Demon Possession And Oppression

Philip G. Ney, MD, FRCP (C)

June 28, 2003

Introduction
There is a Spirit World and a Spiritual War
Satan
God
Demons and Evil Spirits
Angels
Demon Possession and Medical Diagnoses
From Whence Come Evil Thoughts?
Children of God
Evil Oppression
Remedy
Hard Cases
Conclusion
Scenario 1
Scenario 2
Summary
Diagnostic Summary Tables

There is a Spirit World and a Spiritual War

Jesus stated that unseen reality is the permanent reality, observable reality is not permanent.² Cosmology has found that ordinary (observable) matter makes up only 4% of the substance of the universe; 73% is exotic matter and 23% are exotic forces. This is a world with invisible spiritual forces and rulers that most people underestimate.³ There is a war going on in the spiritual world, an all-out battle with only two sides and no on-lookers.⁴ It appears that the war is about and within humans. Satan wants to enslave, use, abuse and destroy as many people as possible in his attempts to defeat God and usurp His authority. There is no neutral ground. Though the outcome is predictable, the devil, who is the father of lies,⁵ has convinced himself as he tries to convince others, that he can win.

Satan

It appears that Satan was one of God’s most majestic creations, but he attempted to dethrone God. He was thrown out of heaven. By human choice, he entered this world and became its prince.^{6 7 8} It appears that Satan’s strategy is to deceive and enslave people⁹ in order to win the war against God with overwhelming numbers. Although he is a murderer and slaver, his killing of people is restrained.¹⁰ Moreover, he wants to recruit them for his army.

Although he is powerful and can muster mighty forces, Satan has many limitations, including:

1. He cannot create, he can only recruit his servants, minions and henchmen.
   
2. He has a limited number of servants that were thrown out of heaven with him.¹¹ If Satan did not recruit, his impact in the world would wane through a dilution effect, because of the increasing population. Since it is apparent that his impact is not diminishing, it can be assumed that he is being successful in recruiting. It is quite possible that he is recruiting not only in life but also recruiting after death those spirits who are not children of God or have not been committed to Christ.
   
3. He is limited to existing and acting in one time and space.
   
4. Though terrifying, he has limited power which God constrains.
   
5. He cannot insert thoughts into human minds. When he tries to influence them, he needs a medium, ^{12 13 14 15} sometimes the media. The Scripture makes it clear that he ‘speaks’ (auditory) to humans.¹⁶
   
6. Satan is very seductive, using convincing lies and half-truths to blind people to the truth,¹⁷ especially those who prefer not to know.¹⁸ Yet God protects people’s ability to hear, understand and act on the truth so that even those possessed by a ‘legion’ of demons can come running to Christ.¹⁹
   
7. Satan uses subtle and seductive messages in various media to subvert natural human desires into becoming demands for unnatural pleasures which make people thoroughly cynical or aggressively selfish. Having perverted their God-given needs for mature development into insatiable wants for fun, titillation, greed and power, he can dangle many pleasures to bend people to his way of thinking.²⁰ He can appear to be beautiful and concerned about people,²¹ but literally does not give a damn. He is best able to recruit among those who are bitter, disenchanted or disenfranchised.

God

God is all-powerful, all-knowing and always present everywhere, all the time. Time, space and matter are no boundaries to Him.²⁴ By His Spirit, He can penetrate human minds, especially when they are asleep, leaving them with thoughts, visions, dreams, yearnings and warnings.^{25 26 27} Without much effort, God could defeat the devil, but he has allowed him some authority in order to provide humans a choice. God is “pro-choice”. God wants humans to exercise the immense privilege of choosing responsibility. He insists on truth-informed choice. There are some choices he strongly advises against (divorce), some He never wants people to make (abortion), and some He prohibits (going from hell to heaven).²⁸ God is always protecting humans’ relatively limited freedom to choose in order that people could choose to be His friends. Because He is so powerful and beautiful, God veils Himself,^{29 30} otherwise, like the angels, there would be no choice but to love and worship Him.³¹ Yet to those who desire to know the truth, He reveals Himself fully in Christ.

God and the devil cannot co-habit. They cannot exist in the same space. God’s purity and holiness demands that His temple and anything in it is also pure and holy.³² Anything or anyone that enters His holy place that isn’t clean, he immediately destroys.³³ Nothing unclean comes into the temple of the Lord.³⁴ Even the pots and pans had to be purified.

