There are enormous volumes of information we may and often do absorb each day and so when we read such admonitions as "a must read" we may overlook the material as so many make this claim.
I appeal to godly parents, pastors, school principles and teachers, law enforcement and all Christians to read this article - for the sake of our children, the next generation.
Once it was college students who left the faith that they were raised in; that was back in the 80's. In the 90's these were high school students. Now it's even the junior high level students who have forsaken the Bible in spirit, if not in letter. They may have a form of belief in the Bible, but it isn't biblical belief, and it's not centered around a living, breathing reality of Jesus Christ on a personal, daily level.
How could we have allowed our children to stray so far? Why aren't we engaged in spiritual battle for them and this entire generation of youth?
Greg Reid provides a heart-felt and anguished plea for us to stand fast and engage the power of the enemy by the Spirit of the LORD. He talks about spiritual warfare and the need to train our children to fight against Satan and his kingdom of darkness with real spiritual weapons at our disposal by the grace of God. Read this article; share it; give heed to its admonitions and let us repent of the spiritual negligence of our own walks as well as our children's. May we, by the grace of God, reach out to the youth of this generation, and take back that which the enemy has stolen! AMEN!
You may read more of Greg Reid's materials on his site, The COLOR of PAIN.
I conducted a small interview asking a few pertinent questions with Greg in a TTUF article, which you may read here, concerning the Ouija Board.
~~ James Fire <///><
By Gregory R Reid
“Now these are the nations which the Lord left, that He might test Israel by them, that is, all who had not known any of the wars in Canaan 2 (this was only so that the generations of the children of Israel might be taught to know war, at least those who had not formerly known it)” (JUDGES 3:3)
I stared at the face on television in disbelief at what I had just heard. The young man was a self-professed Satanist teen recruiter who said he would smash Jesus in the face and cut his throat if he saw him. Then he said, “Your kids are our business. And right now, business is GOOD.” The year was 1987, and I was just stepping into a 20 year mission to expose the occult, and more importantly, rescue kids and children out of the cruel and merciless hands of occultism, devil worship and human trafficking. I had known about spiritual warfare for my entire Christian life; now I was about to go to war.
That war was real, it was visceral, and it was costly. It was an era in which, thankfully, spiritual warfare was being taught in the churches in an unprecedented way. I was especially thankful that the youth were being trained. No, not all of what was taught was accurate or helpful. But I believed God was going to take a generation and train their hands to war. (PSALMS 144:1; 18:34)
Fast forward 13 years. In the year 2000, we had done all we could in our particular field, and it was time for a break. I settled down to “life as usual,” feeling a bit like a soldier coming home from war and finding nothing familiar and everyone unaware of where you had been and what you had been through. Regardless, I was looking forward to a time to reflect, recharge, and hopefully, get back into the war.
What I was not prepared for is that the churches had, in my time away, been weakened, infected with occult practices, and had almost completely abandoned the message of and need for spiritual warfare training.
I found churches drawing circles to pray (a magick practice) practicing Yoga, and promoting books by young leaders who were not only weakening the faith of youth, but later on would go on to deny hell and the foundational principles of sound doctrine.
I found that most Christian youth were reading Harry Potter and Vampire books and playing violent, occult-riddled video games. In fact, “cool” youth groups had multiple video gaming systems so kids could come play these games in the house of God. (It was a big draw; youth groups with them flourished; many of those without these “attractions” were floundering.)
What happened? Quite simply, almost 20 years had gone by in which spiritual warfare was not taught.
One of the reasons may have been because of a backlash of sorts against our overemphasis on the issue, and the proliferation of not-quite-sound books on demons, angels, and the supernatural. As one who was well-trained in spiritual warfare and understood the need for it, even I was alarmed by the unscriptural content of much of the material available on this vital subject of spiritual battle.
Unfortunately, the nearly wholesale retreat from the need to raise up youth and young believers who understood spiritual warfare left a void that was quickly filled by Harry Potter, Yoga and many other occultic things and the occult began to get a firm foothold in the western church.
While we turned our concerns to building mega churches, finding ways to create a church atmosphere that attracted the lost - not by the Spirit, but through media entertainment - and engaging in multiple pursuits that took us away from a straightforward cross and blood presentation of the Gospel, the devil was busy luring one generation after another into worldly pursuits. He was addicting them to technology and media that was full of darkness and uncleanness, and making them comfortable enough with the messages of affirmation and self-help they heard in church to keep them asleep to the reality around them. He was making them numb to the fact that that there is a real devil, there is a war in the heavenlies, and that every believer must either be armored for war, or simply become a sidelined observer to the world events around them - not a participant in the battle to save souls drowning in darkness.
