THE RELIGIOUS SPIRIT

The greatest enemy of the truth and the church is the religious spirit. Religious people have always been the enemy of God and His messengers, beginning from the old testament prophets to Christ, and His true followers. We must thence examine our lives to make sure we are not victims of this deadly enemy of God and Christ.

A religious spirit is an evil spirit that seeks to substitute religious activity for the power of the Holy Spirit in the believer's life.  Its primary objective is to have Christians holding to form of godliness, although they have denied its power- 2 Tim. 3:5. This religious spirit is the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees- Matt. 16:6.

The Lord warned His disciples about this deadly enemy. Jesus called it leaven because religious spirit operates like leaven to bread. Leaven only inflates bread rather than adding substance or nutritional value. Religious spirit does not add to the life and power of the church, rather it feeds on the human pride that caused the first fall and the fall of almost everyone since then. Satan knows that God will not inhabit any work inflated with pride. So one of his primary strategies against us to fall to pride and religious spirit.

Satan knows that once leaven gets into bred, it is difficult to remove. Pride by nature is a stronghold to correct or remove. A religious spirit keeps us from hearing God's voice by having us assume what God is saying and what pleases Him. We are deceived to believe that rebukes, exhortations and words of corrections in the scripture are for others and not for us.

The primary problem of the Pharisees was their tendency to see what was wrong with others while not being able to see their own faults. The church's confrontation with the religious spirit will be one of the epic battles of the last days. Everyone will be fighting in this battle.

One of the most deceptive characteristics of the religious spirit is that it was founded on zeal for God. Sometimes, zeal for God can be evil especially when the reason for the zeal is negative- Rom. 10:1-3. No one prayed, fasted read the bible and anticipated the coming of the Messiah than the Pharisees, Yet, they were the greatest opponent of God and the same Messiah. It is the religious conservatives and zealous community that crucified the Word when we came to walk among them.

The religious spirit has thwarted or diverted every revival movement to date, and it still retains a seat of honor throughout much of the visible church. In the end times, a manifestation of this religious spirit will take seat in every temple of God, declaring himself as God and getting almost the whole world to follow him, hence there is a call for awakening and discernment of spirits.

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