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[Music] [Music] Well, it's a great pleasure of mine to have you join me today on the Manna-Fest telecast. And I really sense that a lot of you—and we sense this, but we also receive emails and letters from, from you—that many of you are going through some of the strangest battles that you've ever gone through in your entire Christian experience. And some of them are weird, some are bizarre, some of them are mental battles that you've never had to fight before. And there are many of you that are faith people, and you just are dealing with a lot of anxiety and a lot of fear.
I'd like to share with you today a subject that's going to expose some of Satan's main strategies at the time of the end. Second Corinthians, chapter 2, verse 11: This is a very significant verse. I'm going to elaborate on the context right now. "Lest Satan should get an advantage of us, for we are not ignorant of his devices."
Now, the context of this text that I just read to you is very, very bizarre. It's written to the church at Corinth, but it's written over a situation that was going on inside the church that every member of the congregation knew about, but they had not addressed. And that issue was this: There was a young man in the congregation that was committing sexual fornication with his father's wife, which was actually his stepmother. So the stepmother is having physical sex with her stepson. The church knew about it, but nothing was being said. And so they were allowing it to continue. Maybe the family in the church was an important family; I don't know what the reason was. So Paul got so fed up with the fact that the church had permitted it, knowing it had happened, that he said, "I want you—I'm going to turn this young man over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, that in the end his soul would be saved."
Now, we do not know what happened. This young man had some kind of disease, sickness, or infirmity, and it may have been a series of infirmities that struck him to the point that he turned back to God, and he later repented. The problem was—now pay attention to this, because this is—this deals with Satan's strategy—the problem was that the church was unforgiving toward the young man who had repented. Let me say that again: The church was still talking about his sin, still talking about what he did after he'd been forgiven. And that is a sin to bring up a sin that is under the blood that's truly been repented. It's a sin. We're going to talk about that in a moment.
Now, Paul writes II Corinthians, in the second letter, he talks about, "Sufficient is the punishment inflicted from many," but then he says to them, "I have forgiven him, and if I've forgiven him, you should also forgive him, lest he be swallowed up in more grief." So, in other words, he's saying to the church, "You're only adding more grief to someone who has already grieved for the wrong they've done. You've got to stop it." So he said, "You forgive; I'm going to forgive," and he kept—Paul, you know, he talks about how he—here's the thing about Paul: When you have been forgiven of much—I mean, Paul consented to the death of Stephen; he was a murderer; he arrested Christians—when you have been forgiven of much, you learn to forgive much. When you're the kind of person that you don't feel like you've been forgiven too much, you don't love much, and you don't forgive much. That's a fact, and that's where people get into bad attitudes with other people's problems.
Now, in the context—listen to me carefully—of "You need to forgive this young man, and you need to do the right thing in the eyes of God," then Paul writes, "Lest Satan get an advantage of us, for we're not ignorant of his devices." So he says this issue of not forgiving is two things: It is a device of Satan not to forgive someone, but it is also not just a device of Satan; Satan will use our unforgiveness to take advantage of us. Now, stay with me, because this is important. The Greek word "advantage" means to overreach or to make gain. So Satan is going to be able to reach out; he's going to be able to overreach and make gains in your life if you do not do what Paul instructed the church to do here. And the word "devices"—you know, "we are not ignorant of Satan's devices"—actually, in Greek, can refer to exercising the mind. So Satan will exercise your mind; Satan will control your thinking; Satan will send darts into your mind against you if you don't do what the Apostle Paul is teaching here, and that is that when a person has repented, or they've asked for forgiveness, you forget that and you just move on forward. And only if that person wants to use their situation for a personal testimony of how God—not gossiping—you know, some people are going to testify, and they will tell everything they know about trying to destroy somebody. That's not of God at all; that's total flesh, ego, and pride. He's—if you're going to use it though, to say how God brought you out, how God delivered you, the goodness of God—to, to stop the attack of the enemy—bring glory to the Lord.
