The Devil's Nightmare — Carter Conlon

This message is one of the Times Square Church pulpit series. It was recorded in the sanctuary of Times Square Church in Manhattan, New York City. Other tapes are available by writing World Challenge, PO Box 260, Lindale, Texas, 75771, or calling 903 -963 -8626.

You are welcome to make additional cassettes of this message for free distribution to friends. However, for all other forms of reproduction or electronic transmission, existing copyright laws apply. The devil's nightmare.

Prayer, Conversion, and the Assurance of Salvation

You'd be surprised, but maybe, maybe not. Father, thank you for the abiding anointing of the Holy Spirit. I thank you for the strength and the power that you give to those that are called to speak your word.

And I thank you for the enablement that you provide for us to hear. You said continuously to your churches, he who has ears to hear, let him hear. Lord, we ask for hearing ears tonight and a hearing heart.

God, truly, you are speaking to us. You are speaking to this generation. For a darkened time. But Lord, you want to move an unprecedented power. Father, we thank you from the depths of our heart. Lord, what you will speak and how we will hear it and the fruit that it will produce in every one of our lives.

I ask, oh, God, that there be an advancement to your kingdom tonight. Let your kingdom come in us, in our hearts, our lives. Let your will be done in us as it is in heaven. Be glorified in us. Lord, we have no other cry.

There's no other prayer in my heart. Just be glorified. We ask it in Jesus name. I have quite recently experienced something personally that has renewed my passion for prayer. Twenty four years ago, I came to Christ and I began to pray for my family.

I began to pray in particular for my father, my mother. My brothers, my sister and all the offspring and family that that is associated with that, and I began to pray for them and and I would weep for them every day.

I would at that time I drove thirty six miles into work and thirty six miles home and I would pray every day and oft times with tears. I had come to the understanding of what salvation is and what it feels like to have peace with God, to have your life as it is set on another course, a glorious course of ever changing into the image of Christ on this side of eternity and then having the assurance in your heart that the day you die, the moment you're absent from the body, you're present with the Lord.

And if you are truly converted, it's your heart's desire to see your family, understand these truths, even though sometimes it's mystifying at how resistant people can be to really what is the best news ever proclaimed to humankind.

Incredible that God has reached down in his mercy, became a man, paid the price for our sins and offered to receive us into fellowship with him and into eternity in heaven. If we would just simply believe that he took our place and begin to give our lives to him and to walk with him by faith, it's so simple that half the churches in the world stumble over it and can't see it.

I began to pray and I began to pray with tears and one day, quite unexpectedly, on the way to work, the Holy Spirit just dropped into my spirit that he had given me my request. That my father in particular was going to be saved.

22 years ago and it was amazing. From that day forward, I could never pray with tears anymore for my father because God had already given me the answer. It doesn't mean I stopped praying. I continued to pray.

I believe we should continue to pray until we actually see that which God has spoken to our hearts. But the prayer was no longer a cry as much as a prayer of thanksgiving. Thanking God that what he had spoken to my heart, he was going to accomplish.

And after 22 years, this Monday at 3 .30 in the afternoon, I had the privilege of leading my father to Christ. He prayed to receive Christ, acknowledged that he was a sinner and needed a savior. We talked about heaven.

We talked about eternity. I got to hold his hand and stroke his hair and tell him I loved him, that he was a good father. It was, I think, one of the most awesome times of my entire life. To tell him he could go now.

He didn't have to fight. He had cancer. He didn't have to fight. He didn't have to struggle anymore. That the battle was already won and he had an assurance that he was going to go to heaven to be with God.

One of the last things he said to me is that I will see you there when you get there. I'll be there. Hallelujah. He died Friday morning at 3 .20, almost four days to the hour from receiving Christ. Talk about the finish line, getting to Christ at the finish line.

Spiritual Authority and the Power of Persistent Prayer

But I see the power of prayer. I come to understand that everything that has happened in my life has been because of prayer. I have read the word of God. I've seen his promises to me, then gone to the throne of God to see those promises fulfilled.

I have seen the promises of God that enabled me to stand against the powers of darkness, not only in my own life, but in the lives of others around me. I've begun to understand spiritual authority, I think, even more than I ever had when I first came to Times Square Church.

