Have you ever heard the devil talk to you? He seems to be talking to a lot of people. But let me tell you, if the devil never talks to you, you do not know God. You must be able to differentiate between the voice of the devil and the voice of God. How else are you going to differentiate between these two voices if you have never heard the devil? God said to Elijah, “Go up into Mount Horeb, I want to meet you there.” Elijah, therefore, went and hid himself in a cave (1 Kings 19). I assume it must have been hot outside. He sat down in this cave waiting for God. Suddenly, he heard the sound of a great wind, in which the trees began to shake. He said in his mind, “Hmmm, this could be God.” But he was not satisfied inside. The presence of God brings a certain amount of peace into you. The Bible said, “…But it was not God.” Then, he heard the sound of an earthquake coming, yet again it says, “…But it was not God.” Then, he saw fire and he thought, “This is fire so surely this must be God!” “But it was not God,” for it disturbed him inside. Do you understand? It disturbed him inside and he knew it was not God. Then he heard the “…still small voice,” and when he did, his heart was satisfied. The Bible says that he pulled his mantle over his head, came out, and said, “Yes, Lord.” The voice sounded and he knew it was God.
One time the devil spoke to me and I thought it was God. Yet, God came in and intervened for me. It was just His mercy that I was not deceived. It would have been a horrible destruction if I had gone out and told the church that God had said to me those awful things about the brethren when it was the devil that had shown them to me. However, as I was listening to the devil, God came into my little room and shouted these words, “Satan! You are a liar from the beginning!” Then I said, “Oh God, why did You do this to me? Why did You let Satan come to me, Lord?” He calmly replied, “Why were you sitting down for half an hour listening to the devil and not knowing it was the devil?” All of a sudden, I realized that it was a wrong in me! There was an opening in my soul for the devil. Do you know what the opening was? It was a desire to prophesy. Of course, God had already been using me, but I wanted to be greater! I wanted to go into the congregation and be able to tell the brethren all about their lives and what the Lord had shown me about them. Yet, God’s mercy saved me. However, it did not save the prophet we had in the church…
I was in the church in Jamaica at that time where we had girls prophesying. Strange enough, none of the men were prophesying; they were all young girls. They were some of the best and most accurate prophetess I had ever seen in my life. When they began to prophesy, you just had to bow before God, because they were saying every single thing that happened. Someone would come through the door and they would be able to tell what was in that person’s heart as well as what they were doing. We couldn’t help but realize they were prophetesses that God had put in our midst. But they were young and none of us really had any experience. I didn’t have any, they didn’t have any, and the devil was waiting for his time. His time surely came.
One of the girls fell in love. Falling in love is actually opening up one’s heart to another individual. Once your heart is opened up to someone else, it is not as opened to God as it used to be unless you are well trained and understand that Jesus Christ is first and the other individual only the second. But this girl didn’t have all that knowledge and she was in love. And so, little by little jealousy and all the human problems began to come in. The devil found his way in and began to talk to her. Every time she would come up, she would prophesy with exactly the same power as she had before, but the things would be off – wrong, wrong, wrong. She continued to see visions and continued to have dreams, but now they were all against somebody else.
It so happened that she prophesied to her boyfriend, “Thus saith the Lord God, thou art Timothy and know not what God is doing for you.” He was to take over the church. Then, she came back and prophesied again that, “The Lord told me to tell you that you must buy me the house over there.” The man came to me and said, “Elder, the holy prophet of God says I must buy her a house over there and I am about ready to do it.” I replied to him, “Brother, the holy prophets of God have died and are gone! There is no holy prophet of God in our midst. That little young lady that you are going to marry is going to be your wife and you are going to be her head. She must not prophesy to you to buy her a house! If you see it necessary to get a house and both of you get together and agree upon it, then buy the house. Don’t let her prophesy to you to buy her a house! That’s not right!” He got up, went off, and told her that I was against her, that I was her enemy.
