How to Cast Out Demons

hey everybody welcome to the wonderful world of remnant radio uh today we are talking about devils how to cast them out up until this point we've done a couple episodes about how you get them uh but now we're gonna talk about how to get rid of them it's gonna be an exciting episode you guys stay tuned you are watching the remnant radio a crowd funded show where we interview pastors teachers historians and theologians from different churches and denominations my name is joshua lewis and this is my co-host michael roundtree together we want to help you break outside of your theological echo chambers if you're interested in learning about history theology or the gifts of the spirit this is the show for you i gotta give a shout out to james fairfield who made this song it's so good i like it a good song i can i was like i need anthem rock but not like i didn't know he made that james bearfield made this on his shout out james way to go james yeah good job uh this is michael that's the other michael how's it going and today there we are doing our podcast called to be continuing we're talking about the gifts of the spirit and how they have continued uh today we're talking about demons not the demons are a gift but uh how used you call them demons like you always call them devils well i enjoy having so much fun calling them devils i do is it it's the in the pentecostal world your your world warmer world is that what they always call it i don't know it's like you know when you say holy spirit and holy ghost you know it's a holy ghost with a little um to it and you say the holy ghost kicks out the devils that's right that's right i call them i call them critters i want to accurately represent what they are is that in the bible michael no but the word demon today takes on so much more of a intimidating persona because of hollywood and so the word critter is actually more fitting when you think about you know their abilities okay well there you go granted well welcome to the show guys i hope that you guys subscribe we've got uh some great shows coming up and shows that we've already had talked about witchcraft this week talked about john wesley this week we've been doing demon episodes for a few weeks so if you're interested in this episode and want to catch some of those uh just look up all our episodes on the devils and uh casting them out and all that business so that's been our wednesday episode um coming up this uh this week on monday we have an episode about theology and the arts how does theology speak into the arts how is it done so historically throughout the church how can it do so today and so as we're going to talk about all those things specifically in the in the field of music will be the the primary area of art uh we'll be focusing on and uh we also have history of the baptist church history of the baptist church uh i think we're filming that episode though i don't think it's going live it won't be live but it'll be it's coming that's true yeah okay it's gonna be it's gonna be fascinating lots of good stuff coming down the pike hit that subscribe button subscribe uh if you aren't already formed it's pike it's pike it if you haven't already uh make sure to give the patreon link down below retire the crowdfunded uh if you give you can give on paypal as one time gift but if you give on patreon so those five bucks a month you get really cool extra content such as our book club that we're doing the kingdom of the colts this week we're going through buddhism uh talking about all the buddhism stuff it's going to be really interesting you don't have to have read any of the other former chapters just read that chapter go to the link at the description there will be a vimeo vimeo zoom link that goes up we'll click on that zoom link and we'll all discuss that chapter together it's gonna be a lot of fun and there may be a special guest that joins us who must remain anonymous anyway uh millie how is uh how's denver tell us about your uh what we're going through today uh i'm good sorry i can hear my son playing with some sort of dice right above oh so i apologize i can hear it all right yeah yeah in the background you're my kid he's playing with something sarah is like bringing him food he's it's like on slipping it under the door in the basement no that's that's the sign of archer casting lots upstairs that's what that is yeah okay there you go uh so sorry what was the question how's it going what are we talking about uh things are going well yeah um we are today we're we've we've covered a lot we've covered different ways so if i could kind of backtrack on how this series began uh it was sort of the right way dealing with misconceptions and and and bad theology surrounding demons the way we talk about it we use the word demonized not possessed because possessed is not actually an accurate term for what we're dealing with um and then we talk about different ways that people get afflicted by the demonic and uh and then today we're covering what it actually looks like in practice to cast out demons and so i'm sure that michael rowntree josh myself we're gonna probably have a lot of stories uh and how we've actually practiced this out and so hopefully it will give you the tools that you need when you're when you encounter this stuff and you will if you pray for the sick regularly you will encounter these kind of things that's it excellent so we've addressed a bunch of misconceptions before um we're working off of this premise that christians can be demonized we're not using the term demon possessed again because we just think that's unbiblical vernacular we're saying demons are non-corporeal they don't fill a physical space because they're in fact spiritual so we say hey the christians have been afflicted some prefer to use the word oppressed rather than possessed but we're not going to get into the nitty gritty of that what we're saying is in this video we want to deal with it right whether you're a christian or you're a non-christian what we ultimately want is to see you walk in freedom that's the most important thing uh is that that you are free from these demonic powers and you place your faith and trust in jesus as lord and savior of your life those are the two things that we're wanting to come away as a win today in this episode you got any kind of takeaways of like hey what would you like to see people walking in thinking about uh with today's episode talking about deliverance uh i really i want them to have some practical tools for how do you get a demon how do you exercise the demons okay how do you do it so um so i wanted to have uh some practical tools for how to do that um but for starters i i think that i'd like to maybe look at an extreme case like what do you do when it's like there are times when it's obvious right somebody's eyes are rolled back in their head they're talking in a strange voice you know it's like a a woman and she's talking on a man voice like this you know or some you know those kind of things happen occasionally in severe cases of demonization they wouldn't be the norm i i want to address those scenarios but then also the more sort of i won't say everyday scenarios but for lack of a better word everyday scenarios uh lesser on the scale of demonization uh we talked about this in other episodes where uh you know there are times when you know like if somebody holds a grudge for a week right like ephesians 4 26 to 27 do not let the sun go down on your anger and do not give the devil a foothold so the sun go down that's just one