Big Healing Book - Jesus Now Has ALL Authority, So If Satan Afflicts You, He Has

Objection: Jesus Now Has ALL Authority, So If Satan Afflicts You, He Has to Get Jesus’ Permission First

This is a variant of the God Is in Control fallacy covered elsewhere, but this time it is Jesus who is supposedly “in control.” On the surface, the argument seems reasonable – if Jesus has control over everything, He must control the devil and therefore He must control what the devil is allowed to do so you.

The objection simply misses the point that there is a difference between authority and control. Jesus has all AUTHORITY, but He does not have all CONTROL. If He did, no one would ever sin and Satan would never get away with anything! Neither God nor Jesus CONTROLS anyone else in the sense of forcing people or angels to do what He wants. We all have free will.

Say for example that a street downtown is closed to vehicular traffic. Now an Islamic jihadist, intent on obeying the Quran’s mandate to kill infidels, barrels toward that street in a giant truck. A policeman sees him coming and orders him to stop, but he runs over the policeman and proceeds to run over many pedestrians as he barrels up the street while praising his false God. (Sorry, one-world-religion fans, but the nonexistent “Allah” is definitely NOT the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ by a different name.) That policeman had the AUTHORITY to stop the truck, but he obviously could not CONTROL the truck. The truck driver had the ability to disobey the authority, and he did. Now when he is brought to justice, he will pay a high price for his crime because the AUTHORITIES will apprehend him and sentence him. Even the real God did not CONTROL that truck and stop the terrorist act. God is not in control of the earth – man is.

The authorities had a rule, but they did not control whether people broke it. Think about it for a minute – if everyone were FORCED to do the right things, there would be no need for rules or authorities!

Jesus has authority over everything, but people can choose not to submit to His authority. They too will be sentenced and pay a high price for choosing not to submit to His authority.

Now you might wonder, “If people can willfully choose not to obey authority, can’t Satan and his demons refuse to honor Jesus’ name (representing His authority) and not leave when ordered to do so?” The answer is no. A man invoking Jesus’ authority has the right to run them off. They have no ABILITY to stay because Jesus backs His name when believers use it. These beings are no match for the Lord Jesus Christ. What I want you to see here is that YOU have to do the apprehending – that is not God’s job under the New Covenant. He already put Satan under your feet, but you have to enforce that in your own life. WE are the “authorities” under the New Covenant. We have the keys to the kingdom. If we don’t use them, God will not use them for us.

Satan is still allowed to be on the earth during this period of time. However, everything he does is contrary to Jesus’ authority and is therefore illegal. God does not CONTROL Satan because Satan can still roam around seeking whom he may devour. However, a believer can “apprehend” him in the name of Jesus and force him to cease and desist his ILLEGAL activity is his own life. A believer who knows his rights in Christ is one of those whom Satan may NOT devour.

YOU are responsible for resisting the devil (James 4:7, 1 Peter 5:8) in your own life. YOU need to force him to bow his knee at the name of Jesus. It is at Jesus’ NAME that every knee must bow – they bow to His NAME, not to Jesus in person (Philippians 2:9-11). You run him off in the name of Jesus. God will not do that for you. Satan has no LEGAL RIGHT to afflict you, but he will try to do it anyway. YOU must make him stop using your authority in Christ. Satan cannot buck that authority when you use it.

Jesus clearly came to DESTROY the devil’s works (1 John 3:8), not to give “steal, kill and destroy permits” to the devil so that he can afflict people. You can be CERTAIN that any sickness that comes your way is ILLEGAL and does NOT have Jesus’ permission to be in your body. ANY attack of Satan against you is UNAUTHORIZED and is therefore subject to “arrest” in the name of Jesus – but you have to make the arrest. Jesus doesn’t do it for you. If anything is from the devil (in other words, it steals, kills and destroys), you know that Jesus did NOT authorize Satan to do it. However, Jesus does not exercise authority over the devil on the earth – He delegated that task to believers, so YOU must do it.

That is why so few Christians are successful in running the devil off – they keep praying for GOD to do something about the devil, which He already did. They don’t realize that Jesus put the devil under their feet and that they can trample him themselves.

Even we do not CONTROL the devil on the earth in general. If someone wants to serve the devil, we can’t force him to stop doing it, and we can’t force the devil to stop letting that person serve him. The CONTROL we have is in our own lives because we are redeemed. To see Satan’s control ended in someone else’s life, that person must submit his life to Jesus and thus be taken out of the kingdom of darkness himself. We can grant some relief by taking authority over sicknesses in other people’s bodies, but only if we get their permission first. We still can’t bring someone completely out of the kingdom of darkness – only Jesus does that when someone receives Him.

Jesus’ ministry shows what HE thinks of the works of the devil – His only interest is in getting rid of those works, not “authorizing” them so that men can be miserable.