“Search the LORD’S book, and read it. Not one of these animals will be missing. Not one will lack a mate,
because the LORD has commanded it, and hisSpirit will gather them together.”
(Isa. 34:16, BBE)
As part of our examination of the symbolic meaning of animals in Scripture, we dedicated last week’s teaching to a testimony in which various strange, animal-like species appear in the spiritual realm. In the Bible, we find “a list of creatures, the greater part of which are matter-of-fact animals or birds … all these creatures are looked upon as more or less demonic” (International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia), and with this as our point of departure we paid particular attention to the vampire and the werewolf, discussed in the light of a drama of strange events that occurred in 2004.
Readers might perhaps remember that the main account was concerned with the death of a young man with the name of Neo, and that he experienced at a camp that his spiritual name is Dragon Slayer. This young man was one of my spiritual sons. Dragon Slayer lived up to his name on a few occasions and dealt with principalities with great authority, especially in the prophetic ministry of individuals who had been kept spiritually captive by it.
Someone prophesied to him that he sees a book in which an animal’s tooth has been pressed into, with blood spurting out as the tooth is further driven into the book. (She then explained that it looked like a scene from a Harry Potter film where the main character drives the tooth of a dragon into a book to thus regain power of a girl who was unconscious after she had tried to enter the chamber of secrets. This action then brought a water snake/dragon from a basin, and it is him that Harry Potter had to fight. Harry Potter then used the defeated dragon’s tooth to press into the book. The further he drives the tooth into the book, and the more blood spurts out, the more power returns to the girl.)
This whole matter gained further dramatic significance when someone mentioned that the leader of the camp, and some of the facilitators, had lost a tooth during the camp, or had experienced tooth problems. Job 13:14 was one of the Scriptures mentioned during the weekend: “Why do I take my flesh in my teeth, and put my life in my hands?” Two facilitators then each brought a large tooth of an animal that they had picked up on the camp site, but which they had felt God say they should hold onto until the right time. We felt that this pointed to the dragon who had been symbolically slain so that the child could be born (Rev. 12).
After the camp, I had a serious conversation with Neo about the nature of the dragon, and that in Rev. 17:8 he is called, “the beast that you saw was, and is not …” He is, in other words, but only if you make him manifest. Because Neo had been rid of the spirit of fear (FEAR = False Evidence Appearing Real) during our deliverance session, I was afraid that the spirit would return in a seven-fold manner (Matt. 12:43-45), as it appears in a very similar form to the dragon in the spiritual realm. I also warned him against the symptoms of his previous life, that depression, insomnia, and inferiority would visit him and that he would need to be more vigilant than ever before, and be ready to slay the dragon within himself first.
During the second phase camp Neo was first ministered to, an indication of the importance of his calling and purpose. But in the time after he fell into a deep depression about his circumstances, and often did not even go to work. It was clear that he had a massive struggle with making good choices, and that he struggled to read the Bible, pray, etc. He even started saying that he no longer believes in God. The animal then started winning more and more ground in his life. He again started using all kinds of pills, and then suddenly developed a big passion for werewolf and vampire films, which he started incessantly watching in the period before his death. He was angry at God and at the world.
One of the prophets came to speak to him during this time, and eventually also told him “to slay the dragon within”. To this he laconically remarked, “I am a hopeless Romantic.”
On Wednesday morning 23 June he died, at the age of 33, in a head-on collision with a truck.
When I heard the news I immediately asked God if it was his time to die, and I received Jer. 15:9: “’She languishes who has borne seven; she has breathed her last; her sun has gone down while it was yet day; she has been ashamed and confounded. And the remnant of them I will deliver to the sword before their enemies,’ says the Lord.”
The day of the funeral I was very upset in my spirit, and I pleaded with God to explain to me what had happened to him. God then said that the key lay in the SMS I had received earlier from GM. Along with this I received Mic. 1:8: “Therefore I will wail and howl, I will go stripped and naked: I will make a wailing like the dragons, and mourning as the owls.” This Scripture is remarkable on a number of fronts: I was in mourning, but the “wail and howl” immediately had me feel that this is a direct word about the involvement of the spirit of the werewolf in this matter. In addition, the use of the word dragon further unsettled me, as I had only actually known the word in the New Testament sense of Revelation. But in two commentaries dragon is explained as most probably translated as wolf, or then, a great mythic sea animal.
The Holy Spirit then said that I need to find out exactly when Neo had died. It was between 7:00 and 7:30. GM’s SMS was sent at 7:12, likely the exact time when Neo died.
