Eric Walsh

Country Life SDA Church

Defeating the Strong Man

Isaiah 49 and verse 25 the Bible says but thus said the Lord even the captives of the mighty shall be taken away and the prey of the terrible shall be delivered for I will contend with him that contends with you and I will save your children.

Our message this Sabbath is entitled defeating the strong man.

Let's pray Father God We thank you for this opportunity to study your word.

And I ask now, Lord, that you just make me a nail on the wall, a rusty, sorry nail, Lord.

And upon that nail, I ask that you hang a portrait of Jesus Christ.

There's no reason for me to be seen or heard today.

Lord we want a word from the throne room of grace.

This is our prayer in Jesus's precious and holy name.

All right so we're gonna be coming primarily from the book of Luke the 11th chapter and it's an interesting place to jump in.

Jesus had just taught them how to pray and there's a parable about prayer and and being persistent in prayer and after this part of Luke 11 this little verse of a story pops up.

Not a whole lot of detail but leads to some very powerful biblical teaching.

So Luke 11 and verse 14 says this, and he, Jesus, was casting out a devil and it was dumb and it came to pass when the devil was gone out the dumb spake and the people wondered.

And so this miracle happens where Jesus, and this is not the only time Jesus deals with someone who's dumb.

You remember Mark chapter 9, this little boy who's deaf and dumb.

Here he comes and he finds this, he's casting out devils, and the devil was dumb.

In American English, you say someone is dumb, what you think is they're not intelligent.

It means that the person can't communicate.

That is the denotative meaning of the word.

And so Jesus comes and he casts the demon out.

The person begins to speak and everyone around is floored they can't believe it they've watched this person for years maybe not be able to communicate and after 1 interaction with Christ he whose tongue was locked is loosed and he's able to speak, but it causes a problem.

But some of them said he casts out devils through Beelzebub, the chief of the devils, and others tempting him sought of him a sign from heaven.

And so here, after the demon is cast out, they start saying, wait a minute, how is this guy really casting out these demons?

He's only casting out demons by the power of the prince of the demons, Beelzebub.

That doesn't really make a lot of sense, but they had to try and figure out a way, we talked about this in prayer meeting, they had to try and figure out a way to protect their power, their earning, their income.

Remember, anyone who cast out demons in those days, they were exorcists, they actually charged money for it.

And so when he does this, it rattles a lot of things for these people.

The Bible says in verse 16, that the others tempting him sought of him a sign from heaven.

Similar to what happens when Jesus is in the wilderness and the devil says if you are the Son of God.

But Jesus knowing their thoughts and you would think if the man you are questioning his divinity and even his even his kind of righteousness could read your thoughts, you'd think that'd make a difference.

But he knowing their thoughts said unto them, every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation and a house divided against a house falls.

Jesus said listen if there's a kingdom and it starts to fight itself it will collapse.

If there's a house and they fight themselves it won't last.

He says basically what you're describing me doing makes no sense in the realm of spiritual warfare.

Verse 18 Jesus says if Satan also be divided against himself how shall his kingdom stand because you say that I cast out devils through Beelzebub in other words Satan's kingdom has order to it Satan's kingdom works together to get an end He said listen if Satan is divided against himself his kingdom can't stand.

1 of the most important things the church must have in the last days is unity.

He loves when the people of God fight each other because when we are in at war with 1 another it gives the demons power to come in.

Now, I say this story all the time, but it's appropriate here.

When I was at Oakwood, I took a class called Dynamics of Christian Living.

Cleveland told us the story, and some of you know the great preacher E.E.

Cleveland, if you haven't heard of him, look him up on YouTube, you might find some of his old stuff.

And he told us the story of how, while they were all at Oakwood, years before I got to Oakwood, a church in Nashville, Tennessee called to Huntsville, Alabama, where Oakwood is, and said, we need help.

The church itself has been possessed by devils.

And so A bunch of the preachers, and I've heard other preachers who are alive at the time say that this is a true story.

A bunch of them drove from Huntsville to Nashville, only about an hour and a half, 2 hour drive, went up to Nashville.

Cleveland, as he was teaching us this in the class, said that when they walked into the church in Nashville, the pews were floating in the air.

He said the room, the church was ice-cold.

He said when they began to cast out demons, he said the first person they got to and they cast out the demon out of this person in the church, They asked the demon, they said, how is it that you have set up shop like this in an Adventist church?

The demon says, we have right to be here because this church is fighting 1 with another.

He said, He said they cast out another demon.

They said, demon, what are you doing here?

The demon said, I was there when Marilyn Monroe died.

And they said, what do you have to do with us, demon?

And the demon says, I sing with the choir at Oakwood.

And all of the preachers, he claims that they were all shocked.

