This tape contains the third of six teachings in the series entitled, The Counterfeit Kingdom, presented by the Reverend John W. Howe, Rector of Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Virginia. The title of this teaching is, Demons and Deliverance. I'm starting to say that in the first session, I mentioned that the King James translation really does us a disservice when it speaks consistently of devils in the plural. It should be demons. There's one devil, one Diabolos, one Satan, formerly Lucifer, the light bearer or the day star or the morning star, who fell out of pride, ambition, jealousy, rebellion.

And I want to just do a very quick aside, and you're going to think that I'm making a very bad joke, but I don't intend to. There are those who believe that Satan may well have been the choir director in heaven, that that was his job. Now, there's fairly scanty biblical support, but there's one fascinating reference in the book of Job.

Chapter 38, when God is questioning Job, you remember Job has demanded an audience and he finally gets one. and God asks him all these very difficult questions. And in chapter 38, verse 4, he says, Where were you, Job, when I laid the foundation of the earth?

Tell me if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements? Surely you know.

Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk? Or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

that's fairly flimsy evidence but it is a fascinating possibility morning stars come so close to the literal meaning of the word lucifer day star, morning star and in that context clearly the sons of God refers to the angelic host singing and shouting for joy you know the more you think about it it could be how easy it is to start off offering our gift offering our talent in praise of God and ending up wallowing in pride over our own excellence. That is by no means confined to musicians. But it does manifest itself there.

People whose purpose ought to be to be leading the worship and who somehow subtly get all caught up in their own excellence, their own gift, their own beauty. It's just an interesting possibility. In any event, one devil, one Satan, but a host of demons.

And I think that the key passage in all the scripture on the subject is Revelation 12. I want to look at it fairly quickly and just pick out the highlights. Revelation 12, as is true of almost all the book of Revelation, it's told in symbols, But the symbols are fairly clear in this particular part of the book.

It says a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. Now if you remember back to the book of Genesis, you remember that Joseph had a dream, and it profoundly disturbed his family. He had a dream in which the sun, the moon, and the eleven stars were bowing down to him, acknowledging his superiority.

And his father, whose name was Jacob, Israel, took great offense at that. Do you think that that means that your mother and I and your brothers are going to bow down before you? Well, of course, they ended up doing so, didn't they?

This woman is Israel. She has all of the symbolism of Israel. And it says she was with child, and she cried out in her pangs of birth in anguish for delivery.

And another portent appeared in heaven. Behold, a great red dragon with seven heads and ten horns. and seven diadems upon his heads, and his tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth.

It's primarily on the basis of that passage that most folks say that when Satan fell, he took, in essence, a third of the host of heaven with him. The dragon is clearly Satan. In the next paragraph, it identifies him as such.

It says, dragon stood before the woman who is about to bear the child that he might devour her child. That's the first and major point of his attack. He wants to destroy the child of the woman.

It's immediately clear who he is. She brought forth a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne. The woman Israel gives birth to Messiah and Satan wants to destroy him.

But God doesn't allow that to happen. The child is caught up to God and the woman fled into the wilderness where she has a place prepared by God in which to be nourished for 1,260 days. If you went through the Revelation series with me a couple of years ago, you'll see that that's a number that comes up over and over and over again.

It comes up in terms of three and a half years or it comes up in terms of 42 months or it comes up in terms of 1,260 days. It is a symbolic number. It takes seven, which is the perfect number, seven years and cuts it in half.

Three and a half years, 42 months, 1,260 days is half of human history. And this woman flees and Satan's attack is against her from the time that the child is caught up into heaven, a point which divides human history into two parts. now war arose in heaven Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon and the dragon and his angels fought so we have the dragon and his host on one side Michael who is the prince the archangel over Israel and his angels on the other side but they were defeated and there was no longer any place for them in heaven and the great dragon was thrown down that ancient serpent who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world. He was thrown down to the earth and his angels were thrown down with him.