GM saw a dictionary entry, which points to the fact that some link or explanation lies in the entry. Possibly then Gouws points to the spiritual father, and that what is implied is that the spirit of Virginia Woolf lays claim to the descendants/sons. Why this is of prophetic importance is linked to the fact that my first spiritual name is Architect, of which the root word is father. I am specifically called as spiritual father, to be instrumental in the reconciliation between the hearts of the fathers and the hearts of the sons, through the spirit of Elijah (Mal. 4:4; Luke 1:17). This is mainly what has been happening at the Elijah camps that have been held since July 2003. We thus have here a demonic spirit that works against the spirit of Elijah, to steal the descendants of God. These descendants are targeted to become BenOni, “the son of my sorrow”. and not BenJamin: “the son of my right hand” (who will reign with Christ) (Gen. 35:18).
Shortly after his first SMS, GM had again sent a message, and asked what the spiritual or symbolic meaning is of the wolf, in the light of the Woolf-reference. At that stage I said that I could only think that it perhaps points to the totem animal of the tribe of Benjamin, which is the wolf (Gen. 49:27), but this did not make much sense. After the funeral, while I was praying, the name Zandile arose in my spirit. This means: “another child/son was added to the many other children”. I then understood that Zandile has the exact same meaning as Joseph (which symbolically points to the spiritual father figure of Benjamin), but in another kingdom. God’s descendants are stolen, in that they became like the werewolf or vampire who bites them, even though they are saved, and thus become sons of sorrow. Job 30:29: “I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls.”
A few days later, when I was sharing these things with GM, I received a late-night phone call from a couple in our group who noted that the woman was immensely tormented by a demonic spirit of which they could not be rid. I asked for discernment, and felt led to ask them if they had recently been watching werewolf or vampire films, to which she acknowledged that she had over the last while experienced an immense desire to watch these films, and had done so regularly. She was tormented by a demon who constantly showed her his teeth, a “marker” of the werewolf and vampire.
When I shared parts of this story with my spiritual inner circle, EV shared a tale of a believer in his previous church, who rebelled against God because of a promise he felt God had not kept, and he challenged God about His actual existence. While he was watching a werewolf video, he experienced that the werewolf entered him. That night he fell into a deep coma and when he woke up, he tried to kill his wife and daughter. After intensive deliverance, the demon left his body.
EV’s wife did not know of the conversation we were having, and was sitting in a coffee shop that same day, recounting the story to her daughter and her friend, when the man to whom this had happened walked in the door, the first time in four years she had seen him. Clearly this is not just coincidence, and God wanted to focus our attention on something of enormous importance.
The spirit of the werewolf/vampire is offered an open door when the following happens in the life of a child of God:
- he/she, as part of a romantic disposition, creates imaginary worlds in which God is not present
- he/she creates a “refuge of lies” in certain facets of his/her life, to which they can escape – this becomes an idol and over time a fortress for demonic working
- he/she becomes inexplicably melancholic, depressed, withdrawn, subject to “a kind of erratic melancholy”
- he/she lives different lives in different spaces: at church he has a certain personality, another with his friends, or at work, in other words: he/she wears a variety of masks, and changes according to them – a type of spiritual split personality
- he/she is fascinated by these prototypes of mythical metamorphosis and spends an unnatural amount of time watching films in which these liminal human-animals are the protagonists
- he/she has an underlying propensity for suicide
- he/she is sometimes aware of the Angel of Death around him
- he/she feeds off the anointing of others.
These elements are known from practical experience with this demon. But is there a Scriptural basis for it? In 1 Cor. 15:32 (KJV) we find this remarkable verse: “If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it me, if the dead rise not?” The meaning of “fought with beasts” is presented in the original language (in Strong) as “thēriomacheō: From a compound of G2342 and G3164; to be a beast fighter (in the gladiatorial show), that is, (figuratively) to encounter (furious men): – fight with wild beasts.” Although it is possible that Paul was thrown into such an arena, it is highly unlikely, as he was Roman. One word in the term does however shed light on its meaning. The word for beast is the same word that is used in the book of Revelation to refer to demonic manifestations of “the great dragon … that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan …” (Rev. 12:9). Clearly this has not only physical significance, but also a pertinent symbolic or spiritual meaning. Paul thus literally fought in the spirit, not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places (Eph. 6:12).
- Selah: What would the meaning of the Scripture masthead be? It has enormous implications.
- Read: 46-50; Ex. 1-4
- Memorise: 49:27 (what beautiful synchronicity!)
