Ever asked yourself what lies beneath the surface of forgiveness? Or grappled with the mysterious allure of Legion's spirit? Your answers wait in this podcast. We dissect the essence of forgiveness through Matthew's eyes, using Chester and Betsy Kylstra's book, Biblical Healing and Deliverance, as well as Alexander Pagani's Secrets of Deliverance Defeat the Toughest Cases of Demonic Bondage. We dive deep, exploring Christ's perspective on continual forgiveness, even when it feels like the world sins against us.
But it doesn't stop there. We chase the enigma of the spirit of Legion, a force of supernatural strength and destruction, drawing parallels between the Roman army structure and its spiritual relevance. By exploring the sacrifices of getting closer to Jesus and the visible evidence of a Christian lifestyle, we shed light on the importance of trust, forgiveness, and education in successful deliverance. Ready to learn, grow, and forgive? Join us on this enlightening spiritual journey.
Ever asked yourself what lies beneath the surface of forgiveness? Or grappled with the mysterious allure of Legion's spirit? Your answers wait in this podcast. We dissect the essence of forgiveness through Matthew's eyes, using Chester and Betsy Kylstra's book, Biblical Healing and Deliverance, as well as Alexander Pagani's Secrets of Deliverance Defeat the Toughest Cases of Demonic Bondage. We dive deep, exploring Christ's perspective on continual forgiveness, even when it feels like the world sins against us.
But it doesn't stop there. We chase the enigma of the spirit of Legion, a force of supernatural strength and destruction, drawing parallels between the Roman army structure and its spiritual relevance. By exploring the sacrifices of getting closer to Jesus and the visible evidence of a Christian lifestyle, we shed light on the importance of trust, forgiveness, and education in successful deliverance. Ready to learn, grow, and forgive? Join us on this enlightening spiritual journey.
Welcome to another episode of Fire Dove. This is Logan, and in today's episode we are going to talk about some of the fundamentals when it comes to deliverance, some of the books I might recommend and some of the experiences I've had more recently within this ministry. Alright, so here we go. One of the things I get asked pretty often really is you know, what should I read besides the Bible when it comes to understanding deliverance or starting to maybe explore this topic for myself? And there's a number of books that I've read, like Derek Prince and those sort of authors are kind of like the forerunners in the modern era when it comes to deliverance. A more recent book is the book Biblical Healing and Deliverance, and it's called a unique integrated approach to healing and deliverance ministries, a guide to experiencing freedom from sins of the past, destructive beliefs, emotional and spirit pain, curses and oppression, and it's by Chester and Betsy Kylistra. I don't know if I said their last name right, I apologize. So this book you can get it pretty easy. You can get on Amazon, you can get in a lot of different places.
Speaker 0:This book is I don't feel like it's written the best. It is certainly husband and wife that wrote the book. They both have academic backgrounds in different ways and they're both very technical in the way that they write. It is a pretty dry book. They try and kind of spice it up by having a account of one of their most oppressed people and throughout the story they kind of reference her experience, and the book itself is fine as far as the writing. But what I will say and the reason that I do recommend this book the concepts and the practices that are in this book are outstanding. So if you can get through reading this book and really follow the directions step by step, I really do feel that you will get a lot of self-deliverance and a lot of breakthrough done on your own. It's an interesting way to look at things. They talk about it being like ingredients.
Speaker 0:One of the things we're going to talk about today is unforgiveness. That's the book that I recommend if you're looking for the core concept. If you're looking for something more advanced and interesting, then I would say look no further than the secrets of deliverance defeat the toughest cases of demonic bondage, and that is by Alexander Pagani. He is a YouTuber, he's a pastor, he's pretty rough around the edges, he doesn't hold back and I really like him. He looks like a crazy man. He's got a shaved head and a huge beard and he gets really excited all the time when he speaks. So definitely check him out for sure.
