Strongholds Coming Down

The god of this world is determined that the light of the Gospel not reach the hearts of men. He does not care how religious we are because Satan himself is religious. He was created perfect, and his entire being was filled with the glory of God. Until iniquity was found in him, praise to the Creator filled his musical talents with glorious sounds of worship. He has never quit being religious, he simply diverted his religion to himself and seeks to deceive others to do the same. The entire world is incurably religious, but every religion except the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a religion of satanic influence. The entire message of the Old Testament is loaded with the hidden Gospel of the coming Christ. Satan was successful in hiding this truth from the Jewish leaders of ChristÂ’s day and they became complicit in His death.

Satan’s strongholds continue to hide the Gospel from the hearts of men. To the Corinthian church, Paul wrote, “But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.” (2 Corinthians 4:3-4) The business of the church and the intercessors is to pull down these strongholds so that men can be converted. Our altars are empty of repenting sinners, because our message cannot get through to the blinded souls all around us. A prayerless church is a dying church because intercessory prayer is God’s one and only place of obtaining power to pull down strongholds. He does not dispense His authority to prayerless saints.

The prophets of God understood this. A statesman prophet named Isaiah cried out, “He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.” (Isaiah 40:29-31) The words “wait upon” are a powerful metaphor and teach us to “bind ourselves together with Him.” Prayer is not the spilling out of a “want list” before our God, but is the uniting of ourselves in an undiminishing fellowship with Him. It is the losing of ourselves in utter surrender so that we gain all He is united to our undivided heart in Him.

I fear that this generation of the church knows little of this kind of praying. Consequently, we are developing a thousand ways of building our churches. The problem is that we are filling the churches with unconverted souls that are nothing but proselytes to the club. Our God is not impressed with this trend and is even now raising up men and women to pray by the old-fashioned Biblical plan. I personally feel as though my prayer life has been a joke for most of my Christian walk. This closing hour demands a praying remnant of Salty Saints uniting themselves with our “Great God and Heavenly Father.”

Our enemy, Satan, and his host have created towers of strongholds all over God’s world. The families of earth and their multiple cultures are blinded but nowhere worse than in America. If we will quit being blinded by all the high-sounding religion and see the world with Gospel eyes and Biblical convictions, then we can start “pulling down strongholds by the mighty power of prayer.” Again, to the church at Corinth, Paul said, “(For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:4-5) Not one person reading this “Salty Saints” has to give up their children to drugs, strong drink, sexual bondage, etc. Not one Pastor needs to be satisfied with a dying congregation or empty altars.

God did not send you to your village in Africa or your town in America to preside over spiritual death. A praying saint will soon become pregnant with revival. As that pregnancy grows, so will grow the enemies of the Gospel. Be steady, committed, dependent on God alone and not yourself, and wait upon the Father and His redeeming Son. When Elijah’s servant saw a cloud about the size of a man’s hand, faith spoke out of Elijah’s heart and said, “…for there is a sound of abundance of rain.” (1 Kings 18:41)

Strongholds are Satan’s business, and God has relegated the job of pulling them down to His saints. We can do nothing without His anointing, but His anointing has no place of manifestation until His saints give up and depend only on Him. You are the channel by which God wants to affect everyone in your sphere of influence. There is no power of the “god of this world” that cannot be affected by an intercessor that waits on the Father.