472 Pastor Olukoya Sermons MP3 Download
OPPRESSION MAKETH A MAN MAD
What is Oppression?
To oppress means to rule or treat in a continually cruel or harsh way. It
could also mean to make somebody feel unnecessarily anxious, uncomfortable or unhappy.
Oppression is not just the physical act of torture or depriving people of their fundamental human rights. In the school of prayer, oppression is one of the greatest weapons of the enemy with which he totally confuses many Christians. The devil or Lucifer has been an oppressor since he was cast down from heaven. He had a pretty good idea of what heaven looks like, so if he can’t go back there and continue to enjoy the wonders of being in the presence of the Almighty God, then why should he allow ordinary men (i.e. humans) to go there?
Oppression is a form of physical, psychological, financial, mental, academic, marital and spiritual disorganization in which the victim or the oppressed does not and cannot comprehend the vices or manner of oppression used by the devil to deprive them of their privileges of being members of a chosen generation.
Oppression is a tool of the enemy. It must die in every area of your life, in the name of Jesus.
Eccl. 7:7: Surely oppression maketh a wise man mad; and a gift destroyeth the heart.
When you take a close look at that verse and meditate on it, you can interpret it like this – Wise people are troubled by the ways and deeds of the wicked.
Oppression can be so heavy at times. It can be so terrible that it can disgrace the wisest man’s knowledge. The storms of life have a maddening
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power; they can make a fellow senseless. One of the most pathetic scenes I have ever seen in my life was the one I saw at Idi-Araba, around the Lagos University Teaching Hospital. We took a boy there at night from the Lagos University campus. A trailer tyre ran over his leg. I decided to take a stroll to the gate and through the corner of my eye, I saw a naked woman carrying a pot. From the look of her hair, I saw that she was not mad. She looked well-educated and sophisticated. In those days, I was more of a trouble maker than I am now, so I ran over to meet her and I asked her why she was carrying that pot. I told her that there was a better solution to her problem than to make such a sacrifice. She broke down and cried her eyes out.
She told me she came from the United States with her husband. She had three children and was an orphan. She accompanied her husband back to Nigeria and on arrival, her in-laws took her things and threw her out. They also took the children from her. She had no one to run to and no place to turn until she was taken to a herbalist who told her to make the sacrifice, that it would bring her solution. She told me she was a banker and had a master’s degree. Here was a woman, schooled to the level of a master’s degree, carrying a pot of sacrifice on her head, stark naked at night. Oppression had made her mad.
“Any power carrying sacrifices against me, die, in the name of Jesus.”
The enemy raises a storm against you, when he sees your name in the plan of God. If he looks at the plan and sees that you are not serious, that you are not even listed among the elect, he would leave you alone. But immediately he sees your destiny being connected to the will of God, he would raise a storm against you. Many of us are not happy with our situations, at the same time, we are not mad against them yet.
Many people are losing their minds because of oppression. You should be able to know that the maddening power of the storm is more than able to make a man insane. Once we prayed with a man who wanted money at all cost. Fortunately for him, he got the money. Despite all the money, he developed cancer of the liver and was told to put his house in order and prepare to die. Eventually he found a person who told him that to be free from the sickness, he should sleep with his youngest daughter. He agreed and did. We had to conduct deliverance for him and his 19-year-old
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daughter. This incident is just to show you how extreme these maddening powers could be.
A sister wanted a husband desperately, and she met someone who took an egg and rubbed it all over her body three times and gave it to her to swallow. Not only did she not get a husband after that, she found herself in a bondage. She always felt the urge to have sexual affairs with the fellow who rubbed the egg over her body. I am sure you should, by now, have a clear picture of what I am trying to explain to you.
Oppression is a tool of the enemy.
The truth is this, madness can only listen to a higher madness. The bible says, “For this cause was the Son of God made manifest that he might destroy the works of the devil.” The devil himself is a destroyer, for we know it is written that he came solely to kill, to steal and to destroy while our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, came that we might be saved that we might have life and have it abundantly.