It seemed to be the continuous lesson of Pastor David. The heritage, as it is, he was trying to pass on into my life. He spent seven years teaching me about spiritual authority. Thank God for it. Because I remember standing in Nigeria just a few weeks ago and such an oppression, incredible oppression.

It seemed like it put your very mind in a vice and began to squeeze your thoughts right out of you. All kinds of disturbances in the heaven and on the ground. And I remember the first night with an authority and a confidence in my heart picking up the microphone and speaking to a crowd of over half a million people and saying, I command in Christ's name every knee to bow and every tongue to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Every demonic power, every evil, every spirit of wickedness in high places, you must bow your knee and you must confess right now that Jesus Christ is Lord. And I was speaking into the heavenlies and those that were there know that there was an incredible release, as it is, of God's presence.

And those that were held captive by years of witchcraft in some cases and other such like things were released. Muslims by the thousands, I believe, came into the kingdom of God. It was incredible to see the release of the heavenlies and to see people saved simply because the people that God had raised up and sent over understood the principle of spiritual authority.

The Apostle Paul said in First Thessalonians 517 that we are to pray without ceasing. It's one little verse of the Bible and just simply says pray without ceasing. Don't stop praying. Prayer moves the hand of God.

Prayer has been the backbone of every successful Christian life. Every successful Christian testimony is birthed and sustained in prayer. Now that's prevailing believing prayer. That's prayer that takes God at his word and says, Lord, this is forever settled in my spirit because this is what you say.

I make no apologies for what you say to anybody. I make no apologies to those that would want to water down the truth of the word of God and want to create doctrines that somehow justify a lack of faith or a lack of victory in Christ.

I make no apology for it. I stand on the word of God and I believe it with all my heart. I can honestly stand before you tonight and say in 24 years it has been image to image and glory to glory by the spirit of God.

There has been a constant change. There have been some hellish battles that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemies. But God has brought me through every one of them. He has been the victor. His word has proven to be the truth.

And I thank God with all of my heart that he gives every saint of God the power to stand before every power of hell and to declare a higher authority than every lying spirit. Every lying contrary argument has to bow.

It has to bend its knee. It has to bend its thoughts to God. We have power, the scripture says, to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ and to cast down contrary arguments to truth.

Pray without ceasing. In January we're going to go into a seven day time of fasting and prayer. We're going to pray for God's blessing to come on this church and to continue to guide us and lead us into the coming year 2003.

We're not going to take for granted the victory that we've known in the past. It's been wonderful to walk in tremendous victory, but that's yesterday. Today is a brand new day. Tomorrow there are brand new enemies and brand new battles that have to be fought in our lives, in the New York City and beyond the borders, wherever God should send any one of us.

I hope that you will join us for that seven day fast. It will begin on a Monday morning and go right through to the following Sunday night. We'll meet and we'll pray every night and we're going to believe God to continue to lead us.

Prayer That Receives According to God's Will

Now Matthew chapter 21, look there very quickly with me. I'm going to be reading some scriptures and we probably won't have time to turn to them all tonight. But Matthew chapter 21, verse 19, Jesus gives us some things about prayer.

Now chapter 21 and verse 19 says, when he saw a fig tree in the way he came to it and found nothing there on but leaves only and said unto it, let no fruit grow on thee henceforth, henceforward forever.

And presently the fig tree withered away. When the disciples saw it, they marveled, saying, how soon is the fig tree withered away? Jesus answering said to them, Verily I say unto you, if you have faith and doubt not, you shall say not only to this which is done to the fig tree, but also if you shall say unto this mountain, be thou removed and be thou cast into the sea, it shall be done.

And all things, how many things? All things whatsoever you shall ask in prayer, believing you shall receive. Now I want to bring this into context. Now first of all, the Bible says that if we ask for things to consume them on our own lust, we're not going to receive them.

God in his goodness will not give us things that will diminish our testimony or decrease our dependence on him. Or begin to satisfy us in such a way that we'll no longer look to him. But see there was a tree and it was a fruitless tree.

It gave the appearance of fruit, but it was fruitless. And Jesus spoke to this tree and commanded it to die. And he's giving us a type of what prayer will do. In every one of our lives there are fruitless areas.