Speaker 0:Okay, so let's kind of switch gears here for a second, and I wanted to talk about unforgiveness. So unforgiveness is something that, as a Christian, you're still going to struggle with. You're still a human being and a person and, well, you're going to have to walk through this life too. In the same way, the Bible addresses unforgiveness and its consequences and different key passages. So, looking in Matthew 6, 14, and 15 in the NIV, it says For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive you your sins. And if you look at this verse, you can kind of see the verse. It emphasizes the importance of forgiveness and it suggests that if we withhold forgiveness, it may hinder God's forgiveness for us. There's other passages that will amplify that further that God, if you're living in a constant state of unforgiveness, it can hinder your prayer life and your relationship with God in such a way that he may start to ignore your prayers, and that is something that you should be really, really scared of. And Matthew 18, 21, and 22,.
Speaker 0:Then Peter came to Jesus and asked Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times, jesus answered. I tell you, not seven times, but seventy seven times. And what does that teach you? Well, jesus teaches us, through his interaction with the disciples and the gospels, that there is a limitless nature to forgiveness. He encourages us to extend forgiveness repeatedly and emphasizing the need for forgiving attitude. And that is a challenge, right? If someone is actively sinning against you and hurting you regularly, how do you forgive them? It's easier if something happened and you were offended in the past and then you moved on and it didn't continue to be a problem. But what if they're continually doing that? To have a Christ-like attitude, that is a challenge. That's a challenge for me and it's definitely going to be a challenge for you, I imagine, as well. But you can do that, and it's not through your power, but through God's power, and one of the things to do is just really visualize who is that person through the eyes of God. Because if God can look at you and see grace and mercy and forgiveness, then in the same way, you need to be able to at least understand logically the concept that God loves the other person just as much as he loves you.
Speaker 0:And I think something that a lot of the evangelical churches really fail to do is you hear expressions often like I'm a sinner saved by grace. If you stay in that mindset, they're like oh, I'm just going to constantly be a sinner, and while you certainly are, it's there. However, it also says that you are a new creation, that you've been given a new heart and that your sin nature is your old self. And so he has separated those things and God isn't watching you and just waiting for you to sin every day. He has already poured out his wrath on the cross on his Son, who took that on for you. So don't limit yourself being like I'm a sinner saved by grace and I'm just waiting to survive this life and then that's it, because that's not really living fully for God. At that point You're holding yourself back and that's a self limiting belief.
Speaker 0:So in Mark 11, 25, it says and when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins. So it's similar to the verse that I just referenced in Matthew 6, 14, and 15. The verse highlights the connection between forgiving others and receiving forgiveness from God. It suggests that our forgiveness from God may be hindered if we harbor unforgiveness. So you're seeing this more than once in the gospel right. We're seeing this happen in such a way that God expects us to do this. It's important that we do that. In Colossians it says Bear with each other and forgive one another. If any of you has a grievance against someone, forgive as the Lord forgave you. So you're starting to see a pattern here. I imagine the apostle Paul is talking to the Colossians to forgive one another just as God forgave them. If you see that it's giving in this model, it demonstrates that God is consistently expecting us to do this and he encourages believers to extend the same forgiveness that he's giving us each and every day.
Speaker 0:Finally, in Ephesians 4, 31, and 32, get rid of all bitterness. Hmm, we'll come back to bitterness, because bitterness is such a stronghold in spiritual warfare. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another. Forgive each other just as Christ God forgave you. Now, remember, you need to let go of negative emotions and behaviors and replace them with kindness and compassion and forgiveness.
Speaker 0:Something that I have learned to do during deliverance sessions often is one of the most powerful things you can do is you can paint a word picture for people. You can paint a picture for them to just imagine that they are in the spirit right now and that they are carrying this big, heavy box, and I constantly will ask people what's in this box that you're carrying? What are the burdens, what is the unforgiveness, what are you holding? And then we go from significant person to significant person in their life that the Lord leads us to. So maybe it's your father, your mother, or maybe it was an ex that you haven't really forgiven, and so I will say well, what's in the box? I want you to imagine in your mind right now that you're holding a box and I say what is in that box? That you need to go lay before the cross, see the cross in front of you, see a bunch of stones around it, and then often later in a deliverance time, people will have experiences where they will see Jesus with his arms open, or see Jesus say something to them and it's really interesting to see how God works in that, and so it's a really intimate time and I'm like what is in the box? It might be anger, it might be shame and guilt and all these things. And it's interesting because I will ask people to physically put down this box in front of them and it is amazing to see the resistance. All I'm asking you to do is put an imaginary box down on the ground in front of you, but let me tell you it is so strong I have seen people physically start shaking and trembling and just struggle to let go of an imaginary box in the physical. So there is a spiritual and a physical relationship between them.
