Tony Campolo on Homosexuality, Spiritual Warfare, Prayer & Listening to God (Uncut)

back when the film The Exorcist came out it made the evidence that there are dark spiritual forces at work in the world very evident then the Left Behind books came along and picked up the same theme sociologists and that's what I do for my living I'm a sociologist by trade I've pointed out that that impact of portraying Satan and the powers of darkness the vampire movies and all of this have made people aware of the evidence of a satanic force in the universe however it may be a bit of overkill because the most recent statistics indicate that more people in the United States and I think this would hold true for Canada as well believe in Satan than believe in God I mean Satan is much more of a reality in the consciousness of American minds and in Canadian minds than consciousness of God so that that has I mean I'm glad that we're aware that there are spiritual realities out there but I'm I'm concerned that the impact is such that as Satan is more real and somebody that has to be dealt with then God is real to them and has to be dealt with yeah well not only is there an expansion of these genuine exorcisms I can talk about one it would take me too long to explain the place in our ministries I work a great deal with World Vision and World Vision is working all over the world and places like Indonesia where exorcisms are very much a part of everyday life Haiti when I was speaking in Haiti I talked about sin and guilt nobody reacted because down there sitting guilt is not what they're afraid of the minute I started talking about if you surrender your life to Christ you will be empowered to stand against evil spirits the congregation started cheering and clapping and going like mad because for them spiritual realities are very much a part of their lives my sense is that the that Satan is real and we we have this growing up of of ministries to nurtured exorcisms however in the context of this I hate to say this a lot of phone enos has emerged there are a lot of people who are pretending that they are have some kind of superpowers and can cast out demons that's going on all over the place from the time of Jesus up until the time of now there have always been phonies who have imitated the real thing the real thing is that Satan Israel exorcisms are real horrible thing of our time is that there's a lot of people who are playing on this to make money and that scares the daylights out of me the commercialization of evil is part of the culture in which we live there's a lot of money to be made in depicting as Satan as a matter of fact I've always found evil more attractive than good and that's scary to me I'm talking about my own life evil has always seemed more exciting more attractive more achieving when I I mean who's interested in the nice guy we're all interested in the evil person and I think part of it is our ego saying I'm certainly glad I'm not like him I'm certainly glad I'm not even possessed and in a sense all of us have evil within us at Dostoevsky the famous Russian author said the line that separates a good from evil is not a line that separates one group of people from another group of people the line that separates good from evil is a line that runs right down the middle of each one of us and I think that if we think that there are some people out there who are demon-possessed but we're not I think we are evading the reality that the demonic forces at work in the world are not just out there in these extreme situations that we see in the movies but they are at work subtly in the lives of each of us all of us are fighting demons within ourselves as the scripture says we deal the flesh and there's this battle going on between the fruits of the Spirit and the fruits of the lust of the flesh and we're struggling with this even the Apostle Paul writes who's going to deliver me from this who's going to deliver me from this inner tension between the dark side and the light side and and then he ends it triumphantly praise be to God who gives us the victory but it's a struggle I don't know how to understand I don't understand this stuff either in and one of the things we've got to watch out for is that we don't become judges of other people there is a lot of funniness out there and that's why the Bible says quote-unquote test the spirits test the spirits it says so so carefully in the teachings of the epistles tess's be to see whether they be of God there is a lot of funniness and I have a hard time differentiating between the real and the and the phony and I don't know I don't know how to do that let me say this as a sociologist there's a book that I always had my students read when we were dealing with terrorism and extremism of any sort and this is what Eric offer it the book called the true believer says that you know one line out of that book jumped out at me and I don't remember all about the book but I remember this one line here's the line a movement can exist without a god many movements have fascism Nazism you're going to have a great movement without a God and then this but no movement can exist without a devil if a movement is going to survive there has to be a devil to be destroyed and a lot of people are making a lot of money that's saying we know who the devil is for Hitler it was the Jews as an evangelical Christian I am sometimes I'm sometimes embarrassed because my evangelical brothers and sisters have come up with a new devil it's called the gay community and they have made war against the gay community the truth of the matter is before we start dealing with the gay community we've deal with the demons and aeroknives and our own personal existence and I always said this that the difference between a true leader and a biblical leader was this that a a true leader of biblical leader on the one hand says there's Devils