day you hold on to a grudge for a week you definitely open yourself up you could get demonized from that does that mean that you're suddenly going to be the garrison demoniac uh you know who's in the tombs and the gospels where he's you know he's chained up and he's breaking the chains and he's scraping himself and he's naked which is weird okay but that's severe demonization okay you're probably not going to get that from holding a grudge for a week but you get a demon you could and um and so on this scale from garrison demoniac on the extreme side to someone holds a grudge for a week i'd like to address both of those are the tools any different for how you uh exercise the demons how you deliver somebody interesting michael let's start us off where are we to start man well i think the question that probably needs to be addressed first is how do we know if a person has a demon uh you begin praying for somebody and and then the the topic is going to come up at some point so how do you approach it uh how do you know if it's there and so for that one we've got i'd say one clear scriptural indication but then you've got a number of different scriptures that sort of imply this person is demonized and all of those are kind of work worth looking at so uh round tree and i'd be curious to hear your story on this i mean i think i know the answer to this question but i'm curious to know when did you first uh find yourself interacting with something demonic that's a good question um well there's there's one was the very first time and when is that was the first time that you actually knew it right because probably probably all of us have had interactions with with a demonized person and we didn't know it and that's why i think the gift of discernment of spirits is important but i think what uh i think what you're really getting at is michael when were you in a situation where you were actively casting a demon out of somebody and uh and so i i think that i would say um when i was a youth pastor in my youth group we had a former gang member uh i know that surely makes all the parents of youth children in my church so comfortable that a gang member came but uh he did come and get saved and uh he got baptized he didn't stagging member for long he didn't stay a gang member for long turns out blood and blood out the blood of jesus sorry i'm trying to be as cheesy as possible i apologize no that's that's uh deep so anyway i muted michael and he's like waving at me hey guys tap me in sorry michael this was this was a long time ago this isn't a long time ago no no it's a very long time ago so uh anyway so he got saved he got baptized he started growing with the lord started talking to me about like as a gang member some real deep stuff that he had been struggling with now i i've had scenarios where somebody manifests kind of by surprise okay that's like a luke chapter four jesus just preaching and then you know a demon's like what do you have to do with a son of god or you know whatever it says and you know the demon interrupts the meeting this was was not quite that it was more like i was just talking to him and he had been involved in like not small since like terrible like terrible sins like you should go to jail sins and gang related sense gang related sins so so i was like man this uh this really could be an issue where there's you know i explained demonization and and how demons can attach and and there was also some there was some definite occult so witchcraft occult type stuff which we did episode about on monday and um and i was like man i i would venture that you probably have some demonic attachments and uh what do you think of me just praying over you and he's like yeah yeah that's that's fine um this was like i was leading youth in a bible study at this point we just kind of hijacked the bible study and started praying over this guy well we prayed over him he went into a demonic trance i didn't know what that was at that time but um the reason i would say it was definitely a trance i mean he was completely glazed over just as you would imagine somebody being in a trance but after 30 i say it's three minutes probably a good portion of our viewers don't know exactly what a trance would look like yeah well i i don't know i mean i i think a trance is where you're you're kind of out of it but having some kind of supernatural experience now it paul says like his vision of jesus on the road to damascus and in one of the scenarios he tells about it it tells about in acts 9 acts 22 and acts 26 one of those i can't remember which he says i was in a trance and i saw a vision uh same with peter peter was in a trance in acts chapter 10. story's retold again in chapter 11. he's in a trance and he sees this visionary experience but um but the trance is basically like this supernaturally almost kind of like out of it glazed over sort of deal um a demonic trance now i don't know of any uh examples maybe you guys can help me uh examples of a demonic trance in the old testament i mean maybe saul maybe saul i don't know if i know of any in the old testament but i would say that the experience jesus had yeah well the experience jesus had where he was shown all the kingdoms of the earth how has he shown all the kingdoms of the earth trance but well i mean it was satan tempting him and showing him so how is he showing it michael michael uh miller is using the term trances and like some kind of visionary satan is using demonic powers to show something uh roundtree is using trance in a sort of incaptivated someone's consciousness and trapped them so roundtree doesn't feel comfortable calling jesus yeah that's a good delineation because yeah yeah so okay yeah yeah keep going because it's just like jesus yeah either there i wasn't like hey maybe you should get in a trance i'm just telling you what happened yeah yeah okay so uh to make a long story short and i didn't really know much about casting out demons at this point i was just like i'll just do what the bible says the bible says go away in the name of jesus i started doing that and this this took quite a while and uh by the end of it here are a couple of strange things so so by the end of it we had cast some spirits out and and i would just say we knew that by visionary experience we i i can't remember if the other people who with me saw this too i remember i saw certain spirits leaving at various moments but it was like we cast on you know you know like in mary magdalene it says jesus cast seven spirits out of her um and so did they all come out like all at once was it a one by one we're not really told i know what this guy it was a one by one that's why it took a while and so we we finished at the end of it uh this guy two things for one he came out of the trance and this is how i know as a trance he remembered nothing all he remembered was showing up to the bible study and then nothing okay i've had that happen a couple did he feel tangibly different afterward incredibly okay but but so in two ways okay so first you're talking about life transformation yes it definitely there was there's a big difference uh but the uh the other thing was he was so exhausted i literally this was like a he was probably 250 pounds uh it was as if he had torn his acl and i was helping him off the football field like he had his arm around me like he couldn't walk that's why like he comes out he's like what just happened and i was helping him walk to his car and he didn't live with his parents lived with like grandparents and i helped him into the car and uh and so yes