This prophetic word is part 4 in a series on Altars and it is about Territorial Altars. You can view the other parts here 1, 2, 3
Now that you have established your personal/family altar, and you’ve closed all the doors, at some point the Lord is going to take you outside of your home and you’ll start establishing a ministry, a church or a business.
This can look like many different things – online, in your neighborhood, city, doing conferences or being a guest speaker at events or even an itinerant minister. That could be the end of it or this comes before you establish an actual church or a ministry with a physical location.
These initial stages are for the purpose of training you. David didn’t just jump to fighting Goliath, prior to that he battled the bear and the lion. (1 Samuel 17:34-37) This was training before he got to Goliath.
You see, ministry is not as easy as it looks. What appears to be a simple ministry is actually a person grace by God to walk it out effortlessly. (Ephesians 4:7, Romans 12:6). If you attempted to do the same thing without that special grace, you’ll quickly learn that it is not that easy.
It is easy for you to fast for an event where you’ll be a guest speaker and ask your friends to cover you while you’re at the event.
It is easy for you to fast and pray prior to a 1 week missions trip to another country and ask your friends to fast and pray with you.
You go out, do your thing and then you go back home. All of this can be handled from your altar at home. You’ll be incredibly successful in this role because your established altar, at your home, is working on your behalf.
Your spouse is not affected, your children are not affected. They can continue living their lives as normal because you are just going out to different events and going back home.
When most people get into trouble is when they attempt to run a territorial altar from their personal/family altar.
You can’t do both!
Well, let me correct that by saying you can do whatever you want but rest assured SOMETHING is going to suffer in the process. This is no longer you going out and going back to your place of rest. No, this is another established location that requires a separate altar that needs to be attended to because now you are dealing with two different entities – your home + the city where your church or ministry is located, even if you live in the same city.
Your home life and your ministry life are not the same thing!!! When your pastor comes to church on a Sunday, this is not his time with the Lord…this is his job (territorial altar). His time with the Lord is what he does when he’s at his house at his personal/family altar. Two different things.
Territorial and Regional Altars
Acts 1:8
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.
This is what Jesus told the disciples. They wait for empowerment and then they move out in the form of a concentric circle Jerusalem is the city, Jerusalem is in Judea (the region), Samaria is the next region over, and then going out further from there.
Imagine you drop a pebble in the pond it starts with you and your altar, then it expands to Jerusalem, then Judea, then Samaria, then the ends of the earth. You move outward from the center but you can never get rid of the center or the entire thing will fall apart.
In other words, if your own personal altar starts to fall apart, the entire thing is going to fall apart. Because your personal relationship with Christ is ground zero.
One of the best advice I can give you is that if you are not OK in your relationship with Christ it is best for you to step back and mend that.
When you are maintaining and building a powerful altar, it starts with your house because there are rules of engagement when you move from outside of your house. You cannot go beyond your property line until you know what you are doing and there is more than one of you doing it. Yes! At every level you need more people involved in maintaining the altar. Because you won’t just be fighting one person or being there will be many.
There was Jesus
Jesus and John
Jesus, Peter, John and James
The 12
The 12 turned into the 120 (Acts 1:15)
Then 120 turn 5000 (Acts 4:4)
The larger the territory the more people you need to maintain the Altar. Because you CANNOT let the fire go out. And you are just one person. You have a new church plant – 2 churches, 2 altars…3 churches, 3 altars all while maintaining your own personal altar at your home.
You know when people say “do you have help?” they are thinking do you have people for hospitality, to clean the church, to take up the offering, to help with the children’s ministry? All of these people are important but let me tell you that the greatest work in the church of Jesus Christ is…..
My house shall be called a house of prayer…
You will not be able to establish ANYTHING without a prayer team. I promise you that! THOSE are the people you need FIRST.
You need the empowerment to do the work. If you have the prayer team, you can pray in all the other pieces into place.