I had a moment of crystal clarity one night when, as a youth pastor, I discovered that most of the kids in our youth group had been reading the newest post-Potter fiction books, Twilight, stories about vampires and werewolves. I realized Satan’s real goal was not to send our Christian youth to hell or turn them into devil worshippers. His goal was to render them completely impotent and ineffective in battle, unable to make a difference in this occult-soaked society. His goal was to neuter them and mock them. That was the end game. And he was succeeding spectacularly. Gone were the days of raising up warriors for Jesus. All of that had become a relic of the past when they sold plastic swords and armor at the Christian bookstore and told kids they could be front line soldiers in fighting the devil. When I realized how far we had gone backward, I made a determination before God that I would do everything and anything I could to raise up a generation of front-line fighters who understood their place, their purpose and their power and were willing to accept the commission to go and redeem their generation for Jesus.
Fast forward – It’s 2015. I just returned from a prayer walk in Spring, Texas. A good friend and Pastor in Spring had texted me during a staff meeting about the announcement that the Greater Church of Lucifer was opening its doors on Halloween weekend in downtown Spring, a quiet little antique and boutique town just north of Houston. “Want to do a prayer walk?” Pastor Scott Hayes of Family Christian Center texted. “I want to do a whole lot more than that,” I texted back, and within an hour, we had outlined a whole weekend which would include the prayer walk, a day workshop on spiritual warfare, and my giving my own testimony of being delivered out of the occult Halloween night. Invitations to other churches were given. Flyers were printed and handed out.
We spent a few hours praying near the new Luciferian church, praying outside it – nothing loud and assaultive, simply hitting the heavenlies with the power of God. We were able to invite over 200 people to come out the next day, and we prayed with a number of people. We prayed outside for deliverance for the folks who set up the Luciferian church and those unsuspecting souls that went inside to see it, some even bringing their little children.
My host church came out to attend the training and my testimony the next night. They understood this was real. The pastor was recently moved by God to move his church to another location and they had just settled in. He had no idea that the Luciferian church would be within walking distance from Family Christian Center.
What a sad commentary, though, that not one other Christian or church that was invited showed up. But local “Trunk or Treat” events were packed.
And the Satanic Church of Detroit has as of this writing applied to put out a public display – a “snaketivity” to mock Christmas and sneer at Christians while we are doing, what? Finding more fun activities to attract the lost?
Am I missing something here?
I truly believe that this generation of believers is the one that will see Jesus return. I also believe for the first time since the early church, we are going to see persecution of believers on an unprecedented scale – not just in the Middle East, where we are horrified to see the return of barbaric and satanic butchering and beheading of believers that hadn’t been seen since in the middle ages – but here in the western world where we have taken our freedom of religion so much for granted. Just in the last five years, we have seen the tide turn against committed Bible believers in a way that has positioned us to be the haters, the problem, and the cancer on the modern progressive social agenda. I have no doubt that it will go far beyond words and legal threats before the Lord returns.
So how do we prepare this young generation of believers for what is to come? How do we spiritually train for battle a generation that “knew not war,” who have never engaged in fighting the enemy in a way that made them effective, world changers, warriors? These are my suggestions:
1. Those of us who are older need to get over our fear of spiritual warfare. Yes, I know, talking about the devil and demons and invisible battles is scary. But we are commanded not to fear! (LUKE 12:32) We need to be BOLD. Jesus took the keys of hell and death from Satan. Now we are commanded to move out and clean up the mess that Satan has left.
2. We need to stop dismissing talk of spiritual warfare as “something Carmen talked about in the 80’s) (He’s still on the front lines, by the way, having survived terminal cancer and is back in the battle) or just a “fad” from that era. Paul dedicated whole chapters on this battle we face; we should take it as seriously as he did. Jesus fought the devil, He cast out demons and spoke of seeing Satan falling from heaven, and told his disciples, “In my Name you will cast out devils.” There has never been a time when people – especially youth - are more demonized on so many levels. We need to teach people how to handle the demonic biblically, and effectively.