he felt different in two ways one was transformation two he was exhausted and what i've seen is that uh and again i've seen this a couple of times but um actually a number of times i don't know if you guys have experienced this but when you cast demons out of somebody do they get exhausted afterward i've seen this happen and um and my assessment my my guess is that our spirit is doing battle even if physically we might be sitting in a chair our spirit is doing battle and and our spirit energizes us i mean you look at ephesians 3 it's like may the holy spirit strengthen your spirit okay so our our spirit is part of what energizes us so if your spirit's doing this hardcore battle it makes sense now again i'm guessing there i don't know why i'm telling you what happened yeah that was my first so like casting out of demon's experience let me let me just kind of give because we're going to answer this question but i want to bring it up um a former viewer we did an episode on christian witchcraft uh we had someone in the comment section say hey i'm practicing witch they're back in the discussion thanks for being here glad to have you uh they have a relevant question for our discussion how uh do you differentiate between demons from mental issues right because we'll we'll acknowledge there are actual mental issues that people have that will cause depression that will cause anxiety mental issues that will cause a person to have outbursts where they speak in ways that aren't normative for them and we would say often oftentimes there is a gift of the spirit called the discernment of spirits that god often gives christians to be able to discern in these kinds of situations where there are people in our congregations who they've gone through trauma they've gone through maybe it's something that's biological they've never gone through trauma but they have a physical ailment with them with their body and it would be considered unnormative uh mentally but there are other situations where there are in fact demonic activity where there is a supernatural worldview that is affecting a human person and what we would do is we would say that god through what we would call revelation supernaturally bringing something to mind makes us aware that this person is demon possessed or demonized there's a story in the bible of paul and barnabas going through and preaching the gospel and a woman comes up to them begin to declare by a demonic spirit these men are from god these men are from god now if i'm going to try to read some interpretive lens into this text it seems as if this woman would have gotten credit as a fortune teller saying these men are going to perform miracles these men are sent from god she's actually saying the right thing but she would have actually been getting credit for that so paul turns around and curses her mute he discerned that what she was saying was right but he discerned that she was saying it in the wrong spirit um so often times and again i'm reading that into the text the bible doesn't say paul discerned that this woman had a demonic spirit but it is in fact what happened he did cast the spirit out so there are these moments in which we can discern the spirit in a kind of supernatural way uh sam storms a friend of ours tells a story where they were walking through the streets and uh doing evangelism i think it was and when they they kind of felt this this eerie creepy dark feeling come upon them where they were discerning man there's something demonic here and they walked around the corner and there was a big old pentagram and a sacrifice laid out there on the concrete and they discerned it before they ever saw it and i think the lord does that he prepares us for certain kinds of engagements and interactions with people uh and oftentimes can give us supernatural revelation of why that thing is there um anyway but that's neither here nor there we just went through a couple of episodes where we talked about legal ground and how you can practice certain sins and these certain sins like michael mentioned unforgiveness that can give the demonic powers legal ground have access to your life and oftentimes the discernment of spirit will actually work alongside that so you know this is a demonic spirit oh and this one's here from unforgiveness this one's here from uh outburst of anger or this one's here from x y and z practicing witchcraft that kind of thing i think the tough yeah the tough thing about this is you don't really know if somebody has a demonic spirit unless the lord reveals it or unless that thing reveals itself and that also will happen and maybe another way to think of it or is unless that thing is revealed because there's a clash of kingdoms like the heaven the the kingdom of heaven has shown up and that thing is now forced to make itself known so it can be dealt with and expelled but i would say that the tough part about saying the only way we would know is through discernment of spirits is that it doesn't feel very definitive but no different than any of the gifts we've talked about when it comes to prophecy words of knowledge you don't really know until you begin to start dealing with it and so a number of examples i've shared throughout the last several weeks of people that i felt like were demonized um i mentioned a lady who who uh was practicing clairvoyancy and necrobancy and uh the way i knew that she had a demon was i commanded it to come forth and it revealed itself um and similarly i've had other situations like where in south africa i'm trying to talk to a person yeah sorry go ahead to interrupt you um when you say come forth versus come out or leave why did you say come forth were you asking it to manifest what were you particularly asking of it yeah that's a good question so in this case the woman was asking me how do i know there's a demon and i said what would you like to know and she said yes so that's when i said in the name of jesus come forth and when i said that it was like screaming uh you know she was feeling something clawing at her stomach and in the same way that i told it to come forth i told it to stop and leave her alone yeah i think that on this mental illness versus like demonic thing i i would say that the same caution that we show with physical illnesses we need to show with mental illness right so with physical illness we know for instance from luke 13 we've talked about this one the woman whose back is bent over double because she has a disabling spirit so we know that some physical ailments are demonically caused but there's not evidence that every single physical ailment is demonically caused that's right uh same with mental illness uh the garrison demoniac that i talked about earlier if you have a guy who's naked living in a graveyard chances are that's mental illness right and uh and so he has mental illness and we know from the text that there are demons involved and so i would suspect that in our secular culture that the cause of mental illness more often than what we give credit for which in a secular culture is zero is actually there's a demonic connection but we also want to be cautious that not every mental illness is has a demonic connection and uh and so i think we have to make that distinction and and what i see between you josh and miller you is that josh you talked about the need for discernment of spirits and uh miller you talked about the need for uh just i mean observation i mean when she starts screaming at the top of her lungs that's kind of obvious somebody's eyes roll back in their head that's obvious