Who Hath Bewitched You?
GALATIANS 3:1
1 ¶ O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?
Take a text from that reading…
Who Hath Bewitched You
Study in the book of Galatians
The letter written by the Apostle Paul to the Galatians was written somewhere around AD58, so the first age of the Ephesian Church age had already commenced, where “grievous wolves” (as Paul called them) who were receiving their anointing from the white horse rider (the Devil) were already among the people of God bringing confusion among them to deceive them by what seemed like innocent teachings, but their teachings were false because they were contrary to the word of God that had been given by that first church age messenger – Paul.
GALATIANS 3:1 Read again
1 ¶ O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you (in other words, “Who has put an evil spell on you.” Another translation says – “Who has hypnotized you,” people become hypnotized by hearing certain words spoken to them, and they yield their spirit to those words in agreement, and then they become controlled by that spirit – that is what some of the music is doing in this age, it has hypnotized the people to cause them to act in a certain way), that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?
**In other words - If Christ by his work on the cross has paid the full and complete price for your salvation, then who has caused you to try to mix some of the previous dispensational teachings of the law from the previous age with the new covenant of grace – so Paul is dealing with this problem in the Galatian churches.
**Anything that takes your faith away from the pure word of God is a bewitchment, it is the spirit of the white horse rider), and it will cause you to become backslidden, and according to the scripture you will become foolish.
PROVERBS 14:7-15
7 Go from the presence of a foolish man, when thou perceivest not in him the lips of knowledge. (All true knowledge must be in agreement with the word of God)
8 The wisdom of the prudent is to understand his way: but the folly of fools is deceit. (Fools are people who become deceived in their understanding)
9 Fools make a mock at sin: but among the righteous there is favour.
10 The heart knoweth his own bitterness; and a stranger doth not intermeddle with his joy.
11 The house of the wicked shall be overthrown: but the tabernacle of the upright shall flourish.
12 There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. (Your subconscious mind is totally capable of believing in things that are completely wrong, and that will lead you to death and destruction)
13 Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful; and the end of that mirth is heaviness.
14 The backslider in heart shall be filled with his own ways: and a good man shall be satisfied from himself.
15 The simple believeth every word: but the prudent man looketh well to his going.
Read last verse again…
PROVERBS 14:15
15 The simple believeth every word: but the prudent man looketh well to his going.
***Words produce ideas, and so words and ideas lead you in certain directions and down certain pathways of going, and so we need to always ask ourselves a question - what direction is this word or idea taking me? It is taking me closer to Christ, or further away from Christ.
***Look at the direction that the serpent’s words and ideas took Eve in.
And then look at the direction that the word that God sent to this generation has taken the bride, and then in contrast, look at the words and ideas of where some of the politicians that have led us to in this age that have opposed the word of God – look where those words and ideas have taken us as a nation and a people.
GALATIANS 3:1
1 ¶ O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you…
The Galatian churches namely Antioch of Pisidia, Iconium, Lystra and Derbe) were founded by Paul at his first visit when he was detained among them by sickness - Galatians 4:13.
“Galatia” meaning the "land of the Galli, the Gauls". These Galatians were in fact Gauls
- The Roman province of Galatia may be roughly described as the central region of the peninsula of Asia Minor. It derived its name from the Gallic or Celtic tribes. The Galatia of the New Testament was really the "Gaul" of the East. The people have always been described as "susceptible of quick impressions and sudden changes.
This word “Bewitched you” - in the Greek is probably connected in origin with the Latin word from which is derived our own English word "fascinate”, or “fascinated” – “who has fascinated you with words of bewitchment and cast an evil spell on you so that now you don’t believe the original word of the messenger for your age that birthed you into the light of the age, but now you have become foolish and unwise because you have let yourselves become deceived away from the message of grace”.
The cross of Christ had been "evidently set forth" before the Galatians, but some evil fascination (that of their Judaizing teachers – teaches of men from a previous age and dispensation of the Mosaic law that were trying to mix some of their old teaching in with the new of Christ’s work on the cross as a means of salvation) had drawn away their eyes from looking upon the supreme sacrifice of Christ as the full work of redemption, and held them fixed upon another object - they became fascinated by something else that took their attention like a little child being distracted.
