[A reader's question and my answer]

After one of our Sunday evening healing services, during which we cast out spirits of infirmity, pain, sicknesses, etc., a gentleman came up to me and said that he would like to talk to me about Christians having demons. I said "Fine, what would you like to talk about?"

He said, "A Christian cannot be possessed by a demon." I agreed with him. I said that I did not believe that any truly born-again Christian could be fully possessed by a demon. He seemed a bit surprised at my answer—and a bit disappointed.

"But you were casting demons out of people tonight," he said.

"Yes I was," I said. "But they weren't possessed by a demon, they simply had a demon, and that demon was causing them problems. So we cast the demon out and healed the problem. The same way Jesus often did when He healed people."

Now I was back where he wanted me. "But Christians cannot have demons of any kind," he said. "We don't believe they can have demons or be possessed by demons or anything like that."

Since he had now brought in an additional authority, I asked him who he meant by "We." He named a leading Pentecostal denomination. I wasn't certain that he was authorized to speak for them, but he apparently wanted to bear upon me the authority and power of their doctrine—and thereby convince me of the error of my ways.

"Then you folks never cast demons out of Christians?" I said.

"Absolutely not!" he said.

"Do you cast them out of sinners?" I asked.

"Of course not!" he said. "It wouldn't do any good to cast them out of sinners!"

"So who do you cast demons out of?" I asked him.

"We don't cast them out of anybody," he said.

"Well," I said, "do you believe that sinners can have demons, and that demons can cause all kinds of physical, mental, and emotional problems in sinners?"

"Sure," he said, "I believe that."

"But you don't believe that Christians can have any kind of demons at all?"

"Absolutely not!" he said emphatically, and emphasized his answer was some interesting body language.

"Okay," I said, "if sinners can have demons and Christians cannot have demons, then all the demons in sinners must come out at the moment that they become Christians. Is that right?"

"That's right!" he said.

"Wow!" I said, "you folks must have some wild things going on when you make altar calls for salvation and all those demons come out! People getting healed, blind eyes opening, the deaf hearing, demons throwing people to the ground and screaming as they come out, paralyzed and crippled sinners now walking and leaping and praising God. I would really like to be in your services when you make an altar call and see and hear all those demons come out and see all the miracles and healings that take place."

The gentleman hesitated for a bit, and then said, "We don't have any of that stuff when we make an altar call."

"I don't understand," I said. "You say sinners can have demons, and those demons can cause the sinners all kinds of physical, mental, and emotional problems, and that Christians can't have demons. You also said that the demons come out of the sinners at the moment that they become Christians. So how come all the sinners who have physical problems caused by demons are not immediately healed when they become Christians and all those demons leave them? And what about all the emotional and mental problems that sinners have that are caused by demons, why aren't they immediately healed of those things when they become Christians?"

There was a longer hesitation this time and then he said, "I don't know, but I'll ask somebody."

"Great," I said, "and when you find out please come back and tell me about it."

He never came back.

In Acts 10:38 it is written, ""You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him."

In the above verse, it states that everyone Jesus healed was oppressed by the devil. Or you could read it to mean that He only healed those who were oppressed by the devil, and He did not heal anyone who wasn't oppressed by the devil. Either way, every ailment He healed—physical, mental, emotional—was an oppression of the devil; that is, was caused by the devil. And since the devil is only a fallen angel and cannot be everywhere at the same time, it obviously means that those ailments were caused by demonic spirits. So all the people Jesus healed had physical, mental, or emotional problems that were in some manner caused by unclean or evil spirits.

In light of the above, I find it difficult—no, impossible—to understand why so many Christians and even whole denominations refuse to believe that Christians can in any manner or form be affected by demonic spirits. I will agree that Christians should not be, but then Christians also should not have all the sin problems they have. No one, however, denies the latter, they only deny that a Christian cannot have a demon regardless of the spiritual condition of that Christian. Sins, yes; illnesses, yes; infirmities, yes; mental problems, yes; emotional problems, yes; spiritual problems, yes; demonic problems, no.

Christians and denominational leaders who believe that way seem to be more concerned with their doctrines then they are with the torments and ailments of the afflicted persons. They are somewhat like the Pharisees who were constantly challenging Jesus for healing on the Sabbath. They were more concerned with the law of the Sabbath then with the persons who needed healing. What Jesus said in reply to their criticism of Him applies equally well today.

Perhaps this insistence by many that a Christian cannot have a demon has also to do with the belief that every demon causes a person to sin. But that is not so. In the Gospels there is no story told of a demon that caused a person to sin. In every story, the demon caused an infirmity, illness, or torment of some type.

In Luke 11:14 this is written, "And He was casting out a demon, and it was mute. So it was, when the demon had gone out, that the mute spoke; and the multitudes marveled." Note that the demon itself was mute, and because it was in a person, the person was mute. The demon did not cause the person to sin, it caused the person to be mute.

In Luke 13:11 it is written, "And behold, there was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bent over and could in no way raise herself up." The woman's 18-year problem was a spirit of infirmity. And when the Pharisees complained about Jesus healing the woman on a Sabbath day, he said to them, "So ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound; think of it; for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath?"