The desire of the devil is to see humanity beg him, crave for him, wish he were God Almighty, and for many people to follow him to hell on the Day of Judgment. The path to destruction is wide and sadly, many find it. The path that leads to life and a peaceful eternity is narrow, and very few find it. Jesus is here to deliver and redeem, to the uttermost, as many as are willing to let Him into, their lives as their Lord and personal Saviour.
A king looked at Paul and said: “What kind of person is this, thou hast destroyed thyself Too much learning has made you mad.” Violence will only yield to the control of higher violence. The maddening power of oppression, which has been made manifest in very many lives today, can only be silenced by a higher power. When a strongman keepeth his palace, the Bible says, his goods are in peace. But when a stronger man comes upon him, he will take away his strength and plunder his goods. Only a higher voice can silence the voice of oppression.
Oppression by the enemy can raise unprofitable conflict against you.
After one of the anointing services we had some years ago, a brother, who
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used to hear the cry of a cat at night beside his window, anointed that window. He went to sleep but was suddenly awakened by the cry of the cat. He got up, took his bible and his anointing oil and went outside. The cat was glued to the window and began to talk: “Please, I did not come on my own, I was sent here.” He summoned courage, killed the cat and burnt it.
The devil thought he was mad enough to torture this fellow by programming a cat to his window. But when he met a higher level of madness, his power was subdued. Evil cats being sent against you shall die, in the name of Jesus.
What I am trying to explain to you is that any power that tries to make the wise foolish is not a power to joke or toy with at all. If you think you can dine with the devil with a long spoon, he will climb on your spoon and get at you. Jesus spoke to the storms that felt that they were mad.
Although these storms tormented His disciples and they thought they would die, when a higher madness stood up and spoke just three words, “Peace, be still,” the demonstration of the little power of the devil fell like a pack of cards. When Jesus got into the temple, He drove out all those who had turned His Father’s house into a place of buying and selling.
The devil had infiltrated into the house of God and turned it into what, today, you would call a business center, a place for profit and loss and a playground for dubious people. Jesus went in and it was not recorded in the Bible that He was accompanied by any disciple. So it is safe to assume that He solely drove out those bargainers of destiny in the house of His father. There is a great possibility that even the local authorities could not have successfully driven them out, but one with a madness higher than theirs had come into the place and they bowed.
Oppression can remove our alertness
Oppression by the enemy can raise unprofitable conflict against you. I have seen people who say, “I don’t know what is wrong but I don’t just like that man or women”
Oppression can frighten us. It can even make you a believer to become half-hearted in your faith.
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Oppression can make you think of giving up. You will suddenly feel that ‘Enough is enough,’ “I don’t want to be oppressed by the devil anymore. I want to be free from all those hardships and frustration”, you may say. Then the send in the spirit of suicide as a solution to your problem. It takes the grace of God to oppress your oppressors.
Oppression can remove your alertness.
Oppression can make you to sometimes forget. Jesus who is captain. A fellow can be so oppressed by the devil that he begins to wonder if there is God at all. The problem before you becomes very big because the devil puts magnifying glasses on you when the spirit of fear comes in. Then you will begin to doubt if Jesus really is a Saviour.
Oppression can make you lose your focus
Oppression can make you lose your focus. If you are not ready for the enemy to destroy your life physically and spiritually, then you need to quicken yourself to the fact that if you fail to fight now that you still can, you may not fight again but live or die to regret it. In one way or the other, all men have some madness in them. Many are mad for money. At least, I saw a man who was mad for money and was asked to swallow a live serpent and he did Love, which many have ignorantly turned to lust today, is a form of madness. Love is known for its ability to intoxicate. If you think alcohol can make a man lose his senses, then wait till you find a fellow who is deeply, truly and whole-heartedly in love. All the endless list of desires of humanity like ambitions passions, cares, regrets, lust, addictions – are all quiet madness. They have the capacity to grow, spread and consume people.