And I heard a loud voice in heaven saying, now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they love not their lives even unto death. He is right now conquered.

He is right now a defeated enemy. He and all of his hosts are already beneath the authority of Christ, but I want you to see that they're still active. It's as if we're between D-Day and V-Day.

The defeat is already certain. The mopping up exercise, the expression of it, the full total manifestation of the victory still lies ahead. But you need to see, again, where we stand, absolutely protected, victorious.

Rejoice then, O heaven, in you that dwell therein, but woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short. He's a defeated enemy, still active. And when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had born the male child, but the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle that she might fly from the serpent into the wilderness to the place where she is to be nourished for a time and times and half a time. There it is again, three and a half times, three and a half years, 42 months, so on.

The serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman to sweep her away with the flood, but the earth came to the help of the woman and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed the river which the dragon had poured from his mouth. Then the dragon was angry with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring. Guess who?

You and me, friends. Three stages here of the devil's onslaught. He first tries to destroy Messiah.

He second tries to destroy Israel. And he thirdly tries to destroy all of the other children of Abraham, the children of Abraham by faith, those who constitute the new Israel, the rest of her offspring on those who keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus. There, in a nutshell, is the key to understanding human history.

The devil is a defeated enemy, still active, seeking to destroy us. But if we know who we are and we know where in our victory lies, we have nothing to fear. He has a mighty army of followers, perhaps a third of the host of heaven.

There are two major theories about them. First is that they're simply fallen angels. That's the way they're usually referred to.

They're called here the devil and his angels. In Jude 6, it talks about the angels that did not keep their own position but left their proper dwelling. In the letters of Peter, it talks about the angels of rebellion.

There's a second theory that is a rather bizarre one, but it comes out of the book of Genesis, chapter 6. And it speaks about a rebellion that was so great that it led God to utterly cleanse the whole earth with sending the flood. That's an unimaginably great rebellion.

When men began to multiply on the face of the ground and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were fair and they took to wife such of them as they chose. Then the Lord said, My spirit shall not abide in man forever for he is flesh and his days shall be 120 years. He begins to shorten the lifetime.

The Nephilim or the giants or the mighty men of old. The Nephilim were on the earth in those days and also afterward when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown.

Some people suppose that what that means is that angels had an unholy physical, sexual relationship with people and that it was the unholy offspring of that union that really produced this horde of demons. It may be. That's a fairly disgusting thing to think about.

The nearest we could come would be for a human being to have physical relations with an animal. Think about it. An angel who is a higher created being than we, having that kind of relationship with men.

It could be that both things are true. That we're talking about fallen angels and we're talking about unholy offspring. I really don't know.

The Bible does not go very much into detail about the specific nature of these creatures. But what it does do is it uses an astonishing variety of names for them. In Ephesians 6, verse 12, it talks about principalities, powers, world rulers, spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.

And elsewhere, it speaks about dominions, thrones, names, princes, lords, gods, angels, spirits, unclean spirits, wicked spirits, elemental spirits. And the suggestion is very strong that there is a hierarchy here, one that would make the American military jealous. Spirits under authority of other spirits, under authority of other spirits, under the authority of a commander-in-chief called Satan.

In Daniel 10, don't bother to turn to it, but you might jot it down, Daniel is praying for his nation, and it says that the answer came in the form of God sending Michael, again the chief prince over Israel, and Michael wrestles with the prince of Persia. I think it's for 21 days before he finally is able to come and bring the answer to the prayer. It says he wrestles with the prince of Persia.

He resists him. He resists Michael who is one of the chief princes. So we have angels and archangels and we have demons and we have archdemons and archdemons, not archdeacons.

All of these various spirits subject to Satan, committed to his counterfeit kingdom. And it's obvious from the Gospels especially that they have an insatiable need lust, desire for human flesh. They want to inhabit flesh, which is what gives some credence to that theory about Genesis 6.