You need the people to tend to the altar. I am talking about the spiritual altar of the church – that is the backbone of the entire operation.
Churches can say they have an altar ministry and for them this means praying for the people who come up to the front of the church for prayer, this is important but that can’t be all of it.
Who is praying for the church? The altar at the church needs to be established and this happens outside of Sunday service. Sunday is 1 session, what about the other days in the week? Who’s praying over the church, who’s walking around the church praying, who’s praying over the community around the church, who’s worshipping in the church when it’s not Sunday? Who’s praying over the pastor and his family? Who’s praying for the elders and the deacons in the church? Who’s praying over all the ministries in the church? Who’s anointing the seats in the church and praying over them? Who’s the watchman over the church? Who’s fasting for the church? Not fasting with the church, fasting FOR the church. And, do they have guidelines when they are fasting? Do they know what they are fasting for specifically? Who’s observing the prayer watches when the church is under spiritual attack?
The focus at this altar is all about the church, it’s not a personal prayer time. You can do this through a prayer line where people call in to pray over the church, the community and the city.
The key is FOCUSED prayer and worship around the church or ministry. And, you would be surprised how easily the enemy gets people off track.
People need to be trained and discipled how to do these things. You need to train them to maintain the church altar.
Now imagine a pastor starting out and they are attempting to manage all of this from their personal/family altar? SOMETHING is going to get messed up in the process.
Even if they succeed in a building a rather successful ministry, what happened to their kids? Their spouse? Think about it this way – you elect a President/Prime Minister in your country but the spouse and the children are also involved. You didn’t vote for them, they didn’t ask for it. But they are now involved in the entire process their lives have all been altered by this one decision. WHO is covering them? They have to be prepared to RAMP UP their altar activity at the home because – the pastor is temporarily unable to fulfill the same role at the home when they are busy establishing the altar at the church.
I hope you are catching this.
If the Obama girls sneeze wrong, it is in the news. If the Bush girls cut their hair, it is in the news. And years after they left the role, people are still watching their lives! They never get away from it.
The same thing happens when you start a church, in the REALM OF THE SPIRIT your entire family is involved. Your kids can’t be regular kids anymore people know and recognize them and they don’t even know the people!!
Many times while the pastor is busy building the church – they lose their marriage in the process and the children are scattered. Because the family altar is being neglected. This is why you need to separate altars and it needs to be clearly communicated who is doing what!
Communication – with the family and with the church members who are maintaining the altar.
You know this whole conversation about can women be preach or not, I believe this has to do with roles more than anything else. It is about our role in society and the home. It is not that God didn’t think women were incapable of it, we just have a different role as the counterpart. We can’t all do the same thing.
In the moments when it was necessary, God uses the women and we see that clearly through the Bible. Women taking the leadership role did happen in the Bible, but it was an exception to the rule and not the norm. Just as how the man is the head of the household, but somehow there are many women leading their households today. This was never how God intended it.
The first evangelist is Mary Magdalene. You can read her account in John 20:1-18. It is clear, gives all the relevant details. Do you know what would happen if God allowed the men to come back with the story of the resurrection. Here’s how it would read…
Peter: Sup?
John: “I was at the tomb” while making hand motions
Peter: Word?
John: Word
And that my friends, is why Jesus decided Mary Magdalene was the best way to get the news to everyone!
We have a role and sometimes your role can change depending on the season you’re in. The question is “What is your role in this season?” This is the SAME question for the men too because their roles can change as well. The important detail is to always say to the Lord, whatever you are asking me to do in this season please start working on the heart of my spouse and my children so that whatever it is they are in complete alignment and agreement with it.
I don’t believe God will ask you to do something that will destroy your family in the process. If that happens, then somewhere you went off track. Or perhaps you are running way too many altars all by yourself at the same time and something suffered in the process.