One of the popular madness is the desire to be noticed. Some of us derive pleasure from being noticed. Many are usually seriously disappointed if they go through a lot to prepare, suffer, stay awake all night, dress to kill and they are not noticed at the end of the day. The fellows who are noticed for good are mostly those who have the divine favour of God upon their lives.
All men have madness in them, but what varies is its degree or magnitude. Some are outright mad, like those in the psychiatric hospitals. Others require situations to quicken up their madness and there is a group whose madness grows unconsciously. They cannot control or stop themselves, once it’s fully blown.
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Fortunately and unknown to many, you can channel this madness to the right direction. You can decide to channel your madness against the oppressor. The energy you waste in backbiting, talking to unprofitable and unfriendly friends, fighting or having evil discussion should be gathered and directed against the oppressor. You need to ride on the wings of your madness so that you can oppress your oppressors.
I shared this somewhere before, about somewhere I lived for a long time called Akure. One day, the whole of the town went into uproar. A brother used to do morning cry in front of a shrine everyday at about 5 a.m.
One day, all the people in the shrine came out, called him and told him that they did not have any problem with him but that they wanted him to stop passing through that way. He refused and said that the Holy Ghost did not ask him to stop going through that path. The next day when he got there, about 21 of them came out naked and began to issue incantation against him. He started speaking in tongues. When they noticed that the incantations had no effect on him, they resorted to a physical assault of his person.
Another brother saw him and ran to the church where a service was going on and soon, members of the church arrived there and the shrine with all kinds of tongues.
Eventually, the town crier arrived and said that the king needed to see the quarrelling parties immediately. This incident caused a serious uproar because those who served the idols and offered sacrifices in the shrine wanted to see their gods in action. Those who had surrendered their lives to Jesus also wanted to see His much talked about awesome power in physical manifestation. The king later decided that the Christians should follow their Jesus while the shrine worshippers should call on their own gods.
He stressed that the land belongs to everybody and anyone could take whatever road he or she chooses. The beauty of the incident was that many of those who came out naked gave their lives to Jesus because they could not understand why their incantations did not work.
“Every incantation of darkness against my destiny, die, in the name of Jesus.”
WHO ARE THE OPPRESSORS?
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There are very many of them. The way things are going on in our country now, we need a lot of prayer if our people don’t want to become an example of the proverbial saying that “A knife was put in the center of what bound us together and things have fallen apart.” Many lives in our country today are under oppression and they need God before it is too late. National oppression is as a result of individual oppression. If there is individual deliverance, there will be national deliverance. The oppressors include:
PROBLEM EXPANDERS
These powers climb on top of problems already on ground and begin to expand them. Somebody might already be in trouble with household wickedness and the devil, wanting to destroy him, propels him to annoy a genuine man of God who now issues a curse upon his head. For example, Gehazi was already battling with covetousness and the problem expanders came upon him and added leprosy to it. I pray that any power enlarging any problem in your life shall die, in the name of Jesus.
STAR HUNTERS
Every man has a star and if the enemy can hunt down your star, you are in trouble. You will undergo constant oppression. An occultic man came to church to give his testimony. He had already surrendered his life to Jesus. He arrived at the pulpit but instead of talking, he broke down at the altar and started crying. He was asked what was wrong. When he got control of himself, he told the congregation to stand up and help him pray some prayers.
He said on his way to the crusade, he saw a boy with tattered dress sitting under a bridge. He said he recognized the boy, that on the day the boy was named, he was there and there were four stars on the boy’s head and he took them all away. Now, he felt very bad because he was the one that destroyed the life of that boy. He asked the congregation to pray that the stars be returned to the boy and there would be a divine rearrangement in his life.
“Thou star of my life, reject the prison of darkness, in the name of Jesus.”
DESTINY KILLERS
When a person’s destiny is killed, he will suffer from oppression. When
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your life is not going in the right direction, the enemy has the right to oppress you.
