Raiding The House Of The Strongman by Dr. D.K Olukoya

RAIDING THE HOUSE OF THE STRONGMAN

As far as the Bible is concerned, we should not allow sleeping dogs to lie. That sleeping dog must be woken up and dealt with. From Matthew 12:29 and Luke 11:21 we can gather plenty of facts. The facts are:

1. There is an entity known as the strongman.

• Jesus is the only one that identifies this strongman as an entity. The strongman is not just a concept, it is a spiritual entity.

• The strongman, as the name implies, has a great level of power. Psalm 2:1 says, “Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?” An entity is identified by the Psalmist. It is the same that Jesus tried to describe. Other names for the strongman are ‘the mighty’ and ‘the terrible.’ Isaiah 49:25 says, “But thus saith the LORD, Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken away, and the prey of the terrible shall be delivered: for I will contend with him that contendeth with thee, and I will save thy children.”

• The strongman has a specific location, a house. Inside that house, he keeps goods. He is a keeper of confiscated goods. He ensures that those goods are with him forever and owners never get them.

• The strongman has weapons according to the Scriptures. This is why sometimes when you pray, there would be a counter-attack. He too would gather his own weapons and fight back.

The Bible teaches that the strongman has armour. He defends himself. He has offensive and defensive weapons.

6. The entity called the strongman has a wicked agenda: to steal, to kill and to

destroy. When he is assigned to you and you don’t deal with him, he can trail you from the cradle to the grave.

Unfortunately, in the Africa setting, immediately some people are born, they are handed over to the strongman and he goes after them and pursues their lives until the day they are buried.

• The Bible makes us understand that ignorant people cannot control the strongman. No man can just stroll into his place and say: “Come out! Release my goods.”

• The Bible makes us understand that the strongman can operate in the heavenlies. His locations can be anywhere. Daniel knelt down and prayed and on the day God answered and sent an angel to bring the reply, beloved, the Bible makes us understand that there were some spirits in the atmosphere who were strong enough to prevent the angel from bringing the answers to Daniel.

If Daniel had stopped praying on day one, the angel bringing his prayer would have gone back to heaven. But as he continued, the prayer brought an angel from heaven to assist his angel of blessings. Plenty of us do not assist our angels. So, we don’t get answers. That strongman was able to confront the angel bringing blessings from God and the angel could not pass through for 21 days. The strongman has capacity enough to confront the angel of blessings.

• The strongman is a military personality. So he has declared himself as a soldier. In fact, demons refer to themselves as soldiers. This is why the Bible says: “The Lord is a man of war, the lord is His name.” This is why heavens have no respect for civilian Christians.

1. From the passage we have read, we gather that the strongman is ready for defensive and offensive warfare.

1. The strongman is a thorough destroyer. Mercy is alien to him.

1. He is an alert guard ready to pounce on intruders like a dog guarding a house.

1. The Bible makes us to understand that the strongman has a palace. That is, he is a king. He reigns.

A family had a strange experience. There were five women in that family. The youngest was 39, the oldest around 50-59. All of them were virgins and not married. They had no lovers up to that age. One day, at our prayer meeting the first prayer point was this: “You strongman standing at the gate of my promised land, fall down and die.” Everybody prayed the prayer. The youngest member of that family was there. Immediately she said: “Every strongman standing…, in the name of Jesus;” she fell down and remained on the floor until 5.00a.m when we said: “Let us share the grace.” When the anointing service ended she opened her eyes and said, “I had a vision.” Immediately she fell down, she found herself in a palace. Inside that palace was a king who had five wives. All the wives were wearing the same kind of attire. She said she looked at the faces of four of them and found that they were the faces of her sisters. Then she looked at her own body and found that she was wearing the same attire like those four. She said she challenged the king: “Sorry, others may be your wives, I divorce you, in the name of Jesus.” Immediately she said this, the king fell down from the throne and she opened her eyes. That was what she saw in seven hours. Within few months, she was married.

Why? Because she finally dealt with the strongman.

I also remember the testimony of another sister who was promoted several times. Her salary was huge, but when she collected the money, she would not know what she did with it. She was poor, yet she was getting big money.

One day, she got angry in her spirit and started praying. As she was praying, something ministered to her: “You have a cutlass in your kitchen; hold it in your hand and use it for this prayer. Begin to cut all the hands of poverty that are hindering you.” And she started praying: “I cut off every hand of poverty that is against my life, I cut them off.” She cut until she was tired and she went to sleep. In the morning, they called her from the village that her grand-mother, who was a marine priestess, just woke up that morning and her two hands were cut off and were bleeding. The hands were on the bed. This lady did the cutting in Lagos and the effect was felt 100 miles away. And do you know? Right from that day,

the agenda of wealth that the Lord had for her began to manifest.

