Follow-up question is: Do unbelievers have spiritual gifts?
Ilya, your thoughts? If I can jump in here. Yeah, I believe that we need to first understand and
differentiate between spiritual abilities and spiritual gifts. My personal belief is that as a
human being we are made out of a spirit, soul and body. And non-Christians, they also have spirit,
and because we have spirit our spirit has spiritual eyes, spiritual ears. It has spiritual
senses. And so people, non-Christians can develop spiritual abilities, meaning their spiritual
senses are awakened. And they train their soul to recognize their spiritual abilities and they
through their will, through their soul, they're able to master certain aspects of spiritual
abilities. So I believe that non-believers, they don't have the gifts of the Spirit. But they
could develop a spiritual ability and that's why we see some some unbelievers even experience
certain spiritual phenomenas, or even experience certain things. Whether it's through dreams,
through trances. Even an ability to see in the spirit and hear in the spirit,
sense in the spirit to a certain extent. But this is where most unbelievers, when they start
developing these spiritual senses realize that they hit a ceiling. And they start looking into
other means to help them enhance their spiritual abilities, which usually end up being demonic.
Other spiritual meditations, they invite demons to enhance their spiritual abilities and they partner
with demonic powers. But no, I don't believe that otherwise they can have the gifts of the Spirit,
that we know as Christian, being unbelievers, that's only for those that are believers.
Acts 16:16 kind of confirms what Pastor Ilya was saying, and I'll just read it from the Bible. It
says, "One day as we were going down to the place of prayer, we met a slave girl who had a spirit
that enabled her to tell the future. She earned a lot of money for her masters by telling fortunes."
So she connected to the wrong spirit. So if we open, if unbelievers open themselves up to demons,
it's obviously they're operating in the wrong, wrong direction. But they were using
evil spirits to predict the future. When we become Christians, you must understand that every person
has a spirit. Just because as a non-Christian your spirit is not non-existent, your spirit is dead in
the sense that it's not connected to God. But it doesn't mean that it's not real, or your spirit
doesn't function, or it's like lying in the grave. It's still being used. It still connects to the
spiritual realm. It's just disconnected from God, and so when God comes into your life He resurrects
your spirit. It's not that your spirit was non-existent before or didn't function. It's just
it was annihilated and removed from God. So your spiritual abilities could be completely cultivated
to connect with the demonic realm, and receive information, and give information. And really,
really be used by the enemy and operate in, do magic, do miracles and do all of this stuff. And
then your soul you know yields to that as well, because it's really those things are done through
the spirit. They're not done through the soul. And even though you're completely far away from
God but those are not the same as receiving gifts of the Holy Spirit, and those are not the same as
being used of the Holy Spirit. Rickhard, do you have anything to say in that? Yeah, I think it's
very interesting that if you would Google the word "healing" today, you would actually not
get spiritual like Christ filled healing. When you Google Healing, a lot of New Age things come up as
well. Reiki healing, chakras, and doing different kind of New Age practices you know. And I believe
that the devil is a counterfeit. I don't think that he has creativity in him because God is the
Creator and there's no sense, not even a particle of God in the devil. So if God is a Creator and
He is creative, then the devil has none of that. All he can do is copy, paste. So many
of the gifts of the Spirit, you may see something that seems similar just like the people in Egypt.
Pharaoh asked his magicians, "Hey can you do the same thing as as Moses and Aaron are doing?"
And they could do it to a certain degree. There are some counterfeit there. But the problem is
when anyone accesses the spirit world like this through demonic powers, it normally affects the
person themselves because they have to engage in some sort of a covenant. Many times the people who
practice these things, at least my experience from people involving witchcraft and so on.
Is that they suffer from chronic sicknesses, they suffer from early death many times, and other kind
of afflictions that attacks their family. Because they're trying to access this spirit world by the
means of demonic powers to counterfeit what God has for His people. So it's important as believers
not to be fooled or deceived just because oh, this person said they used stones or crystals and she's
feeling better in her body afterwards. Yeah, maybe she's feeling better in her body but something
else. Because a principle that I go by is, if the devil gives you something with his right hand,
he will take something that your life depends on with his left. So it's kind of like playing
you all the time to where you get stuck in this cycle of affliction and torment at the
end of the day. So the only way that you can really access these gifts and receive it freely
is through the Holy Spirit, because Someone already paid the price which was Jesus Christ.