The demon said, they sing for attention rather than to praise God.

I want to submit to you as we go into 2026, we are all in spiritual warfare.

I want you to understand the fact that you're sitting here now, the fact that you call yourself an Adventist, even if you are only marginally Adventist, even if you don't take this thing seriously Satan has a mark on you to destroy you and your family every single 1 of us our children our grandchildren he wants to destroy us he is coming after us and sometimes we act as if the devil is playing around.

Jesus says it like this in verse 19, and if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your sons cast them out, probably the ones making money, therefore shall they be your judges.

And look at verse 20, this speaks to the power of Christ in spiritual warfare look at what he says in verse 20 Jesus says but if I with the finger of God cast out devils no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you.

Jesus says I can cast out devils with a finger.

I want to submit to you today that sometimes we have given the devil too much credit and too much power.

I want to submit to you today that on your side is 1 who with his finger can cast out devils.

He says if this is the case the kingdom of God has come upon you.

Luke 11 21 says, When a strong man armed keeps his palace his goods are in peace.

But when a stronger than he shall come upon him and overcome him, he takes from him all his armor wherein he trusted and divides his spoils.

The Bible says the devil is armed he has weapons not only does he have weapons the Bible says he has armor this is the parable Jesus is giving but then in verse 22 Jesus says something profound the strong man is keeping his palace what is the palace the palace of the earth.

If you are not in Christ, the palace is your mind.

The strong man, the devil, has control over the earth, over the mind.

But look at this, verse 22, but when a stronger than he shall come upon him and overcome him he takes from him all his armor wearing he trusted and divides his spoils Jesus is the stronger man Jesus is the 1 who can come in and overcome him and look at this and take his armor.

Take what the devil uses to bind us and to try and protect himself.

Luke 11 23 says it like this, That's why Jesus says, he that is not with me is against me, and he that gathereth not with me scatters.

You're either on the strongman's side, or you're on the stronger man's side.

And I don't know about you, but just the way the thing is phrased, I want to be on the stronger man's side.

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05 Sobriety and the End of Time: The Need of a Clear Mind to Avoid Deception

Let's get into God's Word for this morning.

And just to give a recap before I read the verse and pray.

So this session has been on addiction and it's been about how the devil uses these chemical substances behaviors.

And with the advent of legalized sports gambling, there are reports now that some of the young men in college campuses are really losing a lot of money over gambling because you can legally do it now.

And we talked about how marijuana's different from every other drug.

Marijuana works on both the presynaptic and the postsynaptic aspects of the dopaminergic system of the dopamine nerves.

And so by doing that, it actually is a gateway drug.

And as we're gonna talk a little bit about today, marijuana also opens up the mind for spiritualism and demonism.

This is why there are religions like Rastafarianism and others and some of the practices of Hinduism, which is actually where Rastafarians, a lot of them don't notice, that's where they get that practice actually from.

And it is to open up your mind so spirits will come in.

And so that you're open to this to the spirit world.

We talked about marijuana and alcohol how they may how they change your ability to make wise decisions and of course we we had a whole session where we really focused on sexual sin, pornography.

And as I travel around, this is 1 of the biggest, I think this is 1 of the things that is really going to destroy many in the remnant church.

Sexual sin for sure, Ellen White talks extensively about it and uses the analogy back to Baal Peor where Balaam and Balak conspired against the children of Israel and the men of Israel fell.

Always when it comes to sexual sin the devil starts with the men.

The sexual revolution started with magazines like Playboy and Penthouse, all designed to make men give up the Victorian ideas about sex, traditional ideas about sex, intimacy, commitment, and pervert men.

Once you pervert the men, almost by default, the women fall in line.

In fact, as much as I celebrate that the feminist movement is very much against pornography, feminism basically said that whatever a man does, a woman should be able to do.

And hence, the curse carried from the men of Western society to the women of Western society.

And so that now We talked yesterday about the fact that in churches, when they did a poll on Christians, 75% of the men, 70 or 75% of the men said they used pornography, 40% of the women.

And that more than half of those who said they used pornography said they actually have no problem with it.

And once you do that you fulfill the prophecy of 2nd Timothy 3 5 where it says that they have the form of godliness but they deny the power of thereof which is the Holy Spirit.

So all that we've talked about so far is really to get you to a point where we're going to talk about today, which is the reason God forbids these things, the reason the remnant church, Adventism, even though we are ridiculed because of our stance on sexual issues, on abstinence from alcohol, drugs, our health message around what we eat, and all these different things.

We're ridiculed about the fact that we don't drink caffeine, or at least we're not supposed to.

But as the science comes out, it supports the idea that if you want the kind of mind that will be able to discern deception in the last days, you cannot be involved in these practices.

