Truly I say to you, He who does not go through the door into the place where the sheep are kept, but gets in by some other way, is a thief and an outlaw.
He who goes in by the door is the keeper of the sheep.
So Jesus said again, Truly I say to you, I am the door of the sheep.
All who came before me are thieves and outlaws: but the sheep did not give ear to them.
I am the door: if any man goes in through me he will have salvation, and will go in and go out, and will get food.
The thief comes only to take the sheep and to put them to death: he comes for their destruction: I have come so that they may have life and have it in greater measure.
John 10:1-2, 7-10
The world is more spiritual than we know, and it seems that only those who walk in serious darkness (the occult) seem to know this. The children of darkness seem to be more open to the existence and closeness of the spiritual realm than the children of light, who were supposed to dwell there most of the time. It even seems forbidden to speak of such things in some churches. The people who go there often (children of darkness) tend to have more experience and access than those who rarely go, or don’t go at all.
While the children of darkness go there through illegal means, we, the children of light who have the Key (Jesus), do not go there at all. And because of fear and unbelief, the Church tends to stamp “EVIL!” on spiritual things, because of their lack of experience and knowledge on the matter. They tend to attribute anything spiritual to the devil, and he feeds their fear.
The realm of the spirit allows for things that seem impossible, because our physical realm is too limited. So, don’t have a closed mind about things, because the spiritual realm is much more real than the physical, and we know in part, so we understand in part (1 Corinthians 13:9). There are multiple realms and dimensions to things, even in the same space. Picture a division of separate layers in one space. We should not claim to know it all, because a lot of things are way beyond us.
For example, when we see a satyr, centaur, gargoyle, griffin, or faun, it is instantly presumed that it’s demonic, or that it must be our imagination, because of how closed-minded and locked up we are about the spiritual realm. There are always interactions and activities going on in the spiritual realm.
On earth, you can take adrenalin shots or steroids, and they give you more energy than is normal. Any of those things can equip us to do better physically. Imagine how limited the physical realm is (and the effect it has on us); then how much more the spirit realm, where there are tons of things that can affect us, reaching all the way out into the physical realm. The people of the devil go into the spiritual realm and have a party. They struggle, since it’s all stolen property, and they don’t have the key, so those things are locked. It’s not just the gate that is locked; in the spirit realm, many things are locked in containers, drawers, caskets, vaults, and all that, so these people (those of the darkness) keep looking for ways to break into many things.
If Christians had stayed open, simple, and loving, fearing and obeying God, level after level of obedience would have taken us deeper and deeper. More and more things would be unlocked! There is more grace to stir yourself up. Build yourself up in your most holy faith (Jude 1:20). The Holy Spirit prays according to the will of God (Romans 8:26-27). Your faith rises till it hits a certain level, and then you’ll discover a new treasure, a new realm, and other keys into further rooms in the spirit realm!
The devil knows that the easiest way to continue dominating so many things is to make everyone else scared of even coming near the spirit realm. He therefore puts out signs and alarms saying that the spirit realm is evil, while he and his people have fun in the very same realm! He did it so thoroughly that anyone who hears any of the prophetic people through the ages first tends to presume that they’ve dabbled into darkness, no matter how good and sincere their lives were. If you mention the term “Rainbow,” then you must be of the New Age Movement.
“Did you say you saw a third eye in their forehead? You’ve gone into chakras!
You are immediately branded evil, and they don’t listen to anything else you have to say. It’s over, because the devil has spent thousands of years convincing them and making them that way. People have been killed for saying that they had spiritual experiences.
Now, things have really changed; the worst you might experience is that your parents will take you for a deliverance session and you have things poured into your eyes, or get tied up and beaten with brooms. These are live illustrations from members of our congregation who had spiritual encounters when they were really young, and were shut down until recently when they got to understand that the spirit realm is not evil. The devil makes sure all the Christians run away; walking past things of the Spirit and rebuking everyone who seems interested in them.
These are the ways of darkness, and the Bible says that we are not ignorant of the devices of the enemy. We can’t be! We shouldn’t be!
You don’t need to study any book of darkness to know this. When you spend enough time with the Holy Spirit, He’ll tell you more about the spiritual realm. He teaches you what it really is, things to know and expect there, and indeed He makes you desire to be there more often. The spirit realm should be accessed often by Christians, but since most run away from it, it is now occupied by the evil ones.
This disenchantment with the spirit realm is analagous to the disillusionment with church. A lot of people turn away from church because it is filled with dishonesty, fraud, and evil. Jesus talks about God’s house being turned into a den of thieves — Matthew 21:13 – And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.
We should not abandon the house of God because there is dishonesty in it. The fact that the temple was filled with thieves didn’t stop Jesus from calling it His Father’s house. He drove the thieves out of the temple. To do that, He had to go inside the temple (John 2:13-17). You can’t clean up a place from outside! The devil knows this, and that’s why he struggles to keep us out.