There are areas where we would like to be something that we are not. And he says you don't have to pretend that you have the victory anymore. I want you just to speak to that area. I want you to command it to die.

That area in your life that just continuously is not bearing fruit. And he says not only can you speak to that area, but he said you can speak to any mountain. Any obstacle the devil has put in front of you that prevents you from becoming everything that I've called you to be.

He said you can speak to it. And you can command it to be cast into the sea and it will obey you. And everything that you asked me for according to my will for your life, believing it, he said you're going to have it.

If you want to be a person of love and you find that your heart is filled with hate and bitterness and it seems like a mountain. He says I'm giving you the authority to speak to that mountain and cast it into the depths of the sea.

And he says if you ask me to release my love in you, I will release it. And everything that you want that is according to godliness, I will give it to you. You ask me believing. Don't ask with doubt and unbelief in your heart.

Again in Luke chapter 11, we discussed this a couple of weeks ago. Talks about a man who had a friend that came to him on a journey and he had nothing to give him. And he went and knocked on his door and the man said don't trouble me.

My door is shut. My children are now in bed and I cannot rise to give to you. And he said in verse 8 in Luke 11, 8, he said I say unto you though he will not rise and give him because he is his friend.

Yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as much as he needs. Now the word importunity means recklessness. It means a man who just simply will not be denied. A man who shows up at his friend's door and says I have a need.

You got the bread. I'm not going away. I don't care what you say. You got it. I want it. And I'm going to knock on your door until you give it to me. Incredible. And now he turns from that very application and he says and I say unto you ask and it shall be given you.

Seek you shall find. Knock it shall be opened to you. For everyone that asks receives. And he that seeks finds and to him that knocks it shall be opened. If a son asks bread of you that is a father will he give him a stone?

If he asks a fish will he give him a serpent? If he asks an egg will he give him a scorpion? If you then being evil know how to give good gifts to your children how much more shall your heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?

God said I want you to pray as a people who will not be denied. I want you to come to my door. And I don't want you to turn away until I give you what you ask for. You need bread? I'll give you bread.

You need love? I'll give you love. You need deliverance from fear? I'll deliver you from fear. But I want you to come and I want you to ask. And I want you to knock and not go away. In the very way I've told you in this parable this is how I want you to pray.

Abraham's Blessing and Christ in Believers

And the Bible tells us in Genesis chapter 3 or Galatians actually chapter 3 verses 7 to 9 that by faith we are the inheritors of the blessing of Abraham. Now God gave Abraham a blessing. And he said in you Abraham all the nations of the world are going to be blessed.

I'm going to come upon you Abraham. I'm going to come upon your descendants. And I'm going to touch you with my presence. And I'm going to bless you. And the blessing that I put upon you is going to flow through you and it's going to become a blessing to all the nations of the world.

Isn't that incredible? Now God gave that to a man who had no child. He had no descendant. He had no personal ability to be a blessing to anyone. He had personal problems even with telling the truth about his own family.

But God said I'm going to bless you. You see that blessing was Christ. Christ was going to come through the lineage of Abraham. And Christ in you and I is God's blessing to our generation. This is how God has planned to bless New York.

He has called to himself a people. And those who responded he has given us of the Holy Spirit which is Christ. The Holy Spirit is Christ. It's the Spirit of Christ. You can't separate the Holy Spirit from Jesus Christ.

Distinct yet one God. Hear oh Israel. The Lord thy God is one. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ. And Christ in us is God's blessing to New York City. Christ in us is God's blessing to the high schoolers in the inner city of New York.

Christ in us is God's blessing to Africa. Christ in us is God's blessing to your neighborhood. Christ in us is God's blessing in your workplace. There is no other plan. That is the plan of God to bless this generation.

It is Christ in us. We are to be a free people. We heard that at 3 o 'clock today. We are not to be a bound people. We are to be a free people. You shall know the truth, Jesus said, and the truth shall set you free.

We are to be a people walking in freedom. It doesn't mean we don't have battles. But the battles don't overwhelm us. It doesn't mean we don't have struggles and trials and have to deal with the infirmities of our own physical nature.