So here's what I'm trying to say to you: You see that—we'll see that word "main strategies"—the—I see this; I have seen this for years. I have seen this during 45, almost 46 years of preaching—actually, 46 years, going into my 46th year of ministry—and that is that the main strategy of the enemy that is hindering more people from being healed, more people from financial blessing, people living under condemnation, people living under guilt, people living under shame—the main problem is that people have not forgiven other people of what they think they did them wrong about, or the person has not forgiven themselves and is living in shame and condemnation. And the Bible tells you that if your heart condemns you, then you don't have—not only do you not have peace with God, but if your heart feels condemned over something, then when you pray, you have no confidence in your own prayer.
Now, I want you to think for just a moment the number of times that instead of you praying over your need—someone has a need; someone is in crisis—and let me say up front, there is nothing wrong with you—James 5: Call the elders of the church to pray; call your prayer partners to pray. We, we do that all the time, to pray—not to play—to pray. And so, but the problem is that so many times people come down for prayer—now watch this—and they're holding bitter stuff in their spirit toward other people, toward a situation. So they're being prayed for, and nothing ever happens. Now you listen to what I'm about to say: God cannot bless you over top of your willingness to either—to, to not forgive someone. Let me say it again: God cannot bless you; He cannot prosper you, bless you, or do anything to help you at all. You've tied His hands if you are not willing to release people and you stay in unforgiveness. And the principle here is: You have been forgiven by God of sins, and He has rescued you from hell, and He requires you to be willing to release other people and to forgive them of any wrong that they have done.
Now, there are people—I know my dad had—has had experiences when he was living and, uh, with individuals that, that said or did things that were wrong, and the Lord would tell my dad, "They have too much ego and pride to ask you to forgive them; they are not going to ask you to forgive them." Someone—this is a long time back—how long ago it's been—but somebody said this: A woman posted on her—on a Facebook page, "The biggest weakness my husband has is he never, ever is ever able to say he did anything wrong." That's really pitiful; that's bad; that's pride; that's pride on steroids. When you maybe did not make the right decision, or say the right things, or you did something you shouldn't do, "I ain't gonna repent; it ain't my fault; it wasn't my fault; it was their fault." You know that's true; that's just pride.
But I want to go back to a very serious issue: That when it comes to Satan's main strategy, he wants to keep you bound up in your mind and in your spirit with issues that you have no control over, and for you to use your mouth to be an accuser of someone else's failure. Now I'm going to say it again: For your mouth to be moving and exercising to be an accuser of someone else's failure. And I have learned this; I've watched this for years: That once people start down this path of, "Well, let me tell you what I know; let me tell you what I heard"—when you start down that path, you won't see it for six months or a year or two, but I'm telling you, with the same judgment you judge, God is going to judge you back again. I have watched people criticize people who fail. Now, these are ministers now, and I have watched those ministers—and some of it was when I was a kid, you know, 18, 19, 25, 30 years of age—and they'd have this meeting, and they would cut this guy down, and they would criticize him. And listen to me: Then a few years later, that same preacher would fall into the exact same sin—I mean, the exact one that they had criticized the other person for. And I asked the Lord one time, I said, "Why does that happen?" And He said, "If you read Psalm 64, the arrows that you send out that are called bitter words toward another person, they, they turn." Even David was talking about this prayer; he prayed that the words would turn and come back at that person. So if that person has some type of a hedge up, they destroy their own hedge by the words they speak on other—that eventually—same judgment; it's a law of God; you just can't change this law. The same judgment that you judge will eventually come back to you again. So the very thing that all you're doing is talking about and criticizing in another person, it will come back at you.
