TEXT: 1 Sam 7:7-11
We are looking at a message entitled, “Deliverance from Evil Altars.” And as you read this
message, I advise that you pray the prayer points attached to it. I also encourage you to pay
attention to everything in it so that you can be richly blessed after going through it. In the book
of 1 Samuel 7: 7-11, it is written, “And when the Philistines heard that the children of Israel were
gathered together to Mizpeh, the lords of the Philistines went up against Israel. And when the children of
Israel heard it, they were afraid of the Philistines. And the children of Israel said to Samuel, Cease not to
cry unto the Lord our God for us, that he will save us out of the hand of the Philistines. And Samuel took
a sucking lamb, and offered it for a burnt offering wholly unto the Lord: and Samuel cried unto the Lord
for Israel; and the Lord heard him. And as Samuel was offering up the burnt offering, the Philistines drew
near to battle against Israel: but the Lord thundered with a great thunder on that day upon the
Philistines, and discomfited them; and they were smitten before Israel. And the men of Israel went out of
Mizpeh, and pursued the Philistines, and smote them, until they came under Beth-car.”
We notice in the above story that the Lord thundered with a great thunder upon the enemies of
Israel after Samuel built an altar and offered a sacrifice to the Lord.
WHAT ARE ALTARS?
In the Bible, altars are designed for sacrifices and not just for decoration (Exodus 20: 24). The
Bible also described the various methods of constructing these altars. Some were made of sand
or unhewn stones, that is, stones that have not been chiselled with any tool, and some were
made of bricks. In some cases, a natural rock could automatically be turned into an altar. Altars
were either constructed for God or idols. Any altar constructed for the purpose of idolatry
incurred the wrath of God. In the Bible, we read the story of a king who was sacrificing by an
altar and God sent a prophet who prophesied to it. This shows the role of altars in spiritual
transactions. As a Bible student, you would find that the great men of God in the Old Testament
built altars. This was because an altar served as a medium of communication and worship.
Abraham, Noah, Joshua, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Gideon, Samuel and David built altars. When
Elijah challenged the Baal worshipers at Mount Carmel, he told them to construct their own
altar and when it got to his turn, what he did was to repair the broken down altar of the Lord.
An altar could also be described as a place where animals are slaughtered for sacrifice, that is, a
place where blood is shed and where blood cries. It is a spiritual dinning table where spirits are
offered food. It is a place of spiritual bureau de change where blood is exchanged for
something. It is a place where contact is made with the spirit world, and it could be with good
or bad spirits. It is a place of spiritual fellowship with either clean or unclean spirits. When
Jacob built an altar in Bethel, it was the angels of God who were ascending and descending on
it. If he had built a demonic one, there would have been the traffic of evil angels otherwise
known as demons.
An altar is a place where covenants are made with spiritual powers. It is also a place of
deliberation, decision and action whether negative or positive. From the above description of an
altar, we can see that there are positive altars as well as negative ones. For example, the cross
where Jesus died was an altar of sacrifice of the Son of God. That cross therefore stood for a
positive altar, which is meant for good purposes. When somebody says your prayer altar is
weak, it means that your prayer life is nothing to write home about. If they say your holiness is
equally weak, they are telling you that your level of holiness is not up to God’s standard.
Conversely, negative altars are raised by the enemies to steal, kill and to destroy. An altar can
be raised to bless or destroy, promote or pull down a person, an organization or a thing. Altars
can also be raised to enhance a course or to frustrate it. So, we see that altars were raised to
either save lives or to destroy the enemies in the Old Testament. According to the passage,
Samuel raised an altar in the name of God against the Philistines, and as a result, God became
angry with the Philistines and thundered with a great thunder against them from heaven. The
altar made things easy for the Israelites. God fought for them and they did not have to do
anything by themselves.
The devil has counterfeited most things God had instituted to bless His people. For example,
people offer sacrifices at crossroads and by so doing, they corrupt the cross of Jesus and this is a
counterfeit. No wonder the problems of many black people can be directly linked to evil altars.