as does the evil leader the evil leader however always says the devil's in them in those people out there the people in the media the people in the liberal press as the gay community they're the they're the devil and we've got to declare war on them the prophets of God never did that if you read the scriptures the prophets of God always say there is a devil that is to be destroyed but the devil isn't out there the Devils within us so when the armies of Sennacherib surround Jerusalem the prophet of God does not say we got to get rid of the devil out there here's what he says he says to the people if we repent if we let God cleanse us if we get rid of the evil in our own I lives then we will be able to defeat the enemies but if we think they're the problem we're making a mistake we're the problem yeah well there's two sides to it in the book of Ephesians the sixth chapter the 12 verses it says we wrestle not only against flesh and blood but we rest against principalities and powers in high places please note there's a double message there isn't there we wrestle against the darkness in our own lives the flesh we were war against the flesh but there are also forces out there principalities and powers a hundred birkhoff one of the great theologians out of the and the Baptist tradition said that when Paul uses the phrase principalities and powers and we must struggle against these principalities and powers out there he's not simply referring to evil spirits who sit on our shoulder and whisper nasty things in our ears to tempt us he's saying principalities and powers when Paul uses those words is referring to any outside forces that influence human behavior do movies influence human behavior it's a principality and power does music influence behavior it's a principality and power does education influence behavior it's a principality and power government is a principality and power and what is said here is there are evil forces at work in all of these institutions but there are also other forces at work there God's forces and here's what we are to do according to Ephesians the first chapter we're to bring all principalities and powers all these social institutions all of these conditioning forces we are to bring them into subjection to Jesus Christ our Lord and here's the next word through the church dealing with young people as I have to in as a university professor I'm constantly running across young people who are spitting on the church and saying I think Jesus is wonderful but the church stinks the truth is there's a lot wrong with the church but I think Dorothy day said it well she said the church is a [ __ ] by that she meant the church has been unfaithful to its to its groom Jesus Christ the church is a [ __ ] but she's my mother namely she's the one that brought me to know Jesus she's the one that introduced me to scriptures she's the one that has nurtured me through the years and I wouldn't be able to criticize the church if if the church hadn't given me the tools to do the criticizing it's an interesting duplicity there but what I am saying is quite simple and that is that we need to struggle against dark forces but we need to first of all deal with the beam in our own eye before we before we look for the splinter in our brother's eye fair regularity I guess is because of my education as a sociologist I look at the school system not so much in Canada but in the United States I can't make judgments about the Canadian educational system but in many of the cities I'm sure it's just as bad as it is in the United States and I'm asking myself if there is a Satan at work in the world and I believe there is how would he go about destroying people's spiritual lives namely to invade the educational system where things are taught that will turn people away from spiritual goodness things that are taught more than that a school system that doesn't properly educate I had a permission Airy organization and we get support from World Vision and for that I'm very grateful but we have work in the inner city and one of the cities we're working in is Camden New Jersey in the United States only 48 percent of the children that go to high school in that city ever graduate and of those who do graduate less than 50% of them graduate literate they are functionally illiterate do you not see some demonic force at work in the school system that is creating a situation wherein children don't get educated and they are sent loose into a world where they can't make a living and then we're surprised when they turn to drugs when they turn to being criminals they have no means to support themselves on the other way an educational system Satan just doesn't I think the problem with the television shows and the media shows of satanic possessions is we think that Satan primarily invades people as individuals and they're demon-possessed we don't realize that our institutions are demon-possessed I mean I'm looking at the economic meltdown in the United States and the question is a very simple one did not demonic forces go to work on Wall Street so that men began to be so selfish and egocentric that they didn't care what happened to poor people Bank bankers have destroyed the incomes of poor people I mean the whole economic meltdown was because there were evil forces at work on Wall Street in the banking system I mean what when are we going to realize that Satan is more sophisticated than a force that invades somebody like in the movie The Exorcist and gets girls to vomit pea soup which is what she actually did and pretending it was some kind of evil force coming up and we say wow that's demon possession no demon possession is what's happening to the political system that is so full of corruption when I look at the poverty in third-world countries I see Satan at work through the political system that are corrupt where they don't survive without bribery