I remember when my dad pastored a church many years ago, how that there were, you know, these very strict people, and I tell you what: "My daughter will never get pregnant." And guess what? Both the persons—both their daughters ended up getting pregnant out of wedlock. There were other people that said, "I tell you, these kids taking drugs; I'd slap mine silly; it'll never happen in my house." And you know what happened? Guess what happened? All the kids ended up on drugs. Because you cause your hedge of protection—this is the strategy of the enemy; he wants that protective hedge to come down. Why does he want your protective heads to come down? Because if you look at what happens when a hedge is—is removed, Satan has access; he can have access—read the book of Job—to the wealth that you have, the prosperity you have, and all of a sudden there's—there's destruction of prosperity. He can have access even to your children. I don't believe God—Satan can kill—kill a righteous person, because he doesn't have the keys of death anymore. But if you look at how the hedge protected Job's family, and look at what happened when the hedge comes down, you can see the danger of that. And then also he attacks people's health, because that was one of the things that Satan did to Job; he attacked his physical health and put boils all over his body for months. So your hedge is significant; your hedge is the word of God; your hedge is the power of the Holy Spirit; your heads are angels that can protect you and build walls and barriers, and that's found in different scriptures of the Old Testament. And so if a hedge is removed—you can be the person to remove it—by Psalm 64, shooting arrows—bitter words, angry words—that turn and penetrate your own wall and cause your own wall to crumble—with—you know, without going into details—I remember a gentleman that was a minister of the gospel that went through some really serious things, and he had made the statement, he said, "You know, I prayed and prayed, and I never could get freedom, and I never understood why the Lord didn't help me." But then I knew the man; I knew his message; I knew some very, very—he would sit at a table and cut down every other preacher—I mean, except himself; I mean, he was the greatest preacher in the world. So he cut down literally every other preacher. And the reason I know this is some of my friends were sitting at the table shocked, uh, he was this guy, and he was after this guy. So, in other words, by his criticism, God said, "You know what? I'm gonna—you're criticizing other people that have had situations that have fallen," so God said this, "I'm gonna let you—this minister—experience what they felt and see if you can stand." And that's what can happen; the hedge can come down. And so the thing that you're criticizing—you know, "Their kids are on drugs; their daughter got pregnant; their marriage is in a mess"—and you just go on and on. If it's a minister, you've always got something negative to say; if their name comes up, "Well, let me just say this to you: It may not happen; you may see blessing everything around you; I'm blessed coming in, blessed going out"—made the head—not there—will be a day—mark it down—that if you don't get that out of your spirit, and in some instances if you don't apologize to, uh, the people that you have maybe said things about, or you've repeated stuff that you didn't know whether it was true or not—is fact—then if you don't do that, it will come back to you.
Now, Paul said this: It can come back in the form of being turned over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, if it involves some kind of sin, and all of a sudden you start having every kind of problem imaginable, just like your whole world's falling apart. And what will happen at that point is there will be a chastisement from God that will come. And listen, the Bible says, "Don't despise the chastening of the Lord." So if you feel like, "Maybe I'm being chastised for things," just remember that the chastening of the Lord is for your benefit and for your betterment. We discipline our children so that they won't be spoiled brats, doing everything they want, when they want, how they want. So discipline is necessary for children in order to guide them in the right direction. So God is the same way as our Father, and we are His sons and daughters, that there are times that He allows chastisement to come.
Now, I'm going to run—these are one-liners—I'm going to run and comment on these seven facts from—I call it the playbook of the enemy. Number one: Many of our battles are self-inflicted. Look at Samson, and look in David. David—Satan tempted them, but they're the one that yielded and created their own battle. So keep that in mind. Number two: Most of Satan's victories occur because we did nothing. When Satan came against Jesus in Luke chapter 4, in Matthew chapter 4, Jesus quoted the word of God; He did something when the attack or the testing was starting. So again, most of Satan's victories occur because we just did absolutely nothing about Him. Number three: Demons love darkness, and our darkness is ignorance. In other words, "We are not ignorant of Satan's devices," Paul wrote. So many times—being—being somebody said, "Well, ignorance is bliss." No, it's not; ignorance can get you killed; uh, ignorance can—can do something to your body that makes it unhealthy. So don't say ignorance is