Extracts from Interview on New York Christian Radio Station with Clinton Clark of Enemy Exposed Ministries
THE FIRST AND MOST IMPORTANT TRUTH I WANT TO SAY IS THAT JESUS CHRIST ALONE IS THE ONE WHO CAN SET A PERSON COMPLETELY FREE OF SCHIZOPHENIA AND RESTORE TO NORMAL LIFE.
While the medical world of psychiatry search in the dark for an answer to this deepest of psychotic illnesses, the good news is that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, can still break TODAY the power of this demonic bondage.
The Schizophrenia Association of Great Britain says that the medical model is the only model for treating a schizophrenic. I wish to say boldly that Jesus Christ must be accepted as the model for bringing a schizophrenic into freedom. This breakthrough news will revolutionize the way the subject of SCHIZOPHRENIA has been traditionally viewed by the medical profession.
We must be willing to give Jesus, the Great Physician, His rightful place on our healing staff as we treat the mentally ill. It is He who rescued me and has equipped me to speak with boldness and compassion on behalf of so many enslaved lives.
I make no apology for calling schizophrenia a demonic illness. That is to say its roots come from an “evil spirit” invading the human soul.
Schizophrenia can be demonically inherited, as it was in my own life. That is to say it is not in the blood system, not in the genes - it is in the demons.
For 26 years I battled in prayer with God’s help to become free of a nest of evil spirits who were intent on destroying me. The ruling spirit of schizophrenia invited other spirits with their own personalities into my life. They would have most certainly succeeded in ending my life but for the greater power available in Jesus who triumphed in delivering me.
When you are fighting a war it is important to know your enemy. I am so glad that the Holy Spirit, the living presence of Jesus in my life identified the evil enemy I was fighting and armed me to engage in a prayer battle to overcome.
So that is the message of hope I want to share with your listeners today. To every schizophrenic hearing this programme, I would say you first of all need to receive Jesus Christ as your Saviour and believe that as the Son of God he died to redeem you from sin over 2,000 years ago. Jesus is the salvation you need in your spirit …this is the first stage of deliverance and it is the basis for further deliverance.
Receiving Christ by confessing Him with your mouth and believing on him in your heart will grant you forgiveness from sin and you will receive the Holy Spirit, the living presence of Jesus (New Testament, Book of Romans Chapter 10, verse 9). That’s the first necessary step to take in moving forward in being delivered from schizophrenia. It is only with Christ’s help that you stand a chance of coming through it. HIS POWER NEVER FAILS!!
CAN YOU ENLARGE ON WHY YOU SAY THAT SCHIZOPHRENIA IS DEMONIC?
Sure. Let’s consider one aspect, namely the voices a schizophrenic hears. I ask the question “to whom do these voices belong?” They are not the voice of the Holy Spirit, or of self but an invasion of a dark spiritual power taking over a person and bent on destroying that person.
These voices disturb, control and even cause such real delusions that the schizophrenic follows their promptings to act and even kill themselves. I experienced the demonic pressure of these voices.
The extreme case of voices ruling in a man can be seen in the Bible in Mark chapter 5. The man we read about was a paranoid schizophrenic living in the caves and was totally taken over by voices of spirits who had made their home in his life. The demons possessed and controlled him so much that his life was certainly not his own – though made in the image of God with an intended freedom to lead his own life.
When these demons had been driven out by Jesus, this man returned to normal life because the voices left the minute the demons left …
The answer (or solution) to schizophrenia is not a medical solution but a spiritual solution. The hope a schizophrenic may have of coming out of his bondage is not through medication but through the power of the Holy Spirit, the living presence of Jesus Christ.
To battle and come through on one’s own is impossible. The demonic strength of schizophrenia is much stronger than any person. That is why we need the power of Jesus Christ to overcome.
Let me give hope to anyone who is listening TODAY who has SCHIZOPHRENIA. and say Jesus Christ can help and strengthen you to reach His freedom.
The man in Mark 5 was powerless to shake off demonic forces which ruled his life and robbed him of his own personality. Demons who have personalities of their own had invaded his life and taken over – hence the hearing of voices which sent him in a thousand directions and TOOK AWAY HIS SANITY.. BUT ALL THAT CHANGED WHEN THE GREATER POWER OF JESUS SET HIM FREE AND HIS LIFE WAS RESTORED.
That’s my story too. For 26 long hellish years, I struggled to keep alive my sanity through faith in Jesus and through strength given me by Him in prayer. It was Jesus holding on to me more than me holding on to Jesus. Year after year, the faithfulness of Jesus kept me.
Jesus said: "So if the Son sets you free,
you will be free indeed."
John 8 verse 36
THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST MUST SEEK THE REVELATION OF GOD ABOUT SCHIZOPHRENIA AND WITH COMPASSION TAKE STEPS TO LEAD CHRISTIAN SCHIZOPHRENICS INTO FREEDOM
I believe the Church of Jesus Christ faces a tremendous challenge to help schizophrenics into freedom – something which in the past it has failed miserably to do.
