The Contents Of Our Salvation Package (contd from part 1)
n the 1st part, we noted that after we come to Christ and confess Him as personal Lord and Saviour, we are called "Child of God", "Saved", "Redeemed of the Lord", "Delivered", "New creation", "Royal priesthood", "Peculiar nation", "born again", "Justified" etc
Oxford Mini Dictionary gives the meaning of 'redeem' as 'buyback', 'reclaim', 'save from the consequences of sin'. This can still be interpreted as 'save from repercussion' or 'save from results of sins' i.e. save from anything, which befalls us as a result of sin. It also gives the meaning of deliverance as 'rescue', 'set free'.
This means that when we become Christians, we are rescued and set free from the clutches of Satan who had previously held grip over us. This implies that we have been rescued from anything and all things that had befallen us through our association with the devil, before we came to Christ, from whatever source, be one, due to our carelessness, when we did not take God seriously, or the consequences of misbehaviours of our ancestors, which we inherited or could have inherited or acquired, with or without our knowledge, or any curse placed along the genealogical linage. All become inconsequential. They all become null and void. They are no longer binding.
The leader of The Twelve wrote in 1 Peter 1:18 that we have been "redeemed" i.e. "bought back," "reclaimed", "set free" not with corruptible things as silver and gold but with a ransom paid by God, which is the precious blood of Christ. The Lord Jesus Himself testified of Himself: "If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed" (John 8:36).
If all these happen after one becomes a Christian, other than ignorance, there should therefore be no reason why the 'redeemed', the one who is already set free, suffer under the yoke, burden or influence of his ancestral spirits or curses.
If according to 1Peter 1:23 someone is born again, not of corruptible seed i.e. his justification (salvation) is not inherited from his parents; meaning that the salvation of the parents cannot save him (St. John 1:12-13), but has to make his confession of faith in Christ outside his parents, this to me implies a total break from the business of his ancestors, be it with the devil or anything; a total break from what his parents might have or might not have done; a total break from what covenants or what not his parents might have made with the devil. They are no longer binding on the child of God.
If I cannot bank or rely on the salvation of my parents for my salvation, neither can I inherit it, why should I inherit whatever covenants they had made with the devil if ever they did, especially after I have confessed Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour and I now have Him as my master, having renounced and rejected the devil, after I have obtained mercy (I Peter 2:10), delivered from the power of darkness and translated in to the Kingdom of His dear Son (Col. 1:22). To say that a Christian inherits the covenant, which his parents made with the devil is a contradiction of these Scriptural verses. The writer of Hebrews in 2:14 says that the power of the devil over us has been broken when we believe.
Other than ignorance, how can someone who is described as 'a chosen generation', 'a royal priesthood (i.e. priest of the King), a holy nation, God's very own (1 Peter 2:9) still need some persons to deliver him from certain ancestral covenants? What happened to the deliverance at conversion?
When a person is born again, he enters into a holy, higher and superior covenant with Christ and that annuls every other prior covenant with the devil known or unknown to him, made by himself, or made on his behalf or transcended. Every, prior covenant with the devil are automatically broken because he has been delivered from the power of darkness and translated in to the Kingdom of His dear Son (Col.1:13). He shouldn't need any other deliverance other than to take or be helped to take and use or be helped to use his authority as a Christian when the devil visits to harass him.
Let me prove this with a true story. One evening in November of 1975, a mysterious middle-aged man joined us at a crowded crusade, which we held at Bariga, Lagos. He came with the intention to use his demoniac power to disrupt and cause commotion on the crusade ground. He tried very hard with all the demoniac power he possessed (unaware to us anyway) but it failed him. He then admitted the superior power to his and he gave up, believed and confessed Jesus Christ as his Lord and Saviour. He was up to that moment, the Secretary-General of the Aborigine Ogboni Fraternity of Nigeria (AOFN). He belonged to nineteen other secret demoniac cults worldwide. He was a full time secretary of the AOFN, responsible for the day to day running of the cult. The cult sponsored his education to Chicago where he received a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Business Administration. Ask him any VIP across Nigeria who you suspect was a member of the AOFN, he needed not to check his book (record) before he told you all information about him vis-à-vis, the date he was initiated and the "iledi" (unit), which he belonged. If he had decamped (resigned his membership) he would tell you off the head and the date he did. This gentleman, after conversion hid in my house for six weeks before he was let out into the open world.