bliss; it never is, uh, when it comes to the knowledge of the word of the Lord. So we've got to have knowledge, which is light, to counter the darkness, okay? Number—number four: Now listen to this; this is something the Lord gave me years ago. We always talk about, "Rebuke the enemy; just rebuke the enemy; just, just rebuke Satan," because the Bible said, "Resist the devil, and he'll flee from you." However, Satan has no obligation to—or to obey our rebuke if we are in unforgiveness. Now what that means is this: Satan has no obligation to obey our rebuke if we are in unforgiveness. Unforgiveness is such a horrible sin—and He is sin in the eyes of God for a believer—that Satan legally is not obligated to listen to our rebuke when we're walking in disobedience. So we can rebuke Him all day: "I rebuke you; say no; rebuke you"—you know what it is? It's words. Now, when we're right, and our heart and mind is right with God, then our rebuke has authority because of the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. All right, let's keep going; I've got a couple more. Here's another one: Satan's plot—or Satan's plots—are kept in secret and not made public unless revealed by the Holy Spirit. Now this is very important—why we pray in the Spirit—because the Bible says when we pray in the Spirit, which is to pray in the prayer language of the Spirit, that we speak mysteries, and mysteries are something that are—that we don't know about; we don't see; they're concealed. A mystery is something concealed. So Satan can have strategies that He conceals to hide from us, and most of the time Satan's strategies come through other people. And I want to make that very clear: About 90% of my problems that have happened in my lifetime have been through—through people that the enemy used, and not through Satan Himself. He uses people; they become His vehicle; they become His voice. I mean, the world is tempted and tested with mental thoughts, but Satan does it audibly—most of the time, at least from what I can gather—audibly speak to people: "I am Satan; I want you to do this"—but they have mental thoughts. Now the thing is that when we speak out something that is improper against the word of God, the Bible calls it every idle word—or idle words—usel—useless words, worthless words. If—if we speak idle words, that's what we're going to give an account of the day of judgment. But that's what keeps the foot in the door of the adversary. Guard your heart with all diligence; out of it precedes the issues of life. Take heed to what you hear; he that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. Life and death are in the power of the tongue; let your yea be yea, and your nay nay. Look at the verses about the words of your mouth. This is how the enemy gets in; he gets in through the words of your mouth. And so I want you to—we know we're talking about exposing Satan's strategy at the time of the end. All right, here's another one: You cannot defeat what you permit. For example, if you have a habit, and you just settle into it, and you keep permitting it, you can—you'll never defeat it. And if you have what I call, from Hebrews chapter 12, a weight and a sin that besets you—and I call it a pet sin—and you like that sin, and you don't want to give it up, guess what? You, you will never get victory over that until you have a willingness to lay aside the weight and the sin, or to give it up. Okay, so in other words, you'll never defeat what you permit. And the final word I want to give you in this list is this: With no divine presence, demons get comfortable. So if you—one of the reasons it's important to have a church, a—a group, a family of God, a community—we have a—we have Ramp Cleveland every Tuesday night; we have a big youth event every Friday night; we have prayer on Thursday night. We're not a traditional church, but we're a gathering place, a fellowship of community of people—Ramp Cleveland at OCI Omega Center International. So what I want to share with you with that is the reason it's important to not just sit on the internet and watch TV from the internet, but to get back into these services, is this: The services create—through worship and prayer and praise—the presence of God that builds your faith, lifts you up, encourages you, brings healing and deliverance to salvation, baptist, Holy Spirit. I'm sure you can watch the internet and get that; I know that, but demonic power gets very comfortable when there's no presence of God. The opposite is true: Demonic power gets uncomfortable and is removed the more of the presence of God that we have, and the more of the presence of God that we encounter. And the other thing—I don't have time to get into this—is many times sudden storms will always precede a great victory. I have about another page of notes I didn't even get to—get to in this subject, but for some—
Reason God has me to share with you: to get over bitterness, resentment. Lay outside your pride; confess your fault one to another; pray for one another that you may be healed; forgive people and release and do the right thing. If not, you're going to find yourself in what Paul talked about in Second Corinthians 11. You're gonna find 211 Satan taking advantage of you. I don't want that in my life; I don't want that in your life. So I want you to watch this. We've got a very heavy book; we're offering a great book. I'll be back in a moment. Don't go anywhere.