in the scripture we look at saul and an evil spirit comes upon him we read in first samuel 18 9 i think it is and then in chapter 10 he's raving like a madman and he has a spear in his head hand and he's trying to kill david okay and so there's certain evidences that we can physically sometimes observe and there are sometimes where this the gift of discernment of spirits is just necessary because it's not so obvious and so we would validate both of these and encourage people to exercise caution that just because you have a mental illness or your friend has a mental illness that doesn't necessarily mean that there's a a demon associated with it that's right and we would say that one of those grounds of like hey there's spiritual discernment that we have access to that is a spiritual gift that the holy spirit gives but we also have just like logical reason as we're as we're investigating these situations we would see this in first john chapter four uh don't believe every spirit but test the spirits to see whether they are from god for many false prophets have gone out for the world but this is how you know the spirit of god every spirit that confesses that jesus christ has come in the flesh is from god and every spirit that does not confess that jesus is not does not confess jesus is not from god so here in this passage it talks about right christology right theology of who god is we find in the scriptures that we're not wrestling against flesh and blood but these spiritual principalities as we read through the kingdom of the colts book um i i think early on i told our guys like hey if you read through this you're going to realize that these chapters are going to start repeating themselves because what we have is we have actual spirits that have been teaching the same thing for thousands of years to people and we can think that these are just hey that's just a con artist who's trying to scam people out of money or you can say there's actually a spirit behind these things orchestrating things so that people worship in a certain way and the demonic world knows hey this is gonna work uh you know paul as i hit myself in the face with a microphone uh paul was even warned the church of galatia hey these spirits are gonna portray themselves as as spirits of light but they're they're devils they're devils like it's not about yeah there it is yeah someone asked in the chat section you know when how do you know or so if you're dealing with somebody that you suspect might be demonized do you just command it to come forth does isn't that kind of scary and and what about like isn't that going to make you look weird if the person is not demonized um and i i great question and and i don't know any other way around this i try to when i'm talking to somebody if i feel like there's a demonic entity that's causing this i just say that say hey i could be wrong about this but i'm kind of wondering if maybe there's something demonic to this would you be open to me approaching it that way if they say yes then i'll command it if there's anything dark here i command you now in the name of jesus to reveal yourself and that commanding it to come forth i mean usually it produces results either uh the person will feel something or uh you know i've had demons talk through a person and reveal itself so um that's the only way i know how to do that other than the lord just showing me through some sort of gift of discernment spirits yeah i would i would say too uh i mean as a pastor i try to be cognizant of where the person is at so like if it's in my church and they've been really schooled in how how demons work i might just straight go for it like like bro i think that's a demon boom you know i mean maybe a little bit more than that but essentially just straight line okay there are other times when somebody has no grid outside of just what they've read in the bible but no grid in terms of experience and i might even maybe they're maybe they're a cessationist maybe they even like are kind of against those things but i sense it's there uh i i've cast demons out of people without them even like knowing that's what i was doing right like so i i might do something like this if i wanted to gingerly sort of pastorally walk into it uh and it depends if i have time to explain i i might do like a theological explanation and then do it but if i don't like maybe i'm on a prayer team at the end of a service there's like a 30 person long line and i just every situation is different is what i'm getting at but sometimes what i've done is uh it and maybe this example will work if it's a child for instance i don't really and i have cast spirits out of children okay i don't really want the child being like um devils live in me you know like i don't even want that to be a thought right and so i i might say to the to the child like if i really sent something and it's happened a few times if i really sent something i and a parent was with that child uh i might say that i i might kind of address the parent like hey would you mind if i uh i felt like there was maybe like a dark spiritual power kind of like attacking this kid you know coming against them and i just kind of want to address it and and make it go away and parent you know if i get their permission and like i i might say to the kids something like hey so i just want to i just want to tell like i just feel like a something like a i might use the word bad angel or like you know something bad is coming against you i just want to tell it to go away and just tell and i just say i just tell anything that's attacking this kid anything that's uh that's messing with this kid's mind or whatever we just tell that thing to go away to leave that person in the name of jesus now that kid is not gonna come away thinking like you know michael rowntree just delivered me of a demonic power a spirit of such and such like they're not gonna say they don't even really know but i've seen it produce freedom and i just found that it it's really situational in terms of what i say it's good yeah miller we've talked a little bit about okay so if we think we discern there's something spiritually going on we're gonna address it we're gonna talk to the person there's just there's just tactful ways of doing this you need to be tactful you don't need to be like hey man you don't scream from the altar i think you got a devil because you're porn addiction like you don't just you know you're not trying to embarrass people there are people who have to live after this kind of session and i think one of the things that hasn't helped is that when people come into this arena of deliverance they feel like they have like this i have this special and unique power to cast out demons because i've done it and most people don't have experience like i do so it becomes this show and at the expense of the person so we want to we want to not have we will not want to not do that we want to honor that person that person still has to live in their christian community after this moment but miller once once we realized hey this has happened this this thing has come to the surface we realize it's there how do we cast it out yeah okay again i so there's some caveats or some uh what you call them airbags josh that we should give when you're dealing with something demonic it's probably dependent upon the context that you're in how you're going to deal with it so if i'm in a small group meeting where it's become apparent that somebody's dealing with something demonic i don't mind in that environment making the small group about