We all have to go through these things, but we are not swallowed by it. We walk through the midst of the flood. We walk through the midst of the fire. We walk through and out the other side even of the valley of the shadow of death.

Not even death can stop the testimony of Jesus Christ that he establishes in his people. We are to be a free people. We are to be a changing people. We are to have a testimony of the power of God. That's how God destines to bless our generation.

Satan's Opposition to the Church

We are to bring others with us into the power of Christ and to a place of God's rest and promise. Now, beloved, the devil doesn't lie down and play dead because the people receive Christ. Matter of fact, you may not have ever known warfare until you really come to the Lord.

We can expect Satan to resist our faith in the promises of God. He will resist us. He will oppose the church of Jesus Christ. Book of Revelation says he sends out of his mouth a flood after the seed of the woman.

The seed of the woman is the church of Jesus Christ and he sends out a flood to swallow that church. To divert the church. To cause the church to settle into a place that she was never destined to settle into.

To cause her to fall short of the calling of the glory of God in Christ Jesus. To cause the church to be ineffective in her home. To cause the church to have no consequence in the neighborhood. The devil doesn't care if there's a church on every corner.

And in some cases, in towns across America, there is a church on every corner. He doesn't care as long as the church is absolutely ineffective. Absolutely swallowed by circumstance. Absolutely, literally ignorant to the power of prayer.

To the power of God that is available to this generation. He doesn't care how many churches people build as long as the church has no power. He will resist faith in the promises of God. He will throw circumstance after circumstance into your face.

Moses and the Devil's Nightmare

And try to get you and I to believe that circumstance has a greater authority than the promises that God has spoken to us. If you go to the Old Testament, the book of Exodus chapter 5, I want to talk to you about the devil's nightmare.

What is the devil's nightmare? Now, in Exodus chapter 5, this is the story of Moses coming into Egypt to get 3 million people that belong to God. I love the story. It is a type of Jesus Christ. True. Christ coming to the world.

Christ dying on a cross. Christ breaking the power of the devil. But it is also a type of the church. The individual Christian. The believer in Jesus Christ. It speaks to my heart continuously about the fact that there is no limit to what God can do through a surrendered believer.

What is the devil's nightmare? He doesn't really care about church programs. And put all on Easter pageants and do all kinds of things. Couldn't care less about bake sales and all the things that go on in the name of Christ.

He doesn't care about the 3 steps to this and 4 steps to that. But there is something that is a virtual nightmare to the devil himself. If you take the story in Exodus of Pharaoh to be a type of the devil, because really that's what it's meant to be.

He's holding the whole nation of God's people in captivity. And God is a remedy. He doesn't raise up an army in another land and send it in. He raises up an 80-year-old man. Incredible. A man who has failed his own people in his own side.

He felt he had a mission. He felt he had a calling and he set out to fulfill it. The people rejected him and he took off. He dropped another place for 40 years. As far as he's concerned, he had a call and he missed it.

He failed. He had no sense of ability for when God called him. He said, listen, this is a terrific idea. Moses said, you know, I hope you find somebody to go and do this thing. Because that's what he said, to send whom you will send.

This is awesome. I mean, I'm happy for you, God, that you want to deliver all these people. But he said, I tried. It didn't work. And they rejected me. And I'm not a speaker. I'm not eloquent. I don't have any ability to stand and speak before the masses.

Nevertheless, the Lord got a hold of his heart and he gave him a promise. I'm going to deliver the people. And I'm going to bring them into a place where they're going to worship me. I'm going to bring them into a special land of promise and provision and protection.

And so Moses heads out. And now let's go over to Pharaoh's court for a little while and think about the devil and the powers of darkness. He has succeeded historically to captivate entire countries. Captivate cities, generations, church ages, denominations.

And he puts over them taskmasters that make them build. Build bigger buildings. Build better things. Go out and feed the people straw and send them out to make bricks and bring them in. And every service, every Sunday.

Some of you have been in churches like that. It's one new thermometer after another being rolled out. Here we are. We're almost at our goal. Taskmasters, go out, work harder, get more bricks, come in, feed them straw and send them out.