EVIL SPIES
These come to spy and monitor your progress. I was at the church one afternoon when somebody brought a dozen chairs for the anointing service. This fellow was very happy. He said before he came to Mountain of Fire, he wore one shirt and a pair of trousers for six months. But now, we could see the way he was dressing expensively. He said he had some evil people in his house who kept reporting to the devil that he was making progress in his endeavours and everything had been going back to zero point. I pray that every power monitoring your progress shall be blinded, in the name of Jesus.
HEAD MANIPULATOR
Consider the case of a well-groomed marriage which suddenly became a living hell. The husband became a dog and the wife a cat. They used to agree before, but now they have agreed to disagree. A student might be the best in school but all of a sudden, he moves to the tail of the class where he battles to become the last runner-up.
MONEY SWALLOWERS
They wait for you to invest, they watch the interest grow and when it is time for you to reap your harvest, they move in and swallow everything. They are the types of forces that feed on their hosts from time to time. They are not permanent parasites but they come when the harvest is near. I pray that all money swallowers shall vomit all they have eaten, in the name of Jesus.
PROGRESS ARRESTERS
The victim moves slowly for a while, then all of a sudden, he is arrested and he becomes confused.
SATANIC MINISTERS
In this our generation more than in any other, satanic ministers are more rampant. They are the group that say, “Thus saith the Lord,” when the Lord does not say anything. They are the ones Jesus warned about when he said,
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“In the last days, many shall come in my name performing miracles and deceiving many.” They will end up in hell. Do you know that no matter how powerful your church is, you will still find someone who will take you to the house of a herbalist if you want to go there?
POVERTY ACTIVATORS
These powers activate poverty out of apparent wealth and affluence. They make a man lose his divine favour before they plunder his goods. Most of the time, they are programmed against a person over a period and the fellow whom they are draining does not realise he is being drained until it is too late. He then begins to run helter-skelter, looking for a solution. They are very wicked powers and are no respecters of persons. They move in over a period of time, operate and move out suddenly.
COFFIN SPIRITS
These spirits come in through fear. They first of all withdraw your peace and you become restive. The growing fear becomes a voice which continues to implant the spirit of death. At every point, even when it is a common headache, the person sees death approaching. Some cases are so bad that the victims see the coffins coming to them. I pray that every coffin spirit in your life shall die, in the name of Jesus.
VAGABOND ANOINTING
The victim becomes a wanderer, roaming all over the place without a focus, aim or objective. Just like the wind blows and we don’t know where it is coming from or where it’s going, so does a person with vagabond anointing wander. It’s a pity that many who are possessed by this spirit are not even aware. It destroys destinies and puts the people in bondage.
SPIRITS OF DEATH AND HELL
These spirits are bent on killing people and sending them to hell fire. That’s why Jesus died and went to hell and it is written in Revelation 1:8:, I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.
Jesus went to hell, fought with the devil and collected the keys of death and hades, and so He is in charge. All you need to do is get connected to the One who holds the keys and you will become free. You shall not die but live
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to declare the works of God, in the name of Jesus.
RAIN OF AFFLICTION
This force torments people. Some victims have big files in hospitals. But it is written that, as children of the Most High, by the stripes of Jesus we are healed. So we have no reason to be afraid of the devil. I pray that every rain of affliction will backfire, in the name of Jesus.
STRANGE MONEY
Once you get this kind of money and it touches your own money, your money disappears in a mysterious way. You won’t know what happened to your money. You must be very careful about those from whom you collect money. Plead the blood of Jesus on any balance of money you receive and pay your tithes regularly and faithfully. Your tithe is one tenth of your income, but wise people pay more.
WITCHCRAFT HANDWRITING
Some people sleep and when they wake up there are scratches all over their bodies. The devil gives such evil marks to people so he can manipulate their lives. They are signatures of the devil over his own properties.
SATANIC ARROWS AND BULLETS
These are fired at people from different directions. They are carriers of problems, diseases and troubles. When the bible talks about the arrows that fly by day and the fiery darts of the enemy, it is referring to satanic arrows and bullets. The blood of Jesus which speaks better things than the blood of Abel will keep you from the roach of these devil.