Dueling Altars
Exodus 34:10 – 16
10 Then the Lord said: “I am making a covenant with you. Before all your people I will do wonders never before done in any nation in all the world.The people you live among will see how awesome is the work that I, the Lord, will do for you. 11 Obey what I command you today. I will drive out before you the Amorites, Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 12 Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land where you are going, or they will be a snare among you. 13 Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and cut down their Asherah poles.14 Do not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.
15 “Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land; for when they prostitute themselves to their gods and sacrifice to them, they will invite you and you will eat their sacrifices. 16 And when you choose some of their daughters as wives for your sons and those daughters prostitute themselves to their gods, they will lead your sons to do the same.
You are dueling in the spirit for the territory with a demonic altar. Yeah! YOU are there to break down their altars.
Now you are in the community, you have to invite the community to be a part of your church and you are going to get all kinds of people coming there. There are some who have good intentions but they need to be saved, discipled, trained and those who have bad intentions. Those who are there for destruction – witches, wizards, warlocks, sorcerers.
You have to discern who is who. You have to weed out the ones that are there for evil while saving those caught in the clutches of the enemy. All while maintaining your own purity, holiness and complete devotion to the Lord.
The Bible never told us to embrace the wolf in sheep’s clothing. John 10:1-17. We are to get rid of them. When you decided to start that church it is no longer just about you and your family. All the people in your church who are members of that church are now under your covering. Your protection. YOU are responsible for them. So when the wolf comes you can’t just jump on a plane and run back home like you are a guest speaker at a conference. No! This is different. You are responsible for these people now.
The demonic realm also has an altar which they are maintaining. Everything you are doing at your altar, they are doing on theirs, except their altar is communicating with the devil. The works from their altar is being carried out by demons while the work from your altar is being carried out by angels.
There’s is a counterfeit!
They are also making sacrifices but now it is human sacrifices, animal sacrifices, blood sacrifices, while you are operating under the Blood of Jesus.
It is a complete counterfeit altar that is in opposition to the one you are raising for the Lord.
This is why He tells us to tear down their altar, don’t erect or build anything that looks like theirs and keep your worship pure, don’t follow their practices or worship their gods.
And, this is why every time in the scriptures when God sends His people to take territory He always told them to tear down the evil altars and erect an altar to the Lord in its place
Judges 6:25-28, Deuteronomy 12:3-4, 1 Kings 13:1-11.
Now I’m sure some of you are thinking that you’ve never seen one before but I am here to tell you that you have. You just never knew what you were looking at.
Here’s an example…have you ever been in a Chinese restaurant and you see the big buddha, sitting over the pond with the koi fish and there are people throwing coins into the pond and making a wish? What is that? Every flip of a coin is a wood on their altar of sacrifice to their god!!!!
We don’t do wishing wells or fountains with coins because you have no idea what that was dedicated to.
This is not in every Chinese restaurant but you may have seen it before.
How about the Vietnamese nail salon with the buddha on the counter with the flowers all around it? That’s an altar. People over there rubbing the buddha’s belly.
Remember I told you that you can tithe and give offerings or donations from your altar, this is their equivalent of that and they are depending on that buddha to bring them money.
Now that I have told you, watch how much more aware you are now and you will start to see it everywhere!!! In every culture they some form of it.
You will start to see the setups in the corner of the businesses that you visit….”oh, this is for our ancestors”…Umm, NO!
Am I telling you to go in there and tear them down? NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Every altar is connected to a greater altar, it has demons attached to it, you touch that thing and you are not properly covered? YOU GOT PROBLEMS!!!!!!!
How are they going to get you? Through the doors that you have not closed.
They find your vice, and they use it. They find the vices of your children, and they use it. They find the vice of your spouse, and they use it.
Doors.
While you are tearing down their altars (in the spirit), they are looking to tear down yours!! Both of you have the same mission and much like the Highlander….there can be only One!
The problem is that when you walk into some churches, not all, they look exactly like the community that they are there to save. This means they have made covenant with the gods in that city. They are in cohoots with the demons and the principality over the region. Instead of being set apart, they integrated all in the name of being “relatable”.
