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In The Classroom Of James Hartline January 6, 2006
Lessons In Spiritual Warfare Part 1
"Overthrowing The Strong Man."
"But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. Or how can anyone enter the strong man's house and carry off his property, unless he first binds the strong man? And then he will plunder his house." Matthew 12:28-29
* * * Lesson 1. The Strong Man Of Sodom
I am a man with the greatest of concern for my fellow Christian. In my daily course of life, I see the great burden being thrust upon the American Christian by satanic forces who are determined to wipe out every vestige of Biblical influence in this once godly nation. Everyday, I speak with moms and dads who are brokenhearted that their sons and daughters have had their vulnerable minds hijacked by advocates representing the Spirit of Sodom. Those dark, socialistic engineers of a resurrected Sodom are determined, in their rebellion against the throne of God, to plant a massive crop of what the Bible calls the "Vine of Sodom" (Deuteronomy 32:32). The fruit of that unholy vine is bitter and it is deadly. Its fruit has taken many young men to their early graves after they have ingested the bitter poison of AIDS. Its stagnant juices have left many mothers weeping in the long nights of despair. Families are being crushed by this unholy homosexual crusade, and that agenda's leaders present no compassion for the countless families who have forever lost their loved ones to this resurrected Sodom's grave deceptions and merciless deceits. Sodom's spiritual wickedness is ancient. Genesis 13:13 states: "But the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the Lord, exceedingly."
The spiritual wickedness which percolates throughout the influence of resurrected Sodom has, what the Bible calls, a strongman. This strongman defends the territory where this ancient demonic stronghold has been rebuilt. He is the Strongman of Sodom. In Genesis 14:2, we read of the King of Sodom whose name was Bera. The Hebrew definition of Bera means "son of evil." Thus, Sodom is replicated through this strongman and king, reproducing new spiritual sons of evil. Lesson 2. Taking Inventory Of Ourselves We could rant forever about the complete apathy demonstrated by false church leaders who stood silently by while each brick was laid upon brick to rebuild the sulphuric walls of this resurrected Sodom. We could continue to protest those same irresponsible shepherds who still remain in some of the most influential churches in America, where their obssession in building church schools and larger sanctuaries has supplanted their most holy responsibility to stem the tide of rising evil. While these modern day Pharisees have ramained mute, lesbians and homosexuals have hjacked the entire national discourse. The sun has set. The night has arrived. It is too late to return to the debate table of who is responsible for this nation's great moral calamity. The hour now calls for a new course of action. What does God require of us, to rectify this great antichristian crisis? What course is God setting before us, that we might save our nation from a surely impending judgment? The moral bankruptcy of the blind leaders of the homosexual agenda have had their minds fermented in an unholy spirit of pride that will never allow them to admit they have been wrong in the course they have set for this nation. Make no mistake about it. The Bible is clear. God has never allowed the Spirit of Sodom to remain for extended periods of time upon the earth. Each time, in history, when this foul thing has resurfaced to restart its death march against mankind, God has intervened and destroyed the culture where it has rethroned itself. There is no exemption. America will be no exemption. The American Christian must make an immediate decision: will we capitulate to an inevitable judgment upon our land? Will we allow those who have set the table of Jezebel in modern America to steal our destiny and our lives? Or will we demonstrate the courage of Joshua and take back our great nation's course? Lesson 3. The Battle Plan What then, shall we do? Where shall we take this battle? And where do we start? It is a hard thing to reclaim a nation, when those who are destroying it, are prospering in their destruction. Clearly, there is a great spiritual force that is driving the homosexual agenda. The fact that most churches in America have remained silent on this matter, demonstrates that we have not engaged in the battle with a proper, Biblical approach. The battle is not a natural one. It is a supernatural one. Indeed, it is spiritual and it begins with a dream. A prophetic dream, in fact. A dream sent from God to me, his warrior in this war. The Prophetic Battle To Reclaim America I have many prophetic dreams from the Lord. God regularly shows me many spiritual insights as to the unseen giants that are feeding the unholy cultural dilemas facing our nation. In Ephesians chapter 6, Paul talks about the various levels of demonic governmental forces in the invisible spiritual realm: "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." Ephesians 6:12
