But then if you start talking about the fourth dimension
and you say, well, there's also potentially
demons in this room, there's potentially
angels in this room, people will go, what, are you crazy?
So right now, in the room, there's
radio waves happening that I cannot see.
We cannot see these radio waves.
But there's music flowing through here.
There's voices flowing through.
And if we had a radio with an antenna of some sort,
we could pick it up.
Or if we opened up our computer, that's
probably even a better example today.
You open up your computer, and suddenly you see a program.
And the music that's all in the room here is pulled in.
And everybody knows that.
Everybody accepts that.
But then if you start talking about the fourth dimension
and you say, well, there's also potentially
demons in this room, there's potentially
angels in this room, people will go,
are you crazy?
And MIT even has done studies on haunted houses
looking at meters, using meters to measure ghosts.
And you say, well, Steve, are you crazy?
Or what dimension are you on?
I'm talking about right now.
I'm talking about in some of our universities today.
It's in this parapsychology area,
this paraspiritual area.
There are PhDs that study this all the time
because there is evidence that it's true.
And so some of your most popular programming,
some of your most popular TV shows
relate to the fourth dimension.
You may have watched them, seen them yourself.
But I'm a big believer in the fourth dimension,
that there's angels and demons, that God inhabits
the fourth dimension.
The Holy Spirit is there also.
And we can tap into that.
And that Jesus was powerfully used in His ministry
to cast out demons, to heal the sick,
and to do signs and wonders because He was naturally,
being a Jew in the Middle East at that time,
He was naturally acclimated to the spiritual realm.
So it's interesting that the Pharisees, the Sadducees,
and others that confronted Jesus never
questioned the reality of the fourth dimension.
They questioned His identity.
They questioned Jesus' identity, but they never
questioned the reality of the spiritual warfare,
the spiritual power that He came with.
Matter of fact, they said that He was demonized.
They said Jesus was a demon because He
was casting out demons.
And that's when Jesus said, well, wait.
How can Satan cast out Satan?
But their argument was still in the fourth dimension,
whereas in the West, where we've been largely programmed
into a type of psychology and also
a type of scientific methodology,
that if you can't prove something
in the three-dimensional world with sight and sound
and proof, then we're not going to believe it.
And that's to our own demise.
That's a wonderful thing in building cars.
And that's a wonderful thing in building rockets.
But in the most important area, which is our spiritual life,
we have this what I would call the excluded middle.
And what I mean by that is like, I guess the best way
to describe it is if I were to draw it out here,
it's like a circle.
And in this first circle is a spiritual dimension,
what I'm calling the fourth dimension.
Then below that circle would be like another circle,
and that's the three-dimensional world.
And in the West, in Western theology, Western science,
the two circles don't meet.
They don't meet each other.
So there's this excluded middle, which
means that we don't see the interaction of angels
and demons in the three-dimensional world.
OK, yeah, yeah, I believe that.
I mean, it's in the Bible.
I'm a Christian.
I believe in angels.
There's probably angels out there.
There's probably demons.
Jesus cast out demons.
I believe that.
But we don't see the interaction of the two,
whereas in the 2 3rd world and other parts of the world,
those circles overlap.
So that fourth dimension, that three-dimensional world,
they overlap with each other all the time.
So even when I was on the island of Okinawa
ministering on these other smaller islands in the South
China Sea, we would go out to do evangelism,
show the Jesus film, do things like that.
And when I mentioned the demonic and I mentioned spirits,
everybody just sat up straighter.
They understood that they already
had a dimension of the three-dimensional world
interacting with the fourth-dimensional world.
And so that's the world Jesus came into.
And that's what we're challenging you.
I'm the one who's kind of getting empowered with empower you in this particular series.
I want to I want to equip you that you don't have to be weird.
You don't have to be a nut and you don't have to be crazy to begin to walk in the same power that Jesus walked in.
So the best place to start is the very beginning of Jesus ministry in Luke chapter 4.
If you have your Bible, you can look at it later. You can look at it with me right now.
But Luke 4 is Jesus being tempted by the devil.
And this is kind of interesting because what I like about this particular passage is that the devil actually moves into the three-dimensional world.
And that's what I'm talking about, how the fourth dimension affects a three-dimensional world.
Jesus is getting he got baptized and right after baptism,
he goes into the desert and he's tempted by the devil.
And there's this one verse, there's two verses here that are really interesting.
