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CHAPTER 1

THE MYSTERY OF PROTOTYPE TIMING

When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and finding none it says, "I will return to my house from which I came."

— Luke 11:24, ESV

But when Jesus said "this temple," he meant his own body.

— John 2:21

How do demons take up residence in our body parts and the "rooms" of our souls? In order to answer that question, in this and the next chapter I want to explore some important parallels between the human body and the Old Testament temple. I don't intend to be dogmatic about the connections I'm about to show you, because the Lord often speaks to me in figurative language and I tend to communicate that way myself. But I do believe there are some significant spiritual insights for us to glean.

God first began to open my eyes to prototype timing through the writing of the apostle Paul. In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul wrote:

For the law of Moses says, "You must not muzzle an ox to keep it from eating as it treads out the grain." Was God thinking only about oxen when he said this? Wasn't he actually speaking to us? Yes, it was written for us, so that the one who plows and the one who threshes the grain might both expect a share of the harvest.

— 1 Corinthians 9:9–10, emphasis added

The verse Paul is quoting is Deuteronomy 25:4: "You must not muzzle an ox to keep it from eating as it treads out the grain." But Paul says, "Was God thinking only about oxen when he said this? Wasn't he actually speaking to us? Yes, it was written for us ..."

Within Paul's statement we find the core of what I call "prototype timing." A prototype is "an original model on which something is patterned." 1 When God spoke about oxen in Deuteronomy 25:4, He wasn't thinking only of the animal. In his revelation Paul says, "It was written for us." This suggests that God had Paul's audience in mind when He communicated the laws concerning oxen to Moses. Thousands of years after the Book of Deuteronomy was written, Paul revealed that the oxen were actually a prototype for those laboring for God.

The oxen represented something that would be revealed at a later time — ministers of the gospel — and served as a model for how we are to understand the way ministers should be treated. So now whenever I see oxen in Scripture, I consider how the passage might relate to ministers of the gospel.

This is the essence of prototype timing. Throughout Scripture there are truths like this, objects and items that represent something that would be revealed at a later time. When God opened my eyes to these prototypes, I began to see a whole new layer of revelation in God's Word.

Three Key Prototypes

Through prototype timing we can begin to see the revelation in this book unfold. By understanding three key prototypes, we will see how demonic spirits can reside in a person's body parts and especially how they can hide in "rooms" in our souls.

House

The word house can be found more than two thousand times in Scripture, and its first reference is in the Book of Genesis in the account of Noah and the building of the ark. As we will discuss in chapter 2, the ark parallels the temple in that it had many rooms and chambers. But to truly understand this prototype, we must first read Luke 11:24 (ESV):

When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and finding none it says, "I will return to my house from which I came."

The demon said it would "return to my house from which I came." The demon was looking to go back to the "house" where it had been legally living, but earlier the verse said, "When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person" (emphasis added). The verse is telling us that the person is the house. This is why whenever I see house in Scripture, I consider how the verse may apply to a person.

Doing this has opened up a floodgate of hidden pearls — too many to include them all here. But I will share one that is found in Leviticus 14:33–34:

Then the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, "When you arrive in Canaan, the land I am giving you as your own possession, I may contaminate some of the houses in your land with mildew."

In its proper exegesis the curse in Leviticus 14:34 is only mildew. But when I consider the passage more figuratively through the lens of prototype timing, where house represents a person, I realize the curse could be spiritual contamination. Though God does not "contaminate" a person with demons, this verse suggests that an individual can become spiritually polluted or unclean. We know this is true because 2 Corinthians 7:1 says, "Let us cleanse ourselves from everything that can defile our body or spirit. And let us work toward complete holiness because we fear God."

Seeing Leviticus 14:34 in light of prototype timing causes it to take on another layer of meaning. And I believe there are gems like this throughout the Bible. There is a vast deposit of hidden revelation in Scripture that is waiting to be discovered. The Bible says in Proverbs 25:2 that it's the glory of God to conceal a matter, but it's the glory of kings to search the matter out. Ask the Holy Spirit to give you the heart of a king to search out new revelation in Scripture!

Tabernacle

In the Book of Exodus, God instructed Moses to build Him a tabernacle according the pattern He showed him on Mount Sinai:

Have the people of Israel build me a holy sanctuary so I can live among them. You must build this Tabernacle and its furnishings exactly according to the pattern I will show you.