GOD is not pleased.
In order for you to stay pure and on task for the Lord, you have to know right from wrong, truth from lies, black and white and you can’t compromise.
Now your little church or ministry may not have as many people as they do initially but I can assure you as you continue to stay the course, God will create a DNA in your church where you will start to attract the true followers of Christ. You will be taken seriously. And the Lord’s presence will be there because you have altar that honors HIM.
With this comes an enormous amount of warfare because the territorial spirits are going to come after you. Hence the establishment of your altar need to be done as soon as possible.
How to establish a Territorial Altar
It is pretty much going to be the same as what you would have at your personal altar except this time all the prayers are focused on the church itself, not personal prayers.
You will have worship happening there, not just on a Sunday when you preach. You would need to ask people to come by and worship at the church at different times.
If you get pure worshippers and pure prayers you will be able to establish this quickly.
Drive around the area and pray over the area.
Drive around and repent over the city for all the sins you see happening there.
You can’t do any of this without first putting on the Armor of God because as soon as you start these activities the territorial spirits are going to KNOW that you are there and they will start with the warfare quickly.
If you have the worship happening, regularly, from people who are pure – I didn’t say the best singer, I didn’t say the best piano player, I said PURE… HOLY. A portal will get established over the church very quickly.
Here’s how you’ll know when they have picked you up on their radar, your dreams are going to turn demonic, lots of warfare and fighting. That’s God alerting you that they know you are there.
And, they will come for a visit.
When the witches show up
The scout comes first, trying to figure out who you are, scan you for your spiritual gifts, your weaknesses your life story (using divination) and …DOORS. So they can get easy access to your life.
When you are dealing with people like this, you can’t pretend like how people pretend at church like their life is so perfect. They can see what you are doing in the spirit. Let me just tell you that straight. THEY KNOW!!!!
The initial conversation is basically them trying to discern if you know who you are and if you know who they are.
Please, do not become paranoid and suspicious of everyone but if your spirit says something is up, no matter how sweet they are, you need to take it into prayer with the Lord and specifically ask about that person.
Lord, who is this? Show me this person in the spirit.
Now if you have the Armor of God on, they won’t get that much from the scan so what follows next will feel like someone darting in and out of traffic. You ever see someone driving and they keep changing lanes going in and out to get ahead? I don’t have any other way to explain it to you other than like that. They will start to talk 500 words per minute, sprinkled with flattery, if you don’t jump in and pick up the conversation they switch to another topic and they’ll just go from topic to topic, 500 words per minute.
They are talking a lot because they are hoping that you will start talking a lot.
They’ll talk about their kids, which they may or may not have, give you fake names. What they want is for you to pick up and tell them the names of your kids, how old they are, if they are married or not. They’re scouting!
Then they will scan the church members. What are they looking for? Who is maintaining the altar. What can be stolen in the spirit.
So they need to find who is worshipping in the building, who are the intercessors, who is the watchman. Remember now, their mission is the same – tear down the altar. Therefore they have to identify everyone who is keeping the altar going.
Then they find their doors, and access their lives and suddenly your wonderful intercessors will start having problems in their marriages, family problems and instead of turning up to pray over the church,,.they show up asking YOU to pray for them! They sit around and talk about their problems for 55 minutes in a 1 hour prayer meeting and pray for 5 minutes…and nobody is aware of what is happening because it is so subtle. A gradual derailment until the prayer group lost focus. Then your worship leader who was so good at opening portals with the purity of worship moves out of town because they got a job they just couldn’t refuse. And, before you know it within a year you have no one managing the altar.
Hmmm, now how did that happen? You had a visitor whether you recognized who it was or not.
You have a prayer team, but they are not praying over the church instead it has turned into a gossiping session that occasionally prays for each other and consists of one scout that just goes to gather information.
Once those maintaining the altar are removed, it is very easy for that church to crumble because there is no one covering the people in the church or praying over the neighborhood so shortly the church starts looking like the very thing you were sent there to tear down.
