The Prince of the Power of the Air. Part 1

Praise the Lord. Welcome to The Sound of Faith. I'm Sharon Knotts thanking you for joining us today because we know faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Today's message is a panoramic view of the evil influences and supernatural authorities driving our current chaotic culture, especially the anti-Christian America media. The Prince of the Power of the Air.

No, get ready. And here we are in Ephesians chapter 2 verse 1. The Spirit that now works in the children of disobedience. So we know that we were born dead.

Amen? Everybody here was born dead, spiritually speaking. We were all born in sin shape and into sin and iniquity. And our whole life until we came to Christ, whatever age that may have been indifferent for each one here, I'm sure. Until that time, we were under the influence, the rule and the dominion of an evil spirit that's now working in the children of disobedience.

Those were all present tenses. Past tenses was good for us when we were, but the fact is even now there's a spirit that's working in the children of disobedience. When we were under that influence before our salvation, we walked according to the course of this world. We walked according to this dispensation, the age of this world, the rule, the agenda of the Prince of the Power of the Air. Now the word power here in Greek is exousia which we all know means authority. We walk under his authority.

Amen? He had rule over us. He is a prince and that is a strong Greek word archon and it means just what it says.

He's a prince. He has authority over a dominion and the dominion that we see here that the Prince of the Power of the Air has is the air. And in the Greek, the word is a-e-r, air.

We bring it over a-i-r, but it's air and it refers to the atmosphere. Amen? If we would flip over to chapter six and look at verse 12, which we all know well, but we'll read it. Ephesians 6 12, for we wrestle not against flesh and blood. We're not wrestling against people.

Amen? But against principalities. That means princes that have dominion. Against powers.

Exousia. Amen? Authorities. Against the rulers of the what? The darkness of this world. There's darkness in this world and there are rulers that are ruling in the darkness of this world. It's plural so we know there are territories where certain rulers are ruling, but they're ruling over darkness. Amen?

Against spiritual wickedness in high places and it would have been better there if it had been translated in the heavenlies because that's where Satan's realm is operating. I know we always say he's in the pit. Not yet. Not yet. It's coming.

It's coming. Amen? And like my dad, brother Hardy, always used to say, we're not going to quit. Well, he actually, he said we ain't going to quit. Let me be, you know, authentic.

Authentic Archie Hardy. We ain't going to quit till we put him in the pit. Amen? And we know he always used to say, he told the Lord, if you don't already have somebody, I want to be a candidate to help throw them in the pit.

I'm sure a lot of folks want to be that one. Amen? Amen. So we're wrestling.

We're in a wrestling match. Amen? And it's against the spiritual wickedness and the rulers of the darkness of this world. And spiritual wickedness in the heavens is what we are up against. So this person, the prince of the power of the air, of this atmosphere, of this realm in the heavens where Satan has his domain, which we know is not where God is. God is in the highest. Amen? The third heaven where we know both Paul and John went and had revelations. Amen?

And told us about their going there. But this person is also called the prince of this world in John 14 30. He's called the God of this world in 2 Corinthians 4 4. And he's called the prince of demons.

And Jesus said that. He's the prince of demons that Jesus said in Matthew 12 24. This is none other than Satan, the adversary of God. Amen? We know we're told in first John, the first chapter, God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. Satan is his adversary, the prince of darkness. Not only does he exercise authority over this world and over its systems, he exercises authority over the air, the lower atmosphere, the lower heavens. And you know, in our present digital age, almost everything that we do is controlled in some way by radio waves and satellite beams.

Amen? You know, think about your TV, all the electronics in your house, your computer, your cell phones. I mean, people have become so digitized today. They have refrigerators that tell them when they're out of mayonnaise.

Did you know there are such things? I don't have one, but some people cannot turn their lights on in their house unless they tell Alexa to do it. And you can laugh about that, but that happened to my mom. So Todd is trying to help my mom out and you know, she knows nothing about digital stuff. She can't even open email.

Okay. But Todd is trying to help her out. And of course, you know, he's going to know everything there is to know electronically. So he fixed it so that in her living room, all she had to do was say, turn on the light. Well, something happened with her power or her internet coming into her home.