During those days in my house, he related to us the kind of power he willed while in the cult and he told us one, which he performed in the house of a popular socialite Lagos chief on the afternoon of the very day, (just few hours before) he met Christ. He thought he could repeat the same feat when I told him in boldness that if he tried it, it would fail because (1) I expected him to have become dispossessed of every prior demoniac power he possessed before he came to Christ and (2) my house is completely under the control and influence of the Holy Ghost and no demon can operate there. It was after I said those things that he confessed of an attempt he had made few days earlier to enter into the coven (gathering of witches) and he discovered that he could no longer do so. I told him, if he had done, I would very much have doubted the genuineness to his claim of having become a Christian.
During the years when I coordinated the work of the Fellowship of Christian students (F.C.S) of a certain district, I met a girl who belonged to a kind of a very ruthless, wicked cult called 'egbe' or elegbe' in Yoruba. It was another student who noticed her mysterious, funny and peculiar behaviours and made a jest of her. The demon possessed girl promised to deal with her. And in fact she really dealt with her until she was rescued. Nights after nights, the demonic girl in company of her cult members tormented her victim in her sleep with severe beatings, using broom sticks. The victim would cry (weep) out into the world on those nights and when other mates in the dormitory would gather round her (the victim), they saw no one. Yet the scars of beating could easily be seen on her. The demonic girl afterwards was herself led to Christ and instantly, she discovered that she could no longer join with her previous cult members at their meetings.
I have narrated these two stories to confirm that when one genuinely becomes a Christian, all previous satanic covenants are no longer binding. They should no longer be effective in the life of the Christian.
We sing many choruses without taking serious thought of the wordings, claim and apply them e.g.
Jesus breaks every fetter /3ce
and He sets me free.
Another one says:
I am delivered, praise the Lord,
I am delivered by His power,
Once I was bound by the chains of Satan,
I am delivered praise the Lord.
I recognize and it is unfortunate, that many Christians do not know what are contained in their salvation package and Satan takes advantage of their ignorance and continue to pester them with the pact(s), which they had earlier made with him or which were made on their behalf or transcended in them through their ancestors. When we come across such people, it is not deliverance they need but only to be helped to take their authority on the devil.
A pastor once gave a testimony of how he at a time suspected that their ancestral compound name might be having its toll on the compound members But to the exclusion of his nucleus family. Whatever might be the devil's activity operating in the lives of the non-Christian members in the extended family, could not affect the Pastor's nucleus family because they were already covered in Christ, in whom their allegiance is and the superiority of their covenant with Him, sealed with His blood.
The situation with many Christians is like someone who has money in his purse but still suffer hunger, begging for money to buy bread or someone carrying an authentic cheque and rather presenting it at the appropriate bank continues to suffer deprivation. And if God directs such Christians to those of us who have the understanding, we do not have to make a big deal or farce of it other than to alert them of the package in their hands.
Sometimes I wonder if many who go by the appellation of 'Deliverance Ministers' themselves have sufficient ideas or else a number of their approaches would have been different, sometimes having the appearance of the methods used by fettish priests.
God, through prophet Ezekiel in chapter 18 had corrected the erroneous notion, which said that: "The children are punished for their father's sins". The reference says that this can only be possible if those children continue in the steps of their ungodly pagan fathers. In the same way, whatever covenant my ancestors might have made with the devil cannot be binding on me except I too follow the paganistic ideas of those fathers. Because the nucleus family of the Pastor referred to above did not follow the paganistic ways of their ancestors, and he was sufficiently aware of his salvation rights and benefits, when the effect of the forefathers' covenants started to loom again, it could not affect him nor or any member of his nucleus family.
Some have argued that Moses' inter-relation with the magic of Egypt in his early life made Satan to contend for his body after he died (Jude vs 9). While this may sound a spiritual explanation, it should be noted that while Moses lived, we had no record that his early life experience with whatever power of Egypt bothered (had a toll on) him in anyway nor affected his ministry. So, if after I die, and some evil spirits for whatever reasons come to contend for my body, that will no longer be my headache but those of my responsible guardian angels. And we are yet to be told that Michael, the archangel who rose to the occasion in the case of Moses' dead body and told the devil: "The Lord rebuke thee" is on vacation nor sleeping. I am sure that as soon as this body dies, my spirit will be gone to the father instantly. And that is what I care about.
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