In an earlier post the Authority of the Believer was presented “2023.06.03 The Authority of the Believer” at https://www.eti-ministries.org/the-authority-of-the-believer
In Appendices 1 and 2 are two articles that report on the reality of Demons and associated with that the Deliverance of people oppressed with Demons through the authority of Believers, frequently called Exorcism although I prefer the term “Deliverance.”
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The first article is from Fox News at https://www.foxnews.com/media/exorcist-reveals-signs-demonic-possession-responds-new-demon-movie-levitation-pupils-turn-green
And the second is from Doug Ferguson at http://spiritualhealingsource.com/?p=6650
The key point is that Demons and Satanic Messengers {Angels} are real and that true Believers who are filled with the Set-Apart {Holy} Spirit of Yah and who understand their authority in the name of Yahooshua are able to easily minister Deliverance to anyone who is oppressed by Demons and / or Satanic Messengers.
I have had considerable personal experience of the Demonic over the years, including being attacked by Demons who tried to strangle me on two occasions. I have also experienced personal deliverance and ministered deliverance to others so I know from first-hand experience that Demons are real – see “2021.12.08 The Essence of Cleansing and Deliverance” at https://www.eti-ministries.org/essence-cleansing-and-deliverance
See also “Seven Components in Growing Close to Yah” at https://www.eti-ministries.org/seven-components-of-drawing-close for my approach to Deliverance which I refer to as “Cleansing” which should be used on conjunction with other approaches to Deliverance. Basically, once one is keeping all of the Ten Commandments, it is relatively easy to get rid of most Demons.
With regard to the two third party articles cited above and the other articles that are cited below, the usual caveats apply, see https://www.eti-ministries.org/critical-caveats-re-third-party-content
Appendix 3 contains a detailed explanation of the Demonic by Derek Prince, one of Yah’s generals of the 1900’s. Worth reading. From https://www.derekprince.com/sermons/24
Appendix 4 continues this discussion from https://www.derekprince.com/sermons/25
In both cases remember that Yah is central not Yahooshua.
Appendix 5 reports on a Satanic Convention in the USA as an indication of the level of deception that is creeping into our society from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-65549975
A few further references of relevance:
“2011.02.10 - We wrestle NOT against flesh and blood” at https://www.eti-ministries.org/the-satanic/the-satanic-part-1/we-wrestle-not-against-flesh-and-blood
“2012.06.08 - Body, Mind and Spirit” at https://www.eti-ministries.org/anointed-life/anointed-life-part-5/body-mind-and-spirit
“2001.04.1.12 Demonic Activity Associated With Artefacts and In Dwellings” at https://www.eti-ministries.org/articles/tagid/4460
“2021.12.08 The Essence of Cleansing and Deliverance” at https://www.eti-ministries.org/essence-cleansing-and-deliverance
“A Study on the Ministry of Deliverance” at https://www.eti-ministries.org/men-women/marriage-teachings/6-deliverance a selection of audio recordings by a highly anointed servant.
“The Satanic Part 3” – a range of pages discussing a whole range of issues relating to the Satanic and Demonic Realm at https://www.eti-ministries.org/the-satanic/the-satanic-part-3
Conclusion
Demons are real but as Believers we have the authority to cast out Demons (Ancestor Spirits) and Satanic Messengers {Angels}. Note that there are over 100 Billion Demons on the planet – people who died without believing in the Creator.
Please feel free to email me (James) by replying to this email if you have questions or comments.
May Father bless you and keep you and make His face to shine upon you and grant you His Peace
May Yah judge me severely and correct me harshly and show me the level of my present deception and how to correct it with regard to everything that I write and publish
Dr James A Robertson
Emissary and Spokesman of Yah
{Apostle and Prophet of the Almighty Creator}
16 July 2023
Appendix 1
Exorcist reveals signs of demonic possession, responds to new demon movie: 'Levitation', pupils 'turn green'
Fr. Lampert has served as a priest for almost 32 years
By Jeffrey Clark | Fox News
From https://www.foxnews.com/media/exorcist-reveals-signs-demonic-possession-responds-new-demon-movie-levitation-pupils-turn-green
Exorcist reveals signs of demonic possession, responds to new demon movie: 'Levitation', pupils 'turn green'
Fr. Vincent Lampert told Fox News Digital that he has seen people possessed by demons foam at the mouth, growl and even snarl during the rite of exorcism.
Fr. Vincent Lampert — a Catholic priest and the designated exorcist for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis — has witnessed people "foaming at the mouth, growling and snarling" during one of many exorcisms throughout his career.
Exorcism is an ancient rite in the Catholic Church, that is, "at its core," Fr. Lampert said, "a prayer directed to God or directed against demons."
That prayer has the power of "commanding" a demon to depart the body of a human "based on the power and the authority of Christ," Fr. Lampert explained.
"An exorcism really is a command to the demon to reveal itself. And then once the demon reveals itself, the battle against it will begin," he said.
Fr. Vincent Lampert — a Catholic priest and the designated exorcist for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis — has witnessed people "foaming at the mouth, growling and snarling" during one of many exorcisms throughout his career.
That battle can take many forms. Fr. Lampert said that he has "seen everything from levitation of the body," to someone "drop to the ground and begin to slither like a snake across the floor."
Others have their eyes "roll" to the back of their heads. At the site of an exorcism, Fr. Lampert said that there can also be a drop in temperature in the room, "horrible stenches" and an "odor."
It is an unusual experience, even for a priest.
When Fr. Lampert was first appointed as an exorcist in 2005, he became "one of only 12 stably appointed exorcists in the United States." For his training in Rome, he sat in on "40 exorcisms" in just three months.
He has also served as a priest for almost 32 years since 1991, first becoming appointed as an exorcist in 2005.
THE STORY BEHIND REAL-LIFE EXORCISMS
But Fr. Lampert's work has only become busier over the years. He told Fox News Digital that there are thousands that reach out to him every year for his help. "I currently receive about 3,500 requests a year from people all over the world who are seeking help from the church," Fr. Lampert said.
He described the signs that a person has been possessed by a demon. Some speak with "a very deep and authoritative voice," he said, and their "complexion" can also change, becoming darker. He also said that he has also seen the eyes of a person possessed "turn green" and their "pupils become like a serpent."
As Fr. Lampert put it, these are all signals of a demon trying to say, ‘Don't mess with me because I'm more powerful than you.’"
Exorcism is an ancient rite in the Catholic Church, that is, "at its core," Fr. Lampert said, "a prayer directed to God or directed against demons."
Fr. Lampert also explained why exorcisms are not filmed and released by the Catholic Church.
"That’s to protect the identity of the person who is possessed," he said.
Fr. Lampert acknowledged that some critics argue that filming the exorcisms would provide the best "proof" for its validity. But he took issue with the premise that all would believe if confronted with video evidence of a live exorcism.
"I think we all know that we live in an age where technology can be manipulated. So even if one were to claim that they had a video of an exorcism, it doesn't mean that all doubt will go away," he said.
As to the fascination with demons and Satan, Fr. Lampert said that "the devil is a big business today."
"There is still this fascination with the devil and the world of the demonic," he added, commenting on the movie "The Pope’s Exorcist" that was released earlier this month.
Fr. Lampert said that while he has not watched the film, he is a member of the International Association of Exorcists (AIE) which is a "group of 750 priests and their helpers from throughout the world." It is the same organization that was founded by the movie’s protagonist, Fr. Gabriele Amorth. "The AIE has not given good reviews to the movie," Fr. Lampert said.
"They don't believe that Fr. Amorth is portrayed correctly, and they believe that the focus really is on the devil and not on Fr. Amorth and what he tried to do during his ministry of helping people who were possessed," he explained.
Fr. Lampert received an appointment to become an exorcist by the Bishop, who in turn serves under Pope Francis.
Fr. Lampert was emphatic that demons were real forces in the world, telling the story of a young girl whom he said was possessed by a demon after she was abused.
"I did an exorcism on a person who was raped by her father, beginning at the age of seven and then felt broken and battered from that."
"At the age of 12," he said, the girl's father "turned his attention to her younger sister. So she's broken. She's shattered. She blamed God for allowing this to happen," Fr. Lampert said.
That led to the girl choosing to leave the church for "more than 38 years," Fr. Lampert said, until a friend encouraged her to return, an opportunity that allowed her to meet Fr. Lampert in person. She then asked him to help her, as she believed she was being inhabited by a demon.
Fr. Lampert said that when he said the name of "Jesus" in her presence, the woman’s "eyeballs turned green and her pupils became slanted like a serpent. And the voice came out of her mouth and said, 'Who's he? He has no power over us.'"
One week later, Fr. Lampert performed the exorcism in a chapel. Fellow priests, the woman in question and her friend were all present, he said. After he blessed the woman with holy water, Fr. Lampert said, her "eyeballs turned green again. The pupils [became] slanted."
It was then that the demon spoke directly to Fr. Lampert: ‘You can't get rid of us. We've been here too long, and you're not strong enough.’"
During the rite of exorcism, Fr. Lampert breathed on the face of the woman, recalling a moment in the Gospels when Jesus breathed on the face of his disciples.
Fr. Lampert also discussed the "fascination with the devil and the world of the demonic" in pop culture.
"The person came flying out of the chair and landed on the floor. I and the other priests picked her up and she's glorifying and praising God. And there was a glow about her," Fr. Lampert said, that was almost like a halo.
"They're not radiating their glory. They're radiating the glory of God. It's a sign that a person really has taken their free will and united their free will with the will of God. That's a sign that I always look forward to knowing that a person truly has been liberated from demonic possession," he said.
That session took 45 minutes.
Fr. Lampert left off with one thing that he said everyone should understand about exorcism. "Ultimately," he said, the main actor in the rite of exorcism is not the priest — it’s God.
"Even in an exorcism, Jesus is not a bystander. He's the main actor. So it's not what I'm doing as an individual, it's what Christ wants to do in the life of a person. Anytime we turn to Christ he is always going to accept and welcome us with open arms. And in doing so, we can defeat anything the devil is trying to do to us," Fr. Lampert said.
Appendix 2
By Doug Ferguson
From http://spiritualhealingsource.com/?p=6650
e·van·ge·list: noun; a person who seeks to convert others to the Christian faith, especially by public preaching. HELP!!!
I’d been recruited by a well-known and widely respected evangelist with his own sizeable organization with more paid employees than many a successful company and which filled a four story office building.
What he was not all that well-known for, and which would have certainly reduced the amount of wide respect he enjoyed, was his personal involvement in a “deliverance ministry” often referred to as spiritual warfare – to be blunt, casting demons out of people who were being bothered by them.
It was this “secret work” for which he had recruited me. We had met at a Christian business luncheon – he was the “big name” speaker that day and I had been introduced as the speaker for the following week – one who was neither all that well-known nor widely respected.
We sat next to each other while eating and hit it off …I had always been put off by some of what I had characterized as his affected mannerisms and speech peculiarities …and to my surprise I found him to be a warm, caring individual, plus we had some mutual friends and he knew of my relationship with the psychiatrist and he knew about some of our work together.
There is a reason some folks keep exorcism rituals secret.
Sometime during the meal he asked me if we (meaning the psychiatrist and I) believed in “demons” or “evil spirits.” My response was that we both found such a belief inescapable since the Bible is loaded with references to their existence. I quickly added that we both also felt that much of what went on in the so-called “deliverance ministry” was ineffective at best and potentially harmful. “We take the position that if you don’t know what you are doing you’d better leave them alone,” I’d said…citing the story of the seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish priest:
Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists took it upon themselves to call the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, “We exorcise you by the Jesus whom Paul preaches.” Also there were seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, who did so.