Yeah and a lot of times like in the occult world, you either pay you know to get activated in that
stuff. Or some people, like even we're seeing in the comments right now. People saying from the
young age they started to get these particular you know inclinations, or they started to get
these dreams, or started to know information. And so that in itself you just must understand, even
before you're born again you have a spirit and your spirit was created to connect with the spirit
realm. Your soul is connected to the emotional, to the physical. You connect with your soul to other
people and your body connects you to the world. And so just because you're even disconnected
from God, it doesn't mean that you don't have the ability to connect to the spirit realm. And the
devil will use the fact that you are disconnected from the realm of the Lord through Jesus,
and you're disconnected from that but you're still long to be connected to the spirit realm. And so
he will bring you the counterfeit, he will bring you the fake. He will bring you the parts that
will look real, and in fact they will be real in themselves that yeah, it would be a healing,
yes information will be accurate. But the source of it, when it's not rooted in the Gospel,
when it's not rooted in Jesus, when it's not rooted in the Scripture. You are operating from
another realm and then sooner or later the devil who is behind that, he only has one agenda and
that is to kill, steal and destroy. And people who go to psychics, people who go and read horoscopes,
people who try to get information from these other sources or who are the channels for those sources.
You must understand is that you're being used by the enemy and the enemy will hurt you. He will
steal, kill and destroy. And even if on the outside through law of attraction, through
a lot of all this stuff, you know connecting with universe and all of that. And you feel like, "Oh,
but I'm getting more money, I'm getting more famous. I'm getting more peace."
Honestly that is not how we judge whether something is true or not. Is it leading you
to Jesus? Is it leading you to holiness? Is it leading you to righteousness through the blood
of Jesus Christ? Because this devil can give you all of that and he can take you to hell. But at
the same time usually all of these blessings that he gives, they have an expiration time
and they have a very huge price. I remember one guy started coming to our church and
his mom took him, he had a paralysis if I'm not mistaken. It was in Africa. She took him to
Reinhard Bonnke. No, so in the beginning what she did is she took him to the native doctor.
So which was like a witch doctor in Africa. This witch doctor did some ceremony on him and
this paralysis actually was gone. He was completely healed of paralysis as a boy, and then
some two weeks later he starts to develop swelling in his knees. Now this is him saying this to me
because I personally didn't believe when he said that. The swelling got so big that there
were holes developed in his knees. His knees got so big he couldn't walk. So now he didn't
have a paralysis but he was completely not able to walk. He said mice were coming out from the
swelling in his knees and I was like, "Bro this, this can't be." I was like, "I don't believe in
this stuff." And he's like, "Vlad." He's like, "I saw mice coming out of my own body." I was like,
"How can mice live in a human body?" I was like, "Man this, this stuff is not real." I'm like,
"Are you sure you were not on drugs?" And so the stuff that he was telling me, but you know
Rikhard you've been in Africa so this is not strange for those people who've been in Africa.
And so I was like, "So what happened then?" He couldn't walk anymore but not due to paralysis,
due to swollen knees out of nowhere. So they take him to Reinhard Bonnke meeting and they prayed for
him for deliverance. Demons come out of him and he says his knees go back to normal. The swelling,
he's in front, it shrinks. And so he has some pus that comes out and he starts to walk and no
problem whatsoever. And he told me this, he says, "The witch doctor fixed the paralysis
and but they also gave me another problem you know." Because really the spiritual people,
they don't remove your problems, they replace them with problems you currently
don't have. And so it's just those problems will take a while to manifest and so, yeah,
you might get healed of this but then you got another problem. And so that's why
you just should come to Jesus and Jesus doesn't replace problems, He removes them in Jesus name.