DESERT SPIRITS
These spirits cause whatever you do or you are involved in to become desolate like a dry land. The life of the victim becomes an arid region where nothing seems to work right. The dews of heaven and the rains of heaven are completely prevented from falling on such a life by desert spirits.
EVIL MARK
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This is a mark of dis-favour and oppression. Anywhere the victim goes, he does not find favour or mercy. Everyone else would be allowed to go, but that fellow with the evil mark will be detained. When it is the person’s turn for something, the thing goes upside down. Try as you may to help such a person, as long as the mark is still there, nothing can be done.
CONTENDERS WITH ANGELS OF BLESSINGS
These are the kind of contenders that stopped the angel sent to Daniel for 21 days. He prayed and God answered, but the prince of Persia refused to let the angel go until angel Gabriel came from heaven to help the angel. These contenders hold people’s blessings and prevent them from achieving their goals.
BUSINESS BEWITCHMENT
It possesses the goods before they enter the market. People would search through the whole town looking for these goods but once they reach the market, no one would be interested because this oppressing spirit has possessed it.
MARRIAGE KILLERS
A research showed that 25 per cent of the women in psychiatric hospitals are there because of marital stress. Marriage is an institution created by God. Two people (a male and a female) are to come together to live as one to the glory of God and for the purpose of procreation. Like he challenges other institutions of God, the devil has also attacked marriages, right from the time of Adam and Eve up till today.
CHILDREN KILLERS
These prevent children from, even, entering the wombs of their mothers. When the children enter, they try to snuff life out of them before they are born.
SATANIC PRAYERS
There are churches of satan all over the places. These days, people pray these prayers to the devil to strengthen him to fight against Christians, but our God is more than able to deal with him.
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TERRITORIAL DEMOTION
It is impossible to prosper in certain areas. Even if you had so much before you moved into such places, the forces of demotion will not allow you to prosper there. They suffocate all forms of progress.
POCKET WITH HOLES
There are pockets that have holes. No matter how hard you try to safeguard what belongs to you, it keeps disappearing or slipping out of your hands.
DESTRUCTIVE INCANTATIONS DEMON IDOLS DREAM MANIPULATORS
These enter into people’s dream and make them experience practical nightmares that are horror. They never dream of heaven or prosperity, but of torture and masquerades that continue to oppress them. Some people’s cases are so serious that they are even afraid to sleep.
UNFRIENDLY FRIENDS
This is terrible because those whom you call your close friends are the ones that go behind you to carefully plan your downfall. Some appear to be caring and loving, but are more wicked than the devil himself.
HOUSEHOLD WICKEDNESS
The Bible says that the enemies of a man are the members of his household and those he loves are the ones he should fear the most. It happened to Samson when Delilah got his secret and traded him to the Philistines. It also happened to Joseph when his brothers sold him to the Ishmeelites who took him to Egypt.
The forces of oppression are doing a lot of havoc. The Bible says, “Surely oppression maketh a wise man mad.”
WHAT TO DO
Decide that you will take your circumstances into your hands – you cannot be delivered until you decide wholeheartedly to fight and say, ‘Enough is enough.’ Take that decision right now in your mind.
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You must exhibit holy violence, a higher madness to deliver your destiny from the hands of the oppressors.
Pray barricading prayers so that the oppressors will not be able to disgrace you.
Somebody said that for any success you want to achieve in life, to win a race, pass an exam excellently or to rise in your career, you definitely need a little bit of madness.
PRAYER POINTS
Every power that wants to swallow my destiny, what are you waiting for? Die, in the name of Jesus.
Every agenda of oppression for my life, I bury you today, in the name of Jesus.
Every oppressor of the night, what are you waiting for? Die, in the name of Jesus.
By reason of the anointing, every yoke in my life, break, in the name of Jesus.
Anointing that breaks the yoke, break my yoke, in the name of Jesus.
Yoke-breaking power of the Holy Ghost, fall upon my life, in the name of Jesus.