Ex-Satan Worshipper: The Spirit of Witchcraft Has Burned Down the Church’s Walls

This article is about destroying fear, but if you do not have the true foundation of a genuine, intimate relationship with the Holy Spirit—if you are not deeply rooted with the Holy Spirit—you will never overcome fear on any level or any demonic attack that the devil throws at you. I say this because in my travels I hear many people talk about Jesus, and even on Christian television as I hear Jesus preached, one important thing is often left out of the equation: the Holy Spirit.

After Jesus left the earth, He promised to send us the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, and today we have lost track of that vital person of the Trinity. We have lost our relationship with the Holy Spirit, and that is why we are under attack by the devil and living in fear. We know every other voice that comes our way, but the No. 1 voice, which is the Holy Spirit, is foreign to us these days. That is a tragedy for every believer who calls himself a Jesus follower.

A Voice Like No Other

In my demon-worshipping days, I knew every voice of every demon in the spirit realm, even the devil himself. At that time that was so important in my demonic walk, but in 1999, I had a miraculous encounter in my life and heard the voice and words of the Holy Spirit for the very first time. It changed me forever. This voice was nothing like all the other voices I had ever heard. The voice compelled me, and it was so beautiful, like standing by a brook of water in the woods. It gripped me from head to toe with love, and even though the devil was a spiritual pharaoh in my life, ruling me with fear, I walked away to my new life and never looked back.

This article is heartfelt, the cry from my heart to reach out to the church at large that considers itself to be under the banner of the finished work of the cross. But now so many have come to a place as ministers where they are more worried about protecting their self-image in the pulpit, so they just let people stay in bondage as prisoners of fear because it is more important to protect the image of their churches—and themselves—than to set the captives free.

The casualties, the people who have been left on the spiritual battlefield, are those who sit in the pews and are bleeding spiritually. They are being tormented by demons of all kinds of fear—anxiety, worry, depression, oppression, sickness and so on—and no one is going back onto the spiritual battlefield to pick up our brothers and sisters, because the church buildings, our self-image and political correctness have become more important than going the extra mile to destroy the works of the devil inside our churches.

Who has bewitched us that now we are preaching a different gospel? I say this with a broken heart and with tears in my eyes. We need to wake up as the church and invite the Holy Spirit back into our hearts, churches and pulpits. The late Pastor David Wilkerson said it best: This is “a call to anguish.” That was one of the most powerful sermons he ever preached in his lifetime. Today you can go to YouTube and hear that powerful message.

Where are the Nehemiahs of our time? Nehemiah had a cry in his spirit when he heard the report that the walls of Jerusalem were burnt down and lay in ruins. This man was moved by the Holy Spirit and cried out to God. The Lord heard his cry and answered it. We need to be the Nehemiahs of our time because the spiritual walls of our churches are burnt down. There has to be a cry and an anguish in our hearts for the body of Christ.

Our spiritual walls in the church today are burnt down by the spirit of this world and by a spirit of witchcraft. We have fallen away from our true calling of winning souls and setting the captives free. We have forgotten that our mandate is to help God’s people, our brothers and sisters in Christ, to stay free and walk in that freedom and their purpose and destiny in Jesus Christ. Each of us has a destiny that Jesus Christ has ordained for us before the foundations of the earth.

This leads us to the million-dollar question today: How can a Christian be in a state of demonic bondage when the kingdom of God does not share territory with the kingdom of darkness?

The statement I am about to make is not meant to be throwing stones at the church, but the answer to that million-dollar question is this: We are in denial, and we have failed to embrace our true calling of what God, through Jesus Christ, has called us to do on the earth. The early church was feared and respected everywhere they went, yet we have lost our way as the modern-day church. We have abandoned our responsibility to care for, love and nourish the body of Christ to bring them to freedom.

It is time we put the devil and his kingdom—every witch, warlock and spiritual warlord who has aimed their demonic arsenals against the church—in their place. We must rise up to claim our true identity as Christ-followers. He shed His very blood for our redemption. The reason we have broken spiritual walls in the body of Christ is because we abandoned our relationship with the Holy Spirit.

A Holy Invasion

The early church in the “upper room” never lost sight of their mission once the Holy Spirit invaded them. They wholeheartedly depended on the Holy Spirit through prayer, fasting and waiting on God. Those were the main principles of that awesome church in the upper room. And today many churches rely only on formulas and worldly ideas—how to grow your church to be successful. The spirit of Ichabod (meaning “the glory has departed”) rules over many churches today and now we are spiritually sick. When you are spiritually sick, fear creeps in. The evidence of Holy Spirit is fire, and we see His power in Peter preaching one message on the day of Pentecost when 3,000 people were convicted. Those same people, who were yelling “Crucify Jesus Christ!” 50 days earlier, now became believers.

How is it that many of our brothers and sisters, who love Jesus Christ with all their hearts, are still in bondage? Many churches have a vague notion of who the Holy Spirit is. They knew Him at one time, but now they struggle to understand His role. He is overlooked many times in our services today, and we grieve Him tremendously by shutting Him out. Little do we know He is just as divine as the Father and the Son. He is just as important. Without the Holy Spirit in the church, well-intended Christians can go to church service on Sunday, give offerings and tithes and sing praise songs, but still be in bondage.

Without a true relationship and intimacy with the Holy Spirit (the third person of the Godhead, the triune God), the devil will keep us in bondage to fear, doubt and unbelief. There will be strongholds instead of freedom, and we will just be surviving instead of thriving Christians in the church at large.

To the body of Christ, I want to share these Scriptures because I am not afraid to share with you about how beautiful and important the Holy Spirit is in our walk with Him.

—”As they worshipped the Lord and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them'” (Acts 13:2).

—”He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes I will give permission to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God” (Rev. 2:7).

—”But as it is written, ‘Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him'” (1 Cor. 2:9).

—”You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. Now if any man does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him” (Rom. 8:9).

—”For God is the One working in you, both to will and to do His good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13).

Meditate on these Scriptures and let them be the spiritual oxygen that you breathe so you can have the victorious life our Lord Jesus Christ has predestined for us who are saved. {eoa}

John Ramirez (johnramirez.org) is an internationally known evangelist, author and highly sought-out speaker who for more than 16 years has been teaching believers around the globe how to defeat the enemy. He has shared his powerful testimony—of being miraculously saved as a high-ranking satanic priest—on It’s Supernatural!, The 700 Club, TBN, Daystar and more.

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