In my dreams, I have seen many of these wicked rulers. They are territorial spiritual forces, unholy angelic beings, that dictate the governing influence over an area of the nation. They also orchestrate and influence political ideologies, such as the lies and deceptions of the radical homosexual agenda. Without an appropriate and effective spiritual response from God's chosen leaders, governing spiritual forces will prosper much in the way the gay agenda is doing today. It is God's will to destroy this unholy manifestation which has mocked the very foundations of our churches, our communities, our families, our marriages and our children. However, God moves into action against these unholy forces, when His people humble themselves before His mandate for mankind, and they cry out to heaven for help. Then, God moves to raise up deliverers who will commit their souls to His kingdom and His plan for the overthrowing of the devil's strongmen and their wicked territorial influences. I am one of those that God has plucked from the very hand of satan's grip. The Lord has commanded me to deliver the city of San Diego from the enemy's stranglehold. The Lord has raised me up to be solely devoted to His will and at His every command. In this new year of 2006, my sleep has been filled with a rush of new prophetic dreams from the Lord. In one of these dreams, the Lord has shown me that the governing spirit that sits over the homosexual community of Hillcrest has been thrown down. It has been a long and dangerous battle that I have been fighting. I have had to learn perseverance, trust, and most importantly, faith in God's word. Over the last several years, it has been a continuous, spiritual, wrestling match, as to who would flee this neighborhood, me or the governing spirit. The Bible teaches us, "Submit yourselves unto the Lord, then resist the devil and he will flee." Most Christians I know, forget about the sumission to the Lord part, before they start resisting the devil. That is why they never see victory over their oppressive opponents. I have learned this most valuable of all lessons in spiritual warfare: submission to the Lord and His way of doing things, is the key and critical component to everything else in our battles against the enemy. The corridors of history are lined with fallen brothers and sisters who did not learn this foundational principle. In this particular dream that I am discussing here, I saw myself, in a vision, in the second floor of a two story building with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. I believe that Governor Schwarzenegger, in this case, represented the governing spirit over Hillcrest, that I have been battling with for the last few years. In this dream, Governor Schwarzenegger was distributing a chemical powder in this prison-like building. Schwarzenegger also would be representative of the strongman who guards his house, in this instance, this prison-like building. Homosexuals and lesbians in Hillcrest, whether they realize it or not, are captives, or prisoners, of this spiritual strongman. This chemical powder would be the deluding substance that has clouded their judgment, and thus corrupted their thinking so that they accept the very sin that is keeping them in bondage, and ultimately, will kill them. In the midst of this house were prison guards who were looking for the one who was distributing this chemical powder. One of the guards spotted Schwarzenegger with the substance. The guard then attacked the governor and pushed him out the second story window. I saw Schwarzenegger fall and when he hit the ground, I heard his knees breaking, as well as his wrist. The governor was defeated and thrown down, a broken spirit, and a fallen, impotent man. He could no longer stand erect, and his hand of power, with which he signed unholy laws, was now ruined. The guard who threw him down came back up to the second floor where I was reading a book filled with dates for new wrestling matches. I knew then that I would be engaged in more wrestling matches with the enemy in the future. I then awoke from this revelatory dream. The Significance Of This Dream For The Christian In Warfare
What lessons can be learned from this dream? To understand how this revelation is applicable to the average Christian who desires to obtain victory in their respective assignments of warfare, one must apply the appropriate Biblical scriptures, as well as the life experiences lived out through application of those same scriptures. A key scripture in understanding how to obtain this overwhelming victory over the strongman is revealed in the book of Luke: "When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are undisturbed. But when someone stronger than he attacks him, and overpowers him, he takes away from him all his armor on which he had relied and distributes his plunder." Luke 11:21-22
The critical clause in this passage is, "when someone stronger than he..." In order for a man or woman to overcome a territorial influence, such as the Spirit of Sodom, which sits over a homosexual community, taking captive all those that come under its dominion, that Christian must first have authority over that spirit. That is why the Lord will usually raise up an individual who was personally held captive by that sin, but has now overcome that particular sin, to go back and liberate a community that is in bondage to that sin. The Lord can use anyone, but it is generally a former captive that will lead the charge to deliver a generation of those bound by his former captor. Moses is a perfect example of a man, once under the influence of Pharoah, that was sent back by God to deliver an entire nation from their Egyptian captors. The Lord will also send a clear sign to the deliverer that the strongman is being thrown down. Moses had many signs after his burning