Noticed three things in the verse: 1. Jesus called her "a daughter of Abraham," meaning she was in covenant with God through Abraham, 2. she was bound by Satan, and 3. His astonishment and indignation toward the Pharisees that this daughter of Abraham had gone in and out of the synagogue for 18 years—"think of it"—and all that time remained bound by a satanic spirit of infirmity. I wonder what He would say about the thousands of similar situations today?

Now someone will surely say to me, "Are there not many evil spirits that tempt Christians to sin?" Yes, there are. One of the first demons I cast out was a spirit of lust. It was in a man who had been a Christian for about 20 years, and who was the treasurer of a local fellowship. It was after a Sunday morning service and almost everyone had left except for the pastor and his wife and a few other members of the congregation. The Pastor asked me if I would help him to pray for someone in a small room behind the sanctuary. When I went into the room, I was introduced to the treasurer, whom we'll call "Bill." He was about 35 years old.

Bill told us that for years he had been bothered by extreme lust, that he could not even look at a woman without lusting after her, even though he was married to a very attractive woman. For examples, he mentioned both the Pastor's wife and mine. The Pastor started to pray for Bill in the usual way, that is asking Jesus to heal him. But without knowing why I did it, I interrupted the Pastor and asked him if I could pray for Bill. When he said that I could, I stood in front of Bill and put my hands on his head and started commanding a spirit of lust to come out of him.

Almost immediately, Bill started choking and retching. Then he started vomiting long trails of a clear slime-like substance that clung together until it almost reached the floor, and Bill was over 6 feet tall. Not wanting it to get all over the church carpet, and not having time to find a paper towel, I reached down and caught it in my hands, or at least as much as I could. To say it was ugly feeling doesn't even come close to saying what it felt like. Part of the room we were in was a kitchen, and I got to the sink as fast as I could to wash it off my hands—scrub it off. I also found some paper towels and went back and laid them on the floor in front of Bill, since he was still vomiting out that slimy substance. The Pastor looked a bit shocked about the whole thing, while I acted as if I knew exactly what I was doing.

Over the next several years, we saw this same substance come out of a number of people who were being delivered from demons. And we learned that this slime-like substance was not the demon itself but rather a material that the demon apparently nested in. It always came out after the demon had left the person. It never preceded the expulsion of the demon.

In centuries past, it was said that the stomach was the seat of all emotions because that's where strong emotions were felt, especially negative and highly disturbing emotions. Perhaps that ugly feeling in the stomach under the stress of strong negative emotions is something other than the emotion itself. Certainly a thought worth considering, if you're a Christian that is.

A number of years ago, I attended a church growth seminar for pastors from the same Pentecostal denomination as the gentleman who tried to help me see the error of my ways—the seminar was held in Buffalo, New York. The seminar was conducted by Dr. David Yonggi Cho, who is also a member of that denomination. Dr. Cho is pastor of the Yoido Full Gospel Central Church in Seoul, Korea. Every night at the end of the meeting Dr. Cho would pray for healings. He did it by standing at the pulpit and commanding various kinds of spirits of infirmity, pains, and types of illnesses and sicknesses to come out of the pastors who were there. He then asked any who had been healed to raise their hands and stand up and testify. Every night, without exception, several would stand up and testify of having been healed of various kinds of pains or other ailments they felt in their bodies.

One night a woman in a wheelchair came to the meeting. She said that she had heard that Dr. Cho was going to be conducting a seminar, and she knew that if she could just get to the meeting and have him pray for her she would be healed. Dr. Cho laid his hands upon her, and commanded the spirit of infirmity to leave her, and she got up out of her wheelchair and walked across the platform.

Next to the last night, Dr. Cho asked the pastor from that denomination's largest church in the city where we lived at that time to pray for healing at the end of the meeting. Now since that denomination does not believe that Christians can have demons under any condition, although Dr. Cho obviously does, the pastor prayed by asking Jesus to heal anyone there who had an infirmity or ailment or sickness of any kind. He then asked anyone who had been healed to raise his hand and stand up and testify. That night, without exception, not one pastor stood up and testified of having been healed of anything.

The next night, which was the last night of the seminar, Dr. Cho prayed for healings at the end of the meeting the same way he had every night when he prayed—and with exactly the same results. When he asked, several pastors stood up and testified of having been healed of pain or some other physical problem.

To summarize: Dr. Cho prayed for healing by casting out spirits. The denominational pastor prayed for healing by asking Jesus to heal. Dr. Cho got people healed every night. The denominational pastor got no one healed. The only difference between the two ways of praying was that Dr. Cho prayed the way Jesus told us to, by casting out demons, and the pastor did not. So you decide: "Can a Christian have a demon?"

How you decide—or how you are able to decide—may well determine how successful you are at getting people healed. Or determine whether or not you will ever witness a miracle, or perform one.

"John said to Him, "Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in Your name, and we tried to prevent him because he was not following us." But Jesus said, "Do not hinder him, for there is no one who will perform a miracle in My name, and be able soon afterward to speak evil of Me" (Mark 9:38-40 - italics mine).
 

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