In 1998, while I was in Bombay, India, ministering at a leaders’ conference, I met a sullen and despondent pastor and his wife. At one time, the young couple had high hopes for church growth and regional impact, and were full of great expectations. Then they became heavily involved in spiritual warfare. Living on a hill in Southern India that overlooked the surrounding countryside, which was punctuated by ancient Hindu temples, they began to try to conquer the high places in the spirit world. Attempting to contend with spirits of poverty, death, and reincarnation among others, they demanded that Satan loose his grip over the Indian people.
Shortly after they began to assault the powers of darkness, an elderly neighbor died. Although the wizened old woman had professed Christianity, she still persisted in clinging to a mixture of various Hindu rituals. One morning, as the pastor passed her house, he smelled the rot of human flesh that filled the hot, musty tropical air. Soon, he discovered the neighbor’s badly decomposed body lying in the undergrowth near her house.
That night, the pastor’s wife saw an apparition—an evil spirit that resembled their dead neighbor—enter their bedroom. The ghost flung a black scarf across the bedroom that floated through the air like a leaf and landed on the couple’s bed. The next day, the young pastor had a heart attack and nearly died. For two weeks, he hovered between life and death, and he suffered two more heart attacks. His wife also became deathly ill. Delirious with fever, she was hospitalized with a serious intestinal disorder. After they were released from the hospital, a gardener who worked at their home told them with scorn and ridicule: “Nothing is going to live here. You are outside of your authority. You are taking on something greater and more powerful than yourselves.”
With growing fear and dread, the young couple watched everything around them die—their beloved pets, livestock, plants, flowers, and fruit trees. Almost overnight the atmosphere surrounding their home became eerie and ominous —highly charged with demonic activity. One morning as they were leaving their property they were shaken to see that the rod-iron spears lining their gate had buckled and now resembled cobra heads bent over and prepared to attack.
When I met them six months after they began warring in the Heavens, they looked lifeless. I encouraged them to stop this type of warfare. Through prayer, I discerned that the calamities were able to take root in their lives because they had lost spiritual authority by misunderstanding and violating God’s principles that govern the spiritual universe. I exhorted them to ask God’s forgiveness for disputing His authority structure in the Heavens. I also asked them to bring a white cloth to the evening service to counteract the vision of the black scarf. That night, pastors from around India laid hands on the cloth and anointed it with oil. The Holy Spirit prompted me to instruct the pastor’s wife to stand in her bedroom, exactly where the apparition stood, and in the same manner toss the cloth on the bed saying, “I rebuke every evil thing that has come upon this house from a result of the curse of this woman. We repent of violating God’s created order through errant spiritual warfare.” After the pastor and his wife repented and reversed the curse, their health improved.
Furthermore, the doctor pronounced the pastor’s heart to be as good as new. No scar tissue was found on his heart muscle. A month later, I received word that everything around their house had begun to live again. Plants, chickens, dogs, and cats thrived. Even more surprising, the following morning after they reversed the curse, the cobra shaped rod-iron spears on their gate miraculously straightened! And the gardener disappeared.
Source: Needless Casualties of War
(By John Paul Jackson)