God will inhabit humans only by invitation. Jesus says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock”.³⁵ God does not force entry into human minds, and the devil cannot. The devil can only seduce and frighten people into listening to a medium or the media he controls.

Once God’s Holy Spirit comes into a person, he/she is completely changed in the sight of God.³⁶ Once in, God stays in. He maintains His presence by a guaranteed unilateral contract sealed by the gift of His Spirit.³⁷ He cannot be forced or thrown out by anyone, not even the person themselves.³⁸ Just as “once my child, always my child” in human relationships, even more so in our relationship with God. When people are His, they are His forever. We belong to the Lord, mind, body and soul.³⁹ We are bought with a price. We are not our own.⁴⁰ God can be ignored, unused and hurt but He cannot break His promise^{41 42} or turn his back on His children.⁴³

Demons and Evil Spirits

According to Strong’s definition⁴⁴ of demon in Greek and Hebrew, “‘daimonion’ is neuter, a demonic being; by extension, a deity”. An evil or foul spirit is ‘akathartoo’. It appears that sometimes the term is the spirit of an ‘unclean’ devil. This seems to imply that demons were angelic beings thrown out of heaven with Satan. Whereas, an evil spirit could be a spirit of an evil person. It might be anyone who has not received Christ’s Spirit and gone to heaven, or who is a spirit that was not committed to the Lord after they died. Their hell is being alienated from God and working for the devil. According to Dr. Kenneth McAll,⁴⁵ the spirits of people not committed to the Lord may bother the living because they are still looking for someone to commit them to Christ.

Demons are non-corporeal entities. They vary in rank, authority and purpose. Jesus’ statement that “a house divided against itself cannot stand”⁴⁶ implies that they may be at war with each other. These unseen entities have names, personalities and different jobs in Satan’s kingdom.⁴⁷ They do not like being naked or homeless.⁴⁸ As Paul states, all spirits wish to be “clothed” when they die.⁴⁹ When those who are servants of the devil die and leave behind their bodies, they feel naked and vulnerable.

In life, as in death, all beings are servants of God or slaves of Satan.⁵⁰ Jesus says of some people in his day, “you belong to your father, the devil.”⁵¹ Since there is no neutral ground, it implies that all people who are not children of God must be children or slaves of the devil.

Demons instantly recognize Christ and His authority. They know He is able to send them to where they belong and confine them there.^{52 53} Demons can take human form, but only as an apparition.⁵⁴ They may be at war with each other.⁵⁵ They recognize the sovereignty of Christ. They cannot inhabit animals. If demons possess animals, they will go crazy and kill themselves.⁵⁶ They may trouble people to gain some relief from their unhappy state.

The fallen angels, demons, are limited in power and there are limited numbers of them. Satan cannot create new demons. Therefore, one has to assume that he is able to recruit people, both in life and in the spirit world. Thus, the war for souls continues in the spirit world. This might imply that people have a second chance. Since so little is known about this subject, it has always seemed better to assume that our only chance for choosing salvation in Christ is in this life, and it is necessary to make one’s eternal life’s decision while alive and aware.

It appears that the demons immediately recognized God and can recognize God’s servants.⁵⁷ So God’s servants are able to recognize the devil’s servants.^{58 59} The devil ignores those Christians who, although they have the most powerful Spirit of God in them, never use it. He will attack in a variety of ways, those who are a threat to him. Christians have always recognized that those who fight at the forefront of the battle need greater prayer support and “covering by Christ’s blood”.

Angels

Angels can take human form,⁶⁰ and are more powerful and more numerous than demons. They can inhabit or speak through animals.⁶¹ They consider themselves to be fellow servants of God with Christians.⁶² They are instructed to guide and guard God’s people.