that person and them getting free so long as that's what they want like in other words they don't desire to to remain in sin that would allow that thing to stay there they're repentant they want to be free from this once and for all so i don't mind making the focus because that's a small environment where you can care for the person properly now if i'm at a church meeting and i have somebody come up to me and i begin to notice that there's something demonic depending on the level of demonization that i feel like i'm dealing with i may deal with it right then and there or i may set an appointment a private meeting where we pray for this this literally happened uh last week at my church somebody had been watching these episodes showed up at my church on tuesday night and so she told me on the front end hey i think i'm demonized and based on what she was telling me and why she thought she was demonized i was like this is probably not something i can do at the front of the church for about a 5-10 minute prayer time and so we had a private room that we set aside and we went with her my wife and i and that's another thing is i never do this by myself uh jesus sent them out by two and i think this is incredibly important today that we don't cast demons out by ourselves for the most part especially if you're in a private setting of some sort just because there's no telling what kind of accusations could get flung your way and i i have that as a rule of thumb not just for dealing with the demonic but dealing with you know somebody who wants counseling prophecy somebody who wants healing i just i try to make sure that there's an environment where there's accountability and disclosure uh to where it's above and beyond reproach so the other reason we do that especially with somebody who's demonized is because we don't need the the enemy to embarrass them any further than they've already been harassed and embarrassed so it's to protect them as well now if somebody comes up to me and it's you know i can sense that there's something there michael and i dealt with this we had a guy who was who was he had acid reflux and um michael and i were praying and trying to figure out okay what do you think the cause of this is and i i can't remember michael but i think you had a vision of uh him getting caught in a shameful act and when you had that vision we asked him like hey did this this happen to you and he was like yeah and he i'm not going to show the details of it but the point is that shane that he'd been embarrassing so embarrassed by getting caught in this shameful act had caused some self-hatred um and he had never really forgiven himself for that and so we walked him through a prayer of repentance and then commanded something to leave we felt like there was a demonic spirit there now that was something we could deal with in five to ten minutes um because you know it was a less severe form of demonization and when we dealt with it the guy's acid reflux had been completely healed he wouldn't eat mcdonald's afterwards and you know here we are that was back in uh i believe it was 2017 if i'm not mistaken michael um yeah and so we're four years later i talked to the guy just um about three weeks ago and he's been free ever since and we've we've told a couple of stories about this miller told stories about people who were practicing necromancy and talking to the dead and you know they were christian and they were i say they were christian because um they were professing faith in christ but in addition to that they were trying to syncretistically merge in these necromancy spirits and and miller told them hey if you're a follower of jesus you cannot do this there's no mixture here this is not a thing that we practice and they weren't willing to let it go but said hey maybe come back later i had a similar experience when we had a young girl eve can't come up to us she'd been in and out of mental health hospitals but we also knew that there was a sin that her parents kept busting her for that she would not repent of and you know she came to us and it's like hey i think this is demonic you know the speaker might have talked about it that that week at camp and or that day not night it can't make it sound like it's a multiple week thing and uh she asked us hey would you pray for me and i just said hey well are you willing to let go of this thing we know that you're wrestling with it we know that are you going to change and not keep doing this and she said no i don't think or well she said she was i'm not sure and i was like okay we can talk tomorrow and when i talk to her tomorrow she's like no i'm not ready and i was like okay i can't pray for you because biblically i'm held responsible because if we cast this demon out the bible talks about seven more evil coming back if you're not filled with the spirit uh and these people who are saying hey i want to rule my life i'm not going to be submitted to the spirit i'm not going to let the spirit lead me and guide me in my ethics that's not an area that you can have confidence in when pastoring yeah hey i want to come back to something that came up in the chat uh two or three times after i mentioned i said something about like a a bad angel in reference to a demon of course you know we've done episodes on this before that one of the common theories from first enoch which is not part of the biblical canon uh one one of the inter-testing graphic works yeah and anyway but it it teaches that the source of demons what is a demon it says uh it teaches that a demon is uh the disembodied spirit of one of the nephilim that first arises in genesis chapter six you read about that story but we've done episodes what are the what are the names of the episodes we've done on this subject oh tons and we've done episodes with heiser me and miller early on in this discuss just briefly hey if you take heiser's take on this or that um but tons you can you type in nephilim you can type in anything we've done on nephilim anything with with heiser's probably mentioning it so i i think that's a feasible theory that might be right uh i don't consider the book of first enoch canonical but also when talking to children you're just trying to make it be aligned to the most thing that makes sense hey uh there could be there's three different theories of what could be oppressing you right now and you know it's likely yeah it's not worth the discussion quick quick little story so my my daughter anna she's 13 now but when she was like five uh i was i was praying over her a good night prayer and in somewhere in the prayer i said something like protect her from the devil and she goes daddy who's the devil and and i was like oh i guess i haven't like really done a whole lesson on this so uh you know at the time she watched dora the explorer or explorer right okay it's like swiper that's what i said i said i go this is what i said i go the devil is just like swiper the bad guy i said the devil is just like swiper but get this i said but invisible and she goes daddy can i sleep in your bed tonight i was like yeah yeah you can that's great yeah so she got to sleep in our bed that night oh my god that was that was a parenting uh right there hey another question that would be worth tackling is from alicia hoot i don't know how to pronounce that forgive me um but she says if no sorry there's a bad joke i'm refraining from you're welcome uh so it's as if casting out demons from christians is essential for complete freedom in christ then why aren't we told to do this in any of the new testament