The Beloved Disciple wrote in The Revelation of Jesus Christ, chapter 18:
21 Then a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, saying, “Thus with violence the great city Babylon shall be thrown down, and shall not be found anymore.
22 The sound of harpists, musicians, flutists, and trumpeters shall not be heard in you anymore. No craftsman of any craft shall be found in you anymore, and the sound of a millstone shall not be heard in you anymore.
23 The light of a lamp shall not shine in you anymore, and the voice of bridegroom and bride shall not be heard in you anymore. For your merchants were the great men of the earth, for by your sorceries all the nations were deceived.”
Brother Eby also wrote:
It is significant to note that in all the previous 65 books of the Bible the words “sorcerer,” “sorcery,” and “sorceries” are translated from words denoting magic, witchcraft, or wizardry which were arts as ancient and established in human civilization as have been the true workings of God. As far back as the time of Moses and the kingdom of Egypt we see the experts in the magic arts were able to keep up with the supernatural workings of the Lord before the Pharaoh — rather convincingly up to a point. Of course, as with all counterfeits, they inevitably are exposed sooner or later. Though some are outright frauds, fakes, and phonies, with others their power is often very real — divination through the assistance of evil spirits, black magic, enchantment, witchcraft.
Only in the book of Revelation does the reference to magic arts or sorcery take on an entirely new meaning! The word used throughout the book of Revelation is an altogether different Greek word than is used anywhere else in scripture. In Revelation 21:8 it is pharmakeus and in Revelation 22:15 it becomes pharmakos. Then in Revelation 9:21 and here in our text the word is pharmakeia. Obviously the prefix “pharma” reveals that the meaning of the word has something to do with drugs, as in the words “pharmaceutical,” “pharmacy,” and “pharmacist.” No other place in scripture, but in the book of Revelation, is the idea of “sorcery” associated with drugs! The three Greek words listed above are simply different forms of the same word denoting drugs and druggists. It identifies deadly poisons and those who either make or sell those deadly poisons. That is just what the words mean, nothing else. In the Greek language a Pharmacist is, therefore, a Sorcerer, a maker or a dealer, a vendor or a user of deadly poisons sometimes administered as medicines. Legal or illegal, in many cases they destroy the brain and other vital organs and systems, madden the user, and weaken and ruin the spirits, souls, and bodies of the countless millions who use them. If you doubt that practically all drugs are dangerous, deadly poisons that are, even at best, destructive to human life, just listen to the plethora of warnings and side effects at the end of most pharmaceutical ads on television! Oftentimes more seconds are spent on the warnings and side effects of the drug than on the actual promotional and beneficent content of the ad! That is the actual meaning of the words “Sorcerers” and “sorceries” in the book of Revelation. As a matter of scholarship it cannot be contested.
The purpose of this message is not to attack drugs, medicines, or pharmacists. Let us keep our minds in the Spirit! Again I remind every reader of these lines that the Revelation is a spiritual book, and its realities are spiritual realities! No one knew better than the beloved John what, in its spiritual meaning, “drugs” signifies! The message is clear — it signifies the doctrines and teachings of religious Babylon which dull the spiritual senses of the Lord’s people and are destructive to true spiritual life, giving them a false hope, a mis-directed goal, and causing them to live by religious superstitions, myths, traditions, legends, and folklore. Doctrines about the power of the devil, financial prosperity, the rapture, so-called end-time events, the antichrist, the great tribulation, a mansion over the hilltop, along with holidays, rituals, ceremonies, sacraments, and a hundred more delusions drug God’s people into a spiritually hallucinogenic state. They live in a false, starry-eyed fairy-world of soulical imaginations which they suppose to be spiritual realities! Pleasure! Fun! Thrills! Excitement! are the result of a cunning spirit that saturates the church systems as they run after the “high” of soulical programs, concerts, fleshly manifestations, emotionally stirring singing, entertaining preaching — the same as any drug user in the world. God says that all nations are deceived by the “sorceries” or the “spiritual drugging” of Mystery Babylon!
The people are drugged to sleep by the word of Babylon simply because the true word and the true ministries of God ARE FOUND AND HEARD NO MORE AT ALL IN HER! They have nothing of life to offer, no reality to meet your deepest need, so they give you a drugged word to induce either a deep spiritual stupor or a fleshly, emotional high which keeps you ignorant of the real, eternal values. You are so drugged out of your mind that you’re not aware of the lack, of what’s missing. It’s a numbing effect, you’re in a hypnotic trance, an illusory world of imagination, unreality, and make-believe, as they “soothsay” you, casting over you their spell, bringing you under their control so that you listen to their voice and blindly obey.
There are not many people who are sufficiently awake to believe it, but at this very moment hundreds of millions of church goers of every sect and creed are walking and talking and acting under the delusions of Babylon’s drugs. They are filled with false doctrines, false hopes, false expectations, false understandings, false interpretations, false forms of worship, and though they profess to be Christians, they would not know the real Christ if they met Him on the street. They are so “high” on their mixed potion that they giddily imagine that they are going to be caught up in the sky where they will sit on a cloud with Jesus eating pork chops, or some such foolishness, at the marriage supper of the Lamb, while the inhabitants of earth suffer the excruciating pangs of “great tribulation” under the rule of a superman dictator called “the Antichrist.”
– End Quote –
In the mid-1970’s FATHER told me to start playing bass guitar in the small church we were attending. I told HIM that I no longer had a guitar since I sold it immediately after I was baptized in The Holy Spirit six years prior… it represented my former life. I had played in a somewhat successful rock band and quit once I was baptized for my nature had changed and I totally lost interest. At any rate, I told the pastor what FATHER said to me and we privately prayed that FATHER would provide. Forty-five minutes later, a man approached the pastor and said, “GOD told me to give this church my bass guitar, do you need one?” I began playing the next Sunday.
A group from that congregation expanded to a location about 25 miles away and we were led to go with them. I continued playing. FATHER anointed me to give messages in Tongues to that congregation and I faithfully submitted to HIS anointing. We received hundreds of messages in Tongues and interpretation over the years I attended. All were timely and appropriate. This ended when FATHER instructed me to depart on August 31st, 1996. I had received the revelation of “the Sons of GOD” and had shared with those who had ears to hear in my young married couples Sunday school class, but the pastor was not on board. He did not want his control challenged or diluted by others with revelation. He ultimately left the ministry and sold the building. After 20 years, I was released from playing bass guitar in “church” services.