When the devil is communicating with Jesus, challenging Jesus, he says this,
then the devil taking him up on a high mountain showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.
And the devil said to him, all this authority,
I will give you and the glory for this has been delivered to me and I give it to whomever I wish.
That's interesting. John in 1 John 5 says the whole world is under the sway or under the power of the evil one.
So what the devil is saying is that, look, I have power over the whole world.
I have authority over the world. I control governments.
I control leaders. I control people all over the world.
And I can give my power and authority to whomever I wish.
Now, if that was a lie from and he is the father of lies.
But if that was a lie, Jesus certainly would have confronted him on that.
But what Jesus says next is, therefore, he says, get behind me, Satan.
So he tells Satan to get behind him, but he never refutes what Satan just said.
So that's the reality. So Jesus is tempted by the devil.
He deals with the devil. It's interesting.
And we'll cover this another time how he deals with the devil.
And the main way he covers his power against Satan is through the word of God and and knowing the word of God and speaking the word of God back to Satan.
But what's interesting is Satan also quotes the Bible.
But anyway, that's another issue. We'll get to that.
But if you have your Bible, you go to verses 31 through 44 at the end of the chapter in Luke, chapter four.
Look what Jesus does. He leaves the devil.
He goes back into his ministry. He's just getting started.
And here's what it says. Then he went down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee, and was teaching them on the Sabbath.
And they were astonished at his teaching, for his word was with authority.
Now, in the synagogue, there was a man who had a spirit of an unclean demon.
And he cried out with a loud voice saying, Let us alone.
What have we to do with you, Jesus of Nazareth?
Did you come to destroy us? I know who you are.
You're the holy one of God. And then Jesus rebuked him, saying, Be quiet and come out of him.
And when the demon had thrown him in their midst, it came out of him and did not hurt him.
And everyone was amazed. So in the synagogue.
OK, so in the church, this guy manifests a demon.
Jesus cast it out. And this confrontation begins.
So my thesis is this, is there's a lot more demonic activity even happening in the church than we even know.
And so part of what I'm talking about was Satan, demons in the fourth dimension in this series.
How do we confront that? How do we minister as Jesus ministered?
How do we begin to take on the devil and all his works?
Because this is what is said about Christ in 1 John 3 8.
For this purpose, the Son of God was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil.
So I believe the reason the church has so little power is we do not know how to deal with the works of the devil.
We do not know how to work with how he is, is manifesting himself in the lives of many.
I'm convinced that if we could get good at this, if we could become discerning as Christ wants us to be discerning,
if we could walk in the.
power that Christ has given us through the work of the Holy Spirit, we could probably
walk into most hospitals today, set people free through prayer and through actually declarations
against the works of the enemy, and you'd be amazed what would happen.
And so that's my conviction, and that's what a Kingdom of God revolution looks like to
me is that we can walk in this power that God's given us.
So this all goes back to Genesis 1, 26 through 28, where the man and the woman were commanded
to have, that they had all authority over all of creation, they had authority over all
created things.
And we've been given that authority.
It's the first command in Scripture.
Romans 8, 37, yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved
us.
So God has given us this power to the degree that, let's look at John 14.
John 14 was the passage that really set me on fire many years ago in the realm of Satan,
demons, and the fourth dimension.
John 14, 12, this is Jesus speaking.
Most assuredly I say to you, he who believes in me, the works that I do, he will do also,
greater works in these because I go to the Father.
Whatever you ask in my name, that I will do that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
If you ask anything in my name, I will do it.
If you love me, keep my commandments.
So powerful passage about the fact that we can do what Christ did.
We can walk in that same power through the work of the Holy Spirit.
So the challenge before us is how do we do it?
Well that's what the ongoing series is going to be about is how do we do that?
How do we walk in that?
But men and women, you have all of the power.
You have all of the authority if you're born again.
If Jesus Christ lives in you and you have the power of the Holy Spirit, you can begin
to discern in the fourth dimension what is going on in the three dimensional world and
walk in that.
So don't be one of those that are living in that excluded middle.
Walk in the power of the Holy Spirit and as you begin to grow in this particular arena,
I promise you, you're going to have a really adventurous, exciting, new Christian life
as you watch what God's going to do because I think God often gives us only what we can
handle.
So to the degree that you get equipped in this arena will be the equipped that it will
be the extent to which God can use you not only to equip others, but also to set the
captives free in a fresh, new way.
God bless you.
Look forward to the series before us and what we're going to learn together.