letters especially since many lived in a pagan culture well it depends what you mean being told that are we told explicitly by paul cast out devils no but we do have precedent throughout the four gospels and acts that that was a normative for christian practice and we have church history to fall back on so if you look at it jesus had disciples he gave them authority to cast out demons so he did it uh he taught gave them authority to do it they do it and then the early church practices they do it as well and so the fact that you see um part of the messianic profile being casting out demons and healing the sick should by example demonstrates us that's part of christian practice for us as well in the same way that jesus preached the gospel he had the disciples preached the gospel and part of that was demonstrating the advancement of the gospel by casting out demons so yeah so the question could be coming from a couple different angles one of them could be just like hey um the pre-packaged assumption is that all christians live absolutely free of demonic power i think that's probably the assumption in the question and then saying hey this is an argument from silence because there is nothing in the bible that says cast demons out of christians therefore you must not need to cast demons out of christians now we touched on this a couple of times paul in i believe second corinthians chapter 12 says that there was a messenger from satan sent to buffet him okay now again that seems like there's some kind of demonic affliction now some will say oh that's oppression but not possession but again we've talked about this there's no such thing in the greek of possession and oppression it's just demonized they're non-corporeal spirits that are afflicting people they afflicted paul and i think paul was a christian um now in his given situation this might have been a sickness that was given to him we don't really know what it was but the ultimate goal was that paul's saying hey i'm boasting in christ's power to be made perfect in this situation so again in in these kinds of situations where they're believers or unbelievers is unimportant what we do see is they're demonized now if if you are a christian you know and hold a new testament world view when it comes to the scriptures the bible does not say uh that every demon was defeated at the cross uh at all in fact it says that christ has made everything separate under his feet and yet we do not see all things yet subject under his feet ephesians chapter one is it ephesians chapter one it talks about the prince of the power of the air um it's in ephesians uh it talks about ephesians two yeah so that talks about satan as still reigning in some capacity as the prince and the power of the air though the demonic has been disarmed would they still afflict even ephesians chapter six talks about uh the fiery darts of the evil one there's an actual affliction in fight that we have with the spiritual worldview so all christians everywhere are going to need to deal with this on some level yeah and and i think we what we have a little bit of the case a case in point here is that the didactic portion of the new testament especially the epistles most of them had specific issues they were dealing with in specific churches so paul's going to address idolatry in first corinthians 8 through 10 and then 12-14 he's going to address spiritual gifts in chapter 11 he's going to address the lord's supper and he's picking questions up in galatians he's going to address their heresies their heresy and so each letter has addressed the new perspective you get the new perspective just keep going okay so in each letter there's something specific and so uh and so do we want to say now i'm trying to think i'm racking my my mind my brain here i know the new testament uh the didactic new testament the letters okay i know they talk about baptism i'm trying to think of a of a command is there a command in the epistles to baptize people and if not i mean this is what baptism does it does it says what baptism does it talks about baptism just like it talks about demons i'm trying to i'm drawing but here's we're going to feel so sheepish afterwards oh no there's like 30. it might it might okay i know in first corinthians 1 paul says i'm glad i didn't baptize anyone yeah okay so it talks about baptism talks about it in romans chapter 6 talks about it in a second peter talks right but and there are lots of examples of it in the book of acts in matthew 28 he just specifically tells us now that's a narrative yeah my point is we've got narrative we've got epistle and they're different and in the narratives the four gospels and the book of acts they are replete with examples of demons leaving and demons being cast out do we want to look at these like these are just newspaper accounts or do we want to look at these as though they're actually telling us how to live via story i would say it's the latter and and again we i want to make sure that when we're talking about this okay there's a there's a demonic forces a person that comes in front of us and we realize that there's a spirit here and we say hey we're talking to the person we're like you know repent of this sin they repent of the sin you cast out this demon or you cast out this demon and then you have them repent of their sin the cart before the horse it doesn't really matter in this given situation but how is it that the christian has power how is it that the christian has authority to stand in front of a demonic power and say be gone now what if there's like a jewish sorcerer or a person who practices witchcraft or maybe a buddhist who comes in and they all have their little exorcism and they all want to practice a certain kind of position what gives us the power and authority to actually cast out demons and again pointing to the faith of christ christ right now seating on a throne is king right it says of his government and of his kingdom there will be no end it conquers and it moves forward the gates of hell don't prevail against the kingdom of god it keeps pushing them back so what we do when we in confront a demonic power we are placing our faith in jesus we trust that he is still king he's still sitting on a throne and he's still conquering demonic powers and as we have trust in faith in him we realize through his session the mediated power of the holy spirit that we have authority over demonic powers this is not an inherent power within us this isn't something that we get to walk around with it's trust and faith in jesus and jesus power is made on display through the agency of his church so when a person says hey man how do i cast out a demon how do i know that i can say demon go it's because jesus said demon go and we trust in his power we trust in his authority you could you don't you could be a child you could be a teenager you could be an old you could be young but if you're a christian you have faith in jesus jesus has the power to deliver people of demonic powers it's not our power it's not trust in our practice or mode or method it's trust in jesus and i can't stress that enough it's it's a very very important piece in this model so i think the um we're running out of time and i want to make sure we get through some of this stuff before we finish in the process of casting out demons so we started off with this idea that discernment discernment of spirits is how we might know something is there or we find something else that would indicate it just by their behavior or their symptoms i'm describing you know at night