But as we grow and increase in obedience, we are going to be taken into those realms more and more, and there will be a significant number of people there that will steadily drive out the illegal occupants. The legal occupants will come; that’s why the sons of God have to be manifested, so they’ll drive the illegal occupants out. The enemy knows that if he can’t stop you from coming there, he’ll try to deceive you when you come. If you yield to him and do what he says, you’ll disobey the Father of all spirits. Remember, it’s a battle! It will have an end, but while we are trying to recover all that the devil has stolen from us, remember that the way to overcome is not in the knowing alone (that is, just having knowledge) .
Knowing (knowledge) will bring you in, but also have enough understanding to know that God will give you authority, boldness and power. If the righteous are as bold as a lion (Proverbs 28:1), then righteousness gives boldness. But when you enter the spirit realm with unrighteousness in your life (you’re constantly practicing sin, without any effort to do righteousness in your day to day walk with God) and demons snarl at you, you’ll run out! Jesus was able to drive out all the people in the temple, because He was as bold as a lion. Righteousness has a huge part to play. Though faith takes you there, righteousness keeps you there. The devil will try everything along the way to discourage you, scare you, and keep you out.
Midian was so impoverished that the Israelites cried out to the LORD for help. When the Israelites cried to the LORD because of Midian, he sent them a prophet, who said, “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: I brought you up out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. I snatched you from the power of Egypt and from the hand of all your oppressors. I drove them from before you and gave you their land. I said to you, ‘I am the LORD your God; do not worship the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you live.’ But you have not listened to me.” Judges 6:6-10
The prophet told them their history: I brought you out from Egypt, from that place of slavery. I rescued you from Egypt’ s power and from the power of those who oppressed you…
It’s not only Egypt (the world) that oppresses. Other oppressors exist.
The prophet continues: I drove them out from before you and gave their land to you…
It’s the Lord that goes before us and drives out all our enemies.
I am the Lord your God; do not worship the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are now living, but you have disobeyed Me. Disobedience led to all their problems. Disobedience will drive you out of your own possession given to you by the God of the whole earth. Obedience is the major key; obey Him by believing, but also obey Him by maintaining righteous living. All of it will release power to drive out the enemy.
In the midst of righteous living, remember that we all stumble in many ways (James 3:2), so don’t disqualify yourself. Repent, so you don’t go running out of the spirit realm! Again, based on your knowledge of the different things that you’ve been taught, you should know the provisions available to you when you fall short, so draw on that knowledge and apply it. In this case, it is repentance, so you can maintain your boldness even in front of the devil (who accuses us – Revelation 12:10). But if you go on with guilt, it will be easy for the devil to drive you out of your Father’s property, and like many others, you’ll become a witness against the spiritual realm.
To access the spiritual realm, you have to be spiritual; you can’t harbor unforgiveness. Everything is connected; forgive and deal with sin promptly, so you don’t take the experiences you had in disobedience and mislead those who earnestly want to access the spiritual realm. Repent fast; always deal with sin very quickly. Don’t keep it! The devil in his trickery knows that he can’t stop you from having access, and so he tries to make you trip up. He knows you’ll be forgiven as soon as you ask, so he makes you feel too guilty to ask for forgiveness, (which is pride on your part). You have to care so much more about enjoying your Father’s house than about people’s opinions, or you’ll remain in spiritual poverty. For every move God makes, the devil has a countermove, but God always trumps the devil’s schemes in the end.
The people of darkness (especially in Africa) are always ready to sacrifice even their own blood, and that of others, to gain access into the spiritual realm in the wrong ways, how much more should Christians who have Jesus as the legit Door? The whole spirit realm knows that the life is in the blood (Leviticus 17:11, 14). Because of the life in blood, it’s an essential power source. The spirit realm demands blood, and since the children of the darkness don’t have the blood of Jesus, they give the blood of other things. Now, we have the blood of Jesus, so we use that. He died and made His blood available for us to have access to everything. We have the best deal; an amazing deal with God! So, when the spirit realm requires it, it is available to meet that demand. We must believe what the blood can and will do. It can acquire healing and all the different spiritual experiences. Now, we are to receive it and make use of it because in truth, we don’t appropriate it enough. The life of the Son of God will give us more access, more quickly, in every way, because it’s like a password or a master key. We really have to start making use of what is ours! Whatever we think we are experiencing is little there’s so much more.
We’ve spoken about people who are gone (dead physically). They aren’t really gone. I don’t approve of or support people communicating with the dead, but there are instances where God reveals things to us using the images of people who have passed on, or He just lets them show up especially to deliver a message. Are there exceptions to general rules? Yes! After Jesus rose from the dead, the bodies of saints who had lived in the past were risen and seen (Matthew 27:52-53).