****I am saying this because we as individuals can often get distracted from the simplicity of the full and complete work of what Christ has done for us at Calvary because we also try to bring in preconceived ideas of righteous living from the realms of our own conscience and culture into the mix as a means of our own personal salvation. Christ’s work on the cross plus our own good deeds and behaviour.
Who hath bewitched you..?
***Spells are casted on people by words that convey ideas that are contrary to the word of God, and because your subconscious mind will believe almost anything that you feed into it by the way of words and ideas - and that is OK if it is the word of God, but if you are feeding on things that are in disagreement with the word even slightly, then that can become a big problem for you, because you cannot stop that from affecting your subconscious faith realm, and that is how we can become bewitched and foolish.
That is how Eve became foolish, because she was led away with an idea that was contrary to the word of God. When she finally realised that she had been “scammed” by the serpent, only then did she realised how foolish she had been.
*Notice – that Galatians is placed just before Ephesians, so these two books are placed together because after the book of Galatians, Ephesians shows us a people that go on to possess their full inheritance of the promise of the word, but these Galatians have fallen short of the promise because of distractions and fascinations of other things which cause them to err from the true doctrine of grace when they begin to mix the law of works of circumcision and the keeping of holy days etc. together with grace as to the means of salvation.
II CORINTHIANS 11:2-4
2 For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. (A virgin that has not been tampered with by the false ideas of man)
3 But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
4 For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him.
So Paul understanding this is calling these Galatians “foolish” because they knew the truth but then they let false and fascinating words lead them into unbelief of the word of God by thinking that they had to add something else to the work of Christ.
***So this spirit of deceit that Paul was dealing with in his letter to the Galatian churches of that first church age is also the same spirit today in this age, and so the word that defeated that spirit then must also be the same word that will have to deal with the same spirit in this age because all these early churches of the Ephesian church age were a prophecy of the churches and there condition in the Laodicean age.
***If there were people under the first messenger bewitch, then there will be also be people under this last day messenger that will also be bewitch – so Paul is dealing with this in a certain way to combat this spirit of the enemy, and so we must learn from this and also deal with this in this age in the same way that he dealt with it then, and that was to bring the people into a deeper and fuller revelation of the message of GRACE.
GALATIANS 3:1
1 ¶ O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you..?
He is asking them a question – you have become foolish because you have been drawn away from the word to believe something else.
*Any thought or distraction that takes us away from the true thought of the word of God is the influence of the white horse rider, and so Paul is showing us in the book of Galatians how to deal with it - it is because of bewitchment that we are lead away from the truth, so the answer is to combat this is to put in more truth. Meal in the pot was the answer to heal the pot that was poisoned.
II KINGS 4:38-41
38 ¶ And Elisha came again to Gilgal: and there was a dearth in the land; and the sons of the prophets were sitting before him: and he said unto his servant, Set on the great pot, and seethe pottage for the sons of the prophets.
39 And one went out into the field to gather herbs, and found a wild vine, and gathered thereof wild gourds his lap full, and came and shred them into the pot of pottage: for they knew them not.
40 So they poured out for the men to eat. And it came to pass, as they were eating of the pottage, that they cried out, and said, O thou man of God, there is death in the pot. And they could not eat thereof.
41 But he said, Then bring meal (Meal is Christ, and Christ is the word). And he cast it into the pot; and he said, Pour out for the people, that they may eat. And there was no harm in the pot.
***When someone unbeknown throws poison into your own personal pot, and your pot becomes bewitched, then the way to heal it is by putting in the truth of the word.
THE.FLASHING.RED.LIGHT.OF.THE.SIGN.OF.HIS.COMING_ JEFF.IN V-5 N-4 SUNDAY_ 63-0623E
131 Here some time ago, in Los Angeles, I was waiting, or was out at the campgrounds. I was riding up the road. And a--a little lady, a pretty little girl, very pretty, was going up the road. And I thought, "She must be going to a show." And she had on a little frontier clothes, just about--about a six or eight-inches-wide across the front of her, and a little three-or four-inch fringe hanging. And up high on her body, a little spot, just about enough that you could wad up and shut every bit of it up in your fist, hanging across her this way. With a cowboy hat on, and a pair of boots with tassels on them. And a very attractive, I could see where any young man would slide brakes and everything, to stop to her, going twisting up the road.
