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Religious Spirit's Persecution
00:03:12
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| The church has got to come together, Rick. | |
| This book is so important. | |
| Religious spirit you talk about in this book and witchcraft. | |
| Tell us more about that. | |
| Well, you know, a religious spirit was what was Jesus' biggest enemy when he walked the earth. | |
| He didn't have any trouble with demons. | |
| They'd come bow the knee to him. | |
| You know, it was the religious community that persecuted him and ultimately had him crucified. | |
| And I think it is still today, I believe the religious spirit has more influence in what we think of as the church than the Holy Spirit does. | |
| You know, I think the real church is very different than we may perceive it to be. | |
| But, you know, the religious spirit basically has us seeking to establish our relationship with God based on our own works rather than what Jesus has already accomplished for us. | |
| A religious spirit serves and can be very devout, very diligent, because they're seeking to gain God's approval through what they do rather than what Jesus did. | |
| And that's what led to the first murder recorded in world history when Cain slew Abel. | |
| It was all over the sacrifice. | |
| You know, Cain came to present to the Lord a sacrifice of his own works, of the fruit of the ground. | |
| Remember, the Lord had cursed the ground. | |
| He said, you can only bring forth from the ground by your own sweat. | |
| So Cain was bringing an offering that was the result of his own sweat, his own works, where Abel offered the blood, which represented, was a prophetic representation of what Jesus was going to do on the cross. | |
| And so the Lord had to reject Cain's offering, and he's still rejecting offerings that are based on that. | |
| And what did that cause Cain to do? | |
| To rise up and kill his brother, to persecute his brother, those who were living by the blood, by the power of the blood. | |
| So that battle still rages. | |
| You see it raging throughout scripture. | |
| That's what I wrote my first book on, two trees in the garden, how each of those are rooted in the tree of knowledge of good and evil, the death that comes forth and the life that comes forth from the tree of life. | |
| But you see the conflict between those two seeds throughout scripture. | |
| David comes forth. | |
| He's going to be confronted by Saul, who's trying to establish himself based on who he is and what he's done. | |
| And David had a heart after the Lord. | |