And the enemy is really happy when that kind of a thing is happening to his people. And you can see him in his court and he's got total power. He's got authority. He's now throwing the baby boys. He's given an order to throw them all in the river and drown them.

You see the devil is always after the seed of Christ as it is. He knew that through Abraham was going to come the promise. So he had to drown all the baby boys because there was going to come a redeemer.

And the devil will always be after that strength, always be after that promise, always after the seed of Christ in your life. You can be sure of it. The battle never changes. I see this huge temple, a huge, huge, gigantic court.

And there are all types of people cowering and bowing down. People are coming in from other cultures and countries and bowing their knee to him and giving him precious gifts. And you can see the arrogance of this pharaoh as he dismisses people and orders people about.

He's got the whole kingdom under his control. He's got the most powerful army on the earth in that generation. But coming through the door is about to be his worst nightmare. Who's next? Next! Next! And here he comes.

An 80-year-old man. And he's got a stick in his hand, which really is a type of the believer who trusts in the promises of God. That person has come to the cross. There's no other confidence. There's not a sword in this man's hand.

There's no army behind him. He's got a stick in his hand. He's trusting in everything that God has done and everything that God has accomplished, as every New Testament believer should in our generation.

And he walks up and he has nothing, no confidence in himself. You see, this is the greatest nightmare of the devil himself. That somewhere, somebody is going to figure out that God calls the weak and the foolish.

He chooses the nobodies and the nothings of society. And those things that are weak to bring down those things that are strong. Those that are foolish to confound those that are wise in their own sight.

And then walks an old man and stands and he has nothing but confidence in God and he's got a word in his heart and says, Let my people go. Let them go. Hallelujah. You know, the devil is afraid you're going to find out the authority you have in Christ.

Grandmothers that are here tonight, the authority you have in Christ to go in the prayer closet and say, Hey wait, devil, I've got some grandchildren. Start naming them. And I say, I command you in Christ's name to let them go.

Let them go. Bow your knee. Bend your knee to Christ. I've got a word in my heart. I've got a promise from this book. You have no authority to hold them in captivity any longer. I command you in Christ's name to release them to the glory of God and the grace of Jesus Christ.

Pharaoh's Resistance and the Call to Believe

Satan will resist just like Pharaoh resisted. Satan will do everything in his power to take away your faith and confidence in the promises of God. The first thing that Pharaoh says, I'm going to look at just a few of the responses of Pharaoh to the demands of God.

God placed the demand on him to let the people go. Moses was only a vessel. And you and I have to understand that when we have a promise from the word of God, it's not up to us to make it happen. Thank God we don't have to make it happen.

We just go to the prayer closet and begin to sing and dance and rejoice because we know that when we've laid hold of it by faith, whatever we ask, God says, I'm going to give it to you. I'm going to give it to you.

I know it's according to the will of God. So I have a secret delight in my heart. I'm just saying, God, I don't know how you're going to do it, but you're going to save my father somehow. You're going to reach down.

You're going to touch him. You're going to cause him to bend his knee and confess with his mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord. And Pharaoh in chapter five, verse two of Exodus, and Pharaoh said, who is the Lord that I should obey his voice and let Israel go?

I know not the Lord and neither will I let Israel go. And this is the first tactic of the devil. When you and I begin to pray in faith, he says, in whose name are you praying? I don't have I don't know him and I don't have to obey him.

And the very first thing that happens is the burden increases. Fowler increases the burden on the people. Now, sometimes when we begin to pray in faith, folks, things get worse before they get better.

I'll show you this. Go to put a marker in Exodus and go to Mark, chapter nine with me in the New Testament. Very quickly. Mark, chapter nine is a story about a man who brought a demonically oppressed.

Child to Christ, Mark, chapter nine, verse 17, and one of the multitude answered and said, Master, I have brought to me my son, which has a dumb spirit. And where so ever he takes him, he tears him. And he phones and he gnashes with his teeth and he's pining away.

And I spoke to the disciples that they should cast him out and they could not. And, folks, that's sometimes what happens and it goes it goes on. He says he answered him and said, oh, faithless generation, how long shall I be with you and how long shall I suffer you bring him to me?