If Christians believed what they say they believe about Jesus, namely that He is the light of the world who came to deliver people out of spiritual darkness then why aren’t we engaged in penetrating and overcoming the darkness of schizophrenia.
I feel challenged in my own life to do something. I ask the question why did God take the trouble to preserve my life for so long, provide two special wives who loved and cared for me and eventually led me out of the hell that schizophrenia really is?? It was for the sole purpose of glorying His name and providing hope for so many others!!
Who better to bring hope to another schizophrenic than someone who has been there themselves and felt the struggles and anguish of it all?? At the moment, with my wife Tina, I am stretching myself in prayer to ask God, “What can we do to help these people who are the most neglected people in society and the least understood. Show me O Lord what I can do to help schizophrenics come out of the deepest, most involved and most determined deliverance of all.”
What can I do to sound out a trumpet call of hope to schizophrenics who at the moment have to depend on secular groups and societies to provide help for the patients and support for the many carers committed to doing what they can to help.
I have no right to say the church is doing nothing, when I am part of the church of Jesus Christ…. and out there in every nation there are those who love the Lord who feel that something ought to be done to minister to such an aching void of need in the world.
In an endeavour to help, my wife Tina and I have set up a Christian ministry called PUSH – Pray Until Schizophrenia Heals – and we pray He will take it to the four corners of the earth so that schizophrenics will see that Jesus ALONE is the answer to the cry for freedom which is longed for deep down in the heart of everyone desperate for release. Details of the ministry can be found on our website www.schizophreniadefeated.com named after my autobiography Schizophrenia Defeated.
I BELIEVE TWO IMPORTANT THINGS ABOUT JESUS CHRIST THE SON OF GOD. Namely, everything He said about Himself is true and that with Him all things are possible.
So when I read that He said “whoever follows me shall not walk in darkness BUT shall have the light of life”, I believe those words with all of my heart.
And when He says, as He does in Mark chapter 11 verse 24, that “all things are possible to Him that believes” I grab hold of that promise that Jesus as God means what He says.
So when someone says: “James you’re a lone voice in the wilderness trying to give hope in Jesus Christ to schizophrenics,” all I am doing is proclaiming the very words of Jesus Himself to pass on hope in Him.
It’s not an easy feat to come out of schizophrenia, as my own life knows. Normally speaking, at the age of nearly 65, I should with 26 years of schizophrenia in my life be going down and down further into the realm of a disintegrating personality!! But Jesus reversed all that. And he brought me up and out on the other side and exactly 19 years after coming off the medication the night He told me to, I haven’t had cause to go back on drugs at all.
Only Jesus can do all that!! Do you know He specialises in things thought impossible. Who else but God, seeing my own desperate need and getting nowhere on the road to freedom would send across my path a single nurse through a Christian dating agency. . She know all about schizophrenia and then God gave me a real vision of her in a bridal gown which caused me to hold on to her when she wanted to finish.
SCHIZOPHRENICS LIVING OUT IN THE COMMUNITY BUT NO-ONE CARING FOR THEM
In the United Kingdom – as in some other countries – schizophrenics are no longer kept in a mental hospital but are released into the community to fend for themselves.
Many live in nice houses provided by the social concern but they are on their own struggling to survive day after day.
I feel that what these people need is a secure house where they can live in their own community with a resident Christian psychiatrist, warden, nursing staff full of compassion who can care for them but at the same time bring them into the freedom of Jesus Christ through prayer and worship and make deliverance, healing and restoration a real experience.
My wife and I are about to start a fellowship time in our home for Christian schizophrenics we know – asking God to lead us as we endeavour to offer hope and freedom through the compassion of Jesus in our hearts.
EVERY CHRISTIAN SCHIZOPHRENIC NEEDS TO BE ABLE TO PRAY IN THE POWER OF THE HOLY SPIRIT BOTH TO REACH FREEDOM AND THEN MAINTAIN IT.
It’s an uphill struggle for someone heavily doped through taking drugs and living in passivity to take command of their lives and daily decide they want to break free of the bondage of schizophrenia. That’s why each sufferer needs the added prayers of those close to them to both sustain and move them forward.
It is important for a schizophrenic to receive Jesus before being delivered because if the presence of Christ is not occupying His life, when the demons have been exorcised there is a strong likelihood of further demons much stronger than those already there, returning to rule his life.
That’s why the living presence of Christ must be enthroned in the heart to first of all secure spiritual freedom and then to retain and enlarge that freedom. A schizophrenic has to co-operate continually with the Holy Spirit in the matter of walking in his new found freedom.
I believe it is important to get Christian schizophrenics into an atmosphere of worship where the spirit gains the ascendancy over the mind. God works in coming down to set people free as they are involved in worshipping him and breaks strongholds as the Name of Jesus is uplifted.