The enemies go about to construct altars of affliction for many people and these altars have
priests of wickedness ministering on them. The devil has taught his people the secret of altars
and they use it for destructive purposes. You may wonder where the devil borrowed this idea.
Remember the Bible says that he had been with God right from the beginning. He had seen the
order of heaven and understood the way things are done over there. So, he duplicates things
and goes about to teach his disciples how to use them for negative purposes. That is why I often
emphasize that prayer against evil altars is not the gentle kind of prayers. An evil altar is a place
of evil transactions where many evil things like infirmities, demotion, failure, etc are
accommodated. And looking at the situation in our immediate environment, where some
people do not mind going to any length to make money or harm their fellow human beings, we
should understand that evil altars must be dealt with aggressively. At this point, I would like
you to pray the following prayer points:
1. Every satanic altar erected against me and my family, be demolished by fire, in Jesus name.
2. I refuse to be a prisoner of any local altar, in the name of Jesus.
Sometimes, sacrifices are made on evil altars in order to seal a contract with wicked spirits.
Sacrifices are food given to evil spirits to enlist their support and this is why the Bible says that
we should not eat things sacrificed to idols, because eating them would amount to eating at the
same table with idols. Any food sacrificed to idols are given to demons and sharing food with
demons means being in agreement with them. That is why you discover that sometimes
sicknesses such as migraine, hypertension etc are not actually the problem. The enemy uses
them as camouflage. It is against this background that Christians are advised to pray always
when they are sick even when they seek medical attention. We should not forget that believers
should rely solely on the Holy Spirit to fight their battles. When your name is submitted to
altars, it is in order to monitor and influence your life in a negative way. Many house-helps,
nannies, in-laws and relations that are brought in without prayers are altar agents who supply
information to evil priests ministering at evil altars. They value this information very much
because it helps them to know which ammunition to use on their victims. These altars are also
used as remote control devices to cause problems for people. Some of the weird things they do
include rituals at crossroads in order to limit their victims for life. A person under the dominion
of these evil altars normally loses his or her mind and can no longer exercise discretion. Such a
person will be living in fear and will be experiencing nightmares and all sorts of afflictions. In
the light of the foregoing, the kind of prayers to undertake against evil altars is not “a
gentleman” kind of prayers, but rather, it is the aggressive prayer of command and prophecy.
Let us look at some of the local altars erected to destroy the lives of people in our environment.
1. Crossroad altars: This is a perversion of the cross of Jesus. The reason they use crossroads is
to summon demons from the north, south, east, and west together against a person. If for
example, you find a pot of sacrifice at your office, it is because they are summoning demons to
cause havoc in that place. Whoever is a victim of crossroad altars would be bombarded with
afflictions. Any born again believer who does not know his or her right and lacks power, cannot
counter the effects of evil altars. A policeman on the road controlling the traffic may stop
vehicles because of his authority that is acknowledged by the drivers, but if he encounters
armed robbers, his uniform of authority notwithstanding, he would be killed. What I am saying
is that there is a difference between power and authority. If you are born again and you have
not received the baptism in the Hoy Spirit, it means that you only possess authority without
power to back it up. Failure to get baptized in the Holy Spirit would make a Christian
powerless and sacrifices offered at evil altars against such a person at crossroads would affect
him or her. The person may not die, he or she may even make heaven, but they will destroy
many good things in his or her life. It is amazing that crossroads sacrifices are seen even in
intellectual communities, like universities and other institutions of higher learning. Whereas,
people think that such practice is done only in slums and ghettoes. This would serve to
disabuse the minds of those who think that offering sacrifices is only for the illiterates.