Speaker 0:When it comes to doing deliverance, I have found one of the best things to do is to go through what we're going to talk about in this episode and future episodes as far as some of the earlier steps that are outlined in that biblical healing and deliverance book. If you're able to go through those steps first, then the part that's demonic usually comes off significantly quicker, and the reason is because those were the strongholds. Demons are like lawyers and lawyers, you know, are they looking for a legal right to why they can be there. So if you break the legal right, if you denounce it and you forgive the person, and if you let go of these things that you are holding on to, they don't have anything to hold on to anymore. And one of the things that talks about in Alexander Pagani's book is this idea of us being a temple and they're just squatters that are in a room of your person and they're in there and unless you go kick them out, they're going to keep being there. They're just a whole bunch of delinquents. It's important that you go through from room to room and find where these spirits might be, and often it's going to be an injury that you've experienced emotionally from either your mother or your father, either for them being there but not really emotionally being there, or if they had said something difficult to you. People, you know life's complicated and our parents do their best, but they make mistakes, right, don't we all?
Speaker 0:So, moving into a new section of this I wanted to talk about was the spirit of Legion. The Legion is a well-known spirit. It's one of the named spirits in Scripture directly and it has a well-known background to it. So in the Christian Standard Bible, if you go to Mark, chapter 5, verse 1, it says it came to the other side of the sea, to the region of the garrisons. As soon as he got off the boat, a man with an unclean spirit came out of the tombs and met him. But the man came out and met him.
Speaker 0:If you notice, it says he lived in the tombs and no one was able to restrain him anymore, not even with the chain, because he often had been bound in the shackles and chains, but tore the chains apart and smashed the shackles. No one was strong enough to subdue him. So what are you seeing there? You're seeing a super natural level of strength. There are accounts out there, in the most extreme cases where you have maybe a woman who's like 95 pounds but she might have an oppression of Legion in her and it takes like six or seven guys to hold her down, like grown men to hold her down because the supernatural strength I've seen it twice and it's an interesting thing to see where it doesn't make sense in the physical right You're like, wow, that person's so strong. I don't understand why there might be a spirit behind it.
Speaker 0:If you go back to verse two, it says, as soon as he got out of the boat, a man with an unclean spirit came out of the tombs and met him. Now, remember, this man is not a Christvall, he's demonized straight up. He's not being oppressed, he's demonized. There's no way around that. But there's still a part of him, in his natural desire, whether it's curiosity or desperate. There's a part of him that still wants life and still wants to live and still has the capacity to come in the presence of God and seek Jesus out, even with this Legion oppressing him.
Speaker 0:Picking up in verse five it says night and day, among the tombs and on the mountains, he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones. Working in youth ministry that's one of the things that came up is there are a lot of young people that cut themselves. It's terrible and it's awful. Where is that coming from? Well, it's probably coming from a spirit, because in what does Satan want? He wants to steal, kill and destroy. That is a form of it. Right, when it comes to heavy levels of depression that are supernaturally there, I'm not saying don't take antidepressants, I'm saying you should pursue God in every part and facet of your life, and cutting is certainly a symptom of like a spirit of death or suicide being on someone when he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and knelt before him. He understood who Christ was, simply to spy his presence and he cried out in his loud voice what do you have to do with me, jesus, son of the Most High God? I beg before God, do not torment me. So the spirits immediately knew that God had come, his presence was there and that they knew his authority and power before he'd even spoken. Just his presence.
Speaker 0:And in a deliverance session, often you can feel God come, you feel the spirit come in. It's interesting, it's hard to articulate with words, but you feel it in your spirit, you can feel heaviness. Come in and then you can feel the peace on it. Lets up when, when things are broken in the supernatural. For he had told him come out of the man you unclean spirit. What is your name? So notice. For he had told him come out of the man you unclean spirit. Exclamation mark. Jesus is saying come out now.