And the evil spirit answered and said, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?”
Then the man in whom the evil spirit was leaped on them, overpowered them, and prevailed against them] so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded. (Acts 19:13-16)
He told me, enthusiastically, that he couldn’t agree more. Then he added that he’d like to talk over something with me after he was through speaking. I agreed to spend a few minutes afterward.
How do you spot a phony? Ask Source.
During his presentation – about one of his upcoming, well chronicled “crusades” – this one in Amsterdam, Holland – I still remember thinking, “why can’t he just be himself, he comes across as such a phony, when he’s actually a pleasant guy”.
A few minutes after he was finished, he found me and ushered me to a private corner and asked if we could keep what he was about to say to me absolutely confidential. I assured him that it would be.
He proceeded to tell me that he was involved very privately and personally in a work that he couldn’t be associated with publicly, particularly because the support for his ministry and organization by several of the larger denominations would be withdrawn. He was going to be conducting a “deliverance” session that evening at a private home and wanted to know if I would accompany him.
Brad was afraid because he hand't earned his Demon Button yet.
I quickly asked silently if I was supposed to accept the invitation and wasn’t overjoyed that I received a definitive leading in that direction. Frankly, I was uncomfortable, if not a whole lot fearful!
That night I witnessed some things I wouldn’t have believed had I not heard and saw them personally. He had brought a woman along who was in her late sixties whose job, he informed me, was to sit nearby and pray for God’s protection during the process. This did nothing to abate my fearful misgivings about having accepted the invitation; an act someone might refer to as that of obedience rather than faith.
Four things are firmly embedded in my mind from that session:
- That, by whatever label anyone wants to attach to them, they were REAL! I’d had no idea what to expect, but I certainly didn’t expect what I had witnessed.
- He had developed a method by which they were effectively gotten rid of permanently.
- The question I have heard many times since, from the parents of the nine year old boy who was afflicted with a severe case of asthma which often brought him to the emergency room of the hospital. “Do you believe that demons always cause asthma” (or, whatever other chronic and “incurable” disease that has been dispatched).
- I remember, strongly, this man’s answer to that question, which was: “Oh my no, I wouldn’t say that, but I will say that every time I cast a demon out of somebody with asthma …the asthma leaves as well.” To which I simply now add a “me too.”
Should you be afraid of what's behind the door. Ask "what now"?
The excitement we felt that evening for having witnessed a “miracle” led to my accompanying both the evangelist and the “prayer warrior” on other such (again, secret) outings. One evening, the three of us were at the front door of a home – the evangelist introduced himself and us to the couple, then said without any previous warning, that he had another emergency appointment and that I would be working with them and that he would be back after the other appointment.
Ella wasn’t surprised – I was dumbfounded. But I proceeded just as I had watched him go through a variety of what I would now call “rituals” …the couple, in their early thirties, expressed that they had heard about this ministry from a friend who had been healed of arthritis and this young woman could barely move her head due to the heavy settling of arthritis in her neck.
Two hours later, the woman was totally free and had complete flexibility of movement. Ella gave an outburst that I had not seen before. She lifted her hands in the air and exclaimed, “Praise the Lord!”
Give the credit away..."praise the Lord".
Almost involuntarily I immediately said the same thing – clenching my hand tightly into a fist and pumping it in the air. Then I noticed …my hand clenched – I had been unable to do that for months! I had noticed that Ella had always lowered herself gingerly down into wherever she was seated – several years earlier, she’d had her back broken when the car her son-in-law was driving skidded off the road and rolled down an embankment and which they had both miraculously survived.
Without thinking I said, “Ella, bend over and touch your toes.” She quickly resisted saying, “I can’t, ever since my back was broken” – I insisted, again, “Touch your toes!” To her amazement she actually bent effortlessly down and touched the floor. She started excitedly praising God again, this time joined by the young couple and me …staring at my tightly closed fists, remembering the pain I had endured just that morning running hot tap water over them and rubbing them so that I could get my hands around the steering wheel to drive to my office.
Every 2 weeks! Does it ever end?
About that time the doorbell rang and my mentor returned, joining in on the excitement and sharing a similar story of “victory” at his other appointment.
From then on, two or three times each month, I would receive a call to pick up Ella and together just the two of us would go off for another session.
We’re now to the point of the mental image I received in my answer to the question I had asked about what kind of prayer and what kind of fasting, back in #44.
With these seeming miracles happening almost every week, why would I be dissatisfied? When I read the referenced passage it hit me that it was taking me two hours and sometimes longer to accomplish what Jesus had done in an instant! I feel the need to say, don’t forget he rebuked the disciples for being unable to do what he did. Don’t forget that he said anybody that believed enough could do the same things he had done – and don’t forget that he had said that same ANYBODY WHO BELIEVED ENOUGH could do even greater things than he had done.
This glass is full of change. Ask Source how.
So I asked, what kind of fasting, what kind of prayer would bring me to the point of believing enough? I saw a picture in my mind of a large glass of clear water. I, at first, was startled, because the image was so clear. Then I began to understand I was to eat nothing and drink water only UNTIL I believed enough and I would understand! I saw how to pray – how Jesus prayed himself and left us clear (if muddied through various commentary and interpretation) instructions how to approach God for what Jesus had termed God-faith or the faith of God.
What had taken me hours previously, now would take a few seconds. One last story – my friend the psychiatrist: Whenever I would share with a group of his patients he invariably would ask the question, in front of the group: “You don’t think that it is necessary to fast do you?”
My response was always the same, “All I know is that I didn’t know or understand the kind of “faith” that it took to do what I can now do, until I could go several days without eating anything. No juice, coffee, tea –herbal or otherwise– no supplements, water only. There is a simple reason for it, but unless somebody is ready for it, they just don’t seem to get it.
Later and privately he told me that he couldn’t fast because he had hypoglycemia and he had been told that it would be life-threatening if he fasted. He asked me if I thought he should fast …I told him to ask God, not me.
He did ask – he went on a long trip, driving with his wife to visit their daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren several states away. He announced to her, with no little resistance, that he was going to put a case of bottled water in the trunk and when they stopped she could eat, but he wouldn’t.
Great things can happen when you fast and pray.
Four days into the trip he called me on his car phone …exclaiming that he felt great, had no hunger and more importantly had more faith than ever before! “My hypoglycemia is gone, I know it – and even my wife is convinced.
The “good” doctor went on to being a co-wielder of healing miracles instead of “needing” me. He learned what all of us who DO the work of Jesus learn sooner or later: The secret …and you, without limits, can know it for yourself: Jesus didn’t do anything …he said that, not I, “It is the Father in me, He did the works.”
Jesus fasted and Jesus prayed in a specific way. A drum I have been beating on for many years is to repeat something he said: “What is the point of calling me, ‘Lord’ if you don’t do what I say?” This isn’t legalism, it is power and grace and it is yours to have FREELY.
The End
NEW RADIO CAST: http://tobtr.com/s/6649651 The audio is 18 seconds delayed, please stay tuned for the interview with Brad.
This entry was posted on July 6, 2014 at 1:14 pm
Appendix 3
How To Identify The Enemy
Part 1 of 2: Basics of Deliverance
By Derek Prince
From https://www.derekprince.com/sermons/24
You're watching a top ten sermon by Derek Prince.
Controversial, yet scriptural. Deliverance from demonic influence is a relevant and needed ministry in today's church. Drawing on decades of personal experience, Derek Prince imparts the foundational keys to spiritual freedom.
Sermon Outline
This teaching includes a free sermon outline to download for personal use, message preparation or Bible study discussion.
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Code: MV-4128-100-ENG
Transcript
The theme of this and the following session will be “Basics of Deliverance.” The subtitle is “All You Ever Wanted to Know About Demons But Were Afraid to Ask.” In these two sessions I’m going to seek to achieve a well nigh impossible task, to cover in two hours every main aspect of this ministry. Of course, not in detail, but in outline.
I believe it’s appropriate we begin by considering this aspect of the ministry of Jesus. And I’d like to turn to Mark 1. I have said many times, as far as I’m concerned, I have no ambition to improve on the ministry of Jesus. Some people, I think, feel that it could be done better today. That’s not my attitude. When he began his public ministry the thing that struck people the most was his way of dealing with evil spirits. And it’s worthy of note that this was one miracle of Jesus which had never previously been recorded in the Old Testament. Almost all his other miracles—healing, provision of food, control of nature—had already been recorded in the Old Testament. But there’s no Old Testament record of driving out evil spirits. And the people who witnessed it were immediately gripped by it and became excited about it.
Here’s the first account in a synagogue in Capernaum. It says in verse 23 of Mark 1:
“Now there was a man in their synagogue with an unclean spirit...” (NKJ)
The Greek says “in an unclean spirit,” which is not translatable into English. I think perhaps the best contemporary English would be “under the influence of” an unclean spirit.
There are three phrases that are used more or less interchangeably, we might as well mention them now: Demons, evil spirits and unclean spirits. It also talks about specific types of spirits such as the spirit of infirmity or a spirit of fear. All right.
“And there was a man in their synagogue under the influence of an unclean spirit. And he cried out [Notice, the ‘he’ is not the man, it’s the spirit] saying let us alone; what have we to do with you, Jesus of Nazareth? Did you come to destroy us. I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” (NKJ)
Notice that the evil spirits instantly identify who Jesus was. It took his disciples maybe more than a year to begin to realize who he really was, they knew instantly. They feared him. Also notice the combination of “we” and “I” which is very typical. When Jesus spoke to the man in Gadara he said, “What is your name [singular]?” And he said, “My name is Legion, for we are many.” This combination of “I” and “we” is very characteristic of demons. Verse 25:
“And Jesus rebuked him saying, Be quiet and come out of him.” (NKJ)
The Greek says literally be muzzled, come out of him.
“And when the unclean had convulsed him and cried out with a loud voice, he came out of him.” (NKJ)
Notice there were very dramatic physical manifestations. It was not the kind of behavior that was normal in the synagogue. Somebody once said to me, in most churches what they would have done was put the man out of the church. But Jesus put the demon out of the man, you understand. And he left the man in the synagogue. Then we read the next verse:
“Then they were all amazed, so that they questioned among themselves, What is this? What new doctrine is this? [or what is this, a new doctrine?] With authority he commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him. And immediately his fame [or his reputation] spread throughout all the region around Galilee.” (NKJ)
That is so true. The situation hasn’t changed. If you begin to get manifestations of evil spirits and deal with them, the reputation will go all around immediately. It’s a thing that still tremendously impresses people when they witness it. The thing that I want to emphasize there is Jesus did not deal with the man, he dealt with the spirit in the man. Another person in that man. And there’s no indication that the man had behaved but normally before, you understand? It was the presence of Jesus with the anointing of the Holy Spirit upon him that brought out the unseen presence of the demon in the man.
Now, the same day later on in this chapter, verse 32–34 we read a further development of this ministry.
“Now at evening, when the sun had set, they brought to him all who were sick and those who were demon-possessed...” (NKJ)
Let me say once and for all I do not like the translation demon-possessed. The Greek word is daimonizomai. If I were to write it in English letters it would be something like this. Where daimon is the root and comes from the noun demon, you understand? So izomai is the passive, to be demonized. That would be the best translation, to be demonized. This translation, demon-possessed has unfortunately obscured the issue for millions of people because they say how can a Christian be possessed by the devil? My answer is a true Christian cannot be possessed by the devil. A true Christian is possessed by Jesus. However, in many true Christians, there are some areas where they are demonized, where they are afflicted and affected by demons. Areas in their lives and character where they are not themselves fully in control. And they are demonized, but not possessed by Satan. If we could just clear away that one obstacle of translation we would be a lot further to seeing reality. All right.