bush encounter with the Lord, including his staff-turned-serpent, that swallowed up the witch's snakes of Pharoah's court, as well as the many miraculous plagues that brought down the pride of the Egyptian ruler. Gideon had his dew on the fleece encounter. Elijah had his fire-out-of the-sky manifestation when doing battle with the prophets of Baal. In my case, the Lord sent a very graphic sign as an indication that the strongman over Hillcrest was thrown down. One of the deluding influences of this strongman was his ability to control the public perceptions of Hillcrest, to deceive the public at large from taking any interest in this deadly environment. This delusion had created a grave public apathy towards the death grip of satan inside of Hillcrest. When I woke up from the dream of Schwarzenegger being thrown down, my clock read 4:00am in the early morning of Friday, December 30, 2005. Within four hours after that dream, I had received word from one of my ministry team members that the San Diego Union Tribune was reporting a dead corpse had been found inside of the gay bathhouse, Club San Diego. The body was found at 4:07am, thus the death had occurred at the exact time that I had the dream ( www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20051230-0703-bn30body.html). For over three years, I have been fighting with the forces of hell, in particular, this strongman territorial spirit, to expose the dark underbelly of these bathhouse altars to Baal. The Lord had instructed me several years ago, that the bathhouses in San Diego were altars devoted to Sodom, which were the feeding tables for causing the resurrection of the ancient Spirit of Sodom. The Lord commanded me to tear down those altars, and the spirit of homosexuality would then be evicted from the city of San Diego. I have been in a death struggle against those places, and no matter how many death threats, assaults, afflictions and oppressions have come against me, my obedience to God has not been shaken. I have stood the test and I have counted everything loss, to stay obedient to my God, in this battle. Within several hours of the announcement of the dead body being found in the bathhouse, Fox Channel 6 called me to set up an interview. You can watch that interview by logging onto: The powers of the homosexual agenda have done everything to silence me and keep the truth about their deadly behaviors from being given to the public at large. Clearly, the Lord is now saying to me, "James, I will now rip the veil of secrecy off of this enemy, and the light of God will shine in the darkness and the darkness will flee!" This drastic sign from God had been preceded just one month earlier when the San Diego City Attorney filed a six count indictment against the owners of another of the bathhouses, the 2200 Club on University Ave., which I had also been trying to shut down. ( http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/5447808/detail.html). Despite the ridicule, the persecution, the threats to my own safety, I have refused to back down from that which the Lord has commanded me to do in His name. Lesson 4. The Battle Is At Hand
If we will stay the course and not give up, God will use us to change our entire culture, and our nation's destiny. The Lord desires a man or woman who will receive the Lord's call, step out of the crowd, and become His planted vessel for change. The Prophet Isaiah reveals this great revelation in this most timely instance: "Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, 'Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?' Then I said, 'Here I am, send me!' " Isaiah 6:8
God has given dominion of the earth unto man. It is in our control, to determine what spiritual forces rules mankind. If we are obedient to God, then we will know His will and stand firm to fulfill his mandate for the earth. If we relinquish our God-given responsibilities to those who are advocates of the devil's plans, then they will triumph over us and destroy God's purposes for our lives and our nation. The battle is at hand. My willingness to stand firm in the midst of a dark wilderness has proven the word of God to be ultimate truth. He has been faithful to move through my trust in Him, to bring down the unholy altars. He said to me, "Who will go for us?" I said, "Here I am Lord, send me!" And send me, He did. The continuous stand I have made has resulted in many of the devil's altars being torn down. The battle is not over, but the dispossessing of the enemies of heaven is underway. There will now be great disorder spreading throughout the homosexual community of Hillcrest. The strongman that kept control of this neighborhood has been thrown down. The hellish glue that held this stronghold together is now gone. The ultimate phase of this victory is to commence with our assuming the role of peacemakers. We must bring back God's way of doing things. We must be peacemakers to enforce God's will in this time of great spiritual transition. It is not enough to dispossess the enemy. It is not sufficient to tear down the enemy's altars. We must also possess his house and distribute his stolen goods, which are really God's goods, to their rightful owners: the Lord's righteous servants. * * * * * * * Thank You for spending time in the Classroom of James Hartline. This Date In History: January 6, 2005
James Hartline Servant Of The Most High God! Preparing For My Departure: But Running My Race Until I Leave!
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