Demon Possession and Medical Diagnoses

In Christ’s day, possession by an evil spirit was sometimes used as a metaphor to explain all sorts of unexplainable illnesses, e.g. epilepsy, depression. As people 1500 years ago used the idea of “bad humours” to explain sickness they could not understand, but are now known to be caused by bacteria, cancer, etc., so spirits were considered the cause of illnesses in Christ’s day. It is apparent that “the evil spirit from the Lord”⁶³ that troubled Saul was probably some kind of recurring mental illness that resulted in him being paranoid and depressed. The child who was thrown into the fire or river by a demon clearly had grand mal epilepsy.⁶⁴ It is possible St. Paul’s blindness was a somatoform illness.⁶⁵ The Bible used the common language of the time so that it could be understood by people. Jesus didn’t question the people’s usual diagnosis, although He could easily have described the abnormal biochemistry or physiology if he wanted to.⁶⁶ Since all sickness and evil comes from Satan, being immersed in a depression feels like being possessed by evil because of its evil origin, and it certainly doesn’t feel good. In some instances the demon possession was probably subsequent to a mental illness or the last tragedy to those who had been abused and neglected as children.

The ‘spirit of mental illness’, ‘depression’, ‘envy’, ‘anger’ etc. that is commonly spoken of by some Christians is using “spirit” in the same way it was used in Christ’s day. Spirit, is a play on words. It is not meant to denote demon or evil spirit but an attitude or a tendency toward self defeat or exploitation or a diagnosable illness. People of ancient times can be excused for mistaking illness for possession, but not nowadays.

Evil spirits could be driven out by exorcists of all kinds. Jesus noted that people in His day who were not disciples, who did not have the Spirit of Christ in them, were capable of driving out evil spirits.^{67 68} The only problem was that, once the person was clean of evil spirits, he could easily be repossessed. The exorcised spirit wanders about and then, finding the original house clean, will easily re-inhabit that person again. Christ recognizes the privacy of door to our heart and mind, the demons must also. But the only permanent defense against demon repossession is being possessed by the Holy Spirit.

Humans never lose their ability to respond to Christ, even when they are possessed by a “legion” of demons. The worst murderers in history, the ex-abortionists of our time, can respond to the call of Christ. They can open their hearts and invite him in.⁶⁹ Then you see the amazing grace and power of Christ to essentially change a person. Humans can invite Christ or can invite evil into their lives. God protects that ability to choose for all of our human life. However, there is no question that choices to ignore Christ’s invitation will determine our tendency to choose in a similar way in the future. Wrong choices become habitual and constricting. Right choices always enable and free.

There is a great gulf fixed between the spirit world and the human world.⁷⁰ Those who are in heaven cannot come to earth. It is understandable that people in heaven might want to return to earth to correct the affairs of family and friends, and guide their loved ones in an effort to bring them to the knowledge of Christ, but it can’t happen. The only ‘communion of saints’ is between Christians on earth.⁷¹

Christ died once for all people, for every sin, forever.⁷² “For our evil consciences have been sprinkled with Christ’s blood to make us clean, and our bodies have been washed with pure water”.⁷³ Because of this, we have a way through the “sacred curtain”.⁷⁴ We can go boldly into the presence of God, which is the holiest place.⁷⁵ Through accepting Christ’s death on our behalf, God now sees us as holy.⁷⁶

From Whence Come Evil Thoughts?

If the devil cannot invade the person without their permission and if the devil cannot intrude thoughts into a person’s mind, where do evil, warlike, disquieting thoughts come from? Jesus made it clear that pollution was from the inside. “It is the thought life that defiles you.”⁷⁷ James writes that the evil desires and fights come from within you because of selfishness.^{78 79} Paul writes to the Galatians, “It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time.”⁸⁰ These miserable thoughts and consequent actions come from a combination of rebellious inclinations, fantasies and selfish desires. Selfishness is an inveterate part of unregenerate man. Human fantasies are fired by all kinds of dehumanizing experiences and perceptions that do nothing to edify the spirit or the mind. It is not the devil putting bad ideas into people’s minds without their awareness. Self and species destructive behaviour arises from thoughts generated in the minds of humans who one way or another invite evil influence into their person.

Christians are the temple of the Holy Spirit. They are owned by God. God keeps them clean because He will not allow anything evil into His temple. It is a dishonour amounting to slander, to suggest that the spirit in Christians is anything but the Holy Spirit. Jesus confronted the religious leaders’ slander and went on to say it was an unforgivable sin to say the Spirit in Him was a demon.^{81 82} What is true of Christ is also true of God’s children who all have God’s Holy Spirit in them.