and the people suffer yes God is at work in the world and Satan is at work in the world but one thing I've got to make clear I've read the Bible I know how it ends God and the people of God win we win in the end and the end of history is not the triumph of the evil it is the triumph of God here's the way we sing it in the Hallelujah Chorus the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of our God and he shall reign forever and ever and when we pray the Lord's Prayer we pray thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven God is at work through the church through the people of God and the good news is we will be triumphant in the end and evil shall be bound and cast away when they talk about spiritual armor we were engaged in spiritual warfare which is what we've been talking about we're engaged in a great struggle between the forces of darkness and the forces of light which is sustainably enough is communicated better in the film series star wars where you know where the key character is struggling between the dark side and the light side of life are we going to go with evil with Darth Vader are we going to go with the forces of goodness more portrayed in the media as that struggle than in our own lives the truth is that we have to for fight against these dark forces and it says in the Bible in the sixth chapter of Ephesians that we have to put on the whole armor of God what does it mean to engage in spiritual warfare it seems to me that it's to become spiritually empowered and so every day and I do mean this every day I wake up and I lie in bed for about twenty-five minutes and I say nothing to God and people say and God speaks to you no nothing I Drive everything else out of my mind and surrender to the infilling of the Spirit because I know what Jesus said without me you can do nothing without my presence in you the evil side of you will take over the good side unless my spirit is in you says Jesus you're going to be fighting a losing battle with the forces of darkness spiritual warfare is going on out there in the world it's going on in our own lives and we need to spend time each day not asking God for stuff but surrendering to the infilling of his Spirit Christ is alive he wants to invade people he says if you ask you will receive and every morning I surrender and asked for the infilling of the Spirit because I know I'm going out there to deal with forces of darkness in the world and forces of darkness within my own person jesus said there's two ways of praying you can deal with a lot of fancy words and the Sermon on the Mount he says that's what the Pharisees do oh they're beautiful prayer Oh pastor that was a beautiful prayer this morning he says you can do that and it has its reward but if you really want to pray go into the closet and shut the door and the gods you meet in secret will reward you openly by that he means go to a secret place the ancient Celtic Christians called it a thin place and in that quietude of the morning I push everything else out of my mind CS Lewis said the minute you wake up the animals come to get you 101 things you have to do that day it takes me about 10 to 15 minutes just to push all the extraneous thoughts out of my life and I say the name Jesus over and over again I focus on Jesus particularly Jesus on the cross and I feel myself connecting with him I feel him reaching out from Calvary across time and space and absorbing out of me the dark side the ugly side of my humanity cleansing me if we confess our sins he is faithful and just says first John the first chapter he will forgive us of our sins that here's the important thing and he will cleanse us I start each day surrendering to a cleansing I say Jesus I'm waiting connect with me absorb out of me transfer from me to you all the dark things and I wait for that to happen and in silence and in stillness I wait for his spirit to flow into me and answering the question what goes on in the morning when you do this spiritual centering I can only quote mother Teresa they asked her once when you pray what do you say to God she said I don't say anything I listen so the interviewer said all right when you pray what does God say to you and she said God doesn't say anything God listens and if you don't understand that I can't explain it to you there's a kind of praying where you hear nothing and say nothing but emotionally and spiritually you simply surrender yourself silently now goes the old hymn I come to thee ready my lord to receive you and as many as received him here's the word for spiritual warfare John 1:12 as many as receive him to them he gives the power to become the sons and daughters of God even to those who believe in his name the morning is not a time of asking it's a time of surrendering there are other times that I pray where I ask but it's got to be more than that in the morning it's a time of emotionally and spiritually saying Here I am I'm weak and frail something's got to happen to me and I can't do it to myself you have to do it to me I recognize my own personal inadequacies and weaknesses and simply surrender to Him and saying god I don't know how to be empowered I don't know how to resist evil you've got to take control of me and I'm willing to let that happen

Channel: Jon Oleksiuk

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Keywords: tony campolo, demons, christianity, authority, bible, interview, freedom in christ, neil anderson, spiritual warfare, bible truth, satan, dr. tony campolo, neil t. anderson, neil anderson sermon, occult, witchcraft, spirituality, tony campolo interview, neil t anderson interview, neal t anderson interview, spiritual warfare prayer, spiritual warfare sermon, dr. neil t anderson, what are demons, red letter christians, gay christian, systemic evil

Id: v5aXd19EqlE

Length: 19min 42sec (1182 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 22 2017