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Please give me your undivided attention. Many months ago, I began to hear secular economists announce a new global reset was coming. That's when I heard this phrase in my spirit: The American Apocalyptic Reset. For several weeks, I woke up early and began receiving a series of stunning prophetic downloads that I pinned and now have placed them all in my brand new prophetic book, America's Apocalyptic Reset. This book is a must-read for all Christians, for all of those who love Bible prophecy, for conservative Americans, and American patriots. The 19 chapters go extremely deep into exposing the agenda now being secretly plotted and to be publicly forced upon us, the American people, and how we can counter it. I discovered some very stunning ancient prophetic parallels and patterns, some that go back four thousand years, that are repeating themselves in the United States right now. I deal with the miracles, Great Babel Reset, and the planned persecution of Christians; America's self-curse that will eventually bring judgment upon the nation; the coming Jezebel clash; the woman who will be president; how should we act and wisely resist corrupt governments. I reveal the unique Silicon Valley parallels and also go into the plans to bankrupt then reset America economically. Also, I talk about how to function when the church must go underground. I received a very unique revelation concerning President Trump and a pattern that's found in history. There's a chapter also that I deal with: How did the prophets get it wrong? And so much more. Ladies and gentlemen, this is probably the most significant prophetic book in the history of my ministry, especially in the time that we're in.
But that's not all. I'm also including my most recent inside information prophetic briefing on two audio CDs. It's two hours in length, and I will release detailed information that I cannot—and I want you to hear me—I cannot nor will I share this on social media or on television. As absolutely in the climate that we're now in, a lot of this information would be targeted for being blocked and banned if it was made public and not done in this private setting that we're doing it in. These two hours contain biblical, political, national, and international revelation and information that I am sure that many of you have not been aware of. It is for truth lovers only. I want you to order right now this prophetic resource package: my brand new book, The Apocalyptic Reset, and the two-hour prophetic CDs by going online at perrystone.org or calling 1-888-21BREAD or write me at Perry Stone, P.O. Box 3595, Cleveland, Tennessee 37320. Now we're making this available for your donation of 35 or more, and you can request the offer APR-140. That's APR-140. I'm going to unmask the radical globalist and individuals who have set out to oppose and silence Christians, silence patriots, and shut the mouth of conservatives, and we will show you in the book what we can do when we unite together. We are looking forward to getting this into your hands. I do appreciate the comments that we're receiving about the book, The American Apocalyptic Reset, and the and the and also the audio CD. But I also want to say that many of you are ordering our other materials, and we're appreciative of that. You know, we have some pretty major projects that are coming down the road; some of them I haven't shared with you publicly yet on the Manifest telecast because we're still in the planning stages. But there's something pretty major, uh, very major that's going to be built on our property at the Omega Center International Ranch, and also we're working on a wholeness center that will concentrate primarily on young people, and that's being remodeled and fixed right now while I speak. So you'll be hearing about these different outreaches that our ministry has, and I want to say especially to those of you who get our material because that helps keep Manifest on the air, but those of you who are partners of our ministry, I want to say a great thank you to you because I don't know if you realize what God is doing in this work and in this ministry. You know, I've told you about how the Lord spoke to me about revival was going to come to the lens of a camera and how that we sit in a, actually at ISO the Bible school, and we sit and teach, and they put up big screens in different parts of the world, and I'm preaching to a live audience right there, and people are being saved, filled with the Spirit. We've even had reports of some tremendous miracles that have taken place through prayer. And so this is one of the ways that God is going to reach people in the time of the end, and so we're going to be expanding that because one of the things that I feel that I want to just briefly mention to you is that with with pestilences and viruses and things of this nature that are global at this point, you see so many times where you hear about a nation that has locked down people and they have only access to their home or you see situations where people are limited in their church attendance. So people have to turn to a website such as perrystone.org, which is our website, or internet sites in order to hear the word of the Lord that's being presented. So we want you to know we're going to use every method we can to reach as many people as we possibly can. But don't forget our big fall camp meeting which is coming up, and then the Lord willing, all these meetings are planned: October the 10th, Richmond, Virginia, Faith Landmark Ministries; and then, of course, the Field House in Williamson, West Virginia, the 23rd and 25th of October. And my time is out. Go to perrystone.org for more information. This is Perry Stone. Join me and our great team of John Kilpatrick, Jensen Franklin, Tommy Bates, Karen Peck, and New River Lindel Cooley heading up our praise and worship for our great Holy Spirit-filled anointed fall camp meeting, October the 5th—that's a Tuesday night—through the 9th, which is Saturday morning. Come to OCI in Cleveland, Tennessee, and join me and the entire team for the greatest event all year long. Don't forget about Pam's Fall Festival on Saturday afternoon. See you there.
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