They will cloud your judgment ever so slightly and if you want an example of how important it is to not be deceived in these last days.

Think about what they can do with artificial intelligence now.

If you are not rooted and grounded, you trust what you see.

The time is coming when they will be able to make you see things.

So we've always said, well, the demons are gonna come and impersonate.

Somebody can program a computer to promote the deceptions and I don't think I put it in this talk but there's a really good study out of MIT that shows that in fact where If you take if you put on social media, if you put a lie on social media, it travels about 1000 times faster and about 100 times further than if you tell the truth.

That means the most popular people on social media are probably inherently lying to you.

The more popular they are on social media, the more likely they are they're actually telling you lies because that's how you get you can't get very famous telling the truth.

So all of that is to say that as we talk about this 1, now today, the Lord led me that I should go back over another form of habit addiction, 1 of the ways the devil gets in, and that is entertainment.

So we're gonna talk a little bit more about entertainment today.

We did a little bit the other days, and we're gonna go a little deeper into it today as we talk about the clarity of mind.

So with all of that said, let's get into this.

Our scripture reading comes from 1st Corinthians chapter 6 verse 18 which says, flee fornication.

Every sin that a man does is without the body, but he that commits fornication sins against his own body.

What, Paul says, don't you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which you have of God, and you are not your own?

For you are bought with a price therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit which are whose God's we belong to God changes the way you do everything because what society tells you is do what you want to do do what feels good to you that's not what the Bible teaches the Bible says Jesus himself actually says it deny yourself take up your cross and follow me.

That is the instruction given to each of us as Christians.

Father God we thank you for this opportunity to study your word and I just ask now that you lead us by the power of your Holy Spirit.

These are once again very difficult spiritual issues to talk about and the devil is busy.

But Lord, right now in the name of Jesus, we rebuke Satan.

And Lord, we ask that you bind him and cast him far from this place.

Soften hearts and allow the Holy Spirit for him to move on the hearts and minds of your people now.

Our talk, Clear Minds in the Last Days, Guarding Against End-Time Deception.

We're going to use the Bible story found in Daniel chapter 5.

Daniel chapter 5 says, Belshazzar the king made a great feast to 1000 of his lords and drank wine before the thousand.

Here the Bible gives the example again of the dangers of intoxication.

I mean I get around to it at the end of the story, but he knew the truth.

In fact, he is 1 of the few pagan people in the Bible who actually has a chapter that you can credit to him, Daniel chapter 4.

So he knew the truth, but here he is getting drunk.

The Bible says in verse 2, Belshazzar, while he tasted the wine, commanded to bring the golden and silver vessels, which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple, which is in Jerusalem, that the king and his princes, his wives and his concubines might drink therein.

When you get drunk, you naturally and almost automatically bring out the vessels that belong to the temple of God.

Every time you engage in these behaviors that destroy the body temple, you are violating, defying the vessels of God.

You belong to God and so as you do these things, all these things begin to happen and he has all his wives as concubines and he's just carrying on terrible verse 3.

Then they brought the golden vessels that were taken out of.

Then they brought the golden vessels that were taken out of the temple of the house of God, which was at Jerusalem.

Out of the out of the temple of the house of God, which is at Jerusalem and the king and his princess his wives and his concubines drank in them they drank wine and what did they do they drank wine and what did they do after that they praised the gods of gold and of silver of brass of iron of wood and of stone drunkenness led to idolatry drunkenness all care was gone It is even more interesting because again, we may not get to the back end of the story that in fact, right as they're partying that whole city and nation in a sense is surrounded by their enemy.

Some of us are partying while the enemy has us surrounded.

So here they're they're having this feast.

Ellen White doesn't use often use words like this but look at what she says.

Ellen White says, with reason dethroned through shameless intoxication and the lower impulses and passions now on the in the ascendancy the king himself took the lead in the riotous orgy You don't really think about Ellen White's talking like that there do you?

I normally wouldn't even read such a word except it's a part of the verse, a part of the part of the passage.

The Bible says, come let us reason together.

Without the ability to reason, you, it is difficult and I would almost argue impossible to be saved.

He wants you intoxicated with something so that you are unreasonable, so that you can't choose.

04 Healing the Brain After Addiction: The Power of Our Health Message

03 The New Drug: Pornography and Sex Addiction

And again, this is probably 1 of the more challenging topics even for me to speak on.

If I'm going to deal with this topic Sometimes when I'm at a church, the car starts having the rental car has problems.

The devil really does not like for this subject to be broached.

The scripture for this third session, Matthew 5 and verse 27 says, You've heard that it was said by them of old time, thou shalt not commit adultery.

But I say unto you that whosoever looks on a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart.

So our message for this third session is the new drug, pornography and sex addiction.