They want to be in flesh. And you remember that strange episode with the Gadarene demoniac when Jesus cast out the legion of evil spirits. They begged him to allow them to go into the swine.

If they can't have human flesh, they'll take pigs. They have an insatiable desire. I don't understand that.

The Bible says nothing about why. It's just the way we encounter it. One thing that ought to encourage us, it's my opinion that you and I will probably never, at least most of us, have a direct encounter with Satan himself.

You need to understand very clearly that he is not like God, omniscient and everywhere present at once. He is in one place, doing one thing at a time. and I don't think that too many of you really merit his attention.

He's spending his time with Yuri on drop-off and he's trying to get a hold of Ronald Reagan and he's doing whatever he can at the highest levels of influence. But you and I are going to run into some of his followers and for most of us that will be quite enough. Jesus encounters with demons, especially in the Gospel of Mark, which was probably the earliest of the four Gospels, were continual.

Everywhere he went. It's interesting that the demons invariably recognized him before the people did. The demon possessed would confess him, Jesus Lord, though they didn't bow to him.

They feared him, and they had to submit to his authority. And it's interesting that we find them much more prevalently in the Gospels than ever before, and that's really what we ought to have expected, I think, because Jesus comes in as the light of God, and the light exposes the darkness. Sometimes Jesus has to speak more than once, but usually he simply speaks a word, he commands them to depart, and they depart.

And that's what was so astonishing about Jesus' ministry. The Jews, you see, were used to exorcism. They practiced exorcism.

They had people who majored in that. But the way the Jews did exorcism was to go through long, ritualized prayers and ceremonies that invoked not only the name of God, but also all manner of other supposed names of power. And what so astonished them about Jesus was that he simply spoke a word.

He didn't invoke all these names, names out of paganism and names out of mythology, as well as some of the great names of God out of the scripture. He just spoke a word, and the spirits had to obey. There's an example of that kind of prayer that's come down to the present day in a manuscript in the British Museum.

You might just be interested in it. This was not a Jewish prayer per se, but it's the sort of thing that they would use. O thou most puissant prince Radhathamus, which doth punish in thy prison of perpetual perplexity the disobedient devils of hell and also the grisly ghosts of men dying in dreadful despair, I conjure, bind, and charge thee by Lucifer, Beelzebub, Sathanas, Jaconil, and by their power and by the homage thou owest to them, and also I charge thee by the triple crown of Cervis, his head by the sticks and fledgerton, your fellow private devil.

It goes on and on like that. Names of God, names of Lucifer, names from paganism all rolled into one and that's how they would try to do an exorcism. Jesus comes onto the scene and he says, get out.

And the people were astonished. So what is this? A new teaching?

With authority, he commands even the evil spirits. And it says they marveled. at that.

They marveled. They were astonished. They wondered at that.

It's especially clear, again, in Mark's gospel, that Jesus' ministry was really threefold. Number one, preaching and teaching. Number two, healing the sick.

And number three, casting out evil spirits. And it's interesting that that distinction is consistently made between healing the sick and casting out spirits. Sometimes you have symptoms of illness, which are in fact produced by demons.

In Matthew 12, there's blindness, but it's because there's a spirit of blindness. He doesn't heal the person, he casts out the evil spirit. Some blindness is demonic, not all.

Some epilepsy, or apparently epilepsy, is demon produced. It doesn't say all is, But in Mark 9, he casts an evil spirit out and the man loses all of his epileptic symptoms. Some infirmity.

It talks about a spirit of infirmity in Luke 13. Some infirmity, not all. You can catch a cold.

That doesn't mean you've got a demon. But some infirmity is demon-induced. And Jesus heals the sick and he exorcises the demonized.

And that distinction is consistently made. When he commissions others to minister in his name, he explicitly includes this threefold nature of ministry in the commission to them. Look at Luke chapter 9.

