Python Spirits: Discerning Counterfeit Prophecy in the Church
Deception is one of the biggest predators that the twenty-first-century Church has ever faced, and it is running rampant.
There is something wrong in the Church when we would rather make friends with the devil instead of casting him out. Some- thing is amiss when we’d rather stroke our favorite sin instead of falling to our knees in repentance. The sin that we excuse from our pulpits will soon be celebrated in the streets of our nation. We need a return of Holy Ghost discernment in the Body of Christ!
We must decide today that we will no longer be seduced by the voice of the snake. We have to choose to listen to the real Holy Spirit, and we must never settle for anything less!
I want us to look at something that happened to the apostle Paul. Paul and his team were on their way to an open-air prayer meeting, but they were very rudely interrupted by a demon spirit.
It happened that as we were going to the place of prayer, a slave-girl having a spirit of divination met us, who was bringing her masters much profit by fortune-telling. Following after Paul and us, she kept crying out, saying, “These men are bond-servants of the Most High God, who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation.” She continued doing this for many days. But Paul was greatly annoyed, and turned and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her!” And it came out at that very moment (Acts 16:16-18).
Friend, I understand that we are living in a society that loves to cancel everyone who is even remotely offensive. I know that pas- tors and preachers have been intimidated into stroking people’s issues instead of following Paul’s instructions to the Ephesians and “speaking the truth in love.” But at some point, we are going to have to stop dancing around the issues and actually speak some biblical truth.
The Church must learn once again to treat a snake like a snake! If this story in the book of Acts was happening in today’s church culture, we would have recommended this young lady to a counselor. We would have tried to talk her out of her problems, or we would have tried to pretend that nothing was wrong in the first place.
Please do not misunderstand me: not only do I love counseling in its proper context, but I have been on the receiving end of godly counsel. But you cannot talk a devil out no matter how you try.
When I was a little girl, we would frequently have people wander into our church off the streets. People would come in drunk, high, or both; and it was nothing in the world for Granddaddy and the prayer team to gather around that person and pray them through. They would cast the devil out of them, lead them to salvation in Jesus, and pray them through to the baptism of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues.
What the old time Pentecostals had a prayer for, our modern churches have a chat for. I want you to talk to anyone you need to talk to. I see nothing wrong with that. But if the source of your problem is a demon, a chat is not going to make your problem go away. You need someone who can call a snake a snake!
Most people in our churches today would not have even recognized a problem with the young lady in Paul’s meeting. They would not have understood what was wrong with her message. She was shouting, “These men are servants of God! Listen to them!”
The problem was the source, because the source was a snake. The source was a spirit of darkness that was trying to manipulate the situation to its own benefit. We need to cry out to God to open up our eyes once again. When you’re dealing with the devil, it’s time to plead the blood of Jesus and get rid of the snake!
We need God to open our eyes once again. We need to know what we are looking at. We need to know those who labor among us. We have had so much deception in the Church, so many ministers who are deceivers. Friend, believe me, if you want a move of God in your life and in your church, you had better start crying out for discernment right now, because the enemy will come to deceive you.
In Matthew 24, the disciples instigated a conversation with Jesus that caused Him to start detailing the signs of the end times. He listed things like wars, rumors of wars, pestilence, famine, earthquakes in various places, and so on. I find it so disturbing that all of these signs of the times are in full play right now, but never in my lifetime has there been less preaching on the soon return of Jesus Christ than there is right now. Perhaps that’s because the spirit of deception has been loosed in these last days.
Jesus only repeated one of the signs of the end times. Many of these signs are so extreme, but Jesus did not repeat earthquakes or pestilence. The only sign that He repeated, He actually repeated three times. It was this: “Let no one deceive you!” Friend, that is why I believe that the greatest distinction, the greatest sign that we are living in the last days, is that deception is not just out there in the world, but it has crept into our pulpits!
While the Church abandoned the altars of prayer, the enemy took that opportunity to spew out deception over our airways. When I was a little girl, you rarely ever heard of anyone who was struggling with same-sex attraction. I am thirty-eight at the time of this writing, and now we have preachers trying to reinvent the Bible to endorse the LGBTQ agenda. Years ago, preachers knew it was wrong to steal people’s money to live lavish lifestyles in mansions, claiming those offerings went to the work of the Lord. Hardly anyone thinks anything of it now. Granddaddy’s generation wouldn’t understand why we think we can minister without spending time in prayer and Bible study, but we have our own little cute church Ted Talks now. They’re laced with lousy versions of pop psychology, and what little Scripture is used in these “sermons” is so twisted, it is beyond recognition. Surely, we are in the last days!