And they brought him unto him. And when he saw him straightway, the spirit tore him and he fell on the ground and wallowed foaming. And, folks, this is exactly the way it goes sometimes. This man brings his oppressed son to Christ and basically is saying, if you can do anything, would you please do something for him?

And when you begin to pray for a lost loved one, how many parents here want to ask the question? No, no, don't put your I'm not done asking the question. Now, how many parents have prayed for a lost child?

And the moment you began to pray, it seems like your child is just taking a course on how to be more like the devil. Isn't that true? It just seems like it gets worse before it gets better. But James says even the devils believe in tremble.

You see, they know that the one who has spoken to you has all the power. And the devil puts on one final display of his power as it is one final manifestation to get you and I to believe that there is no power in the name of Jesus Christ.

Takes a bad situation and makes it worse. And this boy falls on the ground and now it looks really hopeless. And Jesus said, how long has this been with him? And he said, since he's a child and oftentimes it's cast him into the fire and into the waters.

He said, if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us. Now, Jesus said these words to him. If thou can't believe, all things are possible to him that believes. Oh, folks, I make no apology for that.

If you can believe, Jesus said, all things are possible. If Christ himself was standing at the altar of this church tonight and you came to him and said, I have a child and this child is being oppressed to the devil and the devil is leading him and the devil is pining him away and causing him to waste away into nothing.

Jesus would not change his words for this generation. He would say to you and to me, if you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes. And the man cried out and said, Lord, I believe. But help my unbelief.

God, I believe as much as I can. But the devil is putting this scenario before my eyes and trying to convince me that you don't. You have no power in this situation. Help my unbelief. Oh, God, help my unbelief.

I believe that should be the cry of every Christian now in this hour. Every father, every mother. God, help my unbelief. Help me, Lord Jesus. Take me out of the realm of unbelief. God, I don't want you looking at my life and referring to me as part of a faithless and crooked generation.

My God, give me the power. Give me the ability to believe that what you say is the truth and what you said you will do what you will do. And he charged him and said he rebuked him and said, you dumb and deaf spirit.

I charge you come out of him and enter no more into him. And the spirit cried and ran him sore and came out of him. And he was as one dead in so much that many said he is dead. Incredible. They say it's hopeless.

And when God intervenes now, they say he's dead. But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up and he arose. All folks, I want to tell you something. God never calls things what people call them. He never calls them what circumstances.

You see, that's our hope. And you can't believe it for others until you believe it for yourself. Until you yourself have been taken by the hand of Christ. Until he has lifted you out of your weakness and depression and bondage and brought you into his power.

And when you begin to experience it, then you understand that all things are possible to him who believes. All things are possible, folks. This is not just some kind of a fictitious hyperfaith message.

This is the reality of Jesus Christ. All things are possible. Then he said to them, this kind. Comes not forth but comes forth but by by nothing but by prayer and fasting. In other words, the casual seeker of God will never know this power.

Those who just go to church on Tuesday and you make your your weekly visit to the house of God Sunday. But it's Christ really doesn't become your all in all. He's not part of your life. You're not seeking first his kingdom and his righteousness.

You will never know. You'll always be outside of this kind of power. We are now seeing hundreds. We saw hundreds that other Friday night, a few Fridays ago, come to Christ. Pastor Patrick said gang members, thugs, weeping so hard downstairs that they could hardly talk.

Under the conviction of the Holy Ghost. Standing up in this sanctuary and giving their lives publicly for the Lord Jesus Christ. And these things are happening because we are praying. Because there's a young people's group in this church that are fasting and seeking God for their high school companions.

The casual seekers will never know this. And the devil is happy when the church just stays at the level of casually seeking God. Like the king that said to Paul, when it's convenient, I'll call for you.

And so many people live their Christianity like that. Now, Lord, thanks for helping me when I when I need you. I'll give you a shout. When it's convenient, I'll call you. Oh, I'm tired today. Better not go to church.

It's raining and it's such a long drive. But Lord, I'll call you when it's convenient. But you see, these people will never know the power of God. It's the seekers of God that begin to know his power.

It's the people who abandon themselves to God. And say, Lord Jesus, I want the whole thing. I want the whole thing. I want everything you've got for me. If it lands me in Asia or Africa or India, it really doesn't matter.