He called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to preach the kingdom of God and to heal. Threefold ministry. It was his ministry, and he passed it on to the twelve.

In the next chapter, it says, After this, the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to come. And again, if you read all the way through the passage, You see, he commissions them to go out and preach. Verse 5, whatever house you enter, first say, peace be to this house.

And if a son of peace is there, your peace shall rest upon you, and so on. It says, verse 9, heal the sick in whatever town you come, and say to them, the kingdom of God has come near to you. And it doesn't specifically mention the business about power over demons, but look at what happens when they come back.

Verse 17, the 70 returned with joy, saying, Lord, even the demons. are subject to us in your name. And then he refers to what we just read about in Revelation 12.

He said, I saw Satan fall like lightning. And then he goes on to caution them, you know, that's not really the thing you need to rejoice in. Don't rejoice in the fact that demons are subject to you in my name.

Yes, they are, as a matter of fact, but that's not the thing to rejoice in. Rejoice that your names are written in the book of life. Make sure that our ministry and our faith and our joy centers in the right thing.

There is an authority that he gives to us, but that's not where our joy resides. In Mark 16, last chapter of Mark, verse 17 says, And these signs will accompany those who believe. in my name, they will cast out demons.

They'll speak in new tongues, they'll pick up serpents, and so on. The very first one, in my name, they will cast out demons. Some scholars dispute the authenticity of that as part of the original manuscript, but I mention it because it is true to the spirit of things, even if it wasn't part of the original manuscript.

Jesus passed on a threefold ministry to the twelve. he passed on the same threefold ministry to the 70, and he passed on the same threefold ministry to those who believe. And if there were any doubt about it, I come back to Ephesians 6 again, which I already quoted, when Paul says, we wrestle not with flesh and blood, but with principalities, powers, and so on.

God isn't going to send us off to wrestle with principalities and powers without equipping us to do so. It's not the kind of God we serve. And by the way, an awful lot of people read that verse as if it said, we wrestle not only with flesh and blood, but also with principalities and powers.

And that is not what it says. It says we wrestle not with flesh and blood. That is not where the battle is.

The battle is in the heavenlies. We wrestle with principalities and powers, with spiritual hosts of wickedness and so on. And God isn't going to send us out to do that spiritual battle without giving us the authority to win.

We're going to come back to that in the next session when we talk about spiritual warfare. Matthew 18 and verse 18 says, Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven, which is a deliberate echo of the way Jesus defined his own ministry. Do you remember?

I come and bind the strong man that I might plunder his house. And now he says, I give you the authority to do the same thing. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound.

Whatever you loose shall be loosed. So Jesus' ministry is transmitted to us. The ministry of deliverance or exorcism of the gifts of the Spirit, though it is very frequently spoken of as such. It is not one of the gifts of the Spirit.

It is nowhere referred to as one of the gifts of the Spirit. It is an authority resident in the name of Jesus and available to those who properly understand and use that authority. These signs shall follow those who believe in my name.

they shall cast out demons. It is not a gift of the Spirit. It is an authority resident in the name of Jesus.

However, there is a gift of the Spirit, and it's a very important gift of the Spirit called discerning of spirits or discernment. In 1 Corinthians 12, where it lists some of the gifts, it mentions in verse 10 the discerning of spirits. And I submit to you that if it is a gift of the Spirit, then like any of the gifts of the Spirit, it can be received or it can be refused.

You can refuse to speak in tongues. God isn't going to force that on you. Some of you are refusing to speak in tongues.

You can refuse the gift of discernment. God isn't going to force that on you. Or you can receive it if he wants you to have it and you're willing to receive it.

Like any of the gifts of the Spirit, it needs to be developed it needs to be developed we don't get gifts usually full blown experts the first time we ever try to use them I don't know anybody who the first time he tried to lead somebody to Christ was a Billy Graham he had to develop that gift he had to work with it he had to use it I don't know anybody whose first sermon was really worth hearing he had to develop it okay like any of the gifts it needs to be developed we need to get sensitive in using it. And it is not infallible. The gifts need to be submitted to other members of the body, tested and confirmed.