Now, you shouldn’t want to talk to or go to the dead. Necromancy is wrong. But these days, Christians presume that anything that comes from the other side is evil. I think the best example is Moses and Elijah. They appeared to Jesus on the mountain and spoke with Him. That’s not the same as seeking contact with the dead, or consulting mediums. That’s the difference between astrology (divination from the relative positions of celestial bodies), and astronomy (the study of the celestial bodies and physical universe outside the earth’s atmosphere). Astronomy was used by the Magi to discern the time that Jesus would be born.
Those who react as though everything about Saul’s experience (in 1 Samuel 28:7-15) was evil forget that anything in the spirit realm can come through the door, or through the window. People have been able to tell the future by consulting evil people. Good things can be accessed through the wrong means. The devil can see things from the spirit realm and even try to prevent them from coming to pass. The rules are not fixed the way we have thought. Sons of God came and impregnated women on earth, and are now chained in darkness (Genesis 6:2, 2 Peter 2:4, Jude 1:6). Can things happen, and then stop happening? Yes. Not everything that has been must always be. Then people come later – after it has stopped happening – and presume that it never happened.
For more than 2000 years, animals were sacrificed to God. Most of the dreams in the Bible; accurate revelations, were received by pagan kings. Why is this hard to accept? We’re struggling with all we have heard since we were born. We think basically, and revert to our old ways. Look at things from a higher place, and stay there. If we start to pray and create an atmosphere, you will be let in. But when you go around being worldly, and the spirit realm opens up to you, you can enter, but you’d have come in through the wrong way. Do the right thing, like worship, and the Door will open to you. God may not even want you to be there at all, but don’t act like the spirit realm is static. Things are not exactly how we usually think. It is in God’s hands to know when we cross the line; judgment is in His hands.
The problem with going and asking to speak to a dead person is that a demon will appear to you, and pretend to be the one you seek. The official position is that you have no business being there. But, is it possible that when the medium came crawling through the window, seeking to contact Samuel, that she actually saw Samuel? God can send someone to go speak with even an illegal intruder. We presently don’t understand enough of the spirit realm. We need to keep growing in understanding so we know these things more clearly. Some of us will go on guided tours of the spirit realm, and come back to enlighten the rest of us. Sometimes, we don’t touch these areas because we aren’t strong enough to bear it, which is why we don’t say or talk about everything. People get into trouble, trying to press through and enter into things outside the appointed time. The wisdom of the wise is to take things in their time and season. To manage this, you must surround it all with the fruit (of the Holy Spirit). All of that must be in place.
Children don’t jump from kindergarten to getting doctorate degrees. Because of pride, many people want to know everything at once, and that precedes a fall. For Christians, the beauty is that we have Jesus. We have a shepherd. Angels are given to go with us, and the Spirit of the Lord Himself, because it’s in obedience. You have authority to enter those realms because you are under His authority.
There are levels of purity and obedience that we have to grow in. As the days go on, we are going to experience things that are so much more advanced. We cannot experience those things for our sake, because we haven’t gotten there yet. If we continue, we will get there naturally. There are things that only time and faithfulness will bring you to, such as experiences in things like prayer, and seeing the results of prayer. That’s how it is with spiritual things. Qualification grants you access to greater things. It may even seem to be a fluke; not really by a lot of expended effort, but by accumulated experience. This is how our walk with God will be, and can be.
There are people who are not called to partake in some things, till they die. David’s hands were too bloodstained to build God’s house (1 Chronicles 22:8). He got the blueprint and prepared for it, but he was not commissioned to build it. God used David to fight His wars. But, a Benaiah is not the same as a Zadok or Nathan. People have different roles. Everybody must walk with God, and the paths will get clearer with time as we stay righteous. We learn to carry light steadily and faithfully, and keep walking even when we are tired. Some people might be called to tow a lonelier path than others.
At some point, we will have to stop talking about some things, or we will run the risk of beginning to experience some of it. There’s an atmosphere that enables such experiences, too. Every time is not the same. The advantage of walking with God is that He lets us in on the times and seasons that He has ordained. This is why you shouldn’t be worried about anything. You need the challenges and difficulties to prepare you. It’s like making garri (granulated cassava). You don’t cry about the process of acquiring experience. You need the experience. You have to come to a place where you don’t even feel the pain anymore. The expertise and ability to bear it is developed by actually experiencing it. By the time you’ve gone through training, you will be so accustomed to it that the actual battles don’t faze you. Everything is part of it, so how can you feel bad about training? You’ll have authority to speak in those areas (after the training).
Don’t purposely put yourself in any situation, though. Do your 100% best in every area so that you don’t have unnecessary problems, but bear in mind that you will still fall short in some way. Just do everything God says with the knowledge that it will work for good (Romans 8:28).
– Pastor Ita Udoh
(Excerpts from The Prophetic Ministry Series; March 25th 2019 & June 3rd 2019)
© God’s Lighthouse, 2020.