— Exodus 25:8–9

In the next several verses God outlined exactly how He wanted the tabernacle to be built and everything that should be in it, from the type of material to be used to the exact dimensions the furnishings should have. Why would God be so particular? It's because the Hebrew word translated "tabernacle" means "residence" or "dwelling" 2 — again, a house! — and this dwelling would belong to God.

In Exodus 25 the tabernacle referred to the place where God Himself would dwell, but in the New Testament Peter would use the same word to refer to his body: "Yea, I think it meet, as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up by putting you in remembrance; knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath shewed me" (2 Pet. 1:13–14, KJV). So tabernacle can also refer to the human body.

The Old Testament tabernacle consisted of three compartments: the outer court, where the sacrifices, offerings, and ceremonial cleansing of the priests were conducted; the holy place, which housed the table of showbread, the altar of incense, and the golden candlestick; and the most holy place, where the ark of the covenant was kept. This is also where once a year the high priest would enter with the blood of atoning sacrifice to cleanse the children of Israel for another year.

These three compartments also represent the three areas of mankind: body (outer court), soul (inner court), and spirit (most holy place). Incidentally the Lord desires for us to love Him wholeheartedly in each of those areas. He says in Deuteronomy 6:4–5, "Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart [most holy place], all your soul [inner court], and all your strength [outer court]."

The tabernacle of Moses was God's mobile dwelling place on earth. The Israelites took it with them during their wilderness journey and when they crossed the Jordan River and entered the land of Canaan. But as Jeremiah 31:33 indicates, God never wanted to dwell in a tabernacle built by human hands. He desired to dwell in the human heart and cause us to be living tabernacles who carry the light of His presence to a dark world. (See 1 Corinthians 3:16.) But before this would happen through the death and resurrection of Jesus, the tabernacle of Moses would be replaced by something more sophisticated: the temple.

Temple

The Israelites worshipped God in the mobile tabernacle for years. Then when David was king of Israel, he began making plans to build a permanent habitation for God. Because David's hands had been stained with blood after years of war, the task of building a permanent temple would fall to his son Solomon (1 Chron. 28:6).

Before David died, he gave Solomon the blueprints he had drawn for building the temple:

Then David gave Solomon the plans for the Temple and its surroundings, including the entry room, the storerooms, the upstairs rooms, the inner rooms, and the inner sanctuary — which was the place of atonement. David also gave Solomon all the plans he had in mind for the courtyards of the Lord's Temple, the outside rooms, the treasuries, and the rooms for the gifts dedicated to the Lord.

— 1 Chronicles 28:11–12

David spent much of his reign developing plans for the place where God's name would dwell forever. David had such an intimate relationship with the Lord that God called David "a man after my own heart" (Acts 13:22). I believe that because of his closeness to God, David figured out that God's ultimate desire was to dwell in the human heart. I believe he knew that one day the temple would not be the place where God's people went to make blood sacrifices; rather, it would be the place where His children worshipped God from a surrendered heart.

The Spirit of God would have had to reveal this to David, but Jesus made this truth plain in a conversation recorded in the Gospel of John:

The hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem [a reference to the temple because that is where it was located] will you worship the Father. ... God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.

— John 4:21, 24, ESV

After David died and Solomon became king, one of the first things Solomon did was ask God to give him wisdom. He knew that not only was the responsibility of leading the people of Israel on his shoulders but also the construction of the temple. His request so delighted the Lord that God granted him more wisdom than anyone who had ever lived. (See 2 Chronicles 1.)

I believe that supernatural wisdom was evident in the building of the temple. Solomon's temple was an upgrade of the previous tabernacle. The old tabernacle consisted only of three areas, but the new temple would include a three-story complex with ninety rooms. We will explore the blueprint of Solomon's temple in chapter 2, but here is where we see the emergence of rooms in the temple.

Thousands of years after Solomon built the temple, Jesus entered a rebuilt version of that facility and began turning over the tables of the merchants who were profiteering in God's house. When asked by the leading Jewish priests to show them a miraculous sign to validate His authority, Jesus replied, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up" (John 2:19).

The leading priests responded by saying, "It has taken forty-six years to build this Temple, and you can rebuild it in three days?" (John 2:20). They didn't understand what Jesus was actually saying. We read in the next two verses:

But when Jesus said "this temple," he meant his own body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered he had said this, and they believed both the Scriptures and what Jesus had said.