And that is the teaching. We don't have the time to go through it, but you go back and read 1 Corinthians 12 through 14 and that is the teaching concerning the gifts. That I don't rest on my independent and infallible insight into anything.

I submit to the other members of the body of Christ. The gift of prophecy is to be tested by the other prophets. If someone is speaking and somebody else has a better message, let the first one sit down.

God gives his gifts in a body to be used in that way. And it operates as do all the gifts under the anointing of God. And therefore, any believer who is open to the Spirit of God could manifest it, but probably only some will develop a real ministry in this area.

You understand what I'm saying in making that comment? I mean, you could be used, if you're open to the Spirit of God, you could be used for any manifestation of the Spirit according to God's assessment of what the need is. God could use you to heal somebody.

It doesn't mean that you're going to have a ministry in healing. Relatively few of us are going to have a ministry in healing. Any of us could be used in a given instance in that area.

You could bring forth a prophecy. That doesn't mean that you're going to be a prophet. And you could be used by the Spirit of God in this particular area of discerning of spirits, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to develop a ministry in it.

If God begins to give you that, however, I would urge you that even then you need to be very, very sensitive in using it. He gives gifts so that we might be better servants, not so that we might be arrogant about our authority in using them. I'm interested that in Acts chapter 16, when Paul is in the city of Philippi, there's a slave girl who is demon-possessed.

She has an occult spirit of prophecy. And she runs around heralding Paul and his companions saying that these men are from the Most High God. You'd think they'd appreciate the free publicity.

They don't. For the same reason that Jesus never allows the demons to speak. He says, you shut up. Why?

Even though they're confessing him Lord, he doesn't allow them to speak because they confess him to be Lord, but they're not submitted to him. And he won't take a claim without submission. And it says Paul became very annoyed at her and he finally turned around and cast out the evil spirit.

But what I'm interested in is that she proclaimed them, she heralded them for many days before he did that. Didn't he recognize it immediately? Or was it not God's timing?

I don't know. I do know that Kenneth Hagin told a story about himself that he was ministering to a particular lady and he met with her six times and the seventh time God showed him that there was a spirit there. It doesn't operate automatically.

It doesn't operate infallibly. And even where it is operative, we need to be very, very sensitive in using it. And we need to know that we're on God's timetable.

Jesus himself cautioned that deliverance ministry improperly handled can lead to far worse problems than were there at the beginning. You remember his comment? The Spirit goes and brings with him seven other spirits more evil than himself and they enter and dwell there and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first.

Needs to be careful. Counsel, prayer, repentance. We need to walk with that person through, usually through an inner healing.

We need to know that we're really on God's timetable. that's with regard to the to the gift of discerning of spirits but there is another kind of diagnostic tool that the new testament speaks about in first john 4 we're told to test the spirits it says not every spirit is of god we're to test the spirits and i think that's that means in two ways. First of all, Jesus said, by their fruits you shall know them.

And we sang at the beginning about the fruit of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit produces fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. That is the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

I submit to you that the fruit of unholy spirits is exactly the opposite. Doesn't that follow? So one of the ways to test the spirits is to test the fruit they bear.

For instance, if somebody is preaching or teaching or begins to prophesy or give counsel and begins to lose emotional control in the midst of it and begins to get very agitated and his voice goes up several decibels, even if the words coming out of his mouth are right, I have to question what's going on in his spirit. That's not the fruit of the Holy Spirit. There's something amiss there.

But 1 John 4, 2 goes on to say this, specifically about testing the spirits. By this, you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not God.

Test the spirits. By this you will know the Spirit of God. Every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God.