Father god, we thank you for this opportunity to study a word and to deal with these challenging issues.

I am asking in a special way lord for holy ghost power.

I ask again lord that you just make me a nail on the wall.

A rusty sorry nail lord but upon that nail, I ask that you hang a portrait of Jesus Christ.

Let me not be seen or heard lord instead father, let us hear a word from the throne room of grace.

All right, come on in have a seat and here's where we're gonna go.

If you have your Bible you want to jump to 2nd Samuel chapter 11, 2nd Samuel chapter 11 and I will read the Bible says and it came to pass after the years was expired at the time when kings go forth to battle that David sent Joab and his servants with him and all Israel and they destroyed the children of Ammon and besieged Rama but David tarried still at Jerusalem.

So before we get into this subject of sexual addiction pornography David is David.

David's the guy who when he would return from battle with Saul, the women would sing, David has killed his, Saul has killed his thousands, but David has killed his tens of thousands.

He's supposed to be in battle, leading the people as the king, and instead he's back at the palace.

Verse 2, And it came to pass in the eventide that David arose from off his bed and walked upon the roof of the king's house and from the roof he saw a woman washing herself and the woman was very beautiful to look upon.

Now you know David had many women, wives, so he probably, he may have even gotten off a bed with 1 of his wives.

The Bible says David goes to the roof of the palace, looks off the roof, and sees a woman there washing herself the Bible says she was very beautiful to look upon this is a rooftop experience but not the good kind David sees this woman and he is instantaneously attracted to the woman.

The Bible says and he sent and inquired after the woman and 1 said is not this Bathsheba the daughter of Eliam 1 of David's counselors the wife of Uriah the Hittite his 1 of his main soldiers they're like wait a minute don't you know who this woman is I mean literally her father is someone you know her husband is someone you trust don't do you realize who you're talking about and the Bible says and David sent messengers and took her and she came in unto him and he lay with her for she was purified from her uncleanness.

That means the bath that she was doing at the beginning of the story was the bath that would happen after a woman would come off her monthly cycle.

It was a statement that she could be she was she was often more fertile.

And also her desire levels might be higher.

And so she was purified of her uncleanness and she returned unto her house.

Most a lot of men don't want to hear this 1.

And the woman conceived and sent and told David and said I am with child.

Can you Imagine the shock that ran through King David.

Here's a man who brought down a giant with a stone, and all it took for him to be brought down was for him to look inappropriately at a woman.

So for us, the smartphone has brought in digital rooftops.

You have a way to stand on the roof like he did and look out and see what you ought not see.

And you don't have to climb on top of your house, you no longer have to be a peeping Tom, you don't have to go to the store and buy girly magazines, all of it can be done with a simple device.

How do people go into these forms of sin?

It is often connected to a societal problem.

Ezekiel 16 49 says, Behold, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom.

What was the number 1 sin of Sodom pride that interesting fullness of bread and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy she was idle They were laying around on their bed up on a rooftop like David when they were supposed to be doing something look at verse 50 and they were haughty and committed abomination before me a Bible.

Then God says, therefore I took them away as I saw good pride and idleness leads to abomination The practice of abomination.

Now I don't have time to get into it but We know there was something they call the sexual revolution.

In fact, it made it so that basically trying to describe sex to you as if it's just a physical activity, like going to play ball or do gymnastics.

And in that process, many have been deceived.

Why is the intimate act of sexual relations sacred?

Because it is the only way God designed for procreation to happen.

This is puberty trends and this is up to 2000, but you can see Germany, France, United States.

You go back far enough, young girls would not start menarche.

Menarche is the age at which a girl has her first period.

It would not happen till they were over 16 years of age.

If you go back far enough, how old would a young lady be when she got married?

So by the time she was able to have children, she was getting married, her desire, hormonal desire, matched about that time.

Over time what's happened is the age of onset of puberty has fallen precipitously so that today in America, the average age a girl starts menarche, has menarche, is 12 years old.

The average age for African American girls is 9 years old.

So you say, man, these girls look more like women than girls.

Back to Menu

Presenter

Eric Walsh

All Recordings

Defeating the Strong Man

58m

05 Sobriety and the End of Time: The Need of a Clear Mind to Avoid Deception

1h 8m

04 Healing the Brain After Addiction: The Power of Our Health Message

59m

03 The New Drug: Pornography and Sex Addiction

59m

02 The Brain on Drugs: How the Devil Chains the Mind

59m

01 A Generation Addicted: Drugs, Demons, and a Rising Death Toll

55m

When God Spared Not

43m

Alien Invasion

47m

3 The Holy Spirit’s Final Work

49m

2 Artificial Intelligence

54m

1 Defending the Trinity

51m

12 God is Faithful!

28m

Sound Doctrine