132 And I was fixing to turn to the campground, and I went up towards the campgrounds. And I started to turn around, to go back. I thought I'd stop, say, "Young lady, I wish to speak to you in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Though you be a pretty girl, there is no doubt about that, though you have a figure that would probably... You, you want to hear the brakes whine. Do you realize that that spirit that's making you do that will drive you to a devil's hell where you'll suffer through the ages that is to come? Do you realize that that pretty, little formed body, and them well-set cheeks and hair, and so forth, and red lips, maybe in--in another six months the worms will be crawling in and out of that well-formed body, out here in the dust? And that soul that stays in there, today, will be in a devil's torment."
133 Then something stopped me, as if God would say, "If you do that, they'll lock you down yonder in jail." See? There you are. Then I seen Billy come out and motion, it was time to come. I hear them singing Only Believe.
134 Oh, my! How can people be bewitched in such stuff as that? Is because they disregard the Word of God.
135 And another thing, is ministers behind the platform, who is associated in these organizations, who read That and know It, are forbidden to say anything about It, because they'll drive their congregation away from them then. And the churches are looking for members. But God is looking for born-again saints of the living God, that will shine as the stars. God help us to be honest and tell the Truth, what Jesus Christ said. But that's the day we're living in. That's the signs that Jesus said would be, and we see it right before us.
136 Look now, and Jude the 7th chapter again, "Sodom and Gomorrah." Oh, my, what an awful thing! Unmarried to women, "going after strange flesh." A man that's married to his wife, they're--they're not no longer two, they're one. And a man that'll run out after another woman, he automatically separates himself from his wife. And a woman that runs out with another man, she is dead to her husband. She's denied her own flesh; she's cut away from him. That's right. In the Day of Judgment, will have to answer for it.
137 But today they don't want to hear a Message like that. The people don't want to hear That. They want to be tickled in their ears. Exactly what the Holy Spirit told me the day I laid that cornerstone there, said to:
Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season;...
For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall... heap for themselves together teachers, having itching ears;
... and shall be turned from the truth, to fables.
***So people that are turned from truth to fables – or a church or a nation or an individual that is turned from truth to fables - it is the same pattern of the Galatian group who became foolish. So the remedy is also the same, and that is to put more of the word in by taking the people deeper in the clarity of the truth of the word – and that is what the message of the hour has done and is doing in this age.
THE.FLASHING.RED.LIGHT.OF.THE.SIGN.OF.HIS.COMING_ JEFF.IN V-5 N-4 SUNDAY_ 63-0623E
141 Jezebel refused to hear the Word of the Lord. She wouldn't want to call that old fuzzy-looking preacher, Elijah, her pastor. But he was her pastor, anyhow. Right. God sent him, and he bellowed out his message. Though uneducated, they don't know where he come from or where he went to. He came on the scene with the Word of the Lord. He sent his message, that he preached, and he condemned everything there was, called sin. That, that modern Jezebel, had switched and bewitched the people under the witchcraft of her powers until the whole nation was corrupted, and Elijah stood alone out there on the mountain. God said, "Elijah, don't think that. I've got seven thousand down there that's honest in heart, yet." That's his second pull, and the third one went back for them.
142 But remember, God was merciful, and He--He... And Elijah's message condemned that unbelieving generation. Noah's message condemned that generation, and brought judgment upon those who refused to hear it, and deliverance to those who believed it. "And as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the coming of the Son of man."
SATAN'S.EDEN_ JEFF.IN V-2 N-20 SUNDAY_ 65-0829
76 Now, Satan, this deceiver, as spoke of in Matthew 24:24, with so much deceit. Now, we find that by his gospel programs of knowledge, better education, higher ethics, civilization, and so forth, has bewitched the people that wants to serve God, into believing his lie.
77 Eve did not want to do that, but he showed her how it was more wisdom in it. She didn't know; she wanted to know. She didn't understand, but she wanted to understand. And God told her not to try to understand.
78 How can I understand any of these things? I cannot understand them. I believe them. I don't have to understand them. God is faith, and not understanding. We just believe what He said.
ACTS 8:9-11
9 But there was a certain man, called Simon, which beforetime in the same city used sorcery, and bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one:
10 To whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, This man is the great power of God.
11 And to him they had regard, because that of long time he had bewitched them with sorceries. (Sorceries = Magic arts) Magic is usually an impersonation of the supernatural – in other words, it looks like the supernatural but it is only a trick and not the real thing, but your mind and especially your subconscious realm is tricked into thinking that it is.