Sometimes in dealing with someone, there are some symptoms present, and I'll talk about that in just a minute, that begin to suggest more and more insistently that maybe in the midst of whatever else he's dealing with, There is a spiritual reality. There is a spirit of evil who is contributing to the problem. And at that point, I'll ask, I'll say, now I want you to cooperate with me.

Just be completely at peace about this. I'm just going to ask whether there is any evil spirit around. And that spirit, if there is one there, will identify himself.

And I'll say something like this, I command any spirit which does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh to reveal yourself. In the name of Jesus, I bind your power. You may not inflict harm on this person, on myself or on anybody else, but in the name of Jesus, I command you to reveal your name.

And when there is an evil spirit present, usually a name will come into the person's mind. blasphemy or timidity or fearfulness or heaviness or faint-heartedness. These are all spoken of as spirits in various places in scripture.

Test the spirits. Any spirit which does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. Is there any spirit present which does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh?

It identifies itself and you command it to leave and it's got to leave in the name of Jesus. I said there are symptoms that may strongly suggest demonic influence. This won't necessarily prove it but they suggest it.

Things like attempted suicide or haunting thoughts of it. Things like self-abuse, inflicting of wounds upon oneself. I've seen this frequently with some teenagers that I used to work with, just needing to mutilate themselves.

Irrational, violent reaction against the name of Jesus, or even more so against the mention of His blood. Voices incessantly going through one's mind, especially voices that are blasphemous or obscene. I can't shut it off, it's just always there.

Deep sexual perversion. Uncontrollable violence, hatred, anger. Psychic gifts like that girl in Philippi, especially if they were received through occult channels.

An inability to believe the gospel. I want to believe, but I can't believe. You know what my next question is?

Have you ever been involved in the occult? About 95% of the time the answer is yes. Or an inability to pray.

I just can't pray. Something is blocking my prayers. Not necessarily a spirit, but it suggests it might be.

Violent reaction to the sacraments, especially among Roman Catholics. Excessive emotions, especially negative ones. emotions of guilt or fear or deep, dark depression, drug addiction, substance abuse.

Again, it might be strictly chemical. There might be something else going on as well. Mystical devotion to religious objects of art, even Christian art objects.

Occult involvement per se. Any of these, and there may be many others that we would want to add to the list. You begin dealing with somebody and you uncover some of these things, it suggests maybe, maybe there's a spirit here.

In which case it's appropriate to ask the question, is there any spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh? Name yourself. And then leave.

Take authority over it in the name of Jesus. And what you notice, of course, in virtually everything that I just mentioned, is that all of these things have an element of sin in them. and some people would believe that all you really need to do to deal with these things is to confess the sin repent of it and that's that problem is over well it may be it may be but as I said last time when we step onto forbidden territory we're inviting spiritual influence into our lives and it may not be enough if we've tried repentance and there still seems to be a problem Again, that's the time for that question.

The point I'm trying to make is this, that if you go by symptoms alone, you will not be able to distinguish sin from sickness from spirits. If we go, is this epilepsy a matter of illness, or is it a spirit? Is this blindness a matter of illness, or is it a spirit?

Is this deep problem, this pattern of behavior, is a matter of sin, or is it a spirit? or is it both? And so we've got to use the gift of discerning of spirits and where that isn't operative we need to test the spirits.

Now I want to share an opinion with you and you may not agree with this but I have this opinion anyway that you and I are not for the most part very likely to run into very many instances of the kind of demonic possession that we read about in the New Testament. And the reason for that is that we live in a society that just doesn't let people run around freely who have that total derangement of personality. We lock them up, we put them either in jail or more likely in a mental hospital, and we sedate them.

That's not what we ought to do with them, but that is what we do with them. And you're not very likely to run into somebody who is demon-possessed in the full horrible strength that we read about in the New Testament. But we will certainly come up against the reality of demonic harassment, demonic oppression, demonic influence in our own lives and in those of others.

What do you think we're praying when we say, deliver us from evil? That is not a redundant way of saying, lead us out of temptation. In fact, it literally could be translated, deliver us from the evil one.

