7 Spiritual Strongholds

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Comment by Erica Joseph Shepherd on January 6, 2009 at 8:56am

"The Father wanted satan defeated by man - One made in His image. Jesus, who would shed His blood to redeem mankind, emptied Himself of His rights as God and took upon Himself the limitations of man. Satan was defeated by a man - the Son of Man, who was rightly related to God. Now, as people receive the work of Christ on the cross for salvation, they become grafted into that victory. Jesus, defeated the devil with His sinless life, defeated him in His death by paying for our sins with His blood, and again, in the resurrection, rising triumphant with the keys of death and hell.

In redeeming man, Jesus, retrieved what man had given away. From the throne of triumph He declared, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore" In other words: I got it all back. Now go use it and reclaim mankind. In this passage Jesus fulfills the promise He made to the disciples when He said, " I will give you the keys of the kingdom of Heaven." The original plan was never aborted; it was fully realized once and for all in the resurrection and ascension of Jesus. We were then to be completely restored to His plan of ruling as a people made in His image. And as such we would learn how to enforce the victory obtained at Calvary:" The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet." We are born to rule - rule creation, over darkness - to plunder hell and establish the rule of Jesus wherever we go by preaching the gospel of the Kingdom.
Kingdom means: King's domain. In the original purpose of God, mankind ruled over creation. Now that sin has entered the world, creation has been infected by darkness, namely: disease, sickness, afflicting spirits, poverty, natural disasters, demonic influence, etc. Our rule is still over creation, but now it is focused on exposing and undoing the works of the devil. We are to give what we have received to reach that end. If I truly receive power from an encounter with God of power, I am equipped to give it away. The invasion of God into impossible situations comes through a people who have received power from on-high to release it into the circumstances of life.

The gospel of salvation is to touch the whole man: spirit, soul, and body. John G. Lake called this a Triune Salvation. A study on the word evil confirms the intended reach of His redemption. That word is found in Matthew 6:13 (KJV), " Deliver us from evil." The word evil represents the entire curse of sin upon man. Poneros, the Greek word evil, came from the word ponos, meaning pain. And that word came from the root word penes, meaning poor. Look at it: evil-sin, pain-sickness, and poor-poverty. Jesus destroyed the power of sin, sickness, and poverty through His redemptive work on the cross. In Adam and Eve's commission to subdue the earth, they were without sickness, poverty, and sin. Now that we are restored to His original purpose, should we expect anything less? After all, this is called the better covenant. We were given the keys to the kingdom - which in part is the authority to trample over all the powers of hell.