The Religious Spirit (Part IV)

By Odon Bulamba (28 February 2003)

When Moses went to see Pharaoh to ask for the freedom for the people of Israel, Moses could perform miracles by using Aaron’s staff. Aaron would throw the staff and it would turn into a serpent and those people Jannes and Jambres could also do the same thing, they could imitate exactly what Moses and Aaron were doing. Today we even have Christians who can imitate speaking in the language of the Holy Spirit; when we are praying they will start “ahhh bla bla bla” and they are not filled by the Holy Spirit, it is just to give an impression to people around them so that they can think “oh, really this person is powerful, he can speak in tongues, he can do this and that”. When people are gathered in this way they can rise up their voices and pray to give an impression to people that God visits them. It’s true that they want to cheat people around them but they are cheating themselves because they can never cheat God.

Jannes and Jambres use to do the same thing, but one day God put them in confusion. When it was the time for every first born in every family in Egypt to be killed, the family of Jannes and Jambres were also punished. Why couldn’t they be protected by the tenth plague? Because that was the day that God opened the truth about people’s souls and spirits. Jannes and Jambres were acting on behalf of Satan but covering themselves as people who can perform miracles with the same spirit of God. That’s really another big and serious problem in churches.

Some Christians want to make people who are younger spiritually than themselves to become like a slave to them. They become like their younger brother or sister instead of taking them at the same level and considering them as a friend.

When Jesus himself came among us He considered us as His friends. Jesus doesn’t say that you are there and I am here, no never, He puts everybody at the same level and He loves us. Even if you are younger and you pray, He will answer you. He doesn’t care who you are, or your nationality, no.

But people who have the religious spirit first of all check, observe and analyse before acting. I can look around me and see Peter, oh he can’t give me anything, “Peter what are doing”, “I’m studying” you’ll ask someone else “oh, what are you doing brother”, “oh, I’m a doctor”, “oh, that’s a nice Christian to be, so brother praise the Lord, God is blessing you, you know I was praying for you and your problem you had yesterday and God told me such, such and such things”. These people can even lie and say that God told me so I can pass the message on to you; they are flattering those people because if they know a friend who is a doctor then tomorrow when they’re sick he will treat me freely, maybe when he’ll bring his tithe I’ll gain money and so on. The doctor will also believe that that person is a servant of God, but maybe God doesn’t even recognise that person. We must be really careful in our way of living because if we are Christians and pretend to act on behalf of God while He didn’t send us, it’ll be a serious problem.

There was a man at the time of David. When the ark of the Lord was taken from Philistine to Israel on the way while it was being carried, it nearly fell, and someone intervened so that it could not touch the ground, God killed that person. Why did God kill that man? He killed him because he did something which was not supposed to be done by him. He acted like a Levite while he was not one, only a Levite had the right to touch the ark of Lord, but he touched it. Really it was a good action, which everyone appreciated, but in front of God it was the worse thing to do.

So we must also be careful. Sometimes we can say, “o.k., I have to tell my brother God said this and I want to show you that God is really acting through me”, while God is offended and God can say, “no, it’s not true, I did not send this person, it’s just a religious spirit in him”. It is like the way that that man wanted to prove to people that he stopped the ark from falling; he knew that only the Levite people could touch the ark but he ignored it, he didn’t think about it. So the religious spirit can sometimes make people to not think before acting. We need to find time to think about what we are doing so that we will not do something that will displease God.

The two men in the book of 2 Timothy had a wrong spirit, which meant that their faith was useless. As we can see there are many people whose spirit is not in line; they act like pagans and like people who have never met Jesus Christ in their lives and everything they are doing is wrong. Sometimes they can say – we have faith we believe that God will do something – but their faith is zero. They can pray for you for a thousand years and nothing will change in your life, instead of blessing you maybe they will bring you a curse.

I’ll give you another example; let’s say that a woman is married to man who has HIV and the woman conceives, the newborn baby will have the same virus; he’s innocent but he will die later. It’s the same thing for us; we are the church of the Lord, when preachers or leaders or exhorters are full of sin we have something which can kill. I will come as a sinner and open the Bible which is Holy, I will touch it and then start to preach and everything which is in my heart that is the spirit of darkness, you will receive; you will receive the Word of God and the spirit of darkness and then you’ll conceive.

When you conceive, the fruit of your production will be dead fruit, they will not have power; it’s not your fault but the fault of the preacher. That’s why God said before going into the temple one must clean himself and make himself pure, and he must make sure he’s a hundred percent pure, if not whenever he’ll go into the temple he will never come out. So everyone must have a conscience, before opening the Word of God or preaching to people make sure you are clean so that you will not put something bad in other people’s souls.

2 Cor 11:13-15 such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ and no wonder for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light, it is not surprising then if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness the end will be what their actions deserve

So we can see here that we have ministers of God, however, Satan also has his ministers, those ministers are called false ministers, and they can be false prophets, false apostles, and false pastors. You can see that those people are acting (for example) as an evangelist but they don’t even know where they got that title from, they just gave it to themselves and said ‘from now on I’m an evangelist. I have to preach the Gospel’ but their actions don’t really give glory to God.

Many evangelists come from overseas to Africa but their purpose is just to do business. They can leave their regions to go into a region where people can easily get gold or diamonds. They say, “o.k. I’ll go and preach there”. Once they get there they will start to preach the Gospel and people will give them some offerings. They will collect maybe gold and diamonds and then go and sell them somewhere in Europe and after that they will go back to Africa again and preach. These people are travelling as evangelists and preaching to people as evangelists, but they are themselves like Satan. They cover themselves but the religious spirit is what is leading them. They can look like Christians but they’re not.

A few years ago a man of God was preaching somewhere and he said that it’s a shame for the church because our actions are worse than the people who don’t even know God. When you see a Christian acting you cannot believe he’s a Christian. People who do not belong to the church do better things than people who are in the church. Inside the church you’ll find prostitution, lying, and all kinds of dark power, while people who are not Christians are living in a normal way with their morals and conscience and will not do things Christians are doing.

In Africa pastors can kill each other. Because I’m a pastor and I see other pastors preaching with the power of God and people can feel that the power of God is there, so I’ll go to see a witch and tell the witch to kill those pastors and if the witch is not able I’ll pay gangsters. So there is a competition, not against Satan but against Jesus Christ our Lord and that’s very bad.

Imagine there are two teams playing rugby and in one team you start to mark the players on your side instead of marking the players on the other team, finally you’ll be the loser. It’s the same way with God, He knows what we are doing and He counts how good or bad our actions are. One day judgement will be there, that’s why Jesus said that “many people will call upon my name but on the last day I will say I don’t know you, get out of the kingdom of God”, especially people who have the religious spirit, people who always say they are acting on behalf of God while God is not even with them, so that day they will really be confused.