We're praying for deliverance. We're praying the thing that we ought to be praying, which is that God's authority would release us from that demonic harassment, oppression, and influence. Now the question that inevitably comes up at this point, if not much earlier, is can a Christian have a demon?

And the answer is it depends on what you mean. Can a Christian be demon-possessed? No. Because a Christian, by definition, is possessed by Jesus Christ.

A Christian, by definition, is possessed by the Holy Spirit. You can't be possessed by the Holy Spirit and an unholy spirit at the same time. But influenced by?

harassed by oppressed by tormented by yes of course Satan entered into Judas' heart was he a Christian? of course he was a Christian he operated under the power of the spirit to heal the sick and cast out demons Satan entered into his heart Satan filled the heart of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5 he bewitched the Galatians. The problem is with the phrase demon possession, which is not really a good translation at all.

There is no such construction in the Greek. The Greek is daimonizoma, which means to be demonized. Or sometimes ichin daimonion, which means to have a demon, to have an evil spirit.

But the good news is this. two scriptures to get nothing else out of this. Take these two scriptures.

1 Corinthians 10, 13 No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man. God is faithful and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength. But with the temptation will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it.

Will you stand on that? God is faithful and He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability to cope with it. You may have to cope with some things that I couldn't cope with.

God will equip you to cope with them. If He calls you to cope, He's going to equip you to do it. I may have to cope with some things that you don't have to cope with.

And you'll look at me and you'll say, I don't know how He's going through that. I couldn't do that. You're absolutely right.

you couldn't do that unless God called you to and if he did he'd equip you no temptation no temptation did you hear that no temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man and God is faithful and he will not let you be tempted above your ability to endure but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape and the other scripture is James 4 verse 7 which simply says this resist the devil and he will flee from you. That is self-exorcism. Self-deliverance.

Resist the devil and he will flee from you. One of the men who went over to the SOMA conference that Joe has just come back from was telling me just yesterday about what happened to him while he was there. He said he's known for months that he was going to Soma for something that was going to change his life.

He didn't know what it was, but he's been preparing for it for months. He said in the middle of the conference, there came a time when people could come for prayer for a deeper infilling of the Spirit, for new gifts, for new anointing, for new ministry. He said at that particular point, chills came over him in the middle of Africa.

His back was so painful that he couldn't get out of bed. and as soon as the prayer session was over the pain went away until the next morning when it was announced that so many people had been unable to come to the prayer session that they were going to do it again and immediately it started all over he said I began to think I was under satanic attack he said I determined I was going to get to that prayer session if they had to carry me on a stretcher he said I went to the prayer session I have never before felt such an incredible sense of God's presence and anointing and empowering and blessing, and in the midst of it, satanic attack. Both simultaneously.

He said, I went back to my room. I got all the blankets I could find. He says, I'm in the middle of Africa, and I'm freezing to death.

And he crawled under his blankets, and he said, I began to curse Satan. and I began to say things to him that I wouldn't repeat in public. He said, and I argued with him for two hours and suddenly I was completely liberated.

I came into a wonderful new experience of God's Spirit. Resist the devil and he'll flee from you. You can do this yourself.

If your muscles of resistance are so unused that they have atrophied, then it may be that you need to gather some other folks with you who can pray with you and for you, who can agree with you in Christ, and that is the essence of a team of deliverance ministry. It's folks coming alongside us to help us in the business of resisting. It's really what it is.

Jesus promised in Matthew 18 that if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. And that immediately follows his instruction about binding and loosing. Immediately.

It's the very next word. Whatsoever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. Whatsoever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

And if two or three of you agree together in my name about anything that they ask, it will be done by my Father in heaven. It's a ministry of coming alongside like the Holy Spirit himself does. One of the names of the Holy Spirit, the paraclete, is the one who comes alongside.

