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Unmasking The Religious Spirit
00:03:24
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| Well, what's so powerful, Rick, about this book that you said before the broadcast, Overcoming Evil in the Last Days, it is so timely right now because what you taught us in this book, this book, he writes over 20 years ago, and it is for right now. | |
| We are actually living in this book, Overcoming Evil in the Last Days. | |
| And you talk, Rick, about Satan's cord of three strands: racism, the stronghold of witchcraft, and the religious spirit. | |
| And you break it down so heavy. | |
| And when you get into the religious spirit and unmasking the religious spirit, and it's incredible. | |
| Tell us a little bit before we go off there today about what you're saying, warning about a religious spirit. | |
| And then the witchcraft is in the witchcraft in the church. | |
| Yes. | |
| Well, the religious spirit is an evil spirit. | |
| I'm not talking about Christianity. | |
| I'm not talking about faith, but I'm talking about it can be institutionalized religion. | |
| I think a lot of it is. | |
| But it's a religious spirit is the self-righteousness that was on the Pharisees and Sadducees, the most religious people in Israel, the ones who had the greatest hope in the coming Messiah, who preserved the scriptures, had so many other things, were the worst enemy of the Messiah when he came. | |
| And I believe this same spirit actually has more influence in the church today than the Holy Spirit does. | |
| Oh, true. | |
| Now, that's going to change, but it's just like that religious spirit had more influence in Israel when Jesus came. | |
| And we're still dealing with it today. | |
| It's the same spirit. | |
| There are Christian Pharisees, Christian Sadducees. | |
| But, you know, it was the worst enemy to Jesus, the word himself. | |
| The demons he could easily deal with. | |
| They would bow the knee to him. | |
| But the religious killed him, had him killed, resisted everything he said and did. | |
| So we really have to understand this spirit, the root of it. | |
| And I believe it is rooted in the tree of knowledge of good and evil. | |
| It's something we're all born with, and we struggle to get free of as Christians when we start to really live by the Holy Spirit. | |
| And I would say that a religious spirit bases, it would seek to have us base our relationship to God on religious performance rather than on what Jesus did. | |
| And, you know, one of the things of a disciples, we take up our cross daily. | |
| But I think a religious spirit would have us start putting more faith in our cross than in the cross of Jesus. | |
| Start putting more faith in our sacrifices and things like this, thinking this is what we have our standing with God on rather than what Jesus did. | |