“Now at evening, when the sun had set, they brought to him all who were sick and those who were demonized...”
And really the New Testament hardly makes any distinction. And Jesus did not either. Almost invariably he dealt with the sick and with the demonized in one overall operation.
“The whole city was gathered together at the door. Then he healed many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he did not allow the demons to speak, because they knew him.” (NKJ)
The King James and this version, and various others, use the word cast out demons. The translation I prefer is that of Phillips where he uses the word expel. Because that doesn’t have a lot of religious connotations. It’s simple, practical, down to earth. If you inhale smoke into your lungs, what do you do to get rid of it? You expel it. It’s an action of the will but there’s also a physical aspect to it. And that’s what I like to use, I don’t always use it but that in my opinion, best represents. He expelled many demons. He did not allow the demons to speak, because they knew him. And then I’d like to read one more verse in that chapter, verse 39:
“He was preaching in their synagogues around all Galilee, and casting out demons.” (NKJ)
Phillips translation says he continued throughout the whole of Galilee preaching in their synagogues and expelling demons. I particularly like the fact that he uses the word continued which represents a certain tense in Greek. He brings out the fact that this was not an isolated dramatic instance that just took place in one synagogue, but it was his regular practice in every synagogue to do two things; preach and expel demons. And he did it through the whole of Galilee. There must have been hundreds of synagogues in Galilee. You see, a lot of people have got the attitude well, perhaps every now and then there is a case where it’s necessary to expel demons, but they’re very rare and they’re exceptional. And usually the attitude is if there are such people they’re either in jail or mental institutions. Well I simply have to point out to you that that was not the kind of person Jesus was dealing with. He was dealing with Orthodox Jews who met every Sunday in the synagogue and spent the rest of the week caring for their families, tending their fields, fishing the sea, keeping their stores and so on. They were basically normal respectable religious people but they had what we could say certain hang ups. Certain areas, as I say, where they were not in control of themselves. So do not get the impression that a person who needs deliverance must be either a criminal or a maniac. It’s just the same kind of people that we deal mainly with today. Not exclusively. Good respectable religious people who attend church and say the right things, but in their lives somewhere there’s an area that’s demonized where they’re not in control. It may be in their physical desires, maybe in their emotions, it may be in their mind. I’m going to deal with the various areas later. But if you can accept what I said it will clear away a whole lot of prejudices which will keep you from being able to see this subject objectively.
It’s a funny thing, but people in one nation can easily accept that people in another nation could need deliverance. I’ve dealt with this subject in Denmark. The Danes have no problem believing that Americans need deliverance. See. And the Americans have no problem believing Africans need deliverance. Well I spent eight years of my life in Africa but I have to tell you I never met so many demons in Africa as I’ve met in America. They’re just cultural differences. They adapt themselves to their environment.
All right. Let’s look at one other picture of the ministry of Jesus which is parallel, in fact it describes the same incident in Luke 4:40–41. That’s the same part of Jesus’ ministry that’s described in Mark 1. Luke 4:40–41:
“Now when the sun was setting, all those who had anyone sick with various diseases brought them to him. And he laid his hands on every one of them and healed them. And demons also came out of many crying out...” (NKJ)
We don’t need to read more. See, the ministries of healing and deliverance were interwoven. They came because they were sick but in many cases their cure demanded the expelling of evil spirits. And notice Jesus laid his hands on every one of them. There used to be, I don’t know whether there still is today, a Pentecostal tradition that it’s unscriptural to lay your hands on somebody who has an evil spirit. If that is so, then Jesus was unscriptural. And I’d rather follow his pattern than a tradition.
Now, let’s look on in Luke to just one other chapter, Luke 13. We find the woman who was bent double in Luke 13:11–16. Another incident in another synagogue later on.
“Behold there was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years and was bent over and could in no way raise herself up. [Now notice this was caused by a spirit of infirmity, an evil spirit that had doubled her body over so that she couldn’t straighten herself up.] When Jesus saw her he called her to him and said to her, Woman, you are loosed from your infirmity. [Notice the word loosed indicates binding. He said that in faith, nothing had changed, notice that.] And he laid his hands on her [notice she had a spirit of infirmity but he laid his hands on her] and immediately she was made straight and glorified God. But the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, and he said to the crowd, There are six days on which men ought to work, therefore come and be healed on them and not on the Sabbath day. The Lord then answered him and said, Hypocrite. Does not each one of you on the Sabbath loose his ox or his donkey from the stall and lead it away to water? So ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound, think of it, for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath?” (NKJ)
She was a believing woman. She was a Jewess, she was a member of the synagogue, she had this terrible physical problem; her back was bent over. It was not primarily a physical problem. It was caused by a spirit of infirmity. And the moment the spirit of infirmity left her, she straightened up. Now that demands discernment, but I am simply pointing out that some problems we would classify as physical are actually caused by evil spirits. Jesus also dealt with dumbness, deafness and blindness as being caused by evil spirits. And in many cases his ministry to heal the people was to deliver them from the spirits that caused their dumbness, their deafness and their blindness. Now without going into details I have to say I have seen parallel instances in my own ministry in each of those areas.
Then we read on just a little further in Luke 13:31–32. This is the last of our glimpses of the ministry of Jesus.
“On that very same day some Pharisees came saying to him, Get out and depart from here, for Herod wants to kill you. And he said to them, Go tell that fox [that’s Herod] Behold I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, the third day I shall be perfected.” (NKJ)
That’s a Hebraism. Today, tomorrow and the third day means from now on until the job is finished. So he said I’m going to be doing two things; casting out demons and performing cures. That’s how he started, that’s how he continued, and that’s how he ended. His whole ministry from beginning to end included in it as a major part, probably one third of his time in healing the sick and casting out demons. And the two were so intertwined that it was really impossible to distinguish between them.
Now the next thing I want to say, which I will illustrate very briefly is, in the New Testament no one was ever sent out to evangelize without first being commissioned to deal with evil spirits. There isn’t an example in the New Testament. It is unscriptural to do that.
Let’s look at the first twelve disciples who were sent out. Matthew 10:1:
“When he had called his twelve disciples to him, he gave them power over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease.” (NKJ)
Notice the first thing he did was to give them authority to deal with evil spirits. And then it says, missing out the list of the names in verse 5:
“These twelve Jesus sent out. [and then it says, we’re missing out the irrelevant parts, verse 6 and 7] But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel and as you go, preach saying, the kingdom of heaven is at hand, [but don’t merely preach, do something. What?] Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons.” (NKJ)
It was included in their equipment and it was included in their commission. In Luke 10 we read about a further seventy who were sent out. Luke 10:1:
“After these things, the Lord appointed seventy others also, and sent them two by two before his face into every city and place where he himself was about to go.” (NKJ)
Now we’ll only turn on to verse 17, the report that the seventy brought back, and it says in verse 17:
“Then the seventy returned with joy saying, Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name.” (NKJ)
What was what impressed them most? They had authority over demons. They were not the twelve, they were the seventy.
And then we look at the final commission at the end of the gospels. First of all, in Mark 16:15 and following. Mark 16:15:
“He said to them, Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved, he who believes not is condemned. [Verse 17:] And these signs will follow those who believe. [What’s the first sign?] In my name they will cast out demons.” (NKJ)
He did not send them out without first making sure that they knew how to deal with demons. And in Matthew 28, the other version of the great commission, verses 19–20 he says:
“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (NKJ)
He told them to teach their disciples everything he taught them. And one of the main things he taught them was how to deal with evil spirits. And he said when you make disciples, you teach them what I’ve taught you, and when they make disciples, they’re to teach those disciples what they have been taught. And he said, I am with you to the end of the age. He made no provision for that process to change. He envisioned the same going on from the time he left to the time he came back. That’s his program. The tragedy is the church has departed from it. They have not improved upon it, they can’t. They’ve simply made a disaster out of it.
Now, there’s only one person in the New Testament, other than Jesus, who is called an evangelist. Only one. I’ve counted twenty-eight persons called apostles, but only one person called an evangelist. Isn’t that remarkable? We don’t hesitate to dub the title of evangelist. Anybody who isn’t a pastor in the contemporary church has to be an evangelist. There are only two options, basically. Who was the evangelist, who can tell me? Philip. Now his ministry is described in Acts 8, Acts 8:5:
“Then Philip went down to the city of Samaria and preached Christ to them.” (NKJ)
Philip’s message was very simple. It was a one word message. In Samaria he preached Christ, on the road to Gaza he preached Jesus. All right.
“And the multitudes with one accord heeded the things spoken by Philip because he had a well organized committee and a choir. No.] hearing and seeing the miracles which he did. For [what was the first thing?] unclean spirits crying with a loud voice came out of many who were demonized. And many who were paralyzed and lame were healed.” (NKJ)
Notice the first thing in his ministry as an evangelist was driving out evil spirits. So I’m suggesting to you that both the pattern and the commission of Jesus leave no room for the servants of God today to go out in evangelism without first being equipped to deal with evil spirits. I don’t believe you can find an example there.
Now I’m going to give you some general teaching on the nature of demons, and we’ll stick with the word demons, and ways in which you can know if they’re at work in you or in others. Of course, there’s always the two gifts of discerning of spirits and the word of knowledge. But apart from that, in the supernatural realm, there are many, many other combined indications which should alert us to the presence of demons, either in ourselves or in others. You need to know, first of all, as I’ve said, they are persons without bodies. You’re dealing with persons. Disembodied persons who have a passionate craving to get into a body. You need to understand that. They are totally discontented outside of a body. The kind of body they want is a human body, but rather than be disembodied, they’ll settle for a pig, or a dog or other animal. They do not want to be disembodied. That is torment for them.
They have two main objectives assigned to them by Satan. Number one, to keep you from knowing Christ as savior. But if they fail in that, their number two objective is to keep you from serving Christ effectively. See that? If they’ve failed in number one they don’t give up. They simply switch to number two.
Now we need to distinguish between the flesh and demons. The flesh being the old carnal nature, the old man. Demons being persons that move in and occupy areas of your personality. I compare them this way: The flesh is the carcass, the demons are the vultures that settle on the carcass. You understand? If there were no flesh, there would be no vultures. It’s a very vivid picture. If you’ve lived in a country where there are vultures, you know when something is about to die a little speck appears up in the sky and hovers there. And you look up a little while later and there are three or four more and the nearer the animal on the earth gets to death, the lower down the vultures come. Jesus said where the carcass is, the vultures will be gathered together. Where the unregenerate flesh of man is exposed in its carnality and its sinfulness, you can be sure the vultures will be gathering.
Now the remedies are totally different. What’s the remedy for the flesh? The cross. That’s right. Galatians 5:24:
“They that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.” (NKJ)
What’s the remedy for demons? To expel them, that’s right. Now you cannot switch the remedies. You cannot expel the flesh and you cannot crucify demons. So in order to know which remedy to apply you have to know what you’re dealing with. Okay?
Now I would say in general if you are a committed sincere Christian who reads your Bible, prays, has regular fellowship and desires to serve the Lord and you have a special kind of problem, something tormenting, something aggravating, something humiliating, something binding and enslaving, and you’ve tried every remedy, you’ve prayed, you’ve fasted, you’ve reckoned yourself dead and you still haven’t resolved it, you can be almost sure you’re dealing with a demon. I can say this out of experience which is too long for me to relate this morning.
Now, what I want to do in the next part of this session is give you some characteristic activities of demons. I’m going to list about nine verbs which describe characteristic activities of demons. If these are present in your life, more than one, or if they’re very intense, you should begin to check, you probably need deliverance. And bear in mind, all these are activities of persons, because we’re dealing with persons without bodies.