When Christians allow their minds to be polluted with distorted or lying thoughts or fantasies, mainly from the media, they are responsible for allowing that evil into their mind. Now they have to deal with many conflicts that arise because of garbage they have ingested. Garbage in, garbage out. That plus all sorts of early childhood experiences which they did not choose, result in distorted ideas or self-defeating tendencies and apathy in serving Christ. Evil thoughts are not an indication of demon possession but of the oppression felt by those who have invited evil experiences and evil images into their minds.

A child says, “My sister made me do it.” Adam said, “Eve made me do it.” Some Christians are saying, “The devil made me do it,” whereas Scripture is quite explicit that bad ideas and harmful words come from our own minds. The net effect of this irresponsibly blaming others is immaturity which is difficult to treat or correct.

Children of God

In the Old Testament, God had his servants, those who were faithful to Him and who responded to his Spirit when the Spirit visited them. They struggled to adhere to God’s laws, but eventually concluded that without His Spirit living permanently within them, all effort on their part was bound to fail. Paul, as a good Pharisee, found that no matter how he tried to keep the law, it just wasn’t in him.⁸³ The prophets expressed the longing of all Israel for the time when God would write His law upon their hearts.⁸⁴ Then it would be natural and easy to follow God. By the time that Israel and Judah as nations were no more, God’s people had to admit that they were not able to keep their end of the bi-lateral Old Testament, or covenant. Jeremiah speaks of his longing for God to give them a heart to know Him.

Jesus promised his disciples that His Spirit, who is now “with them, would be in them.”⁸⁵ Pentecost was a vivid demonstration that God’s Spirit came to dwell in people. Thus, people became the temple of the Holy Spirit.⁸⁶ Thus, sinners were reborn.⁸⁷ They became sons of God.⁸⁸ They were no longer servants, but “friends”,⁸⁹ for they knew what God was doing since they had His Spirit informing them, leading them each one and all together into truth.^{90 91} Thus, what distinguished Christians from everybody else was the fact that they had God’s Spirit permanently in them. Now His children would have forgiveness, truth, life, power and peace.^{92 93 94 95}

When God’s magnificent Holy Spirit came into people it was the most remarkable event. It had been waited for for thousands of years. Pentecost created a new world order, the Kingdom of God. It was something that Christ prayed for, “Thy Kingdom come.”⁹⁶ Millions of faithful servants of God breathlessly waited for the day. Finally God’s Kingdom came. It was the most remarkable event in history. Now all people could really know God, speaking individually and directly to Him. Since Christ was now any person’s High Priest, there would never be a need for a priest.

When you have God’s Holy Spirit living in you, you have the promise of everything God gives. It is a huge insult to God to ask for more than He has already given you. It is all or nothing. The Spirit inside us is an untapped resource. It is like waiting for wings. Suddenly, you are given wings and then ordered to fly (“I command you to love.”). Some people fly a little, but once they are off the ground they are terrified by the rarified atmosphere and the possibility of being shot at, so they hurriedly retract their wings and crawl about on the ground. What is so incoherent is that they continue to plead for the ability to fly when they have all the necessary equipment.

God’s servants were bought with a very high price. They belong to God, body, soul and spirit.⁹⁷ Now God maintains a unilateral contract and nobody nor anything could pluck them out of God’s hand. Though foolish and foible, in God’s sight Christians are without “spot or blemish”, forgiven everything because of Christ’s death on their behalf. Now they make up a holy priesthood.⁹⁸

God maintained the holiness of His temple in the Old Testment.⁹⁹ Since we are God’s temple, we are His responsibility, He maintains our holiness. He has power over the demons and can protect us awake or asleep. We have the helmet of salvation which protects our head and mind.¹⁰⁰ He has given us His Spirit “without measure or limit”,¹⁰¹ not in part, but always as a whole. We cannot have more than He has already given us by repeated requests or eucharists. We are filled with His Spirit, all parts of us. Now our responsibility is in daily thanks use what He has given us.

God enters us only by invitation. He has given us a door we may either open or keep shut. But once He is in, He stays in. We have to admit we cannot hold on to God securely enough, He holds us. His salvation is a gift, something we did not earn or deserve. Because we are His child, we will always be a child whether we deny Him or not. As in human relationships, we would never disown our child, even when they disown us. The prodigal son rejected his family, went away and spent much of his father’s hard-earned money in a selfish pursuit of pleasure.¹⁰² Yet he never stopped being the father’s son, and the father always expected him to return. He knew he would eventually come to his senses because being out of communion he would starve. Any Christian who turns their back on Christ eventually returns because of their intense hunger for His fellowship.