3. We need to provide, at the least, basic spiritual warfare training for our youth – the full armor, the battle for the mind, darkness vs light, good vs evil, how to engage in effective defeat of the enemy’s work in their lives. To send them out to the battleground of godless high schools and universities without that training is almost guaranteeing that you will lose them to the world.
4. Challenge the false narrative that says, “We don’t need to be talking about these things, especially with the youth. That’s just glorifying the devil.” Ephesians says clearly, “Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.” (EPH 5:11) Don’t hide from them, ignore them or run from them. EXPOSE THEM! Believe me, if you know youth, then you know that they are already fully exposed to the darkness, curious about Ouija boards, ghosts, demons, the Illuminati etc. Our job is to be proactive and expose the lies and teach the truth about these issues. Trust me, they can handle it much better than many of us can. It’s time to buck up and get them into boot camp.
5. It’s time to leave the romper room for the upper room.
I was recently discussing what youth in youth groups need and was shocked to hear someone tell me they needed less prayer, less altar calls, more fun, and maybe a short scriptural snack at the end of the night. Seriously?
In the year that Isis is decapitating children? In the year gay marriage was legalized, abortion providers are laughing about babies’ eyeballs falling into their lap during a late term abortion, a year in which former Christian singer Katy Perry does a performance for the nation that is essentially a reenactment of every kind of satanic and witchcraft ritual there is, you want kids to have more games?
Folks, the end of the Western Church is potentially upon us as one church after another allows perversion and occultism to enter the sanctuary of God, and the youth are our only hope to stand up and raise a standard against it, stand up to Satan’s carte blanche self-proclaimed ownership of this generation and go out to the gates of hell to retrieve their friends from the lip of hell. We will either keep them in the romper room of spiritually “safe and easy” or throw them into the upper room and teach them the principles of praying with power, walking in the power of God and forwarding the Kingdom in unafraid boldness and confidence that comes from knowing exactly who they are. We will either empower them to enter the Promised Land where there are giants and possess that land for the Kingdom of God, or we will weaken them to just sit and wait for the inevitable surrender. Which will it be?
6. We need to invest, like we never have before, in this generation of youth. Years ago pioneer evangelist Winkie Pratney wrote a powerful book called, “DEVIL TAKE THE YOUNGEST” (See the 7th book on this site). He clearly showed how anytime in history before God moved powerfully, Satan tried to do a preemptive strike and destroy a whole generation – the firstborn of Israel in Egypt, the babies that Herod murdered to try and stop the Messiah from taking his throne, etc. He further wrote that Satan knows the potential each generation of youth has to destroy his works, so he seeks to destroy them first.
I wish that we really understood this. So many churches treat youth ministry like professional babysitting, and youth pastors as babysitters who are just doing Junior Church waiting to get a job as a “real” pastor someday.
Oh, folks, we have no idea. The youth truly are the future. Their potential, their energy, their creativity and ability to take risks for the kingdom is boundless, but it remains untapped and unused if we do not invest in them with all of our hearts and the full financial resources it requires to make them effective for the Kingdom.
Just like in the natural, our military is capable of extraordinary things, but if the “desk jockeys” in Washington cut their funding and decide a strong military is unnecessary, then we leave the whole nation at grave risk. It works that way in the church as well. Those of us who are the old guard will soon give up our posts, and churches that have not passed that torch to an on-fire and fully armored young generation will become, like so many European churches, a relic – or a bar. Or a Mosque. God forbid we should have such short sighted vision for our future!
7. We need to have a long-term strategy that does not just treat a group of youth like they are going to “change the world” and pound that message into them for three years before we unceremoniously dump them into the netherworld between college and marriage. We have to arm them for college even while they are in middle school; we’ve got to teach them about godly relationships, how to fight temptation and avoid the all too frequent unequal yoke disaster while they are still freshmen. Warfare is a life-long career for the true believer. Prepare them to be in it for the long haul.
I do not believe that we as the western church need to follow the trend of Europe and watch hopelessly as the sun sets on the dreams and visions of generations of true generals in God’s service. I believe we can believe in God’s power to raise up a true JOEL generation that dreams dreams, sees visions, and will be mighty in God to the pulling down of strongholds of every satanic barricade the devil has erected. God help us to be the ones who are willing to boot camp our youth and prepare them to truly be the greatest generation of all.
Gregory R Reid
1 comment:
Thoughtful blog, thanks for sharing.
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