Scripture: Topics: Bible Questions with Mike
Here we are at The Door again to answer the questions you've sent in. This is question number 21.
"Wondering if a Christian can be demon possessed?" Joanne
Wondering if a Christian can be demon possessed. The Bible term is devils not demons, but so what?
The answer is no.
Now, how do I know that? Because the reason she's asking this is, since about the 1970s, there's been a spiritual warfare movement that has progressed into being anti-God and anti-biblical, and many churches practice casting out devils. Whenever a person has fear, they say they have a devil fear. They got a devil named fear. So they'll get them down, cast out. Or when a woman is nervous or something else happens, and their congregation is repeatedly getting devils cast out of them to try to heal character traits. Now, that's nothing more than hypnotism in Hollywood. It's not real devil possession. You say, "How would you know?" Because I've cast out about 30 or 40 devils of people, sometimes multiple devils, and I know from firsthand experience what it's like to cast out a devil. I know from my firsthand experience what it's like to see and confront a devil-possessed person.
Are People still possessed with devils in Modern times?
And I've talked with missionaries who had to deal with devil-possessed people. I've read several books like one called, Demon Possession in Many Lands, which are stories written by the missionaries themselves. I think it covers about 50 to 75 missionaries' stories, individual missionaries, who tell of casting out devils in the part of the world where they worked. And today, right now, missionaries working in foreign lands quite often confront devil-possessed people.
So it's not something that's rare. It takes place. It's just that there's not enough spirituality in America to provoke the devils to act up like there was. You remember when Jesus would walk into where the devils possessed, they'd say, "We know who you are. You're Holy One of God?" They didn't do that with Pharisees or the scribes. So Jesus, his spirit, his presence provoked the devils to react.
Let's answer that with scripture. Luke 10:19, "Jesus said, 'Behold, I give you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy and nothing shall be any means hurt you. Not withstanding in this, rejoice not that the spirits are subject under you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven."
Jesus had sent the disciples out and told them to cast out devils, heal the sick, and preach the gospel. And they came back excited, saying, "Wow, even the devils are subjecting to us. I just said, "Hey, come out of him," and wow, the devil came right out. That was amazing. Here was this child on the ground, frothing in the mouth, and twisted all up and cursing God and I said, "Satan, come out of him." And woo, out he goes. And the child got up and he was all right. Wow, that's some power. I love this. I like being a preacher. Woo, I'm going to do that again." So they were all excited, these new fishermen, having this kind of experience, and Jesus said, "Don't rejoice over that." He said, "I give you power to tread on serpents and scorpions and nothing's going to hurt you, but rejoice that your names are written in the Lord's book of life. You see, these inexperienced, unschooled, fisherman and tax collectors had the power to cast out devils. I'll give you an example.
We were working in the military years ago, and a lot of guys came out of New York and San Francisco and places like that that were devil possessed. And so we saw quite a few of them respond. When the gospel get to being preached, people begin to say, "God was moving. The spirit of God was working." Every once in a while you'd have somebody go into a demonic, devil twisting perversion. I remember preaching one time. About five minutes into it, guy begins to screech, saying, "Don't say that name," covers his ears. He stands up, his body won't work. One half of his body's twisted. It's like an epileptic seizure. He tries to move, he can't. I said, "In the name of Jesus Christ, come out of him." "Wow, what happened to me?" He's restored. Now we saw quite a bit of that. Saw it with adults, with young people.
I am sophisticated enough to know that people can be psychologically induced to act in strange ways. I know people can be hypnotized. I know that there are a lot of preachers that develop skills and powers to control their congregations. I know that too. And I even look at myself and look at my own experiences and say, "Now is this for real or not?" Because it gets strange.
But one experience I remember that was like, "This is scientific. This is irrefutable," this guy in the church meeting began to have convulsions just while we're preaching, military guy about 19, 20 years old. And I told him, "Come on." I said, "Get up. In the name of Jesus, come with me." Just barely could walk, stumbling along. And one side of his face... Had him turn around and the face of the congregation and I said, "Look at this." And some of them had never seen it. I wanted them to see it.
I said, "This guy's devil possessed." And one side of his face was twisted and that was like grabbed his mouth and pulled it up with a fish hook and his eye and pulled it down and twisted. All the muscles did things that you couldn't do naturally to one side of the face. I've seen stroke victims, their face droops, but this wasn't that. This was seizures all over his face.
And so I said, "Now watch this. In the name of Jesus Christ, come out of him." "Whoa, wow. Oh man, what was that?" He says, and we gave him the gospel and he got saved. See, we never saw a saved person get demon possessed, devil possessed, always unsaved people. Then I said, "Now in the name of Jesus Christ, come out of him and don't enter anyone else on the grounds, anybody else here on the property. Don't enter anybody else." That's what I told the devil.
And so the devil came out because I'm aware they'll hop from one person to another and I've seen that happen. And so it was over with. We went on and had our message and everything and got over with. And about two hours later, everyone had left except about five or six people, myself and one family had a couple daughters. And the back door opened and swung open like this. And in came three servicemen who saw the lights on and maybe one of them had been there one time before. We didn't know them. They didn't know us except they just knew that was a place where you'd come and hear some singing and meet some people, meet some girls. We had a lot of Christian girls. And so it was just a place to stop about 10 o'clock, Sunday night.