Until the time that a child is able to knowingly open the door of his/her heart, parents are given responsibility for keeping their children safe by dedicating them to the Lord. In the Old Testament, the first born was always dedicated or consecrated to the Lord,¹⁰³ as were the children whose parents felt they had a special gift, i.e. Nazirites, Moses, etc. Since parents must recognize every child has a special blueprint and ability to know and serve the Lord, each child must be dedicated to the Lord. Until they make up their own mind, the Lord will keep them safe from the evil one.

In the Old Testament, the slaves were allowed to go free in the Year of Jubilation. However, if a slave found his service good, his master kind, and he had a family, he didn’t want to leave.¹⁰⁴ He would voluntarily give himself to life-long service. This was recognized when he put his head against the doorpost and somebody drilled a hole in his earlobe with an awl. It was then apparent to everybody that the man belonged to his master for life. He could not run away and he could not buy himself out of servitude.

Humans do not have free will. Only God does.¹⁰⁵ Humans have individual, limited free choice.¹⁰⁶ To some extent, each person’s choices are predictable; determined by factors over which they have no control. Their past choices are the best predictors of their future choices to either ignore or to seek God. A person’s belief is seen in their behaviour. Thus there are only theists and atheists, no agnostics. People only behave as if there is God or as if there is no God. God protects human choice, even when they make so many that are destructive to themselves and others.

God gives Himself in whole, not in part. It is stupid to ask for more of His Spirit when you have everything. You can’t gain anything in excess of 100%. Christ has given you life, forgiveness. It is not that people don’t have the fullness of God’s Spirit; it is that they become inattentive and unable to use the peace and the power of the Spirit. He does not get weak or distant, but our ability to tap into His power and knowledge does get rusty. It is like having a very powerful new car in the garage, but never driving it. There is no point in asking for another car when you’ve got the best there is. Christ commands us to tap into that power by obeying His command to love.¹⁰⁷

The Holy Spirit is a gift that comes when we acknowledge that we need Christ, and when we invite Him into ourselves. Thus we can only be grateful and useful in God’s service. Salvation has to be simple so God could not be accused as discriminating against the intellectually handicapped. It has to be very complex to satisfy the thirst of the intellectual. I can think of no other possible way that God could have arranged it to meet all these criteria.

Children are considered a gift from the Lord. Actually they are on loan. They belong only to God. Yet this is a heavy responsibility for parents. It means that every child must be recognized for his/her uniqueness, welcomed, given a name, granted nurture and guidance and, when dead, committed to God. When Christ was not physically present in the world, He prayed to His Father to take care of His children through the Holy Spirit. Thus, parents throughout all the ages of Christendom have felt the need to commit the spirits of their dead children born and preborn, those whom they had acknowledged and welcomed, back to God for safe-keeping.

Evil Oppression

Though demons and evil spirits cannot inhabit a Christian, nor invade their thinking, God’s people can be troubled by situations and by messages that the devil controls. The devil obviously speaks through the media. The images that go into a person’s head stay there. Situations in which Christians place themselves can be very vexing. Lot, a righteous man, chose to live in Sodom but was distressed by the evil around him.¹⁰⁸ This is a picture of Christians who stupidly expose themselves to evil through selfish pleasure, not because they are fighting the Lord’s hard battles. If they were fighting evil, God would protect them.

The mind has amazing retention. It is a sponge and wants to take up more knowledge, so that by God’s direction, people can become wise. But as with computers, garbage in, garbage out. Thus it becomes very important to censor what goes into one’s thinking and be very careful what children are allowed to see and hear. Those impressions soon become oppressive partly because one soon realizes they are very persistent. Even when a person is immersed in worship or enthralled with a sunset, a pornographic image can flash into your mind and spoil it all.