2. Tree altars: We know that some people put sacrifices by some trees, for example, Iroko tree,
pawpaw tree, banana tree etc. Sacrifices found at tree altars are usually wrapped with white
cloths. That way, a report is filed against a person and the case of such a person is handed over
to the demons living in the tree, including witches and wizards. Before a sister got born again,
she was a member of the demonic world. She became a demonic prophetess, who laid hands on
people while she prophesied upon their lives. She told a story of how she attended a church to
carry out her demonic assignment as usual, but a woman sitting beside her challenged her
claiming that she had a greater power. So, she told her to shut up, and before the ‘prophetess’
could say anything, the woman touched her leg and as a result, both of them were lifted away
from the church and landed in a cave within a rock. There, they saw various kinds of modern
gadgets like refrigerators, stereos, wall clocks, electric cookers, etc and right there she started to
cook for the woman. This explains the fact that there are things happening in the spirit world
which many people cannot see, that is why we must pray until things begin to happen in the
spirit world. We must equally know that there is no extent to which wicked people cannot go to
destroy a person.
3. Photographic altars: Altars can be constructed with wedding photographs, family and
individual pictures and through that, a person will begin to receive torments and afflictions or
he may even get killed. Marriages could be broken through this means. In fact, various kinds of
evil could be perpetrated on people using their pictures.
4. Image altars: Symbols are made to represent a person or something in the spirit world and
whatever they do to that symbol may happen to that person in the spirit. For example, if they
give the head a terrible blow, the person may begin to have severe headache, and this explains
why some students suddenly take ill during their examinations. Also, a shop can be constructed
to represent the real shop of a person, and whatever they do to that image would happen to the
shop in real life.
5. Reporting altars: This is the kind of altar where the name of a person is chanted at all times.
Victims of reporting altars would be hearing their names without knowing who is calling them.
However, if they answer, they immediately fall prey.
6. Clothing altars: This is a case where evil people lay hands on the clothes of their victims for
evil purposes. So, if you know that somebody had cut away some portion from any of your
clothes or your underwear was once stolen or your clothes got missing mysteriously, you need
to embark on aggressive prayer.
7. River altars: These are altars meant to serve water demons. They sit on people’s lives and
keep them submerged.
8. Forest altars: Many people do not know that destroyers do not sleep. They are always busy
operating in the forest at night doing evil with people’s names.
9. Body part altars: Things like placenta, hair, etc are used to destroy lives.
10. Astral altars: There are people who utter evil words against the stars of others in order to
render their lives unfruitful.
11. Altars of evil transfer: Satanic priests and spiritual robbers at the altars of evil transfer,
transfer people’s virtues.
12. Family shrines: Any family with shrines has an altar, and the whole family members are
monitored through that. I once prayed with a sister with a pathetic case. Her mother in-law
brought an idol from their village into their sitting room for three months before she went back
with it. While the thing was there, the woman created traffic of demons in her home. Through
this, the mother in-law now had some evil spirits that were monitoring the sister’s home and
giving them information for evil purposes. It took a great deal of prayer of deliverance to
destroy the effect of the idol. When I asked her why her husband could not get rid of the thing,
she said that immediately her mother in-law brought it in, he turned to a spiritual daft and it
was as if he never went to church before.
13. Physical altars: This is the type of altar where they sacrifice people that are kidnapped. I
know a brother who fell a victim of this terrible altar. When he woke up, he discovered that his
son had thrown his daily guide into the dustbin and that was how he left for the office without
doing his normal quiet time. On getting to the bus stop, somebody emerged from nowhere,
slapped his chest and as a result he began to follow him. He was taken to a bush where there
was a satanic priest with assorted human parts, which littered the surrounding of the altar. As
they were preparing for him, the Lord told him to start praying in the spirit. As he began to
speak in tongues, they became confused. When he saw that, he intensified the praying in
tongues and before long they all took to their heels and he was able to escape. This is an
example of a physical altar.
14. Altar of curses: An example will serve to explain this. Somewhere in Ondo State of Nigeria,
a man boarded a bus and the fare was fifteen naira. He took the old one-naira note, which has
the colour of the current ten-naira note and joined it with the normal five-naira note to settle his
fare. The conductor did not discover this trick immediately, until after a long time during the
trip. Eventually, the driver discovered it and demanded to know the culprit, but all the
commuters denied. The driver got annoyed, brought out a horn with a viper’s tooth and issued
some terrible curses with it. He said the person who did it would bury his children, then he
folded the old one naira and threw it into the bush, and as he was throwing it, he also added
that as the note was being thrown away, the culprit would never prosper. Of a truth, these
curses began to happen to the fellow. He noticed that his brilliant son suddenly became a
dullard. He then started to search for the driver and when he found him, the driver said he had
thrown the thing into the forest and solution could only come if he could find it. The man could
not find it but he ran to Jesus. What did that driver do? He simply erected an altar of curses
against the man.