Speaker 0:And one of the things that there's a lot of debate when it comes to deliverance is should you interact with spirits? Should you get their names? And if you do, how much of it can you really trust? Because you know you're dealing with lying spirits and that's definitely something that's going to be debated between person to person on how God is leading them to work within deliverance ministry. Jesus, specifically here, commands it. The spirit doesn't come out. So he says what is your name? He says my name is Legion. He answered them because we are many.
Speaker 0:Legion typically will say that if it's in a person and you're like, oh yeah, I've heard that before, he heard that somewhere, and he begged him earnestly not to send him out of the region. Now, remember, spirits are territorial. They have certain territories and certain job descriptions. They are persons without bodies and think of like state lines or county lines or whatever country lines. They have certain regions that they operate in. You know there's. You can glean from that and he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the region because there's a stronghold, there's probably several spirits that are helping one another in that general area and they help each other supernaturally. They strengthen each other and the more that we break them out of people, weaker it gets and break through and ultimately revival certainly can be a possibility from that. Now I wanted to take a second and just kind of talk about how we can look at the natural and then we can look at the supernatural and we can learn from both.
Speaker 0:Legion is a, from a structural standpoint, is a primary unit in the Roman army and typically consisted of around 4800 to 5500 infantry soldiers known as Legionnaires. So think about that If a man says I am Legion because we are many, potentially there could be 5500 spirits oppressing one single person, the physical realm you think like, wow, that doesn't make any sense whatsoever. I don't even know how you could have 5500, because you're thinking too literal. Spirits are in material and so because of that, they can all fit within the same space. They don't have that volume issues that we have in the natural. They aren't necessarily fully controlled by the rules that we have and because of that they're operating in certain ways that are fairly hard to understand to our finite mind. There's really just no way around that. 5500 spirits that's crazy. Each Legion was further divided into a smaller unit that was called cohorts, which were composed of centuries, and centuries were made up of around 80 soldiers each. So they have, you know, a high structure.
Speaker 0:Once again, we're seeing in Scripture and in the natural and the supernatural, both. We're seeing an order, a rank system, certain powers and authorities, rulers, principalities, all those things. They have a hierarchy and it's very similar to what a military hierarchy looks like. It's not surprising at all, and so, like I've spoke of in the last episode, there are times where you see spirits have like a certain level of they'll sacrifice the weaker ones first, right Legions and numbers. They usually 25 to 30 different legions active and you give them time for the Roman Empire and they spread across different regions of the Empire and they'd have specific names and unit numbers. Just like the military, they were well trained and disciplined soldiers. They underwent rigorous training in weapons handling, marching, combat functions and military tactics. Oh look, demons are really smart. So are legionnaires. So is the spirit of Legion For their battle tactics. They're renowned for, again, their strategy and tactical superiority in battle.
Speaker 0:They are famous for a manipular formation or Legion formation, which involved organizations of soldiers into small, flexible units called Maniplis. These are just notes that I've found on the internet. This formation allowed for adaptivity and maneuvering on the battlefield. They would be really good at siege warfare. They had auxiliaries, one of the things that I thought was really interesting. It said along the legionnaires, the Roman army also included auxiliary troop, which would be non-citizen population from within the empire and they would use them as fodder. Basically, they would use them as archers and cavalry and then they also had.
Speaker 0:The other thing I thought was super interesting is so they have a centurion and they have officers right, like, as you know, in scripture, the centurion and Jesus seeing a man of great faith, the centurion knowing that he didn't have to go, that if he says under his authority, jesus has authority in the centurion understood it in his own life. They have these standard bearers. Each legion had its own standards, including a legionary. Eagle Eagle was considered sacred and represents a legion's honor and identity. It was carried into battle by a standard bear. What's interesting is all the organization right and so, because we are many, what a telling thing to see. And when we see the spirit of legion in scripture, it's one of the things that we can certainly research to death, and the Gospel still comes first.