One very important step when establishing a church or a Christian ministry is the discipleship and training of the people involved. A sermon is for everybody – saved or unsaved – but the people who are involved in the ministry need some type of training or guidelines to work with or they will fall apart.
When you don’t disciple your church members, what happens is the slightest storm comes they will blow right over.
They need roots that run DEEP. This only happens with discipleship. This is not a sermon, this is an actual set of teachings that every new Christian or people serving in your ministry need to know about you and how you are running the church. Basic Christianity on how to grow in the Lord. Otherwise, they will not be able to survive any kind of spiritual attack.
Then all of them need, you, the pastor to spoon feed them and when they should be eating meat they are still there drinking milk! The Great Commission says …teach them what I taught you! (paraphrasing)
When you start establishing the ministry in your own personal/family altar all of these things you have to cover in prayer and ask God to send the right people to you to help you run the church and maintain the altar.
You obviously cannot be there singing and worshiping all the time so if all you have to begin with is worship music playing in your church through the sound system, start with that! At least it is something. I already told you in the personal altar post about the types of songs/worship music you should be using to do this.
GOD will send the people.
Now, if you keep in mind that the workers of darkness are there to locate the people who are maintaining the altar and distract or remove them, you must keep in mind that one of the quickest way for them to do this is get you in a disagreement with the people who are suppose to maintain the altar.
They have to remove the watchman.
Therefore, you take everything back to the Lord. If someone comes and says something to you, that you may not like or don’t agree with , you shouldn’t just shut them down or throw them out of the church. You need to sit with the Lord on it. Make sure that this person doesn’t play a critical role in your church.
Because the witches are going to make sure that you get rid of the people maintaining the altar.
They don’t want you to have anyone there that can stop them.
PLEASE remember that I told you this. Otherwise, every other month you are in an argument with a worship team member, an intercessor, the watchman. Until all of them are gone and now the witch is in charge of your prayer team. And you can’t see it because you removed your entire line of defense.
Next up, they go after your altar at your home.
~~~~~~~~~~
When Abram just started because God had not yet called him into his role, he could manage all these people from his personal altar because he really didn’t have a “ministry” to speak of. God had not yet called him into his purpose.
The minute God was ready for him, separation had to take place.
He has to move into full consecration and all the things that will weigh him down have to be removed. Otherwise, he would not be able to carry all of that.
He left with people and some wealth but by the time they left Egypt he had a lot more, now he’s covering more than he did when he first started out. At some point it was going to be a bit too much.
God knew this and had him move away from Lot.
There’s no way he was going to be able to manage Sarai, his workers, the livestock, the gold and silver, Lot, Lot’s wife, the daughters, the drag queen sons in law, and the rest of it.
No, that’s a bit too much. Usually there is a cutting back so that you can make room for the new.
You have to offload the things that will weigh you down before you can pick up what God wants you to carry,
As soon as Lot left, God showed Abraham what he wanted him to do. I always thought that the only time the Abram went to rescue Lot was Sodom and Gomorrah but that is not true.
He rescued him twice!
Genesis 14:11-16
11 The four kings seized all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah and all their food; then they went away.12 They also carried off Abram’s nephew Lot and his possessions, since he was living in Sodom.
13 A man who had escaped came and reported this to Abram the Hebrew.Now Abram was living near the great trees of Mamre the Amorite, a brother of Eshkol and Aner, all of whom were allied with Abram.14 When Abram heard that his relative had been taken captive, he called out the 318 trained men born in his household and went in pursuit as far as Dan. 15 During the night Abram divided his men to attack them and he routed them, pursuing them as far as Hobah, north of Damascus. 16 He recovered all the goods and brought back his relative Lot and his possessions, together with the women and the other people.
So he had to go and fight to rescue Lot, his family and his possessions. And he went with 318 trained men born from his household.
Trained men.