The first verb, entice. Demons entice. They tempt people to do evil. And if you analyze your experience you’ll find that enticement often comes in a verbal form. A beautiful gold pencil has been dropped on the floor and you stand looking at it and something says to you, take it. Nobody will know. Other people would do the same. If it was your pencil, they’d take it. You know what that is? Anything that has a voice is a person. Behind that voice is a demon enticing you. None of you have ever experienced that, just me!
Demons harass or harass, depends on what part of the world you come from. They study you, they follow your movements, they know your weak moments, they know your weak places, they know just how and when they can get in. The example I usually give is the businessman who has had a terrible day in the office. Everything went wrong, his secretary was inefficient, the air conditioning failed... And then on the way home there was a traffic jam and he was an hour on the freeway, and then when he gets back home, believe it or not, his wife is late with the supper and the kids are running around screaming. And as he gets in through the door he does what we say, he blows his stack, okay? You know what happens? The demon of anger that’s been on his tail all day jumps in. And after that his wife notices a certain change in him. He’s still a loving father and husband but there are certain times when something else takes over. And she notices a kind of different look in his eyes and although he loves his wife and his children, he makes life miserable for them when that comes upon him. And then he’s so ashamed and remorseful afterwards, he says, I don’t know what made me do it. Well we do know. It’s the demon of anger.
Number three, they torment. Now the Bible speaks about the tormentors in Matthew 18. I believe the demons are the tormentors. In Matthew 18 in the parable of the unforgiving servant, the servant who wouldn’t forgive his fellow servant of petty debt, was delivered by God to the tormentors. I have met hundreds of Christians in the hands of the tormentors. You know why? Unforgiveness. If you have any unforgiveness in your heart against anybody, you are a legitimate target for the tormentors. And Satan is a legal expert, he knows when he’s entitled to move in. There are various forms of torment.
There’s physical torment. There’s the example I would choose, arthritis. When you look at arthritis, you’ve seen the devil in action. Twisting, torturing, crippling, binding.
Mental torment. One that’s unusually common is the fear of going insane. So that’s not your problem. Your problem is a lying, accusing spirit which is taking away your peace and the assurance of your salvation.
All right, number four, they compel. I think there is no more distinctive word than the word compulsive. Almost anything compulsive is liable to be demonic. Compulsive smoking, compulsive consumption of alcohol, but let’s not stop there. Compulsive eating is just as demonic. Gluttony is just as much of a problem as alcohol. But it’s a respectable one, you see. You can’t be an alcoholic in church, but you can be a glutton. There are other forms of compulsion. Compulsive talking, garrulity. People who can’t stop talking have got a problem. And they are a problem too!
Number five, demons enslave. Very close. You see, let’s say you’ve committed a sin in the area of sex. You repent, you go to Jesus, you receive forgiveness and cleansing, you’re justified. Just as if you’d never sinned. That’s all finished with. But if after all that you still have this intense drive to commit the same sin again, even though you hate it, you’re enslaved. One very common example is masturbation. Now some psychologists and people say masturbating is all right, it’s healthy. I just don’t even argue about that. But I know there are thousands of people who do it and hate themselves for doing it. And every time they say never again, but it never works. They are enslaved. And there is a demon of masturbation. It’s very common. Let me tell you now before we go too far in the meeting, it has certain specific manifestations. What will happen is the person’s fingers will begin to tingle. I’ve had so many people say, Brother Prince, what’s the matter with me, my fingers are tingling? And sometimes they go stiff and they bend right backwards. And I just whisper in their ear, your problem is masturbation. Renounce it, claim the cleansing blood of Jesus and get rid of it. But it is very stubborn. Many times people have to actually shake it out of their fingers, in the Name of Jesus, to get rid of it.
Now you put four and five together, four plus five equals addiction. Okay, compulsive and enslaving, you put them together, they’re addiction. We are all familiar with many forms of addiction. Some are very unusual. My first wife and I dealt with a young woman, a Pentecostal church member, who was addicted to nail varnish. She just wanted to smell nail varnish. She told us, When I walk into the cosmetics department of a store I’ve got two options. I can either buy nail varnish or run out of the store. But I’ve got to do one or the other. When she was delivered of that thing it came out screaming and it tore her. There are other addictions, you know. The commonest and latest is TV. TV is just as much an addiction as alcohol with many people. They cannot walk into the room with a television set without switching it on. They don’t even think, they don’t know what they’re going to see, but they just have to reach for the television set just like an alcoholic reaches for the drink. And I think probably it does more harm in the long run than alcohol.
Number six, they defile. They make you feel dirty and unclean. Especially when you’re worshipping God. You’re just about to get into the presence of God and this dirty image or this filthy word is projected into your mind. Anything that rises up when you’re about to worship God and opposes you is almost certainly demonic. Or when you want to read your Bible. One common example is the demon of sleep. You know, the Bible speaks about a spirit of slumber. Have you ever noticed people, if they want to read their Bible at 10 P.M., they’re asleep by 10:15. If they want to watch television, they can stay awake until after midnight. Now that’s not natural. There’s a supernatural force that enjoys them watching television, hates them reading their Bibles. You understand?
All right. Number seven, they deceive. They are the deceivers. I believe basically all forms of spiritual deception are demonic. And you know what opens the door to deception? Pride. I doubt whether there’s ever any deception that doesn’t come in through the doorway of pride. Pride inevitably leads to deception.
Number eight, they weaken, make sick, or tired [there’s a demon of tiredness]. I remember dealing with a woman once, she said, I can’t stand this session any longer, I’m too tired. I was about to get sorry for her when I realized it was a demon. I challenged it and it said, That’s right. She’s always tired. She’s tired when she gets up, she’s tired when she goes to bed, she’s too tired to pray, she’s too tired to read her Bible. That’s one of the ones that the others hide behind. Or they kill. Remember Satan is a murderer. He kills people physically. And there’s a spirit of death that he sends out to kill people.
All right. Now if we’re going to take one word to sum up, it would be the word restless. Demonized people are usually restless in some area. The person who can truly relax and be at peace probably doesn’t need deliverance.
Now, the next thing we’re going to deal with, and I think this will be the last although I wish I could go further because we haven’t much time, is their areas of residence. Proverbs 25:28 says this:
“Whoever has no rule over his own spirit is like a city broken down without walls.” (NKJ)
So that compares the inner nature of human personality to a city. And when the person has no spiritual defenses, that city is open to almost any evil spirit that wants to come in. You take a drug addict, that’s his description. Anything can get into him because his walls are broken down. But in a city there are a lot of different areas. There’s the area where the wealthy live, there’s the slum areas, there’s the banking and commerce areas, there’s the sports areas, there’s the various ethnic areas. I used to live in Chicago and this was—you know—there was the areas where it was all Poles, all Swedes, all Jews and so on. And so inside you and me there is a city with various areas with characteristic residents in each area, you understand? I’m going to give you a little list of the areas. I am not a professional psychologist, this is simply based on years of experience.
The first area, number one, the main one is emotions and attitudes. And I put in parentheses “gangs.” Because there are gangs of demons. And each one opens the way for the next. And if you meet one, you should start searching for the others. Now my personal opinion is behind every negative emotion and attitude there is an evil spirit. Anger, fear, loneliness, misery, self-pity, pride, jealousy, there’s a tremendous list. Now the fact that you experience anger doesn’t necessarily mean you have a demon of anger, but if your anger falls into the category of those verbs that we discussed, then you probably have a demon of anger. There are certain root problems out of which the rest grow. I think the greatest single root problem is rejection. And rejection leads to a whole series. Loneliness, misery, self-pity, depression, despair, and when you’ve got that far, you’re headed one or other of two ways. Death, if it’s passive, suicide if it’s active. I don’t believe anybody ever committed suicide except under the impulse of an evil spirit. That’s my personal opinion. I can’t prove it.
Another very typical problem is rebellion which leads to resentment, to hatred, to anger, to violence and you know, produces the typical gang leader and so on.
Number two is the mind. In a way, the mind is the battlefield. Characteristic spirits that affect the mind are doubt, unbelief, confusion, indecision, insanity. And I’ve discovered that people who have been in the occult almost always have a problem with confusion. Depression, you can call it either emotional or mental, it doesn’t matter, it’s there.
The next area is the tongue. There are a lot of characteristic demons of the tongue. The main one is lying. The Bible speaks about a lying spirit. There are people who are compulsive liars. They don’t even know when they’re lying. I had a friend like that, he was the president of the Full Gospel Businessmen in a certain city, he was also characteristically a salesman. He was a fine Christian, a wonderful talker. And he’d sit in our living room and start to talk and his talk would get more and more interesting but improbable. And my head would begin to swim and I’d think, does he believe what he’s saying? Do I believe what he’s saying? But it just kind of flowed out of the natural into the supernatural. Now you know the reason I discovered how that spirit came in? He was an adopted son of wealthy parents, they had no other children, all their eggs were in that one basket. They wanted him to be everything. And he discovered that when he came home with his grades from school they were disappointed because they weren’t good enough. And when they registered disappointment he decided that wasn’t worth it so he just lied about his school grades. You understand? And that started him into the whole field of lying. I believe ultimately he was delivered. But it was such a revelation to me. You see, compulsive liars are very deceptive because they don’t even know they’re lying. They can pass a lie detector test. What else?
There’s the churchgoing demons, criticism and gossip. I was in a church meeting once and a lady came up with a demon, I said your problem is criticism. I said, you spirit of criticism, come out of her and about four people around started to get delivered at the same time! Exaggeration, the evangelistic demon, blasphemy. I was a slave of blasphemy when the Lord saved me. Absolutely incapable of speaking without blaspheming. Unclean speech and so on. Negative talking.
Number four, the thing that nobody talks about in church, sex. Because it is not discussed in church, people with problems in the area of sex go to a psychiatrist. And he says, madam, you have a guilt problem and your problem centers in your religion. Give up your religion and you won’t feel guilty. Now they don’t all say that. But I would say if you sat in church for ten years and still feel guilty, your problem is your religion. Really. I would change to another religion, if that’s all it can do is leave you feeling guilty. Now we have to say certain things about sex. First of all, sex is not evil. It’s good. We have to clear way that misunderstanding. God created man and woman sexual beings. And after he checked on everything he created, he said it was all very good, including sex. One of the big problems in church is we just are not honest about sex, we’re ashamed about it, we’re prudish and we encourage problems by that attitude. I would say every form of compulsive sex aberration is demonic. Without exception. Masturbation, adultery, fornication, homosexuality, lesbianism, effeminacy and all sorts of horrid perversions that we won’t talk about. I would say every one of those is demonic. Now you don’t have to feel ashamed, but you do need to resolve your problem.
Number five, lusts. Now we could have included sex under that heading but it’s such a distinctive area I kept it separate. Perverted desires and appetites. I believe all appetites initially were healthy. But by sin and demonic power they’ve been perverted to become unhealthy and destructive. 1 John 2:16 speaks about the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes. There is demonic power that controls eyes. Some men have to look at women in a special way, they’re absolutely incapable of not doing that. A demon that’s focused in their eyes. As I’ve said already, gluttony is a very clear example of a perverted appetite. I had a woman once who traveled seventy miles in a snowstorm to Chicago to be delivered. She was the daughter of a Pentecostal pastor. Like many people in that situation, she’d rebelled against her parents and their religion, married an unsaved man and ended up miserable. She had three children. She came and got delivered from the demon of gluttony and she said to me afterwards, “Mr. Prince, no one can tell me this isn’t real. It’s just as real as having a baby, and rather like it, and I’ve had three.” And then she told me she was so compulsive in her gluttony that she would take food off her children’s plate and eat it even though she knew they needed it more than she did.