And so it wouldn't work. And did you know that she could not walk over there and turn it on manually? And she kept telling everybody, you know, me or Benny or Sarah's my, somebody needs to come over here. I'm sitting in the dark and we're all thinking to ourselves, why are you sitting in the dark? Why don't you just get up and turn on the light? But he had that particular lamp that's right next to her TV chair so that you had to do it by command. That's the age that we're living in.

Amen. And you know, there are some people that their whole house is digitized like that. And so everything in your home is coming to you and coming to us by some kind of wave that's in the atmosphere. You know, how does that picture on your TV get there?

There's waves in the atmosphere and beams coming down from satellite. And you know, the generation that's coming up now, the millennials, that's all they know. They'd have no idea what life is without all of that.

Right? And this domain is being controlled by the prince of the power of the air. The spirit of Satan is operating through the authorities and operating through the control of much of our media. Now you wonder why you see and hear all the ungodly things that are on the media. The anti-god, the anti-Christian, the anti-bible, the anti-faith.

Let's just say anti-good because the ones that are in power and position have the spirit of the prince of the power of the air operating through them to bring forth his agenda. Amen. And that's why things are becoming increasingly hostile towards Christian and biblical teachings and biblical values and morals and therefore people of faith. Why is there so much hostility? We live in a nation that says everybody has a right to believe what they want to believe. You know, I can't make you believe what I believe and you can't make me believe what you believe and that's okay. Everyone has that right but our right is being systematically, our right is being eroded. Amen.

And they are now actively, not undercover, not covertly, but actively and overtly they are trying to silence preachers of the gospel. Think now some of you are my age or around my age, those of you are real young, just you know, maybe sometimes you go on some of those cable TVs and you watch some of those old time shows that when television started in the 1950s, you had shows like I Love Lucy. And you know, it's still a classic. Amen. I Love Lucy and Father Knows Best and Ozzie and Harriet and those kind of shows. Amen. They were all family oriented. Family oriented.

But think about today. The shows have so much sexuality in them and not only that, many of the shows belittle the family structure. Either they don't have a father at all in the show or if they do, the kids and the wife berate him. Put him down.

He's made to look like a dunce. Disrespectful. Amen. Imagine if back in the time of Father Knows Best, if one of the daughters got pregnant and had an abortion back in the 1950s. Amen.

No, it would have been absolutely unheard of. See, it started off a subtle erosion, subtly, but now it's overt and very pervasive. In the last year, I'm telling you, since the new shows have come on for this last year, I'm sure you're going to agree with me. The LGBT agenda has managed to so influence the producers and the writers. You can't watch one show without them putting in the story some kind of homosexual relationship. And folks, it doesn't have to have anything to do with the storyline at all. It actually can be a little awkward to work it in because it doesn't really go with the storyline.

But they have to put it in there. Commercials now. Commercials. You can say, well, your children should be up at nine o'clock. Well, there's commercials now without right homosexual contact.

I'm going to use the word contact. Amen. They work it in.

Somehow. And you would get the idea from the way this is being pushed in in every show, you would get the idea that half of the country's gay. And that's not true. It's a very small minority. But you wouldn't know that based on what you're seeing on television.

Amen. See, it's an attempt to normalize it, to normalize the aberrant lifestyle that's really only of a small minority. You know, the other night, there's a medical show that I follow because I am intrigued by medical shows when they get into this person's got this. And they always usually put in something that you never hear about. And I find it interesting. And so I've been following one of those shows. But the other night when it came on, as soon as it started, the very first opening scene, I thought I had it on the wrong channel. Were two men rolling around in bed in passionate lust to open up this medical show that I've been following. I couldn't believe it. I had to switch the channel for a while and come back and see if it was safe to watch the story that I normally would watch. It was shocking.

And it was cringe-worthy to viewers like me who follow these shows. And all we want to see is the medical issues and the personal interactions that we would come up against that are normal and everyday. Amen. And all the media is getting bolder. And they're pushing the envelope further and further. And they're bowing down to the very powerful LGBT agenda. And little by little, people are becoming accustomed to seeing it.

So that after a while, they won't be so shocked or offended by it. That is what is behind it all. Amen.

And let me tell you folks, the authors and writers of these storylines and story plots are not just Hollywood writers and New York producers. It's the prince of the power of the air who's driving this. They're just his pawns.