1. The strongman is a controller of a group of spirits. He is like a king, so he must have a kingdom.

1. The strongman is the power source and the dominating influence in a particular situation.

1. He is the principal demon, the leading demon in the warfare against your life. Therefore the key in setting many situations free is to: locate, identify and deal with the strongman.

1. He is the dominant or the head demon. He is like the prison warder of the devil, keeping his prison for him. He is the one energising evil activities, a commanding general of an evil army. He is the captain of the evil stronghold, the king in the palace of darkness.

1. He is the senior serpent or the senior scorpion of whom Jesus said: “I give you power to tread upon serpents and scorpions …”

1. He is the evil power assigned against a problem, which says: “This problem must just continue. It must not be removed.”

• He is the ancestral power in charge of family bondages. He is the principality in people’s individual heavens, a satanic prince over a particular territory.

• He is the Pharaoh among your pursuers, the Goliath among your oppressors, the arrowhead of the attack you are facing, the manager of the satanic warehouse hiding people’s blessings.

• The strongman is that wild, protected enemy that ridicules our prayers, the evil power that rules a locality and decides that certain good things should not happen there.

When the strongman is still inside, other wicked spirits that have been chased out will always come back. He can have human agents representing him.

He will send his children to fight first before you can encounter him.

Every nation, every town, every village and every family has a strongman assigned to it.

• A strongman can also be attached to somebody’s career. All other people will move forward, but the victim cannot move.

• He can be attached to somebody’s business.

• He can be assigned to somebody’s calling, causing problems if you don’t deal with him.

• He can be assigned to somebody’s marriage, work, house, academic and finances.

Until he is identified and dealt with and you possess your possession, he will continue to harass you. That is why the Bible describes him as ‘the mighty’ and ‘the terrible,’ the strong force that scares helpers. He is a power that will argue with deliverance ministers. He can scare away small prophets.

Let me give you good news:

1. It is possible to bind the strongman.

• It is possible to enter his house and raid what he is hiding there.

• It is possible to plunder his goods.

But then, the only language he understands is VIOLENCE. And you need the assistance of the Stronger Man, the Lord Jesus Christ, to fight him. You must understand that binding is the effective weapon against him. Proverb 6:31 describes how to deal with him: “But if he be found, he shall restore sevenfold; he shall give all the substance of his house.” When he is in charge of someone’s case, those who pray with the person are scared away, former friends will

become aggressors. You will always be at the brink of fearful and life-threatening medical condition. Your helpers will come under his attack. There would be terrible dreams. You will have aggressive spirit wives with terrible temper, or spirit husbands will be troubling you or you will always be having one accident after another. You may be seeing dead relatives or ghosts. There would be chains of bad luck. You may be hearing strange voices. You will be having multiple surgical operations. Suicidal thoughts may fill your heart.

When the strongman is in charge of a case the victim will say, “I don’t dream, I just sleep.” You dream but the strongman has taken away your monitor. You do a lot of hard work but have little progress. When you pray, something is resisting your prayers. There is profitless hard work. You just feel as if something had gone wrong somewhere.

When he is in charge of somebody’s case, even when he is a member of a living church, fake members will drag him to witch doctors or to fake prophets somewhere. We have seen many cases like that.

When the strongman is in charge of somebody’s case, that is when the person meets people who will lead him into error? Today, you need to surrender your life to Jesus if you want to confront the strongman. You need to pray confrontational prayers. You need to wage war against the strongman. You need to pray some prayers that will make your enemies to shake in terror.

A brother hired a flat somewhere. Every night he had attack and oppression. He would be hearing gun shots in his room. So he went to report to his pastor and was told to shoot back.

One night as he was in his room, the shooting started. The brother jumped up and shouted: “I don’t know who you are shooting here, but I shoot you back.” He went on like that for about 30 minutes and went to bed. What woke him up was the people running up the stairs. He opened the door and asked what the matter was and was informed that it was the landlord, that he had been screaming that somebody wanted to kill him.

The brother took his Bible and said, “Let me go and pray for him.” Immediately he entered the landlord’s room, he opened his eyes and said, “Don’t

come near, don’t come near. You are the one shooting at me.” The brother prevailed because he had power over the strongman.

Remember, it is impossible to defeat the strongman when you are still in the camp of the enemy. When you are not born again and you have not yet surrendered your life to Jesus, you are going to experience defeat.