— John 2:21–22, emphasis added

When Jesus referred to the temple, He was talking about a body, not a building. This has opened a whole new realm of fresh revelation and unexplored scriptures to me, as every time I read the word temple in the Bible, I not only think of a physical building that was used as a place of worship, but I also consider how the passage might relate to the human body.

I love this passage about Jesus cleansing the temple in John 2 because it is a foreshadowing of deliverance. Just as Jesus walked in and cleared the money changers from the temple, He can step in and cleanse your temple. It doesn't matter how long you've been oppressed by bad habits, strongholds, or deeply rooted demonic activity, God can set you free in no time. He can undo in days what it took the devil years to create! It doesn't take the Lord that long to deliver; we're the ones slowing down the process when we refuse to surrender every area of our lives to Him.

It's worth repeating that it was never God's intent to dwell in temples made with human hands but in temples made without hands. (See Acts 17:24–26.) The terms of the new covenant are that if we choose to follow Christ, God will make His dwelling in our hearts:

"But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel after those days," says the Lord. "I will put my instructions deep within them, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people."

— Jeremiah 31:33

This was God's design all along, even back when He outlined the blueprints of the tabernacle to Moses. The house, tabernacle, and temple were prototypes God would use to reveal His ultimate plan to make us His temple and establish a new covenant not just with the nation of Israel but with the whole world.

The Fullness of Time

God was silent for four hundred years between the Book of Malachi and the Gospel of Matthew. Then He raised up a voice crying in the wilderness, proclaiming, "Prepare the way of the Lord." This voice was John the Baptist, the forerunner and herald for the One who would come after him — the promised Deliverer.

When Jesus appeared, the Bible says it was "the fullness of time" (Gal. 4:4, ESV). It was the perfect time for Jesus to come into the earth realm and speak about the kingdom of God. The Jewish people were living under the control of the Roman Empire and thus had a unique understanding of the concept of kingdom. Though they were not living in Rome, they were being governed by Rome. So when Jesus spoke of being governed by another kingdom, the idea was not foreign to His listeners.

Jesus often referenced the kingdom of God and the temple in His parables, but I believe He spoke with the prototypes in mind. When Jesus spoke of the kingdom, He meant the governing influence of a king over a territory, and when He spoke of the temple, He meant the human body.

Jesus merged the truth about the temple and the kingdom when He said:

The Kingdom of God can't be detected by visible signs. You won't be able to say, "Here it is!" or "It's over there!" For the Kingdom of God is already among you.

— Luke 17:20–21

The kingdom of God — the governing influence of God — is among us because we are His temple. (See 1 Corinthians 6:19.)

The prototypes we've discussed don't just point us to this truth. I believe they also reveal how our human temples function and how the enemy would seek to contaminate them. If we consider that Solomon's temple, which was built with a complex of ninety rooms on three floors, represents our human temples, we can begin to see how demons would be able to hide and function within a person undetected for long periods of time, maybe even years.

But Jesus is still the great Deliverer, and He wants to open our eyes to what might be lurking in our temples. In the next chapter we will look at the blueprint of Solomon's temple to discover how it reveals where demons like to hide. But before we go further, I want to ask the Holy Spirit to give you an extra measure of discernment so you will be able to see the hidden blueprints of the human body and, as a result, the areas of the human temple that may need deliverance.

Holy Spirit, I ask You to expand the capacity of the readers' discernment by removing anything that would hinder them from gaining deeper understanding of Your truth. In Jesus's name, amen.

THE BLUEPRINT OF THE TEMPLE

Then the man told me, "These rooms that overlook the Temple from the north and south are holy. Here the priests who offer sacrifices to the Lord will eat the most holy offerings. And because these rooms are holy, they will be used to store the sacred offerings — the grain offerings, sin offerings, and guilt offerings."

— Ezekiel 42:13

In Mark 5 we find Jesus crossing the Sea of Galilee into the region called Decapolis, which was a group of ten towns. Upon landing on the shore in the city of Gadara, He was confronted by a demoniac who terrorized the town and was quarantined in the cemetery. When the demonized man approached Him, Jesus commanded the spirit within him to identify itself, and it responded, "My name is Legion, because there are many of us inside this man" (Mark 5:9). A legion was about two thousand foot soldiers, which means there were thousands of demons inside this man.

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Excerpted from "The Secrets to Deliverance"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Alexander Pagani.
Excerpted by permission of Charisma House Book Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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