Speaker 0:You know who is Jesus. The demons understand who Jesus is. What ends up happening in this story, of course, is they are expelled from the person. He has a completely sound mind. He's completely changed instantly, as soon as the demonization is no longer affecting him. Where do they go? They go into the pigs. So they ask and they go into this big herd of pigs. They request right, they have to ask where they go, because that's one of the things that you constantly get asked is like well, if we expel demons out of a person, where do they go? And the answer is they go where we tell them to. I either ask for them to go to the presence of Jesus to be judged, or I say to go to the pit or the abyss, and sometimes they'll even bring that up on their own. They'll be like don't send us to the abyss. And I'm like, oh well, sorry, not really. And so the pigs they rush into pigs.
Speaker 0:Now, animals aren't as complicated as the human mind and psyche and so for one, they really couldn't handle having the spirits in them, and this clearly was a spirit of death, spirit of suicide. At some point in that Legion, one of the stronger influences it was trying to do was having the guy cut himself. He was obsessed with death. He's living in a tomb, he's, he isn't excited about life, he's not joyous or anything. One of the things that's really interesting is like say, someone is suffering with depression, you're like Lord, I pray against the spirit of depression In the name of Jesus, lord, I ask that you would give your joy, the Holy Spirit's joy, in place. And so you always have to look at the flip side of the coin and think about what is the godly version of whatever Satan's interest is, and that's kind of it right.
Speaker 0:And so so these spirits, they go into the pigs and then they all commit suicide, they all rush off at a steep bank and they go into a lake and drown themselves. And you're like what in the world? Like that seems ridiculous. Why, what a waste. Why didn't they just? Why did they ask to go into the pigs? And well, they asked to go into the pigs because think about how the economy worked then. Farming was a major form of wealth, and so people were both scared of Jesus because of the authority that they saw, and they were also extremely angry at Jesus because they just lost an entire herd of pigs. That was a huge deal to them. That was their livelihood and their money.
Speaker 0:And they actually reject Jesus specifically and the disciples. And the man asks, the demonized man asks to go follow Jesus, but then he's like no, you need to stay here and just testify about what you have seen and done, because now he's in a sober mind, right. He's not double-minded, he's not got a defiled mind. He has a sober, singular mind, as God intended. When you look at it, these people, jesus Christ, came to them and they pushed him away because it was more important to them to have their finances in order and have a comfortable life. It wasn't being rocked, because whenever Jesus gets close, things start changing and it may not be the way you want it to happen.
Speaker 0:So in your own life, consider that the closer you get to Jesus, you might have different sacrifices. You may have to sacrifice financially. You may have to sacrifice where you live. You may have to change things up if you're truly falling, god's calling for you. That is something and that's not for everyone. Not everyone is called to be a missionary and go live in a hut in a foreign country and learn to speak a new language. God will use you wherever you are at.
Speaker 0:If you work at a convenience store or you work at a gas station, or you work in an office, there's opportunities all around for you to make sure that you're giving it a solid testimony of the people around you. They should know that you're a Christian simply by the way that you act. You have discipline and integrity and all the things that go with a Christ-like lifestyle. That means that maybe you're going to have to stand up and confess like, oh yeah, I used to struggle with this. Or God will use different relationships in your life in a powerful way and you need to, most importantly, read the room. If you see goofy things going on and you realize that, yeah, there's probably something behind that, you know a person acting weird. You can't always run up to people and be like, hey, if you ever had deliverance. That is something that takes time. It takes trust. It takes a lot of. It is something that God will do in His time.
Speaker 0:I've had to learn in my own life that you certainly cannot rush deliverance because certain people aren't ready. It freaks them out, they'll have a lot of hesitation and it comes with the need for education. Someone going through the process and forgiving the biggest hurts they have in their life is certainly one of the best places and you can do that and speak it out audibly. Speak truth. So I forgive my father for, I forgive my mother for and remember it doesn't mean that what they did was okay or that it was good. It means that in the eyes of God, it is something that was paid for on the cross, nothing more. What God be the judge, not you. Hope this was helpful. I will talk to you guys soon.