As the first guy came through the door, he fell back against the wall with the exact same side of his face twisted, the exact same expressions that other guy had, and he couldn't talk. And I start back to him. But before I could get there, a 12-year-old girl walks up, puts her finger in his face like this, and said, "In the name of Jesus Christ, come out of him." And he straightened up, said, "What did you do to me? What was that? What happened?" He had no idea what hit him. That devil couldn't enter into anybody else on the grounds. There were other unsaved people there that night. But when this guy walked in the door, he wasn't covered. When he came on the grounds, he wasn't covered. Those devils were hanging around in a church house, waiting to find a home to live in. And they hit that guy when he came through the door.
Now that was funny. It was truly funny. I stood there and laughed. I laughed and laughed and laughed. I thought, "Now that is crazy, man. That devil hanging around here waiting and doing the same thing, that was the old, twisty face devil, I guess." I don't know. I don't know what else to call him.
But another time I got called... I'm in the storytelling mood here. Another time I got called to a house, this is some years later, and it was a local Baptist church. And the preacher decided he was going to preach against the devil. He got a book on it. He's going to do some spiritual warfare. So he was not a great preacher, small country church. He was just typical country preacher, nice guy, steady kind of personality.
So he preached against demon possession, devils, and stuff. And then he decided to close with a prayer and command the devil to depart from the building. Well, 27-year-old girl starts screeching and screaming and convulsing and carrying on and cussing and they'll curse God and do things.
So they tried to cast the devils out of her and she started scratching them. She went into it. She got the gift of being a cat so she started acting like a cat, clawing and stuff like that, sort of like they did up there in that revival they had recently up there in Canada or they get the gift of epilepsy.
And so she started clawing and carrying on. Well, about four days later, they had just gone through day after day, dealing with her, and they heard that I had dealt with it so they came and asked me to come. Well, I went over there and she was on the other side of the street from her house out in the country, and it's a Pentecostal house and there's two Pentecostal men in there. And when I walked through the door, they were standing back against the wall, scared to death, and she was doing her cat thing, circling around in the living room like that. And they said, "Now don't go closer. She'll scratch you." And I laughed at them. I said, "Don't worry about it." I walked up and I said, "In the name of Jesus Christ, sit down."
Plunk, down she goes, and I don't have supernatural power. I'm just born again. I have the spirit of God those Pentecostals didn't. I mean they could speak in what they thought was tongues and they could cast out what they thought were devils like fear and anxiety. But when it came to the real thing, they were working their way to heaven and the devil just didn't respect that. And so she sat down and I said... I forgot her name. I won't call her anything. I'll call her X. I said, "X, in the name of Jesus Christ, tell me how did you get devils was possessed." She goes like, "Aeeee," that. I laughed. And I said, "Satan, I don't want to talk to you. You shut up. You be quiet. I want to just talk to whatever name is here."
And so everything went quiet. So she explained to me how that she had watched a TV program called “Sivad” on the local channel there. And folks, it was the most mild thing for those days, it was a Dracula show. One of those stupid black and white things where a guy dressed up in little cape and goes around. She'd watch that and she had a poster of him in her room. And then she'd listened to some music by Black Sabbath, I think it was.
And so I said to her, "Do you want to be devil possessed or do you want to be a Christian?" She said, "I want to be a Christian." I said, "Then you need to get rid of all of those symbols that have provoked you to become devil possessed."
So we went back across the street to her house and she went through the house and got some different items like that. Then she brought out a little folded napkin and a knife. I said, "What was that for?" She said, "I was going to sacrifice my son tomorrow.” Her son was two years old. And those things happen.. And so we took the knife.
I gave her the gospel. I said, "You want to become a Christian?" She said, "I'm a Christian." She's a member of Baptist church. She said, "I'm a Christian." I said, "No, you're not. You are devil possessed." She said, "Well, I'm okay now, I believe." I said, "No, you don't. You hadn't been born again. You don't have the spirit of God." So I told the father. Now the father was a kind of a toothless old... There's just the two of them living there.
Toothless old, 60-year-old. Hey, I'm 13 years older than that. But I mean, he looked really old to me then, and he was just a farmer type guy that was not forward in any way. I said, "When we leave, the devil's going to come back in her." And so he said, "She wanders around at night. I said, "You tell her, 'In the name of Jesus Christ...' Say to her, 'In the name of Jesus Christ, lay down, go to sleep, and don't get up till the sun comes up." And they called the next day and said, "After we left, she started her devil possession thing again. And that father said to her, 'Lay down. In the name of Jesus Christ, go to sleep.'" Said, "She did and slept all night." Said, "Isn't that amazing?" I said, "No, that's not amazing. That's Jesus. Devils can't stand his name." So it was about two weeks later that she finally got born again and they had to back and forth with that for about two weeks. She got saved and everything was all right then.