***Today we have a movie world this is becoming more and more advanced in CGI (computer generated imagery) – special visual effects created by computer software to make things look like the supernatural when in fact it is all just made up trickery, so it is another form of sorceries, a modern form of sorceries – but yet even though the people know that it’s all made up, they are still so fascinated that they worship and make cult followings of things that they know are completely fictional.
****People are so easily fascinated and willingly bewitched in this generation – they become so hypnotised and many spells are put on them that turns them from the truth to fables, and then they have no time for the word of God because their itching ears are being scratched by special visual effects and the wisdom of man.
II TIMOTHY 4:1-5
1 ¶ I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom;
2 Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.
3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; (Satisfy my listening ears with teachings that will scratch me in the way to appeal to my desire for the supernatural but without any truth attached to it)
4 And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. (Fictional stories)
5 But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry.
Scofield’s note on Galatians
I. The law of Moses, Summary:
(1) The Mosaic Covenant was given to Israel in three parts:
*the commandments, expressing the righteous will of God Exodus 20:1-26,
*the "judgments," governing the social life of Israel Exodus 21:1-24:11,
*and the "ordinances," governing the religious life of Israel ; Exodus 24:12; 31:18.
(2) The commandments and ordinances were one complete and inseparable whole. When an Israelite sinned, he was held "blameless" if he brought the required offering Luke 1:6; Philippians 3:6.
(3) Law, as a method of the divine dealing with man, characterized the dispensation extending from the giving of the law to the death of Jesus Christ Galatians 3:13,14,23,24.
(4) The attempt of legalistic teachers (e.g.) Acts 15:1-31; Galatians 2:1-5, to mingle law with grace as the divine method for this present dispensation of grace, brought out the true relation of the law to the Christian.
II. The Christian doctrine of the law:
(1) Law is in contrast with grace. Under the latter God bestows the righteousness which, under law, He demanded Exodus 19:5; John 1:17. (See Scofield "Romans 3:21") . ; Romans 10:3-10; 1 Corinthians 1:30.
(2) The law is, in itself, holy, just, good, and spiritual Romans 7:12-14.
(3) Before the law the whole world is guilty, and the law is therefore of necessity a ministry of condemnation, death, and the divine curse Romans 3:19; 2 Corinthians 3:7-9; Galatians 3:10.
(4) Christ bore the curse of the law, and redeemed the believer both from the curse and from the dominion of the law Galatians 3:13; 4:5-7.
(5) Law neither justifies a sinner nor sanctifies a believer Galatians 2:16; 3:2,3,11,12.
(6) The believer is both dead to the law and redeemed from it, so that he is "not under the law, but under grace" Romans 6:14; 7:4; Galatians 2:19; 4:4-7; 1 Timothy 1:8,9.
(7) Under the new covenant of grace the principle of obedience to the divine will is inwrought Hebrews 10:6. So far is the life of the believer from the anarchy of self-will that he is "inlawed to Christ" 1 Corinthians 9:21 and the new "law of Christ" ; Galatians 6:2; 2 John 1:5 is his delight; while, through the indwelling Spirit, the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in him ; Romans 8:2-4; Galatians 5:16-18. The commandments are used in the distinctively Christian Scriptures as an instruction in righteousness ; 2 Timothy 3:16; Romans 13:8-10; Ephesians 6:1-3; 1 Corinthians 9:8,9.
Scofield’s note on Galatians
Christian character is not mere moral or legal correctness, but the possession and manifestation of nine graces:
*Love, joy, peace - character as an inward state;
*Longsuffering, gentleness, goodness - character in expression toward man;
*Faith, meekness, temperance-- character in expression toward God.
Taken together they present a moral portrait of Christ, and may be taken as the apostle's explanation of Galatians 2:20 "Not I, but Christ," and as a definition of "fruit" in John 15:1-8 This character is possible because of the believer's vital union to Christ ; John 15:5; 1 Corinthians 12:12,13 and is wholly the fruit of the Spirit in those believers who are yielded to Him. Galatians 5:22,23.
“O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you…”
***God has sent a message in this day to take us deeper in the revelation of the word than we have ever been before, and that is what keeps away the deception and the bewitchment from us in this hour.