SID: All right, Rabbi Schneider, you told me it is very important for us to understand the distinction between authority and power. Explain that.
RABBI SCHNEIDER: Well Jesus…“All authority,” Jesus said, “on Heaven and Earth has been given to me.” And we were saying before the break, Sid, that we have to know that we have authority in Jesus. Demons will not respond if we’re not standing a position of knowing the authority that Jesus has and knowing that in him we can use that authority. But there is a difference between authority and power. I like to explain it this way. A police officer has authority because of the office that he stands in, and of course, if someone gets pulled over by a car, a police officer gets out of the car, he or she is wearing the badge, often times they’ll have a hat and a uniform which represents their authority. And most people that are pulled over will cooperate with the police officer just because the police officer has authority. But sometimes people won’t cooperate and when people won’t cooperate with the police officer because of the authority, the police officer then has to back up his or her authority with power, whether it be a taser, billy club or whatever that is. And the same is true in dealing with demons. Sometimes demons will just respond to authority. However, some demons will not respond to the authority unless the authority is backed up by power. Authority is given to us automatically when we receive Jesus. But power has to be developed. Remember for example, they came to Jesus and they said, concerning the one that demon had not been driven out of, they said, “Why couldn’t your disciples not drive the demon out?” And Jesus said, “This kind doesn’t come out but by fasting and prayer,” which of course are two means of developing power. So to be effective we want to exercise both the authority that we have, but also develop power, and power comes simply by relying on God, depending on him, walking with him, prayer and all the other disciplines of the faith.
SID: Okay. So people have open doors. How do we close the doors and get rid of these demons?
RABBI SCHNEIDER: Well that’s a great question, and I personally believe that closing the doors often times can be a process. I find in my own life the deeper I get in my walk with Jesus, with Yeshua, the more in my heart I realize I need to repent of. In other words, often time the Lord will start off showing us surface things. But then the deeper we go we see perhaps elements of unforgiveness or pride, or spirit of accusation. And so closing the door involves, number one, repenting of sin continually as the Lord shows us in deeper ways sin within our hearts, areas that we might not know today, but in a year from now, because we’ve grown in grace, we’ll see them.
SID: But you know, in the world Christianity is saying because of a wonderful concept called grace we can go on our merry way, we don’t have to worry about those little sins.
RABBI SCHNEIDER: Yeah. Any truth carried to the extreme becomes a heresy, doesn’t it? Absolutely, we know the first thing that Jesus said was, “Repent, for the Kingdom of God…”
SID: I don’t hear that word much. I don’t go to congregations and the pastor gets up and says, “repent.” You know why? All the people get up and go out, and he wants them to get up and come in. But you know something? Without repentance you won’t even see God.
RABBI SCHNEIDER: Absolutely. And that’s one of the ways that we close the doors and keep demons from getting in. When we repent we close the door, we close out the darkness from our lives.
SID: When you talk to, in the spirit world, to a demon, how do you do that?
SID: You just speak, you don’t speak to them in terms of having a conversation, you speak at them.
SID: At them.
RABBI SCHNEIDER: You speak at them. Absolutely. You’re not looking to converse. I say, “Satan, I reject you. Get out of my head.” It’s just that simple. It gives the direct command to a demon the demon has to obey.
SID: But what happens if sense it didn’t happen immediately? Do you throw in the towel? Do you give up?
RABBI SCHNEIDER: Absolutely not. And that was part of the dream I shared a little earlier. When I grabbed a hold of that demon that was occupying my space, my house, I took a hold of him and I began to punch that demon in the face, and at first it seemed like nothing was happening. It seemed like I had no power. It seemed like all my energy was not having any effect on him. But you know what, I was so committed to getting free, I wasn’t going to stop. And as I persisted and as I kept going, bam, that demon broke. And it’s the same thing with deliverance. We have to be committed to being free and know that we will get free because Jesus said, “If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed.”
SID: You personally battled with something that many of you are battling with right now, a spirit of fear. You think it’s yourself. No, no, no, no, no. It is a spirit of fear. I talked to someone recently, they told me they were afraid to speak in public. You know what I found, Rabbi Schneider?
RABBI SCHNEIDER: What’s that?
SID: Whatever your strength is, it always, you know, like attacked in that area, the person would do wonderful sharing in public. But they wouldn’t even try because they were fearful of it. What would you say?
RABBI SCHNEIDER: Well I would say that, number one, knowing the Word of God, knowing truth and using that truth as a weapon out of our mouth to speak is a key to getting free. The Word of God breaks the power of demons. Jesus, of course we know, defeated the devil in the wilderness and that before by speaking the Word of God. When we know that speaking the Word of God has life in it and we speak it at the demon, at the darkness, the darkness will break, the darkness will bend. It will lose its hold, and more and more we’re going to enter into freedom and into the light. I think it’s important that people recognize that this isn’t always just a one-time quick fix. This is a commitment to being free, knowing you will get free. The principles work. The principles that I keep, Sid, they work.
SID: Tell me how it worked with you, with fear.
RABBI SCHNEIDER: Well how it worked with fear with me is a number of different avenues. Number one, the truth. God began to reveal to me, number one, that the commitment to getting free wasn’t just about my desire to be free, it was about his glory. And then I began to use the Word of God against the devil in the specific areas that Satan was causing fear. In other words, if Satan was causing fear in the area of health I would use the Word of God against Satan in the area of my health. If Satan is using fear in the area of finances, then we use what the Word of God says about finances against Satan in that area. So wherever—
SID: Now when you say use it, what exactly would you do?
RABBI SCHNEIDER: I would quote it, I would, you know, David said he encouraged himself in the Lord. I would speak it to myself, quote it aloud. I would say, “Satan, I reject you, get out of my head.” Then I would replace his lie with the truth, speaking, this is what God’s Word says to myself to encourage my own heart. So I would cast him out and I would affirm myself in the truth.
SID: I would like you to pray right now for the people all over the world watching right now that are looking for help. Pray for them.
RABBI SCHNEIDER: Amen. Father, God, right now in Jesus’ name, I just want to thank you how much you love your children. Father, your word says, behold what manner of love the Father has given unto us that we should be called the children of God and thus we are. And you said, Father, greater is he that’s in us than he that’s in the world, and that this is the victory that’s overcome the world, our faith. Father, we want to thank you right now that in Jesus we already have the victory. Now Father, I speak a word of activation over your people right now that they would realize at a deeper level than ever before that your spirit lives within them, that life is on the inside and that the life that’s in them is greater than the power of darkness that’s outside of them, and that Father, you would activate them out of passivity into activation to use their faith by your spirit with the Word of God, in Jesus name. Satan, I break you off of God’s children’s life in Jesus’ name with the knife of God’s work. I command you to release them right, let them go and in Jesus’ name, I say to you beloved child of God, in Jesus you are free.
SID: Would you say that all believers have to get rid of garbage in their life that was picked up before they were believers or picked up from ancestry, or just a few?
RABBI SCHNEIDER: I think everybody. I think all of us are progressively journeying deeper into freedom and into God’s light. So I think this is for everybody. I think everybody has battles that they need to overcome. You know, Paul said at the very end of his life, “I fought the fight. I’ve run the race and now there’s laid out for me the crown of righteousness.” We all need to be fighting because nobody is yet perfectly free and all of us demand to enter greater freedom and greater peace.
SID: And I speak freedom to you right now. He has a name, Yeshua, Jesus the Messiah. You shall know the truth and the truth, it will set you free.