i feel like there's a weight on my chest and i have night tears or i notice that whenever i say the name jesus i feel something choking me so there are physical things or symptoms that would sort of allude to the the idea that somebody is demonized so the other thing i've mentioned is we don't want to ever do this by ourselves we we do it in pairs for accountability's sake and to uh to protect that person and we don't necessarily cast out demons in front of audiences we we pull them aside to protect them as well now the actual process of it you know typically if the person's a believer and they're completely repented i will just command it to leave um and that's usually a first question are you a believer have you given your life to jesus do you believe that he he died and rose from the dead and that he is the messiah and through him forgiveness of sins comes so that that first part is sort of a pivotal thing it's the easiest way to deal with something demonic is to transfer out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of god um and then if i'm dealing with a believer and whatever we're dealing with isn't leaving uh that's when i usually ask the lord what is causing this where did this thing come from or i'll ask this person how long has this thing been there um usually there there's something in what they'll say or what the lord will show me that will sort of give me uh for lack of a better term a key to let me know why this thing is there um and and it's one of those behaviors that we mentioned in the last several episodes like different ways that the demons get an invitation into somebody's life to afflict them so um at that point i'll then walk them through a prayer of repentance uh confessing jesus is lord um asking for forgiveness for a particular sin and committing their lives to never participate in that sin again and then asking the lord for mercy to be free from it and that i will again command that thing to leave um trying to think what else to say here i just want to make sure that these things are very clear somebody had asked me uh in the chat section a couple weeks ago hey do you really need to have somebody repent for some sin that they committed when they were a kid and i would say yes why not they may not be committing that behavior today but there's still a recognition that what they did was wrong before the lord and asking for his mercy to be set free from it and then of course he sets people free from it because that's what his blood purchased so uh this isn't i know that's can i bring this up because when we're talking about repentance this is something that's important for even christians we use this passage in second corinthians we'll probably do an entire episode on this uh next week but in second corinthians chapter 10 it talks about the weapons of warfare right verse four the weapons of warfare are not uh for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but but have divine power to destroy strongholds we destroy arguments and every lofty opinion that raises against the knowledge of god and take every thought captive to obey god i'm sorry to obey christ being ready to punish every disobedience when your obedience is complete so here in this passage it talks about uh our weapons right our weapons are theological our weapons are there are these thoughts there's these knowledge that rises themselves against the knowledge of christ these are could be demonic thoughts they could i mean i would say that they are demonic thoughts uh that are that are created strongholds and in who we are now uh for example uh i would give an example of uh someone who's close to me a family member that miller prayed for one time and uh this person uh had tons of migraines and miller is talking to him and says hey uh what's going on tell me when did these migraines start well this happened back then well did this happen when back then uh yeah and it goes does this have to do with your value and your worth yeah i don't see myself valuable i don't see myself worth anything he's like well this is a stronghold where the enemy is trying to convince you that you're not worth anything and as he began to walk them through repentance and say hey man you're a daughter of christ you're valuable you're loved you're all these kinds of things and in believing these things that are actually true you're tearing down this stronghold he prayed felt physical relief and stopped having migraines right so this is a a demonic activity that it has ground in this person's life because they had unrepentant sin they had wrong thinking and we use theology to liberate them does that sound right yeah yeah yeah so you know sometimes what we're having people repent from is a particular behavior or sin uh and the other thing that we have people repent from is a demonic way of thinking or a stronghold of the mind which next week i think we're going to cover in some length how to tear down strongholds and that that is often a lot more i i find that tearing down a systematic way of thinking that somebody has has had for years is actually the more difficult work of deliverance another word we could use for it is discipleship and so i think we'll go into some length next week on what it means to tear down a stronghold because that is a way that people get demonized and afflicted they've got certain agreements with the enemy that they've made about themselves that are lies about god that are lies again it's all knowledge raised up against the knowledge of god so you've got this systematic way of thinking that is actually demonic in its origin versus the truth of god about who he is what he's done and who you are in him hey so there there's a there's a good question from ben wren he says what are your thoughts on why there's little demonic possession in the old testament or we might say demonization in the old testament and uh and what we see in the new testament is it's when jesus he's preaching the kingdom the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of god is at hand and it's in that context that he's casting out demons it's in the context of the kingdom is here and he explains that in matthew 12 28 and again in the context of a demon being cast out he says if i cast out demons uh by the spirit of god then the kingdom of god has come upon you that is the reign of god so in the old testament what you had is you had prophets prophesying especially like daniel and uh but ezekiel isaiah there's a kingdom that's coming and the the kingdom of god is going to be one day over all of the earth and god is going to come and he's going to reign the kingdom of god is just the reign of god and he's going to reign over all things you're going to reign over all of the earth and so the uh the old testament saints were looking forward to the coming of this kingdom and jesus comes and he says ta-da it's here yeah okay the kingdom is here it's good now it's both here and it's coming the full consummation is at christ's return but but he comes and he launches he inaugurates the kingdom of god and part of and that explains his healing ministry as well as his casting out of demons ministry because because where uh where jesus reigns a demon does not and so where the kingdom of god is coming upon somebody's body that demon has to go and so that's why he sends out his disciples and he says go and preach the kingdom and heal the sick and cast out demons because the healing and the casting out of demons are associated with the reign of god coming over somebody's body okay and so and so this is really the