So those were early experiences we had, just related to these things. We had another experience at one time where we had a whole group of young people, and they brought some of the music that they were listening to, really heavy bad stuff, and when a couple in our church burnt them, they took a photo of the fire burning, and you could literally see faces in the fire, a quite extraordinary picture. You can see things in the fire as they burnt these things - so demonic spirits get access to buildings, to objects and to people, occasionally to animals. We need to just know what to do. It's not hard, it's really easy. Any person could do it, you just need to know what to do, that's all. So sometimes evil spirits will get into an object because it's been invoked, someone laid hands on it, they carved the idol, laid hands on it, so any object which has been used in idolatry almost certainly will have a spirit attached to it.
If something's been hand carved and is the representation of some God, almost certainly it'll have a spirit has been imparted to it, through the laying on of hands. You've just got to be aware of that. Now wherever a person brings such an object into the house, the demonic spirit can then come and operate against the people in the house. Sometimes people have been involved in the occult in the house, or there's been a trauma, or maybe a murder in the house. Have you ever noticed if there's a murder, often people will just go and burn the house down? Have you ever wondered why on earth would you do that? I mean why would you do that? It's a waste of money, but it's because of an old superstitious fear, that if there's something like that has happened the place is demonised, and the only way to deal with it is to burn it to the ground, put it to judgement by fire. Isn't that an interesting thing?
Now we don't need to do that. We can actually pray and see the house cleansed quite easily, so God warned them not to bring things into the house that were of an occult nature, and He said: if you do it, you'll bring a snare on yourself, so we need to look at how to deal with the house. Common indications that a house needs cleansing are these kinds of things. Here's a few of them. There may be others, but these are the most obvious ones: unexplained noises at night, or sounds at night, voices, someone walking, doors opening and shutting, objects moving, rattling of chains - I haven't heard that one, but I understand that's another one, yeah. Objects moving spontaneously without anyone touching them, spirit beings appearing at night, unexplained areas of coldness in a house, and we're not talking about lack of insulation. We're talking in an area that should be warm, and it's actually quite funny cold, strange atmosphere. I've seen that in some houses.
Constant sickness in a house, once they moved in the house they became constantly sick; constant oppression or heaviness, or even strife and conflicts in the relationships that began when they moved into the house; recurring nightmares, constant turmoil in relationships or children terrified of unseen beings. When we first came here we had major spiritual warfare to break through and see God move, and on more than one occasion our youngest daughter woke up absolutely terrified and obviously seeing spirits, so they would come, and they would enter the house and try and torment the family, and try to wreak havoc in the home. I remember one night I could tell, you hear the sound of her cry. After a while you know your children's cry, and this one, this was a terrified cry. Got out of the bed, straight around in there, grabbed her and put her in bed with us and she was in the bed, and she would look out, then she would suddenly bury herself down, so she could see the spirit. I couldn't see it, but I became immensely aware that the thing was there.
So this was a demonic defilement as a result of engaging in the work of God, and there probably being occult curses directed against us, who knows. Whatever it was, there was a spirit in the house, needed to get him out, and so we had to learn how to pray and how to deal with it. Let's have a look then at how you can deal with it, and I'll show you some things which are obvious things, then some things which are perhaps not so obvious. Deuteronomy 7, Verse 2: When the Lord your God delivers them into your hand, you shall conquer them, utterly destroy them, make no covenant with them nor show mercy. So God delivered His enemies into the hands of Israel, and He required they totally conquer them, so if you ever encounter this, it's your responsibility to totally conquer it, and deal with any defilement. Now the principle causes of defilement are - as far as I'm aware - ungodly objects inside the building; defilement that's been caused by previous occupants of the building, so they were involved in idolatry, had a little altar there or spiritism of some kind; or there's been curses put on the building or the land, often by indigenous people.