Children are born with a very plastic brain. Modern science has shown that the old idea that brains were completely hardwired at birth is far from the truth. As people learn, new connections are being made. Thought patterns are greatly determined by the child’s experience, especially emotionally charged experience. This gives parents an awesome responsibility. The way they nurture and guide their child during pregnancy and after, will hardwire the child’s attitudes, perceptions, abilities and conflicts. Though this plasticity diminishes in time, it is never entirely lost. Older people can still learn new skills and new languages by making new connections, but only with great effort.

a)  Enslavement
The devil seeks to enslave people, and it is not hard for people to recognize a sense of oppressive enslavement. They lack a freedom to choose. This often is a result of them making many wrong choices, or it may result from unresolved major trauma. When people have unresolved conflicts, particularly from their childhood, they tend to reenact these. The repetition of tragedy reenacted feels very oppressive.¹⁰⁹ Very soon, damaged people realize that if they make choices they tend to make the wrong choices, so they make no choices at all. They become driven by circumstances rather than clear rational choice. It is pathetic when Christians decide depending on the opening and closing of doors. God expects them by His Spirit to push open and knock down doors. Those who persistently wait for doors to open to them, never mature.

b)  Persistent Ugly Images
When people expose their minds through visual, auditory or other stimuli, to expressions of evil, those images lodge in their brain and are hard to dislodge. The persistence of these evil images is very oppressive to people. Just when they want to feel free, light, worshipful, joyful, these images flash into their mind and they become depressed. The oppression of these images comes from within their own mind, recorded there by previous experiences. The mind is capable of innovation, and can from previous images, invent a new scenario. These self-generated images can be even more oppressive.

c)  Memories of Painful Experiences
The mind retains painful experiences, because they can be useful in protecting a person. The only way to delete these is in the process of reconciliation. When people are able to forgive, they will automatically forget. God says so.¹¹⁰

d)  Natural Urges with No Natural Outlet
God created the mind and body to survive and to glorify Him. Survival mechanisms are buried in strong urges of procreation, protection, etc. When there is no natural opportunity to express these urges, there is an increasing tension which can result in oppressive conflict. The conflict is to express the urge or not to. This should never have to happen in good marital relationships. A man’s testes and prostate are exocrine sexual glands that must be expressed to the exterior. Lack of sex means there is a damming up of fluids that results in both physical and psychological tension. Paul teaches Christian couples they must never say no to each other sexually.¹¹¹ He points out that if people do, they tend to become diverted into evil images and evil, selfish, lustful and adulterous behaviour. Paul also points out that Christians need to marry, lest they are consumed/oppressed with thoughts of selfish expression of their sex.¹¹² In such a way, hunger which is a natural and necessary urge, can become so distorted, that people even consider eating each other in extreme situations for their survival. When starving, even in Jerusalem, people ate their children.

e)  Natural Urges Perverted By Past and Present Neglect
Children must be able to express their needs and their distress. When they are unable to do so, their expressions become distorted. Dammed up expressions can often result in internal struggles. i.e. key conflicts, to express or not to express my feelings, etc.

f)  Internal and External Conflict
Since evil came into the world, there has been interpersonal conflict, then it becomes resident in a person’s head. The repetition of conflict is very oppressive. People keep trying to understand why they feel so awful, and they spend many hours thinking about the problem, talking to their friends until they’re bored, or re-enacting them until they give up.

g)  Biochemistry
When human biochemistry goes awry, it can result in a variety of physical and mental illnesses that are oppressive.

h)  Conditioning
Any behaviour that results in an orgasm will be strongly reinforced and more frequently repeated. When people are unable to deal with their desires and engage in a rewarding behaviour of any kind, sex, smoking, eating, etc. they have a momentary sense of reward or relief and that powerfully conditions them to repeat the very behaviour they have been struggling with. This conditioning is very difficult to undo. When people struggle against its repression, they feel oppressed and want to despair.

i)  Bonding
When there is sex between people, it results in bonding,¹¹³ whether it is incestual or whether it is marital. The bonding mechanism meant by God to create stable marriages when expressed in the wrong area results in bonds that are very oppressive.

j)  The Presence of the Enemy
When God’s soldiers attempt to engage their enemy, they can sense the presence of the evil one. They need to know that there is nothing to fear, for He who is in them is far more powerful.¹¹⁴ Yet that evil presence can be oppressive.

k)  Handicap
God never intended His creation to be anything other than perfect. People who are handicapped by physical, mental illnesses feel much less than they were intended to be, and that is a very oppressive sensation.

l)  Pain
Persistent pain is oppressing and depressing.

m)  Depression
There are many causes but the oppressive weight of depression makes thousands of people to cry for help.

n)  Warfare
Fighting the devil is a hard battle and people may become exhausted or battle scarred. If in the midst of a hard battle with persecution a Christian is abandoned by his/her fellow believers, the effect results in near despair.