You see, let’s talk about addictions. Addictions grow on frustrations. They’re branches on a trunk. And if you merely deal with the addiction, you haven’t solved the problem. Take alcohol and gluttony. One woman is Episcopalian, her husband runs around with other women, doesn’t care for her, doesn’t give her enough money and so on. All right. She gets frustrated, she’s got to get some relief, she walks across the living room to the cocktail cabinet, becomes an alcoholic. The other woman is Church of God, okay? Her husband does exactly the same. But for that woman to get to the cocktail cabinet would be a lengthy journey. So where does she go? To the kitchen and opens the refrigerator. But she becomes a food-aholic. But the difference is minimal, really. And in either case, to help them you’ve got to deal with the basic frustration which is their attitude toward their husband. All right. We have to go on with the list.
Number six, the whole realm of the occult. I’m just going to write occult. But that is a vast realm. And every part of it is demonic. Even the respectable parts. And I would not involve you to be involved in Yoga exercises, let me say that. I was in Yoga, I was a practicing Yogi. And I would tell you, there is nothing in that I would touch with a ten foot pole. You don’t have to depend on Yoga for physical health, the Lord will give you physical health. I’m just saying, the occult is a deep, dark pit. It’s one of those caves where all the steps, footmarks lead inwards and none ever lead outward.
All right, number seven. All false religions. Islam, Mormonism, Jehovah Witnesses, Buddhism, Hinduism, and in some respects, Judaism. Okay. There isn’t a false religion that doesn’t have a demon about it. Satan is an expert in the field of religion. It’s the main area in which he operates.
Number eight, all heresies. And by heresies I mean departures from the Christian faith. Let’s turn to 1 Timothy 4 for a moment.
“Now the Spirit expressly says, [the Spirit, capital S, the Holy Spirit.] Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times, [that’s the times in which we’re now living,] some will depart from the faith [What faith? The Christian faith. Why?] giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons.” (NKJ)
This is happening on a wide scale today. And then it goes on to say, he gives some examples of their errors.
“Speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry, commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving... [etc.]” (NKJ)
Particularly on the West Coast of the United States you’ll find hundreds of thousands of people to whom that applies. They’re becoming super-spiritual, they decide not to marry, or if they marry, they don’t cohabit with their spouse, and they are going to be super-spiritual by what they eat. Now I believe in eating wisely, but I don’t make a religion out of it. Understand? The moment it becomes a religious issue, you’re on the verge of the demonic. And you’ll notice that people who get in food fads can’t talk about anything else. That’s another mark of the demonic. No matter where you start, you always end up with food. Don’t eat this and don’t eat that. There’s lots of things I don’t eat, but I do not make a religion out of it. Understand?
All right. Number nine, the area of our physical bodies. And we’ve dealt with many examples in the gospels. Certain things I think are normally demonic, I would never say always. The first one I put on the list is epilepsy. And I have seen many, many people delivered. Ruth and I were in Lexington, Kentucky, about two years ago now, and I had a blessing. A woman came to me, she was probably about forty, with her daughter about eighteen. And she said, “Mr. Prince, ten years ago you prayed for me and I was delivered from the spirit of epilepsy. Here’s my daughter, she has the problem, pray for her.” I was happy for that testimony. We prayed for the daughter, I have no doubt that she was delivered. I have seen scores of people delivered from epilepsy when it is treated as an evil spirit. If a person comes to me in a meeting I’ll say, now I believe that’s an evil spirit. I’m prepared to command it to go out, do you want me to? Are you prepared because there may be a fight. There may be a struggle. If you don’t want to, I won’t do it. Some people say yes, some say no.
All right. That’s as far as we can go. We’ve dealt with the primary activities of demons that list, I think, nine verbs. And here’s the primary areas in which I have observed them operating. You see, a person may be completely clear in the area of sex, but may be in a false religion. Or a person may have no spirits in the mind, but may be bogged down in the emotions. Or a person, let’s say, may be in a heresy, but be perfectly healthy. You understand? So there’s a whole choice of areas.
All right. That’s the end of the first session, God helping us we’ll complete this in the second session.
Appendix 4
How To Expel The Enemy
Part 2 of 2: Basics of Deliverance
By Derek Prince
From https://www.derekprince.com/sermons/25
You're watching a top ten sermon by Derek Prince.
Controversial, yet scriptural. Deliverance from demonic influence is a relevant and needed ministry in today's church. Drawing on decades of personal experience, Derek Prince imparts the foundational keys to spiritual freedom.
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Transcript
In this session we’re going to begin by answering one of the most important practical questions in this whole theme, one that many people are concerned about, that is: How do demons come in? How do they gain entry to human personalities and lives? My answers that I am going to offer to you are based on experience and I am not by any means suggesting that they are totally complete. But I will list seven different ways in which they may be able to come in.
The first one is what I call occult background. In other words, somewhere in your family history there has been involvement with the occult. And when you talk about the occult you realize that you’re dealing with false gods. That’s really what it is. In other words, there has been a breaking of the first two commandments, which are the basic commandments: Thou shalt have no other gods beside me and Thou shalt not make any graven image to worship. All forms of idolatry automatically expose people to demons. And in connection with those two commandments the Lord said that he would visit the sins of the fathers to the third and fourth generation. I don’t believe it applies so much to the other commandments, but it’s given in the context of the first two commandments. And so if your father, your grandfather, your great-grandfather or some other corresponding relative was involved in the occult or a false religion, or idolatry, then there is an opening into your life for evil spirits. Now you might say that’s not fair. Well the truth of the matter is the devil isn’t fair. But what I want you to understand is no one is condemning you for having the problem. Condemnation will only come to you if you reject the solution. That’s where condemnation comes. All right?
The second way is through personal occult involvement. And I think probably we’d better read a scripture at this point. There is a saying in English, I don’t know whether you have ever heard it, “He who sups with the devil must use a spoon with a long handle.” I just want to tell you there is no spoon made with a handle long enough to make it safe to sup with the devil. You give him your little finger and before you can turn around he’s grabbed above your elbow. There is just no way that it’s safe to be involved in the occult. I’m going to read Deuteronomy 18:10–12.
“There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, [that is, offering your children in a living sacrifice to a pagan god by putting them in an oven. Now I want you to see that the other things that follow by God are classified in the same list as having your children offered as living sacrifices by fire to a pagan god.] There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or daughter pass through the fire, or one who practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, [that’s a fortune teller] or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. [That’s a pretty comprehensive list. I think every kind of occult practice is included.] For all who do these things are an abomination to the Lord...” (NKJ)
So many Christians just play with horoscopes and then think there is no harm in it. Let me just point out to you that if you’d played with horoscopes under the law of Moses, you would have been put to death. That’s God’s estimate of that kind of involvement.
All right. The third is what I call prenatal influences. Things that happen while you are still in your mother’s womb. And many people have an evil spirit enter them in that phase of their life. The commonest single reason is rejection. A mother resents the baby she’s carrying in her womb. Maybe she wasn’t married and it’s going to be an embarrassment or maybe she’s not getting on well with her husband and she just doesn’t want another burden in the family. Or maybe the financial situation makes it difficult for them to care for the children. But whatever, she just resents that little life that’s starting in her womb and that little person in the womb is very sensitive to attitudes. It’s not just a fetus. It’s a person. And it comes out with a spirit of rejection already in it. Or a woman is pregnant, may experience some kind of a shock, a moment of fear. She yields to the fear, the spirit of fear enters her, has two options. It can stay in the woman or stay in the infant in her womb. It may find it more convenient to stay in the infant, you understand? So when the infant is born, it comes out with the spirit of fear.
Let me show you a scripture which most people don’t notice in 1 Peter 3, which is advice to wives. I just want to bring out this one aspect of it. Telling wives that the pattern for them in the Bible is the attitude of Sarah to Abraham, and I’ll not linger in this point, don’t get nervous. 1 Peter 3:6:
“As Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord, whose daughters you are if you do good [and it doesn’t end there] and are not afraid with any terror.” (NKJ)
To be a daughter of Abraham you have to be able to resist the sudden shock of fear. It’s very obvious, I think, that women are more liable to sudden fright or panic than men. And again, I’ve dealt with many cases of people who needed deliverance because of some shock that came to their mother while they were still in the mother’s womb.
Another interesting thing is I noticed when I was full time in this ministry, or let me say much more engaged in it than I am regularly now, that there were people in a certain age group in the United States, many of whom seemed to need deliverance from rejection. And I began to think, maybe they were all born in the same period. And then I began to say, what period were they born in? And I discovered they were born during the great depression. And I reasoned out the mother already had six mouths to feed and not enough money and here comes the seventh child. And she may be a good woman but she inwardly resents the responsibility of that next child, and it is born with a spirit of rejection.
All right, we don’t have time to dwell on any of these. Number four. But let me say, if you go to a fortune teller or some such person to find out what will happen to your baby when it’s born, you have started that baby off with two strikes against it before it even comes out of the womb.
Number four, soulish domination. See, there’s a difference between the spirit and the soul. I can’t go into that. But there are many people who control and manipulate other people by what I call soul thoughts, soulish domination. The most common example in contemporary American culture is a mother dominating her children, especially her sons. There used to be a best selling book in the Jewish community entitled How to be a Good Jewish Mother. And one of the lessons was “How to Get Your Son to Play His Violin in Public Using no Other Motivation but Guilt.” Well, when you know the Yiddish ?amomo?, they call them in Hebrew Yiddish ?amomos?, I mean, they are the perfect example of what I am talking about. You know about the lady in the big theater who shouted out, “Is there a doctor in the house?” and a man stood up and said, “Yes,” and she said, “Boy, do I have a daughter for you!” All right. But it goes a lot beyond that. I have met successful businessmen, bank presidents and people like that, who never developed in emotional maturity because they still were tied to their mother’s umbilicus. The spiritual umbilical cord had never been cut. Their methods of manipulation are endless. I think of a mother who dominated her family because every time things went wrong she got migraines. And all the family had to tiptoe around, don’t talk, don’t make a noise, mother’s got another of her headaches. She didn’t realize it, but she kept them from doing anything she didn’t want them to do by having migraines.
There are two dirty words in this context. Dominate and manipulate. And wherever you meet them, you’ve met the devil.
All right, number five. I’ve had to say to some people, listen, if you want me to help you I’ve got to be honest. The fact is your mother is a witch. You still have got to honor her but she’s a witch. I’ve had to tell people who got delivered you’re just not free to go back to your parents’ home. You’ll have to stay away, because you don’t have the spiritual strength to stay free from that dominating manipulating influence.
Number five, pressures in early childhood. I have discovered that a child’s spiritual and emotional defenses are not strong enough to keep out persistent demon pressure. Now it says in James 3:16 something that’s worth bearing in mind. James 3:16:
“For where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there.” (NKJ)
So where there is an atmosphere of strife and disharmony between the parents, it generates a condition in which the children will be automatically exposed to demon influence. And I would say more than ninety percent of children are incapable of keeping them out. My observation is that eighty percent of demon problems started in a person’s life before the age of five. And the parents are responsible for that situation, you understand?
Number six, moment or place of weakness. It can be emotional weakness, it can be physical weakness. A woman is standing on a street corner and a horrible automobile accident takes place in front of her eyes. She’s exposed to the spirit of fear. Or a woman has only one child, this is a case I actually dealt with. A boy at the age of five, he died. She goes into depression and stays in it for years. She has opened up to the spirit of grief which is a very powerful spirit. Or a woman is expecting to get married and at the last moment the engagement is canceled and she yields to the spirit of disappointment and goes through life an incomplete person.