That's what we're to do with each other. We come alongside and we agree together in resisting Satan and his minions. I want to recommend to you seven practical points in closing.

And again, strongly recommend the book I mentioned last week by Michael Green, I believe in Satan's downfall. But these seven things come to my mind. If you find yourself dealing with someone and it seems to you that such ministry is what is required, I strongly urge you to share it with one of the clergy.

It may be that God brings you along to the point where he gives you a profound ministry in this area, perhaps one that would exceed any of the clergies, at least at this church. But at least, if you're just being touched by this for the first time, share it with one of the clergy. Secondly, that you approach it cautiously.

Not fearfully. We don't have anything to fear. But cautiously.

Don't rely on first impressions. Don't rely on your analysis of the symptoms. We've got to use the gifts of the Spirit and we've got to test the Spirit.

Thirdly, whatever you do, don't clutch and panic. The authority is ours in Christ and we can have serene, quiet confidence about it. Fourthly, don't try to handle things in a public situation.

Quiet it down. Move into a place of privacy and comfort. Once in a while at the close of a service on a Friday evening, somebody will come to the rail and some really heavy things begin to get expressed.

And when that happens, the person inevitably gets very, very emotional. The thing to do at that point is just to go out, go into the sacristy or go somewhere else. You don't need to deal with this in public.

And we have the authority. we can take authority over it you be quiet right now we're going to deal with this you're in good hands we can deal with this get one of the clergy fifth be at leisure be at leisure be relaxed be at leisure sometimes it takes some time sometimes as I said there's all kinds of other things that need to happen we don't just go in and start casting spirits out we go in and we find out what's really happening and we deal at the level of repentance we deal at the level of renouncing sins of the flesh. Do you know that when you've done that, you've done about 90% of the battle?

You may have done the whole thing. Be at leisure. Sixth, be confident in Christ.

There's all sorts of superstition around, like don't touch the person lest the demons leap into you. That is absolute nonsense. Absolute nonsense.

Cover yourself with the blood of Christ, put on the armor of God, and be absolutely confident about it. And that really is the seventh thing. I just slipped into it.

Plead the blood of Christ, put on the whole armor of God, and let the Holy Spirit lead you. About three weeks ago, a man came to see me. And the reason he came was that he wanted my advice about how to best soften the blow that he was about to inflict upon his wife in telling her that he was going to divorce her.

We began to talk about that. And then we moved on to some other things and began to talk about him. And he began to share a little bit of his lifestyle.

And I found I was talking with a man who was into some of the ugliest things that I have ever heard in my whole life. Deeply, incredibly into them. Into perversion of every sort that you have ever heard of.

Stuff that he didn't even realize. He had suppressed it. You remember in Romans 1 it talks about suppressing the truth.

Their minds are darkened and they suppress the truth. He wasn't even aware of what he was doing. And it began to come out.

And it began to come out. And the more it came out, the more it came out. And the more he became horrified.

literally sickened at himself. We went over to the chapel after about an hour or so knelt down at the communion rail together and he collapsed over the communion rail his knees were on one side and he just collapsed over it and for about another hour he confessed just one thing after another naming sins naming things that he had been doing for years begging God to cleanse him begging God to wash him with the blood of Christ and to set him free all the time that he was praying I was praying with him and I had my hand just gently on his back and he told me when it was all over he said your hand it was as if it was on fire and this is what he said I guess I needed an exorcism now it may be too early to think that we've got the last word on the subject, but I've met with him many times since then. And to this point, it appears as if he is totally transformed.

Totally transformed. Psychologists will tell you that is impossible. He could not go from where he was at to where he seems to be like that.

But he's done so. And do you know, he's on his honeymoon. That marriage is absolutely reconstituted.

It is fantastic. They wonder why they wasted all this time. It's beautiful.

I close with this comment from Michael Green. We need only fear the devil when we cease fully to oppose him. Let's stand and pray together.

Thank you.