Remedy

As with all maladies, good treatment begins with correct diagnosis. When is it a demon or an evil spirit, or when is it mental illness? If we have been using the Spirit that God has given us, we are sensitive to His prompting. There is no question that His Spirit within will alert you when there is an evil spirit around. Literally, the hair will stand up on the back of your neck. In addition, the demons declare themselves, sometimes inadvertently, because they are so afraid of the Spirit of God.¹¹⁵

Evil spirits, spirits of evil people who have died or restless spirits which have not been committed to Christ need to be recognized as such. The spirits of unborn children do not automatically go to Heaven. Every person can only go to Heaven through Jesus. There are no exceptions. He is the only way. If they haven’t met Him and accepted Him as their personal Lord and Saviour, they don’t go to Heaven. This is why it is so important for aborting parents to be rehumanised so they can 1) remember the humanity of the aborted, unborn baby, 2) recognize their child’s identity, 3) welcome then into their heart, home and family, 4) acknowledge their participation in the child’s death, 5) apologize to Christ, 6) bury the child, 7) commit him/her to Jesus.

Psychotherapy may be good treatment, but Christians must be alert to the fact that there is no non-directive psychotherapy. Research shows that, whether you become better or worse, you become more like your therapist. Sadly there are few good psychotherapy or counseling programs that are based upon scientific and scriptural truth. Most so-called Christian programs are basically humanistic with some scripture sprinkled on top.

Jesus says, “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” It’s amazing to think that the most powerful evil force in the universe literally panics and runs when confronted by Christians. It is not that Christians are powerful; it is because the Spirit of God who is resident within them is much more powerful than anything evil external to them. Jesus’ disciples learned of this power and rejoiced that the devils were subject to them.¹¹⁶ Christ reminded them that that power came from Him, and that they must rejoice not in that power, but in the fact that they belonged to Him.

An unsaved person should have the demon exorcised. Then they must be introduced to Jesus. Some have been introduced directly to Jesus. At the moment the Spirit of God comes into them, all evil is driven out forever. They become the Temple of the Holy Spirit and are cleansed and protected by God.

Hard Cases

King Saul was desperately trying to draw up some effective battle plan so that God’s people would defeat their ancient evil enemy but it seemed God would not give them direction or answer. He felt he couldn’t wait any longer. The enemy was about to attack and Saul was pretty sure, based on earlier experience, his troops would run away. Saul consulted a medium because he knew that he could not speak to the spirits directly.¹¹⁷ The medium brought up Samuel “out of the earth” “looking like an old man”, who then lied to him about the defeat of the Israelites and Saul’s own death. We know it was not Samuel because he came out of the earth and because he was looking old, whereas, God’s children are in heaven and are given a new body. Besides, could a witch reach into heaven and bring to earth one of God’s most respected servants? No, it was a devil carefully masquerading as Samuel. Saul believed the lie, and fought in such a despairing manner that he brought on himself and many others his own worst fears.

Conclusion

By God’s power, grace, love and sacrifice, humans may have His Holy Spirit living permanently in them. This defines them as His, Christians. Christians cannot possibly have a demon inside them. They have the Holy Spirit, which indwells all of them as one entity. To teach otherwise is to insult God and confuse and damage Christians. Those who constantly exorcise demons from themselves or others, or by others, are insulting God and become increasingly irresponsible. In psychotherapy, frequently exorcised Christians are very difficult to treat. A correct diagnosis can help a physician. Christian physicians need not be afraid of the devil. “The gates of hell shall not prevail.” ¹¹⁸ They can cast out the devil and all his minions in the name of Jesus because God has granted them that privilege. However, they must never ascribe to themselves that power. Even when they are able to cast out demons they should not rejoice in that but in the fact that their names are written in the Book of Life.

Scenario 1

In this scenario, Christians are not automatically protected from the invasion of the devil into their mind. The net effect of this is:

1. They have no peace and the assurance of eternal life. They can never be sure they didn’t doubt, sin or ignore God badly enough to incur His wrath or damnation.
   
2. They can’t trust their thinking. They are constantly wondering where their thoughts come from.
   
3. They are constantly badgering themselves or allowing others to harass them into getting more faith to ensure God’s protection and love.
   