One of the main deceptive plots of the enemy has been to normalize sin, not only to those outside the faith but to those who sit in our churches week after week. In the early days of the Pentecostal movement, those people believed in holiness. They read and studied the Word of God, and they believed everything in the Book. They would not go to movies. They wouldn’t drink. They wouldn’t play cards. They avoided the very appearance of evil.
Believe me when I tell you, I understand that while one generation lived in holiness, another generation was corrupted with legalism. But when we started allowing worldly influences into the Church, can you honestly tell me that it has helped us?
We have churches in the USA that start off their morning “worship” with secular music. I have done everything I know to do to understand that, but I just can’t make it happen. Why are we mixing the holy with the profane? Why do we think that playing a Coldplay song before our service is going to make us appealing to the lost? Have we lost our minds?
Friend, it is not okay to listen to just any kind of music. This is why it is not okay to watch just anything on TV. This is why it matters what you allow in your family. The things you are streaming are having a profound effect on your spirituality, whether you’re willing to admit that or not.
When deception becomes normal, you place yourself in a vulnerable position with the enemy.
The Greek word that is used for fortune-telling or divination is actually the same Greek word, pythos, from which we get the word python. Now, a python is a large, heavy-bodied snake that kills its victims by literally squeezing the life out of them.
How does a python kill its victim?
You must understand that the enemy wants to wrap him- self around your life and begin to squeeze. He wants to con- strict the flow of the breath of God in your life. Isn’t it interesting that in Hebrew the Holy Spirit is called the Ruach Ha Kodesh, or the “Holy Breath of God”? No wonder the enemy has gone to such extraordinary means to keep you from receiving the power of the Holy Ghost. No wonder he has done everything in his power to keep the Spirit of God from moving in our churches. The deceptive python is wrapping itself around the Western Church, applying pressure and cutting off the airflow, the breath of God.
You might have said it this way: “I’ve just been going through so much that I’m finding it hard to sense God’s presence.” The devil wants to put pressure on you until you can’t breathe. In fact, I promise you, the attack on your life is about seeing how much pressure the enemy can bring on you so that he can break you.
The next thing that the python does in its process of killing a victim is that he cuts off the circulation, keeping the blood from reaching vital points in the body.
I have never seen a time like we’re living in today, when preachers are embarrassed and ashamed to preach about the precious blood of Jesus Christ. God never intended for His Church to be a self-help organization that made you feel better; rather, He intends to have a people who have been washed in the blood of Jesus, sanctified by His Spirit, and unashamed of His great sacrifice.
I have heard people say, “People don’t understand when you talk about the blood of Jesus. It’s too gory. You can’t talk like that.” Friend, you have got to be kidding me. The movies and shows that this generation watches on a daily basis are absolutely soaked in blood. They’re not offended by blood, but they are offended by cowardice. Could it be that the real problem is that we have bought into the lies of the spirit of deception? Could it be that we need God to raise up some preachers of the blood like we have never seen before?
The final stage in a python attack is to crush your bone structure, making you easier to digest. Once you give in to that deceptive spirit of darkness, it is very difficult to break its power.
While we try to make friends with the devil and just try to keep the peace, the enemy is looking to totally crush you and devour you. This is not a negotiation! It’s time to wake up!
In Greek times, Python was a serpent spirit located in the city of Delphi. This demon spirit of divination would possess someone, and they would speak “prophetically.” They would release a word, and many times it would sound right. But the individual through whom this divination spirit would speak would not appear to even open their mouth. In fact, this is where we get our English word ventriloquist. It was an unholy utterance from an unholy source. It always sounded good, but it would wrap itself around you and put pressure on you.
You see, now Paul’s response to this spirit of divination makes perfect sense. We read in Acts 16 that Paul and his team were on their way to an open-air prayer meeting, but because of what that demon shouted, we can safely assume that Paul was preaching Jesus. So when the young lady began to shout, “These men are servants of the Most High God; listen to them,” we need to understand it in the context of this python spirit. That young lady was shouting without even opening her mouth. If you were in the group of people who were listening to Paul, don’t you think you would be really distracted from hearing his message?
That’s why Paul put a stop to it. Paul understood what we need to understand again: you cannot entertain the serpent and you must not listen to it! You have to get rid of it! If the enemy can talk you into thinking that your pet sin is harmless, if he can deceive you in just one area of your life, he can cause a downward spiral that will take you lower than you ever thought you could go.
We need to cry out for discernment, because we cannot afford to listen to the deception of the enemy!
