk about perilous times.
They talk about seducing spirits, doctrines of devils.
They talk about having to endure offense and betrayal.
And so, plus all the other natural disasters and things that not only have happened, but will happen in the future.
So those three things are a combination, I think, as to why that we are going through what we're going through.
But the testimony is this.
When the doctors have looked at you, for example, and said, we don't know that Jim's going to make it.
And here you sit teaching.
Here you sit, how be it weak, but you're still able to teach.
My being able to look in this camera and teach the gospel to me is a mini miracle in so many ways.
But when the enemy attacks, I want to say this, when he attacks you or someone watching me and you have a significant role in a ministry or your local church or an organization that clothes and feeds people, missions, etc., the enemy never factors in the God factor.
He never does.
He never factors in the call of God.
That those of us who have a call of God are called of God, and no one can take that from us.
We can fail.
We can falter.
We can fall on our face.
But it's God who helps us get back up because the call, the call is greater than the fall.
That's a word right there.
The call is greater than the fall.
So God helps us to, whether it's spiritual, emotional, physical, moral, doesn't matter.
He helps his people.
And I'm talking to people out there watching me right now to be able to get up because of the God factor.
That if God is for you, who can be against you?
That no weapon formed will prosper.
He didn't say weapons weren't going to be formed.
They're always being formed.
But there are people who, and some of them are trolls and some of them just are atheists and some of them are agnostics or whatever, that can't stand ministries.
And a lot of them, Jim, as you, if anybody knows you do, are in secular journalism, secular media.
So they want to use their influence of the written news or the radio or television to take people down.
And they do every attempt.
And the reason, I want people to understand the reason why.
Influence.
If you'll go to the book of Job and you'll read the attack that Satan brought to Job, Job said they would come to the city gate to listen to me.
Princes would keep their mouths shut to hear me speak.
And so he had influence.
And so the attack was to hurt him, to hurt his influence.
And there again, God is still gracious enough to say, I'm going to raise you back up.
And one thing you do through all of this, any of us, is you learn lessons that you will have the rest of your life that you can only learn when you go through a very serious attack.
There are things you will never learn.
And a lot of times, and the Lord knows this, and anyone who's been a corporate leader or the pastor of a church knows this, that there are sometimes there are people in your ministry who cannot go where God is about to take you.
And while it's regretful for there to be sometimes separations, it is necessary.
Because for whatever reason, they are assigned for a season.
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