4. They have little courage. Because they are afraid they might lose their faith by denying their Lord, they do not expose themselves to any situation where they could be tempted or tortured into repudiating or relinquishing their faith. They could not be bold to go into any situation where they might be captured or tortured, lest in “denying their Lord” or accepting the devil, they lose their salvation.
   
5. They have mental anguish or illness because they will not resolve their psychological conflicts; rather, they ascribe them to the devil. Since they can’t escape the devil, they may as well resign to his rule.
   
6. They are afraid to go to sleep lest while unconscious the devil insert evil ideas and imaginations.
   
7. They constantly doubt their own thoughts and desires. They are afraid of their imaginations, their inventiveness, their images, lest by imagining they allow the devil into their minds.
   
8. They become irresponsible, ascribing to the devil their own selfishness, lust, gossip, etc. and passively, helplessly accepting it all.
   
9. They are afraid to imagine or investigate. They are afraid to inquire into natural phenomena to find natural explanations. (There is no such thing as supernatural. God is the essence of nature and He cannot be above Himself.) God wants us to know Him.¹¹⁹ If we know God fully, we will know everything. He encourages us to learn who He is and how He works, including how He performs miracles. As we try to get to know the writer from analyzing his writings, and the painter from his paintings, so we can get to know God by investigating the world He created.
   
10. They are afraid of their dreams and even more frightened to analyze them, lest they discover that the devil has put some terrible thought in their mind. Yet dreams are the “royal road to the subconscious”. They are honest and tell a person a great deal about themselves in a symbolic, succinct manner. God communicates in dreams and visions some of His most penetrating insights.
    
11. They are motivated more by a fear of displeasing God than by love, joy and gratitude to serve Him.
    
12. If demons can enter minds, then woe betide the child of Christian parents. Their minds can be constantly demonized awake or asleep. Parents must then constantly examine or suspect that their children have demons, which they had best exorcise as quickly as possible, sadly and too often by harsh methods.
    
13. They live in fear of damnation. If Christians have a demon in them, they cannot possibly take that demon with them to heaven. Therefore, every Christian would be terrified, lest inadvertently they have a demon in them, so that when they suddenly die they would not automatically go into the presence of Christ. On the other hand, if the evil is in their mind when their brain dies, so does the evil thoughts and conflicts.¹²⁰ The Christian, as God’s son, is now living their eternal life. Death is just a transition.
    
14. They cannot possibly come into the presence of God. That is, they cannot pray or commune with Him intimately. God cannot possibly tolerate a demon in His presence.
    

Scenario 2

By admitting their sins to God and accepting Christ’s atoning death, any person who so desires is cleansed from all evil.¹²¹ They are “washed”, “sanctified” and “justified” (just as if they had never sinned) all by the Spirit of our God.¹²² Therefore:

1. Children, even if they have only one Christian parent, are holy,¹²³ set apart, not subject to demons.
   
2. We are “carefree in the care of God”.¹²⁴
   
3. We can look forward to being clothed in an eternal body, which we even now long for.¹²⁵
   
4. We have peace and assurance for the present living and for eternal life, a peace that the world cannot give.¹²⁶
   
5. We can be bold because no one can persuade, coerce or torture us into losing our sonship with God and our citizenship in heaven.
   
6. We can use our imaginations for inventive art, literature and machinery.
   
7. We can be good scientists, freely exploring the world that God has made and not being afraid to uncover some mystery that will detract from our reverence for God. We can be sure that God will encourage us because in our pursuit we are getting to know Him better.
   
8. We know that whatever the turmoil in and around us, we are secure in God’s hands and nobody can ever pluck us out of His hand, not even ourselves.
   
9. We are not afraid to sleep or dream.
   
10. We are responsible, acknowledging the sorrow and sickness that comes from within us, and being prepared to deal with all.

Summary

When a person accepts Christ as Lord and Saviour they are filled with God’s Spirit. Thus they become temples and hosts of the Holy Spirit. Since God cares for His temples and allows nothing unholy in them, Christians cannot be demon possessed. The devil cannot penetrate their minds, inject ideas or read their thoughts. However, when Christians pollute their minds with evil images and speak unholy ideas they will feel the oppression of evil.

DIAGNOSTIC SUMMARY TABLES

Possession

Oppression

Disturbed By Evil Spirits

Mental Illness

Mixed States

References