I remember I was teaching once, years ago, in a certain place, and there was a lady who was Pentecostal and very scriptural sitting on the front row. And I happened to name the spirit of disappointment. And I watched her face. It convulsed. She changed totally, her whole personality changed until she was delivered from that spirit of disappointment. You see, if you build your hopes on something and it doesn’t work out, you’re probably exposed to an evil force.
Now another kind of weakness is physical weakness. Let me give you this example. I’ve talked about epilepsy as being produced at times by an evil spirit. Some years ago my first wife and I had a girl of about eighteen who came to us, she heard my tape, she was a confirmed diagnosed epileptic, on medication, but she believed that it was an evil spirit. She came to us for deliverance. So Lydia and I prayed for her and we felt that the spirit had left. But then the Lord seemed to say to me, “Your job isn’t finished.” So I said to the girl, “Now tell me, how did this start? Did it start with a physical injury?” And she said, “Yes, I was struck on the head by a baseball and after that the seizures started.” “Well,” I said, “the physical injury was purely physical, but it opened the door to a spirit of epilepsy.” You understand? The place of weakness was the injury to her brain. Now I said to her, “I believe the spirit has gone out, we need to close the door.” So Lydia and I put hands on her and prayed for the healing of her brain. I was in contact with her for about three years after that, she took no more medication, never had another seizure. But I give that simply as an example of a moment or a place of weakness.
And the last one is sinful acts or habits. If you persist in a certain sinful habit, you can be sure that sooner or later it will become demonic. To give an example of a sinful act, I had to pray for a young woman once who had gone to see the film The Exorcist. She knew she shouldn’t go. She went and something entered her. She had to come confess as a sin she had gone on territory that was forbidden and then she was delivered. Or a person may go to a pornographic movie and some kind of sex demon will enter, a demon of lust. But you won’t get delivered until you confess the sin that opened the way for the demon, you understand?
All right. Now we come to what is the center of the whole thing. How to be delivered. This is what all of us need to know. And I’m going to give you a list of simple basic steps. I don’t say you have to follow all these steps, but I’ve observed that these are the things that are relevant.
Number one, be humble. Okay? Now you’ll see why I say that when I write out number two.
Be honest. Understand it takes humility to be honest. I tell people don’t call your problem by some fancy psychiatric name, call it what it really is. Call a spade a spade and not an agricultural implement. All right. If it’s lust, call it lust. If it’s hatred, call it hatred. I say to women, call it by the same name you’d call it in your husband and you’ve got the right name. But that takes humility. All right? You won’t face the truth unless you first humble yourself. And remember, the Bible always puts on us the responsibility for humility. It always says humble yourself. Don’t pray to God to make you humble because he’ll humiliate you. Then you’ll have to be humble. But it’s your decision.
Like this, you see. If you are seeking deliverance there may come a moment where you have to choose between two things. Your dignity and your deliverance. Now if dignity is more important to you than deliverance, you know what your problem is? Pride, that’s right. I always think of this doctor’s wife in the State of Alabama. She was a kind of Southern style lady. She heard me teaching and she came up and said, “Mr. Prince, if I understand what you’re saying, if I’m to be delivered I may scream.” I said, “It could happen.” She said, “I was brought up that a lady doesn’t scream in public.” “Well,” I said, “suppose you were in a river drowning and you were going down for the third time and you thought there might be someone on the bank who could rescue you, would you be too ladylike to scream?” Well see, that’s an option, you can choose to drown or you can be a little less ladylike for five minutes. My advice to people is let your dignity go because it’ll come back. And when you’ve been delivered you’ll be much more dignified, you won’t have this thing inside you struggling all the time. Okay. But I really say humility is the key.
All right. The next is confess your faith in Christ because he is the high priest of our confession. When we confess right he comes to our help. But if we don’t make the right confession, we don’t get him on the scene.
Number four, confess any known sin. All right, I’ll write ditto there, any known sin and I want to put but I don’t have room on the line, by yourself or your ancestors. In some cases you have to identify yourself with the family problem and say it’s my problem, I confess it, I ask for forgiveness. Even though it was your grandmother or your aunt or whoever it was.
Number five, repent of all sins. Without repentance, remember what we have been saying all along, without repentance there is no deliverance. And I’ll put here Proverbs 28:13, which says:
“He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy.” (KJV)
Do you want mercy? You got to do two things. Confess and forsake. That’s old fashioned but then God hasn’t changed, you understand? A lot of people have the attitude if I don’t confess my sin, God will never know about it. Really, I’ve met many people. That’s a mistake, God knows already. He’s not asking you to confess in order that he can find out, he’s asking you to confess in order that he can have mercy on you, understand? And let me tell you some other good news, God is unshockable. You can tell him the worst about yourself, he already knows it and he still loves you. But if you hold it in, you’ve held your problem in.
All right. Number six, break with occult, curses [which we’re going to deal with tonight, I can’t go into that in detail now] and secret societies. Okay. Especially Free Masonry. That is a source of the most tremendous demonic problems. And it goes from generation to generation, including retardation, crippling, all sorts of problems. All right. Really, that’s part of repentance, but I’ve put it up separately.
Number seven, forgive others. All of them, everybody. Don Basham and I had a friend years back who was a veterinarian. He needed deliverance but he didn’t get delivered till he had forgiven the whole IRS. That was his problem. None of you have that problem, I’m sure. Jesus said in Mark 11:25, When you stand praying, forgive if you have anything against anybody. That leaves out nothing and nobody. It’s your responsibility to forgive. You don’t wait till they humble themselves and say I really am sorry for what I did. You forgive them not for their sake primarily, but for your sake. I tell people forgiving others is not being super-spiritual or sentimental, it is really simply enlightened self interest. That’s all it is.
And number eight, one beautiful brief word. Expel. We’ll come to that a little later, but passivity doesn’t get you anywhere. You’ve got to take action. The simplest action you can take is to begin to breathe out. In both Hebrew and Greek, the word for spirit is the same word for breath. I remember a little boy, or rather the mother came to me, asked me to pray for her little boy who was about four or five. I said, “What’s his problem?” She said, “Allergies.” “What kind of allergies?” “Food allergies.” “What’s he allergic to?” “Tell me what he isn’t allergic to.” “Well,” I said, “I’m going to deal with it as an evil spirit, is that okay?” She said fine. I said, “I need to talk to your son.” Now I told him in very simple child language, said, “There’s a bad spirit like a breath inside you. I’m going to command it to come out in the name of Jesus. I want you to let it go. So when I say, ‘In the name of Jesus,’ you blow it out.” So he was like a little soldier, prayed for him, said “in the name of Jesus” and he went (blowing sounds). That was all. So I thought Did it work or didn’t it? So I just had to leave it with the Lord. But three days later the lady came back and said pray for me! I said what is your problem? She said allergies. I said tell me first what happened to your son. “Well,” she said, “he marched straight home, went to the refrigerator, opened it and sampled everything in it and nothing did him any harm!” See how simple. Except you become like a little child you don’t get these benefits.
All right. Now that’s how to get them out. That’s the most important piece of information. And even if you don’t understand how they came in, what matters is to know how to get them out. Thank you.
Now we’re going on to the problem area, why some people are not delivered. Okay. This is mainly for those who are going to be in this ministry. Why some are not delivered. Basically it’s for not meeting the conditions. Listen, deliverance is not so much a test of your spiritual power, it’s a test of whether the people have met the conditions. Don’t focus on yourself. Focus on getting the people to meet the conditions. Because once they’ve met the conditions they will be delivered. You may feel yourself a little midget, but you’re representing a victorious Christ.
All right. Number one, lack of repentance. Okay. There’s no guarantee to anybody who is not willing to repent.
Number two, lack of desperation. I say deliverance is for the desperate. I often say to people, when you come back and are desperate—desperation, thank you. Lack of desperation. Summed up in one word, passivity. You’ll find that particularly in people who’ve been in Oriental cults. They encourage to kind of putting your mind in neutral, you understand? And many times you’ve got to do something to prod them. I want to say again, Christ has given us authority over evil spirits but not over the human will. You cannot will for the other person. The person has to will for himself.
Number three, wrong motives. All right. The scripture I’ll give you there is James 4:3, which says you ask and you receive not because you ask amiss that you may spend it on your lusts. We are not delivered just to get off the hook, you understand? A lot of people would like to get off the hook. We’re delivered in order to serve the Lord. People who come merely to get off the hook do not qualify for deliverance.
Number four, (you better go down this list and check yourself while we’re going through it) self-centeredness. All right. Desire for attention. Some people don’t get delivered because they wouldn’t be the center of attention any longer, you understand? You find some of the chronic cases of deliverance never want to get delivered because they’re poor, neglected, rejected people, this is the only time they get the center of the stage. One thing you’ll notice about all people affected by demons is in some way or other they are self-centered. In fact, self-centeredness is an invitation to demon attention. Sometimes you just have to let the person go and say, listen, you’ve heard enough. You can do it for yourself and if you don’t do it for yourself, nobody else is going to do it for you.
Number five, failure to break with the occult, etc. And that includes getting rid of occult objects. Okay? Such as little Buddhas or charms, or horseshoes, anything that savors of superstition is demonic. Moses told Israel if you bring an accursed thing into your house, you become accursed like the thing. Most Christians need to go through their homes and clean out a lot of rubbish. I make it a principle, I don’t want to keep in my house anything that dishonors Jesus Christ or honors Satan.
One of the big steps in my life was I had inherited from my grandfather four beautiful tapestry Chinese dragons. Imperial dragons with five claws, not four. And they were beautiful. And they were not actually objects of worship, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought the dragon really is a picture of Satan, I cannot afford to advertise him on the walls of my home. So I took them down and got rid of them and I would have to say I was not planning it, I wasn’t in need, I didn’t have any such motivation in mind but I just observed. I prospered in a totally new measure once I got the dragons out of my house.
All right. Number six, failure to sever evil, soulish relationships. Sometimes you have to break some relationships if they’re evil, if they’re binding, if they’re—I don’t know what word, I want to say the word gooey. A kind of sloppy sentimentality that isn’t honest.
All right. Number seven, under a curse. Now we’re going to deal with that tonight so I’m not going to get involved in it now. But some people are under a curse and will not be delivered or healed till the curse is broken.
Number eight, (I’m running out of space) failure to confess a specific sin. The one obvious example is abortion. Anyone who has procured an abortion deliberately, in God’s sight, is guilty of murder. And that has to be confessed specifically as murder. Now this isn’t my decision, I’m not making the rules, you understand? I’m just interpreting them. I tried to get people delivered, you could get the demon up as far as the throat and it would not come out. Stop and check. I remember a girl of about sixteen, her mother brought her. Eventually I said, listen, there’s something you’re going to have to confess before this will come out. And she eventually confessed she had an abortion, her mother didn’t know about it. The moment she confessed, it came out. It was so sweet to see the mother and daughter fall in one another’s arms and receive one another. But that, in my opinion, is a unvarying principle.
Number nine which is, this is a controversial one, not separated by guess what? What’s the separating ordinance in the New Testament? Baptism, that’s right. Water baptism. All right. Remember, Israel were delivered in Egypt by the blood of the lamb. But they were separated from Egypt by the water of the Red Sea. And it was the water that prevented the Egyptians following them. They could follow as far as the water. People that are not willing to be water baptized in my opinion, do not qualify to stay free. This is not an option. I’m not dealing with this as a denominational issue, I’m simply stating that’s the way it is. If you can get God to agree, fine. But I’m not going to be a party to that agreement.