Amen. He's behind it. Think about your evening news that you watch every night, especially the 24-hour cable news stations. Folks, let's be honest. They have abandoned journalistic integrity.

They have totally abandoned it. They will print outright falsehoods. It was a day when if a reporter did that and didn't check his facts and print something like that, he would be booted.

He'd be booted out of that job and nobody else would hire him. Amen. There was a day when that would have been the case. But now, when they print outright falsehoods and somebody calls them out on it, they refuse to acknowledge it or correct it.

They let it stand and they come out with some off-the-wall reason. Amen. And when they get away with it, that only makes them more aggressive and more manipulative, hiding the truths and sadly destroying some people's reputations, destroying people's reputations, honest people with their twisted half truths. You know, a half truth is just as dangerous, sometimes more dangerous than a lie because a lie is more easily recognized and proven to be a lie. But when you got a half truth and you go to try to validate it, you can find, well, that part is true, so maybe this part is true. The devil is clever.

Amen. And again, these are all being energized by the prince of the power of the air. Some of the names that some of these news anchors on the cable TV stations call Christians is mind blowing the derogatory things that they say about Christians and Christian leaders. And they spit it out there and nobody calls them down on it. And maybe a bunch of people get on the internet and it'll burn it up saying that you're calling them out, calling them out. They don't care. They don't care if a half a million people get on there and say you lied. They're just going to get back on there next time and say something else.

Amen. Because they have an audience that receives it because they are under the influence of the prince of the power of the air. It's the same way with radio. You know, Christian radio in America has been a staple since January 2nd, 1921 when the first Christian station, let me get the call letters right, KDKA came on the air in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Christian radio.

Amen. And our country was blanketed with Christian radio stations. You know, you could travel across America, east, west, north, south. You could listen to Christian radio the whole trip.

You could go from one station to the next as you went from one territory to another. Amen. Christian radio reigned in America. But let me tell you an interesting fact.

This came out in 2002. In 2002, more Christians listened to Christian radio than even went to church. There were 141 million listeners to Christian radio and there were 132 million Christians who were attending church. That's how prevalent Christian radio has been in America. But folks in recent years, there's been a shift and stations that were once Christian broadcasters for decades and decades are now being sold and bought up by secular buyers who are changing the formats from Christian radio to secular radio.

It is happening continually. Even our radio ministry, Sound of Faith, has been hit hard in just the last few months and we have lost three major markets. The Norfolk, Virginia area, the Dallas, Texas area which is huge and for which we got a lot of support.

And believe it or not, the Portland, Oregon area from which we did a lot of support. All three of those stations have been sold and the Christian format abandoned. And so, of course, I'm scrambling to try to find stations to replace them.

There either are none or maybe one or two and they're already completely filled and sold out because everybody's trying to jump on another station too. Amen. And this is happening. And what does that mean? It means scores of preachers, scores of gospel preachers who had these very important outlets to preach the gospel and the message God has given to them to share with the body of Christ. They no longer have an outlet for that message. And it's the prince of the power of the air who is at work to try to do away with Christian radio. Now, people who work all day on a job, they probably are not able to listen to radio. But there are many people that are home and many shut-ins and such that they depend on Christian radio. And maybe you do listen to it on your way to work or your way home, whether it's Christian music you listen to or some teaching of Christian ministries you listen to.

Amen. And this is quickly being abandoned as the prince of the power of the air is invading the territories of Christian radio. And you know, it's the same with all things Wi-Fi that support the internet and online media. Now, you know Wi-Fi uses radio waves to transmit signals between the devices, the computers or whatever it may be. And nearly everyone has a computer in their home. How many here have a computer in your home? Okay, that's just about everybody. And if you don't have a computer in your home, how many at least have a smartphone?

Then in a manner of speaking, you have a computer. Amen. And you know, our lives revolve around them.

Let's face it, now they do. You know, you're always checking this or that or the other on your device or you're doing something yourself on your device. Amen. I mean, come on now, people don't even go to the grocery store anymore. They go online, they go to let's say Walmart website, they go through the groceries, they say I'm on ABCD and then they come to the door and somebody brings groceries out to them.