When people come to your church and decided to be a part of your church family, you have to train them. A sermon is not enough because when the war comes, and it will, they ALL need to know how to fight.
What happened to Lot’s trained men?
Lot was high maintenance. He couldn’t help himself or his family, someone always had to come and save him.
I believe that’s why God had to move him out of the way so that Abram could focus on what the Lord wants him to do.
After assisting Lot, the next thing Abram does is he gives his tithe (law of first mention) to the king of Salem, Melchizedek which is said to be Jesus.
Then the king of Sodom (as in Sodom and Gomorrah) offered Abram money and he refused it. (Genesis 14:22-24) He said
22 But Abram said to the king of Sodom, “With raised hand I have sworn an oath to the Lord, God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth, 23 that I will accept nothing belonging to you, not even a thread or the strap of a sandal, so that you will never be able to say, ‘I made Abram rich.’
It was after this that God finally told Abram I am making a covenant with you.
You have to pass the money test.
You can’t serve mammon and God. You can’t love money more than God’s people or ever be motivated to start a church or ministry just to make money or make a living. Before you get any level of success, a test comes that has to do with money.
We have to know who to give to, and we have to know who we shouldn’t accept money from. It’s not every pastor or teacher that you should allow to stand at the altar in your church and preach.
That place is consecrated unto the Lord. It is a holy place and not everyone should be invited to stand there.
Some things we must refuse.
Did you hear about the hairdresser in Miami who had this client asking her to wash chicken blood out of her hair? Her 4 year old daughter to died the following day.
Some money we need to refuse. And, we cannot touch the accursed thing, which is the reason I told you not to try to destroy altars if you are not properly covered and you don’t know what you are doing because the demons attached to it, could come for you afterwards.
This is the same way you establish and take territory when you are running a ministry. Same thing.
There are prayers and I’ll share them with you next week.
A note for the businesses
What does this look like when you are running a business. Do you need to set up an altar at your business? No. You don’t need to do that unless God instructed you to do it. You’re creating an atmosphere in that space.
This is specifically for a retail type of business where you are dealing with the public and you have no control over who comes in and out, much like a church or a ministry. When you are in an office environment and you are around the same people all the time unless there is one person there operating in witchcraft, you will rarely ever need to do this.
In a retail environment, this is necessary.
It does help if you have Christians working in your business and you can ask them to pray over the business everyday. Just ask them, you would be surprised that they will do it if you ask.
I think some people don’t realize that there are areas where you need to be doing spiritual warfare otherwise your business cannot survive in that neighborhood.
You should be praying over your business everyday when you get there.
Worship.
Anoint the doors if you feel something is off.
Bind and cast out spirits if you feel something entered when a particular customer entered the store.
Of course you’re doing all of this without your customers seeing it so they don’t think you’re weird! LOL
Make declarations over your business.
Tithe!
Praying over your neighborhood
Your personal/family altar is now doing double duty but this is easier to manage than your ministry, church or business altars because you would have to do this from your house but now you have to specifically focus on your neighborhood in some of your prayers.
Which means you’ll drive around and pray. And again you’re not praying over anything without putting on the Armor of God first. You have to cover yourself. Look for what is happening in the neighborhood so that you know how to pray and what you need to repent for in your area.
Yes, repenting for the sins of the community is crucial. This is how you begin to lift the iniquity off that neighborhood.
What do you see when you drive around – poverty, homelessness, many houses going up for sale, drugs, gun violence. You need to pray about all of this and repent for what you are seeing.
PLEASE keep in mind that the minute you start doing this, you will stir up the spiritual realm in your neighborhood and the enemy knows where you live! Now your household would need to be prayerful. I mean everyone!
You don’t want to start doing this until the Lord has given you the green light that He wants you to do it. This would mean warfare and your family would need to be ready to handle it.
Just with your worship alone you can open a portal over your house.
Next week I will give you prayers related to altars. For now this is quite a bit to digest.
I hope this has helped you.
Blessings!