All right. Ten, now this is a very complicated one. Part of a larger battle requiring corporate action. Okay? Some people are what I call Satan’s battlefield. And he will not let them go, not because of what they are themselves, but because of what they stand for. I don’t have time to go into this. But there are people for whom the whole body has to take the responsibility. To give you an example, there was a young man I knew who had Hodgkin’s disease. You know it’s incurable, it’s just a question of time. Well, he was part of a fellowship which, when the fellowship flourished he did fine, he wasn’t sick. If anything went wrong with the fellowship spiritually, he began to get sick. And ultimately Satan got right into the fellowship, split it open and destroyed it, and he died. You understand? His physical condition was an accurate barometer of the spiritual condition of the fellowship he was in. There are people like that. You don’t have the choice.
All right. One last topic, how to keep your deliverance. Okay. I usually don’t have time to teach on this. Let me say that I have a series of six cassettes called “Deliverance and Demonology” which are available to all of you. This final cassette is “Seven Ways to Keep Your Deliverance.” So if I don’t cover it in detail—anyhow.
Number one, make Jesus Lord, okay? Normally at the end of a deliverance service I’ll tell the people that have been delivered, don’t you go out of this auditorium until you’ve made Jesus Lord of every area of your life. Remember what Jesus said in Matthew 12 when the unclean spirit goes out of a man? He walks through dry places seeking rest. Then he says, I will return to my house. What does he mean by my house? The person he occupied. And when he comes he finds there three things. Empty, swept and set in order. What’s the problem? No problem with having the house swept, no problem with having the house set in order. What’s the problem then? Empty. Unoccupied, no one else has been allowed to move in. There’s only one person strong enough to keep the devil out of your life. You know who that is? Jesus. Every area Jesus occupies is safe. But any area where he is not Lord is unsafe. Have you ever driven through the United States about six or seven o’clock in the evening looking for a motel to spend the night? You’re looking for one word in red neon letters, what is it? Vacancy. That’s right. And when you see that, you know you can get in. Well, in the spiritual world, every area of your personality which is not totally given to the Lordship of Jesus has got that red neon letter sign, vacancy. And the enemy knows he’s welcome. And when he comes in he’s liable to bring with him seven others worse than himself.
All right. Number two. I’m going to just put briefly, garment of praise. The scripture says God has given us a garment of praise in place of the spirit of heaviness, is that right? You see, when you are praising the Lord, you’re bothering the devil more than he can bother you. Let me relate this briefly.
Years back before I had gotten to this ministry of deliverance, I was just pastoring an ordinary sort of Pentecostal church in London, we had two Russian Jewesses who had marvelously escaped from Russia, being saved and baptized in the Holy Spirit. And my first wife and I were praying with them and they really believed in praising the Lord. I mean, they were not reticent. They said in Russia the Baptists praise the Lord much louder than the Pentecostals outside Russia. And so there we were having a good time with the Lord and there was a ring at the bell and when I went to answer it there was one of my lady church members there leading her husband by the hand. And she said, “This is my husband, he’s just come out of prison, he has a demon.” Well that was unwelcome news to me because I didn’t know what to do about demons. But I couldn’t refuse the man so I took the couple up where we were all praying. And I said, “We’ll pray.” You know, that’s a safe coverall, it’s always spiritual to pray. Sometimes it doesn’t produce any results but at least you sound good! So we went on praying and these Russian sisters, they didn’t care about anybody, they were praising the Lord. So this man sidled up to me and he said, “There’s too much noise, I’m going!” Well, I didn’t premeditate my answer but I gave him the right answer. I said, “Listen, the one who doesn’t like the noise is the devil because we’re praising Jesus. You’ve got two options. If you go now, the devil will go with you. If you stay, the devil will go without you.” He said, “I’ll stay.” And about ten minutes later without anything further happening that I was aware of he came up to me and said, “It just left. I felt it leave my throat.” Well that was such a demonstration to me how much the devil dislikes the praises of Jesus. If you put on the garment of praise, he’ll stay away from you because you’ll embarrass him more than he can embarrass you.
Number three, put on the full armor of God. That’s not an option. Ephesians 6:14–17, and it starts with 12, that’s right. Okay. Now that’s all listed for you, I don’t have to tell you all about it.
Number four, live by God’s word. Matthew 4:4 says what? Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord. You cannot live by your feelings. That’s the most dangerous thing you can do. You’ll be up and down and every time you get a bad mood, you’ve opened the door. There’s a little list of three F’s. Fact, Faith, Feeling. Okay. Now you have to keep them in that order. The facts are in the Word of God. Faith believes the facts and feelings fall into line. But if you reverse the order and start living by your feelings, you’ve lost your anchor. You’re like a ship adrift without an anchor.
Number five, submit to God and what else? Resist the devil, that’s right. I’ll put Satan because it’s shorter to write. Which is James 4:7. Notice which comes first, which do you have to do first? Submit to God. If you’re submitted to God and you then resist the devil, what does the Bible say will happen? He will what? Flee from you. Do you believe that? But a lot of Christians are actually doing the opposite. They’re submitting to the devil and resisting God, you see? Really, many.
All right. Number six, I’ll put right fellowship, I don’t put in more. It matters what kind of fellowship you have. 1 John 1:7, if we walk in the light as he is in the light, what happens? We have fellowship. If you’re out of fellowship, you’re out of the light. You’re not protected by the blood. The blood only cleanses in the light. And you’re going to have some kind of fellowship, which is it going to be? With the godly or the ungodly? Paul says, have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness. The fellowship is an acid test of where you’re at in your spiritual life.
Number seven, I don’t know how many I got, can I get them all in? I can. Come under discipline. All right. You cannot be a real Christian without being under discipline. Self-discipline, family discipline, governmental discipline, school discipline, church discipline, there are many areas of discipline. But the one who refuses is a rebel. And you know what the Bible says about rebels? 1 Samuel 15:23, rebellion is as witchcraft. The moment you become rebellious you are exposed to the spirit of witchcraft. Okay? Discipline. Did you get that? For many people today it’s a dirty word. It starts with self-discipline, you understand? Most Christians indulge their moods and their whims and their fancies. You are not free to do that. It’s just as dangerous to do that as it is to indulge your sexual impulses. You are not free to do it.
Number eight, this is the last one. Make Jesus central. All right? You’ll notice it begins and ends with Jesus. And I’m going to put a scripture there, John 12 what? 31 and 32. Which says, Jesus says:
“Now is the judgment of this world, and now is the prince of this world cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.” (KJV)
Notice the order. When Satan is cast out, what is the next thing to do? Lift up Jesus. That’s right. Fill the vacuum with Jesus. The driving out of Satan creates a vacuum. It’s very important you fill it with the right thing. Focus on Jesus. Do not focus on demons. Don’t give the devil too much publicity, he loves it. Demons are real like germs and viruses and other things. We have to acknowledge them, we have to deal with them. But a healthy person doesn’t go around thinking all the time about germs and viruses, you understand? Health in a certain sense excludes them. Don’t see a demon under every cup and saucer. And if you’re from some old line church or even a less old line church, don’t go back, go up to your pastor or rector, stick your finger between his eyes and say you have a demon. It may be true but it’s not the right way to handle the situation.
All right. Now we have done marvelously well with regard to time and I want to end on a very practical note, thank you so much. This is optional, I want you to understand, nobody is compelled. But if there are those of you here this morning, or this afternoon now, who feel that somehow on the basis of what you heard or maybe previous experience, you have a problem. A demonic problem. There’s an area in your life in which Jesus is not in control and you’re not in control. You may be in control of ninety percent but there’s this ten percent. It may be your temper, it may be your mind, it may be your sex life, it may be your relationships with other people, there is an area where you need deliverance. I want to help you. I’ve helped, I think I can say I think with great honesty, hundreds of thousands of people. It works. What I’m going to offer to do for you, those of you who feel that you want help here, I’m going to invite you in a few moments to stand and say a prayer. You’ll not be praying to me, you’ll be praying to Jesus. Remember, there’s only one deliverer, what’s his name? Jesus. If you want deliverance, you have to come to the deliverer, there’s no alternative. Jesus said, him that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out. If you come, he’ll receive you. Now this is a method that I have employed with large crowds. In Wellington, Old Town Hall just two weeks ago in New Zealand we had at least two thousand people. And it worked for two thousand, it worked dramatically well. I have never seen so many people liberated in such a short space of time. So what I am going to offer to do, now this is an offer, I’m going to lead you in a prayer in which you will have the opportunity to humble yourself, to come to Jesus and to affirm that you’ve met the conditions, you understand? I’ll put in your mouth the words. You’ll renounce the occult and every kind of contact with Satanic power. You’ll forgive every other person who ever harmed you or wronged you. You’ll release yourself from every curse over your life and you’ll have to do that in faith without the understanding. And then you’ll present yourself to Jesus as a candidate for deliverance. And when you’ve said the prayer and met all the conditions, the last thing you say is amen, okay? And when you’ve said amen, don’t do any more praying. It’s very religious to pray. Sounds good, but as long as you’re praying, you’re keeping the demons inside. You understand? They can’t get out past your prayer. Don’t speak in tongues. Speaking in tongues is wonderful but it has the same effect, it keeps the demons inside. It’s like when the ambulance or the police car goes down the road with its sirens blaring and its lights flashing. Everything else gets off to the side and let’s it go past. That’s how demons get out, see? Make way for them. Release them. Let them go out.
Now I said faith without works is dead. I didn’t, but the Bible does. Okay? So don’t stand there passive when you’ve said the prayer waiting for something to happen. Do one very simple thing. Begin to breathe out. Expel. And you’ll find if you have a problem, in a short while, it will be more than mere human breath that’s coming out. That’s what you’re after. Now when that happens, you might become undignified, you might not act in a very religious way. If you decide to be dignified and religious, you’ll lose what you prayed for. It’s your option. I suggest you turn loose and get it out. I’ve told people, the devil is no gentleman, he comes in uninvited and he usually has to be kicked out. Kick him out with everything you’ve got. Don’t spare him. Hate him. Listen, it’s no sin to hate the devil, it’s a sin not to hate the devil. To be passive and indifferent is sinful.
Okay. Those of you who want to say this prayer, would you stand to your feet right now. We don’t have more than about three minutes. All right. Now we are praying to Jesus, the deliverer. Not to Brother Prince. And I would like you to say these words, they’re all taken out of the Bible and what I have taught. Okay?
Lord Jesus Christ, I believe that you are the Son of God, and the only way to God. That you died on the cross for my sins, and rose again from the dead. I come to you now for mercy, and for forgiveness. I believe you do forgive me and receive me as your child. And because you receive me, I receive myself as a child of God. And now Lord, you know that special problem that I have. The demonic influences that torment me. Lord, I want to meet your conditions and receive your deliverance. First of all, I forgive every other person who ever harmed me or wronged me. I forgive them all now. Now pause for a moment and quietly name the persons you need to forgive, to yourself. We’re going on. Lord, I have forgiven all these persons. I have laid down all bitterness, all resentment, all hatred and all rebellion. And I believe you have forgiven me. I thank you for it. I also renounce every contact with Satan, with occult powers, with secret societies, with anything in Satan’s territory. I repent of being on that territory and I turn my back on it now. Also Lord, if there’s a curse over my life, I thank you that on the cross you were made a curse that I might be redeemed from the curse, and receive the blessing. And I claim that now, released from the curse and entering into the blessing. And now Lord, I want to come against any evil spirit in me that occupies any area of my personality. I want to tell you I hate them. They are my enemies. I will not make peace with them. I will not compromise with them. They will have no more place in me. I turn against them now and in the authority of your name, Jesus, I command them to leave me. I expel them right now in the name of Jesus. Amen.