Or you order takeout food. We're all doing things like this all the time. We probably do it so much that we don't even think about it. What would happen if all of a sudden we couldn't do that? And most people, not everyone, but many people, at least anybody I would say 50 and younger or definitely 40 and younger, have a social media account of some kind.

They're on Facebook or some sort of social media outlet. Amen. And you know what? The good wonderful thing about this is that it gives us the wonderful ability to program Christian messages, songs and such on social media. Amen.

I mean, think about what happened when COVID-19 first hit and we had that huge shutdown when you literally were not supposed to go anywhere. Amen. In the very beginning, back April last year and May last year, and what a blessing it was to be able to get church online. Now, you know, some of you remember that prior to that, we kept telling you all we're going to do live streaming soon. Pretty soon we're going to do live streaming.

But first we've got to paint the ceiling and we got to do this and we got to do that and all these things we had to do and we weren't getting them done that quickly for different reasons. But you know, one day folks, we're going to go on live streaming. Well, we got plunged into live streaming. We weren't ready and we weren't expecting it. And yeah, it was from my kitchen table.

But we didn't miss one Sunday. And let me tell you, it was many struggles in my kitchen. We were using my laptop. The only problem is, is it started getting hot after all that time. And when it started getting hot, it's starting going out. And here I am preaching at the table and Benny's walking over to the refrigerator and getting ice out of the freezer and put it under my computer.

Try to keep it cool so I can finish the message. Amen. And you know, there was just a lot of things with the lighting and with the sound and all kinds of stuff. It was crazy. But what a wonderful privilege that we were still able to preach and be in contact with Faith Tabernacle through this wonderful medium of internet. Amen. And you know, since then, thousands of churches are now live streaming. Let me tell you, when we finally realized we're going to have to get some better equipment than putting ice cubes under your laptop. We got to get a real computer that's made for this and all the stuff that goes with it. And when Benny would be searching to find one, they would be sold out.

He'd go on here, sold out, go there, sold out. Every church in America was jumping in trying to keep contact with their people through the internet. And now, you know, many churches are saying like we did, even when we go back to church, we're going to stay online for those people who really can't come to church. There are people who just can't.

They're in nursing homes or maybe they are home, but they're immobile. And so we're going to continue to minister to them. Amen. And so all of this has been a tremendous, tremendous blessing. We all agree. It's a great blessing. And you know, even you, when you go home today, maybe there's another preacher that you like, you know, that you'd like to watch.

And when you go home, you'll watch the replay. You know, like I like brother Stottlemyre, you know, he live streams. He reminds me of brother Hardy when he was young.

He's like a young brother Hardy going way back. And so, you know, you can watch him later. I'm not sure y'all have ones you love. Amen. So there are many well-known preachers online, not only pastors, but teachers and evangelists and prophets, and they all have something to share with the body of Christ. And I tell you what the devil doesn't like it.

The prince of the power of the air is not cool. With all of these preachers, we got some of our own ministers in the church that have their own nights when they come on. Amen.

And I know you all know who they are and you probably follow them. Amen. What an eye opening word of the Lord, the prince of the power of the air. The course of this world is being controlled by Satan, who is the prince of the power of the air. Our culture and media are fulfilling his evil anti-God agenda. Paul said we're in a cosmic wrestling match against principalities, authorities, the rulers of the darkness of this world and spiritual wickedness in the heavenlies. This refers to the second heavens where Satan rules and to the atmosphere where radio waves, satellites beam down on the earth, generating radio, TV and Internet. The spirit of Satan is operating through much of the media, which has become increasingly hostile towards Christians and biblical morals, calling evil good and good evil.

Darkness is increasing as Satan exerts his authority over the media. The prince of the power of the air can be ordered on CD for a love gift of ten dollars or more for the radio ministry request. S.K. 2 1 9. Mail to Sound of Faith P.O. Box 1 7 4 4 Baltimore, Maryland 2 1 2 0 3.

Or go online to our store sound of faith dot org where MP3s are available. But to order by mail, send your minimum love gift of ten dollars to P.O. Box 1 7 4 4 Baltimore, Maryland 2 1 2 0 3 and request S.K. 2 19. If you enjoy these messages by my father, brother Hardy and myself, please consider tucking in an extra love gift for our radio airtime. We would appreciate your including the call letters of this radio station. Until next time, this is Sharon Nazi Maranatha.