Beloved, Christian life is a spiritual warfare. If Jesus Christ, the purest man that ever lived had
enemies, it is certain that we would have enemies as well. But there are different strategies in
Christian warfare. You could lay ambush, mount a frontal attack, launch a night attack or do
constant bombardment from afar. However, nothing is as terrible as fighting a war you do not
understand. Sometime ago, somebody showed me a film of the America/Vietnam war. As I
watched it, I almost started to cry because the Americans brought sophisticated weapons to
Vietnam but they could do little or nothing with it because their enemies were hiding on trees
and inside the water with breathing apparatus, hence the Americans could not see them. So, the
Vietnamese succeeded in out-witting many of them. Eventually, the Americans abandoned the
war because they did not understand the strategy of their enemies. In the same vein, if
Christians do not understand the kind of battle they are in, they would be rendered useless. But
our God has the capacity to reduce our enemies to a state of helplessness within a second. The
most difficult situation you may face gives God the greatest opportunity to show Himself as the
Almighty God because He has a lot of unusual weapons that can make us victorious. The usual
trend is that things might start getting worse before they begin to get better and the general
reaction of people is to get discouraged and worried instead of taking the bull by the horn.
Difficult times may be as a result of the penetration of a lot of enemies who must be expelled
before there could be relief. The fact is that, the more the enemy boasts against a child of God,
the greater his fall shall be.
HOW CAN WE DEAL WITH EVIL ALTARS?
1. Recognize their operations which I have already explained above.
2. Repent of those things in your life that are giving evil altars the platform to prosper in your
life.
3. Renounce them. It does not matter whether you know about them or not.
4. Resist them using the words of God.
5. Kill the priests of evil altars who are being used against you. It is an acceptable biblical
practice to slay either evil priests or prophets through aggressive prayers.
6. Withdraw your benefits and virtues from the altars.
7. Destroy the evil altars.
8. Give praises to God.
Furthermore, to destroy evil altars, you can curse them. You can call the fire of God, or the
divine hurricane of the Holy Spirit to blow them away. Every prayer against evil altars must be
done aggressively and with violent faith. Embark now on the following prayer points to
disgrace evil altars.
PRAYER POINTS
1. I render every aggressive altar impotent, in the mighty name of Jesus.
2. Every evil altar erected against me, be disgraced, in the name of Jesus.
3. Anything done against me under demonic anointing, be nullified, in the name of Jesus.
4. I curse every local altar fashioned against me, in the name of Jesus.
5. Let the hammer of the Almighty God smash every evil altar erected against me, in the name
of Jesus.
6. O Lord, send your fire to destroy every evil altar fashioned against me, in the name of Jesus.
7. Every evil priest ministering against me at the evil altar, receive the sword of God, in the
name of Jesus.
8. Let the thunder of God smite all the evil priests ministering against me at the evil altars and
burn them to ashes, in the name of Jesus.
9. Let every satanic priest ministering against me at any evil altar, fall down and die, in the
name of Jesus.
10. Any hand that wants to retaliate or arrest me because of my prayers, dry up and wither, in
the name of Jesus.
11. Every stubborn evil altar priest, drink your own blood, in the name of Jesus.
12. I possess my possession stolen by any evil altar, in the name of Jesus.
13. I withdraw my name from every evil altar, in the name of Jesus.
14. I withdraw my blessings from every evil altar, in the name of Jesus.
15. I withdraw my breakthroughs from evil altars, in the name of Jesus.
16. (Lay one hand on your head) I withdraw my glory from every evil altar, in Jesus name.
17. (Place your hand on your chest) I withdraw my prosperity from every evil altar, in Jesus name.
18.I withdraw anything representing me from every evil altar, in the name of Jesus.