All right. No more praying. I’ll do the final prayer, you do the letting go. Begin to expel right now in faith.
Now Lord, as your servant and representative here this morning, under the authority of the local leadership I take dominion in Jesus’ name over every evil spirit that has been renounced and I command them to go now in Jesus’ name. Release these people and go from them now in the mighty, all prevailing name of Jesus Christ. I affirm that Jesus Christ is Lord over this gathering. That he has defeated Satan. That he holds the keys of death and of Hades. That all authority has been given unto him in heaven and in earth. Satan, you are subject to us through the name of Jesus. You have to obey us. You have to go from these people. You have no options. The Bible says you must leave, and leave you must, Satan. In the name of Jesus. Amen.
Now just get a full deliverance. Release yourself from everything. Once the anointing is here you can get rid of everything and it’s much more difficult to do it when the anointing lifts. That’s right, don’t bother about other people. Don’t hold onto your dignity, it’ll come back in a few moments. That’s right, thank you Lord. Thank you Father. Thank you Lord Jesus. Praise your holy name. Praise your name Lord. Praise your name. Thank you Lord, amen.
Just stay with it, the devil is stubborn, you be more stubborn. Amen, thank you Lord. Thank you Lord. Thank you Father. Thank you Lord. Thank you Lord.
Now if you believe you’ve been delivered, then start to thank God and remember, before you leave this place, make Jesus Lord.
Appendix 5
The Satanic Temple: Think you know about Satanists? Maybe you don't
Published 20 May 2023
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-65549975
Inside the Little Black Chapel, at The Satanic Temple's annual convention
By Rebecca Seales
BBC News, Boston
This may be the world's largest ever gathering of Satanists - and it's about to begin at a Marriott hotel in downtown Boston.
In a candle-lit room set aside for Satanic ceremonies, a neon sign welcomes you to The Little Black Chapel. A raised altar stands at one end, a white pentagram on the floor in front of it.
The ritual being performed here is an "unbaptism", in which participants symbolically reject religious rites performed when they were children.
"No names," says a Satanist who agreed to let me witness their ceremony, as long as they aren't identified.
They wear a floor-length, hooded cloak and a black face mask. Their hands are bound with rope, which is then cast off to represent liberation. Pages are torn out of a Bible to symbolise overturning their Christian baptism.
Image : Minister Rose d'Arc performs an Unbaptism Ceremony for an attendee in the Little Black Chapel
It's clear the experience was powerful for them.
"As a gay child, being told you are an abomination and should be destroyed, warped a lot of my thinking. Finding The Satanic Temple has really helped me embrace logic and empathy."
The Satanic Temple is recognised as a religion by the US government, and has ministers and congregations in America, Europe and Australia.
More than 830 people snapped up tickets for its late April convention, dubbed SatanCon.
Members say they don't actually believe in a literal Lucifer or Hell. Instead, they say Satan is a metaphor for questioning authority, and grounding your beliefs in science. The sense of community around these shared values makes it a religion, they say.
They do use the symbols of Satan for rituals - for example when celebrating a wedding or adopting a new name. That might include having an upside-down neon cross on your altar while shouting: "Hail Satan!"
For many Christians, this is serious blasphemy.
"That's not wrong," agrees Dex Desjardins, a spokesperson for The Satanic Temple.
"A lot of our imagery is inherently blasphemous.
"We've got folks who wear inverted crosses. And our opening ceremony did have the ripping up of a Bible as a symbol of oppression, especially oppression of LGBTQ folk and women, and also the BIPOC community, and pretty much anybody who's grown up with religious trauma, which is a tremendous number of our members."
Image : SatanCon's opening ceremony featured pages being torn out of a Bible - which drew the wrath of critics online
Image: Members of the Satanic Temple know their use of Christian materials is blasphemous to some people, but say they aren't setting out to upset anyone
The Satanists say they respect everyone's right to choose their faith, and they're not trying to upset people.
But Christian protesters from many denominations have gathered outside the hotel, carrying signs warning of damnation.
"Repent and believe the Gospel," urges one. "Satan rules over all the children of pride," says another - the letters of "pride" shaded in the rainbow colours of the LGBTQ Pride flag.
"We are hoping to show God that we do not accept this blasphemy, and that we Catholics have not abandoned the public square to Satanists," says protester Michael Shivler, from a conservative Catholic group.
Convention-goers in the lobby eye the protest outside. "They called us 'dope-smoking masturbators'," one man reports. "Oooh, sky daddy is mad with me!" someone else jokes.
Image: Protestors hold up signs outside the hotel hosting SatanCon
Image: Responses to the protests ranged from apathy to glee
Hellbillies, horns, and Satanic self-pleasure
The event takes up the whole fourth floor of the hotel. The Satanists fill it with androgynous goth chic, flamboyant robes, hand-painted horns, diabolical tattoos, and high-maintenance moustache choices.
Most people here are old enough to be parents, and several are. I spot at least one pushchair.
Presentations are given, including one called "Hellbillies: Visible Satanism in Rural America", and a seminar on Satanism and self-pleasure.
Image: Some attendees wore their normal street clothes to the convention. Others added a little extra
Political activism is a core part of The Satanic Temple's identity. It believes religion and the state should be kept separate, and frequently files lawsuits in the US to defend the distinction. Their point is serious, but they relish bringing satire and outrageousness to the fight.
In Oklahoma, for example, they asked to erect an 8ft (2.4m) Satanic statue at the state capitol when a monument of the Ten Commandments was put up, noting that the First Amendment requires all religions to be treated equally. (The Commandments were ultimately removed after a court battle.)
The Temple also advocates for abortion access, arguing that everyone should have autonomy over their own body.
Earlier this year, it opened an online clinic based in New Mexico, which provides abortion pills by mail.
It has also developed an abortion ritual for people terminating a pregnancy - which is designed to be comforting and involves reciting an affirmation before the abortion - and argues its members must be religiously exempt from abortion bans that would stop them performing it.
That rationale has drawn criticism from some quarters, including in Catholic newspaper the National Catholic Register which called the ritual "nothing more than a grotesque parodying of religious rituals and symbols".
The Yellowhammer Fund, which finances low-income people seeking abortions, declared that "putting your dollars and trust in grassroots organisations that have been doing this work for decades" was a better way to support abortion access.
In a hall packed with supporters, the directors of TST's campaigns present updates on their work. Successes are greeted with whoops, applause, and the sign of the horns.
Another project drawing headlines is After School Satan Clubs - slogan: "Educatin' with Satan". The Temple would rather keep religion out of schools, but wants to counter faith groups coming in to evangelise to pupils.
So where local people have asked it to, it tries to launch an After School Satan Club, focused on community service, science, crafts and critical thinking.
Opponents say it's frightening children, but TST says its content is demon-free. They have a kids' song - My Pal Satan - with a bopping animated goat, and the lines: "Satan's not an evil guy, he wants you to learn and question why. He wants you to have fun and be yourself - and by the way there is no hell."
Skip youtube video by The Satanic Temple
'Satan loves you!'
Dozens of artists and vendors have set up stalls to sell Satanically inspired crafts. They have everything from "Satan Loves You!" beanies, to crocheted toys modelled on the Baphomet - a goat-headed Satanist symbol with wings.
The Satanic Temple is selling its own T-shirts too. The group doesn't take membership fees, and is kept running largely off donations and merch sales.
Image: One seller who goes by Little Nicky sells crocheted toys with a Satanic twist
A newly launched children's book, titled Goodnight Baphomet, draws coos from bystanders.
The Satanic Temple's code of guiding principles - the Seven Tenets - prioritises empathy, control over one's own body, and respect for other people's freedoms, including the freedom to offend.
Translate that into a kids' book, and it includes rhymes like: "Respect everyone's right to be, especially when they disagree. If their words make you mad, set them free - don't be sad!"
Image: The children's book Goodnight Baphomet charmed attendees
Araceli Rojas, who flew from California to be here, finds the tenets relatable and easy to apply.
"I feel like I've always been quote-unquote a Satanist, I just didn't know it."
She says she first learned about TST through TikTok in 2020. "At that point I looked into it. A little scared, I think, like most would be. And I really wanted to make sure that they weren't sacrificing babies! Then I started getting into the culture, and the scene, and I started to join meetings… and eventually I realised no, they're not, it's just a symbol that they use and it's genuinely really good people."
Chatting around the merch stalls, many people say their intro to The Satanic Temple came from the 2019 documentary Hail Satan?, directed by Penny Lane, which explores the Temple's principles and early activism.
TST says it boosted membership from perhaps 10,000 in 2019, to more than 700,000 today.
Those gathered in Boston include local government staff, medics, engineers, artists, people in finance, a social worker, a therapist, and a circus performer. Many belong to the LGBTQ community. Plenty are married to Christians - or at least to non-Satanists.
Members tend to lean to the left politically, but there's no political test to join and the Temple will not endorse any party or candidate.
Lucien Greaves, The Satanic Temple's co-founder, arrives with personal security, dressed in black and carrying a Thermos. "English breakfast tea. I got it from a shop that sells British stuff." He smiles when I accidentally say "bless you!"
Greaves (a pseudonym) started the movement a decade ago with a friend, Malcolm Jarry (also a pseudonym). They shared a commitment to religious freedom, and opposing what they see as Christianity encroaching on legislation.
Image: Lucien Greaves, co-founder of The Satanic Temple, says it was never a prank project - despite their willingness to use satire and shock value
News outlets, especially in the US, often present The Satanic Temple as attention-seeking pranksters pretending to be a religion, something he strongly objects to.
"People are hesitant to take anything we say at face value, but I feel like everything we say is pretty straightforward and we're not misrepresenting ourselves at all."
If you're trying not to look like trolls, was it wise to name your abortion clinic "Samuel Alito's Mom's Satanic Abortion Clinic", after the Supreme Court judge who backed the decision to remove the federal right to abortion? And then put it on a T-shirt?
Image: The Satanic Temple defends giving its abortion clinic an openly trollish name
"Part of the consideration was refusing to yield to this idea that everything must be sober and humourless to be authentic at all," says Greaves.
"My thinking on that was - nothing could be more serious than us opening a telehealth clinic. I just would hate to see us lose any sense of humour." Greaves has had to adjust his life to deal with the personal risks he faces as America's most prominent Satanist.
"I moved at some point within the past four years and I don't even have people over, because I don't want to have to move again."
Some TST members feel unable to acknowledge openly that they're involved, citing risks to their safety. Members who have been outed have lost their jobs, lost their children in custody battles, and found fake bombs under their cars.
Chalice Blythe, spokesperson for the Temple's religious reproductive rights campaign, received online harassment in the middle of SatanCon, after footage went viral of her tearing a Bible during the opening ceremony.
It's not the first time she's been threatened. In 2016, a family member leaked her details online and a gunman turned up at her home.
The gunman "said 'this is what I'm here to do - I have this gun with that bitch's name on it.' I know they went to jail.
"Legally changing my name, I've had to do that."
As far as she's concerned, it's worth it. "If my enemies are people of a crazy evangelical mindset who want to take my rights away - those are the kind of enemies I'm proud to have."
Image: Chalice Blythe says after 10 years as a public Satanist, she's no longer surprised by threats and harassment
Typhon Nyx, in his 30s, is one of many TST members who uses an alternative name in the community - a "Satanym", as they call it. He says he moved from atheism to Satanism only recently.
"Satanism stands for everything I believe in," he says. "Including bodily autonomy, compassion, respect, science. And Satan represents those who were cast out, those who think differently.
"I never found my friends being accepted in the Christian circles. The appeal of Satan is that he is the accepting one, the inclusive one, and someone I can more identify with.
"Although, I don't believe he actually exists."