So I have gone to houses where the wall was written in blood, where they had cut their self and written enchantments from the devil, incest involved, all sorts of different things like that. I've been to places where people were seeing the devils while I was there, and I always thought that was amusing. I went to this guy, he's looking like this. I said, "Where you looking? And he called their names. He's talking about how powerful they were, witchcraft and power. I said, "He don't have any power at all." I said, "I'm going to make him leave. Watch this. In the name of Jesus Christ, leave." He said, "Where'd he go? Where'd he go?"
You see, I don't have to get religious to do that. Don't have to do that now to get all... I can just say it because I'm born again, I got the spirit of God. I don't need to get worked up. Just command him to leave.
I’ll give you an example of another one. I'm on a roll here. We had a ministry on the side of the street. It's between a beer joint and a nightclub, across the street, a saloon. So all of us crammed right in there and we could hear the music playing all time, all kinds of immorality, godlessness, women being sold, drugs, alcohol. And so this guy comes in the place there, military guy, and we had a coffee house type thing. Another couple other guys were dealing with him. And so he pulls out a knife and goes into some babbling and stuff and says he's going to kill him.
So they kind of run over to me. And so he comes at me with that knife and I said, "In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to put that knife down." He dropped it and then he doubles up his fist and he decides he's going to swing at me. And he goes just as hard as he can, right toward my nose. And I could feel the hairs on the end of my nose and go, "Blu-blu." Do I have hairs on the end of my nose? I mean, if I did, that's what I felt. And he stopped right there, and I laughed at him. I said, "You can't hit me. You can't even shake the hand." I said, "Shake the hand of a blood bought, spirit filled, child of God." Now this was funny. He goes...(Tries to pull his right arm up with his left hand, but it won’t move) I can't help it, folks. I start laughing because the devil's so weak.
It troubles me that so many Christians are running around fighting spiritual battles when the battle's already won. The only fight we got is a fight of faith. Bibles says, "Take the whole armor, take the shield of faith." We don't have to go around killing the devil off, beating him up. We've already won in Jesus Christ. And so all these churches going through all these incantations remind me of the Pharisees trying to cast out devils. They don't have the power of God. If they did, those devils would leave. All right? So I had some scripture here. I just got carried away with stories. There's a few more, but I'll stop that, okay?
The question is, "Can Christians be devil possessed?"
2 Corinthians 6:15 "What accord has Christ with Belial,?” the devil “Or what part has he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? For you, the temple of the living God, “as God hath said, 'I will dwell in them. I will walk in them and I will be their God and they shall be my people.'" The devil and God can't dwell in the same body.
2 Corinthians 2:14 "Now, thanks being to God, which always causes us to triumph in Christ and makes manifest the savior of his knowledge in every place." So God always causes us Christians to in perfect love, cast out fear. We never fear the devil. We respect what he could do if we gave ourselves over to him, if we made a place for him. But when we don't make a place for him, he can't even attack us from without.
Now, 1 John 2:13, "I write unto you fathers because you have known him that is from the beginning, I write unto young men because you have overcome the wicked one, the devil." So John was writing to young men. He said, "I'm writing to you because you've already overcome the wicked one. That's settled. We don't deal with that anymore. Let's just deal with your flesh now, that's the problem."
Ephesians 2:2, "Where in times past, you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh within the children of disobedience." That's how we once were. We're not that way now.
Ephesians 2:4-6 "But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:."
1 John 4:2-4, "Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world. Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.” So we have overcome them, the devils in Jesus Christ because when Jesus died, buried, and rose again, he was seated on the right hand of God and he defeated the satanic powers. They have no control now where the spirit of God dwells.
So Christians are never... This seals up, closes off this idea, "Can Christians be devil possessed?" Christians are never taught to resist devil possession anywhere in the Bible. Paul never wrote that, "Be careful. I know some of you're in danger of being possessed." If that were a possibility, it'd be something that needed to be addressed, right? Or he could write and say, "I know that some of you have fear and some of you have guilt, and some of you have this and that. And so when you're gathered together with the spirit of God and I'm there and my spirit's present, then cast the devils out." That never happens.
There is no scripture that relates character traits to devils.
There's no scripture that relates character traits to devils, no scripture that says that if you have a poor character in some area that is because you're devil possessed. The entire scripture warfare ministry has become an alternative religion not based on the finished work of Christ.
People are always looking for something new to get attention, to get money coming in, and to draw big crowds. And you see a lot of hypnotism being practiced in these big churches and big movements.
Just get on YouTube and look up hypnotist and some of them will tell you their techniques, what they're doing, and then switch immediately to some of those televangelists. And you can see they're doing exactly what a hypnotist does to cause their crowd to swoon, pass out, act like dogs, bark, do different things, even jabber in what they think is tongues and is not. I'm not saying there's not a gift of tongues, I'm just saying most of what you see is not the gift of tongues. It's just a blabbermouth hypnotized, something that a hypnotist can affect on stage in a matter of a few seconds with people he's hypnotizing. They do it for entertainment in Las Vegas. All right, that's the answer to that question. Got more than you asked.