You have to remember she was my little girl. She was one of those young people who got saved under my ministry. They looked up to me as their elder. I wasn’t much older than them, but they looked up to me as elder and I was very impartial. All of a sudden, the devil sowed a seed of discord in her heart against me. When something like this happens, the Bible tells us exactly what to do. If somebody comes to you and tells you something about somebody else, there is a method of you keeping clean. The reason being that if you are not clean, God is not going to hear your prayers (Matthew 18). Some of you don’t understand this principle and maybe are wondering, “Why is it that I pray to God for so and so and it’s not done?” But God says that He will hear the prayers of the righteous and if you are wrong with God, He cannot hear you.
This girl began to prophesy against me. That told me that something had gone wrong with her. I was the only one who knew it. It was very simple to discern. Let me give you an example: if you get up and prophesy, “Thus saith the Lord God, Brother Ces is a thief!” I know I am not a thief, but you don’t. And so such a word casts a doubt in every mind except mine. If then this is the message of God to me, I know you are gone. Your prophecy is not on line.
So, she started to prophesy against me. First of all, she saw me sitting naked in the congregation. She didn’t come and tell me, she whispered it all around. Then, one day she came into the church. I looked at her, but couldn’t see her – a big blob of darkness was over her face. I looked at another sister – another blob of darkness over her. I knew that she had told the other sister.
After I had my own experience with the devil lying to me, I went down to the church. The young lady-prophetess met me there and said to me, “Brother Ces, God has spoken to me and has given me a message.” She began to tell me the message. To my amazement it was the same thing the devil tried to give me in my room. She got the same thing the devil tried to give me! But I was young at that time and did not understand how smart the devil is. So I opened my mouth and said, “Sister, it is the devil!” She laughed, “I knew it! God told me before that when I tell you, you are going to say, ‘It is the devil.’” The devil is such a psychologist! When he saw God rebuking him and exposing him in my room, he went to her and told her that she would know that I was not walking with God, because I would say to her, “It is the devil.” Then, the stupid me went and said the exact words the devil told her I would say! Had I held back, and said, “Let us pray,” God would have shown me the plot and I would have escaped. But as it was, before I even got to the church she had called everybody together in an emergency meeting and told them that I had turned from God and the words I spoke with her were the sign. When I finally got to the meeting, the whole church turned against me, because “…the prophet said.” The whole church was dependent on her. What I am telling you is an extreme case of what can happen.
The girl went on until she wrecked the church. The sinners used to come to the meetings and be blessed. But no more. She went outside and told them all the darkness the devil showed her. And so, the testimony of the church was destroyed. She wrecked the church. However, she felt that she was doing righteousness.
I went to God in total distress. I cried to Him for her soul as well as for the soul of her husband-to-be. As I did, God showed me a scene. I saw a door before me and the Lord said, “Peek through the key hole.” When I did so, I saw her and her husband standing before a judge. The judge picked up a black cap, pulled it over his head (this is what they do in the British court when they make a death sentence) and said, “The verdict is ‘guilty’ and the judgment is ‘death!’ You shall be hanged by your neck until you are dead, dead, dead.” Bam! Then he broke the pen he used to write the death warrant with and threw it in the waste basket! I cried to God, “Oh, God! No! No! Have mercy upon them!” I closed my eyes again and heard again, “The verdict is ‘guilty’ and the judgment is ‘death.’ You shall be hanged by your neck until you are dead, dead, dead.” I almost went crazy. For one whole month every time I would put my head down, I would hear it over and over again, “The verdict is ‘guilty’ and the judgment is ‘death.’”
“The verdict is ‘guilty’ and the judgment is ‘death’.” I could not get away from it, so I started to pray and fast. I would cry to God, “God, save them! God, have mercy upon them!” One day God came to me and said, “Do not pray for them anymore.” I knew what that meant: if I prayed any longer, I would get their reward. Their judgment would hit me. I, therefore, stopped praying. Everybody went his own way in the church and the verdict was ‘guilty’ and the judgment was ‘death.’ Their end was truly terrible.
I am talking to you about hearing the devil, about ‘false’ prophecy. How does a true prophet become a false prophet? It is very simple – you just open the door. You have carnality in you, you have a sin, and you open the door. This girl had a jealousy in her heart and would not let it go. She opened the door to the devil and the devil got a chance to minister to her. We all, both men as well as women, must get to the place where Jesus Christ so pervades our being that we cannot be tempted. Our desires will be totally gone. We will not want anything that is not of God. The only things we will want would be the things of God.
Sonlight Devotional 