bigger theological reason why even though we don't have a command in the new testament epistles go cast out demons this is the big picture reason why we believe that we are to follow the narrative of the gospels and the book of acts the example that is set for us because we believe that the kingdom of god is advancing and if my ministry is one of preaching the kingdom it should also be one of demonstrating the kingdom that that part of the the ministry of the church in advancing the kingdom of god on the earth should be advancing healing ministry and casting out of demons because that's what it looks like when god reigns over human beings demons have to go so it's good i think i got kind of worked up no no it's good let me uh let me elaborate on that but so why was it not so much in the old testament because the kingdom wasn't here yet it started in jesus name it advances through the church age and it's consummated at the return of christ that's good i i think what john has to say in uh john chapter one is is parallel to what michael has just said it says the light of the world came and it exposed what was in darkness why don't we see a lot of demonic activity because the light of the world hadn't come to expose what's in darkness when jesus shows up he starts preaching the message of the kingdom these things are forced to come into the light because the light is present there and i would say the same thing is true with believing christians as we preach the kingdom you will have these examples where the light of of the lord jesus is present and it exposes what's there um yeah i've got a question in here again devil's daughter asked good question so if someone's not a christian um is it like mandatory that they have to be even possessed the answer is no no absolutely not uh we would say both christians and non-christians can be possessed and both christians and non-christians can not be possessed but the goal is that there are certain prescriptions that god has in his kingdom right hey this is you live in texas these are the speed limits on the road oh by the way if you drive faster than the speed limit and you don't uh observe the the the lights uh as you're driving you're going to get into iraq there's going to be danger in the same regard when christians or non-christians violate god's law they place themselves in harm's way they place themselves in danger now if you never stopped at a red light you just drove through red lights is it does it mean that you're going to get hit by a car no but does it highly increase the chance that you're gonna get hit by a car absolutely it does and what happens is god is saying this is how the kingdom operates and in the kingdom of god we're gonna live a life of righteousness that is prescribed by god's law when we violate god's law we open ourselves up to demonic activity uh that that very well harms god's people i would clarify on uh one little point on that when you say that uh both christians and non-christians could be possessed or could not be possessed uh i would just i would declare that there is i would do i do declare i would say that there is a distinction between somebody who is in christ and somebody who is not in this when it comes to darkness uh demonic realm kind of thing um in ephesians he says those who believe right this is a particular group of people who have believed and trusted in christ for salvation they've been transferred over from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of god so there is a sense in which when we say possessed what we mean by that which domain are you in well if you're not in christ then you are in a demonically uh charged world right and i try to explain this hard and and if we define demon if we use the word demonized and if we define that as being influenced by a demon then every non-believer is influenced by a demon uh in fact uh ephesians chapter two says just that i mean the verse you quoted works great miller uh but also ephesians chapter two as for you you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live when you walked in the ways of this world and the ruler of the kingdom of the air the spirit who is now at work and those who are disobedient okay so this is everybody the spirit the ruler this is talking about satan the devil okay and so if jesus is not your lord satan is even if you don't believe in satan okay so is that person influenced by the devil according to ephesians chapter two then most definitely yes now does that mean that you're automatically the graveyard guys the garrison no no no no definition the point you're making is there's no playing switzerland in this you don't get to be that's the point that i'm making and josh would totally agree with that yeah and um i would also say if we want to look at church history you know part of the way they would work with their catechumens and and walking up into the baptism it was like a time of fasting uh of getting rid of any sort of demonic attachments or idols or anything and then when they were baptized they would renounce satan as part of the baptism and deliverance was seen as part of that and i think if you look at the first peter 3 portrayal of baptism you'll see that there is sort of like a supernatural demonic warfare i think michael heiser says this in his book the unseen realm that baptism is spiritual warfare that that it is the transference of from one kingdom to another and so uh with all of that said i i think what i would say is if you are not saved if you are not born again if you have not repented of your sins and trusted in jesus to forgive you and to give you a brand new life in some manner in one way or another you are under the influence of satan you are under the influence of demons and i would uh i would call on you i would exhort you as one who loves you to repent of your sins to trust in jesus to ask for his forgiveness to become part of a local church and to be baptized and this is your best route to uh this is your best route to leaving behind those old influences uh and certainly if you're part of the occult or something like that that this is something i would call on you to do yeah and we want you i mean ultimately in okay christian non-christian like we sin is a horrible slave master right like it promises so much and then it never delivers on anything it keeps us bound it destroys our lives it destroys the lives of our family and our loved ones it has eternal consequences um whether you are being demonized now or being robbed of glory in the new jerusalem i want you to live free like that's really important okay if you're a christian you're watching this you're like hey christians can't be demonized okay do you need to live in repentance because i do think there are consequences for your actions um live a life of openness live a life of repentance um i i think man even if you look at you know ephesians chapter six again you get the fiery darts of the evil one and the way that those things are quenched out or by the shield of faith that's what the scriptures are articulated as now does that mean that if a christian is not properly equipped that those darts can hurt them yeah i think so and i think it's armor for a reason and i think that there are christians walking around naked um and they're getting hit they're getting hurt and i want you to live a life of freedom and i want you to live a life of victory uh christ didn't come and die on a cross so that we could be bound and slaved um so let's live a life of freedom i think that's for our good and for his glory i think that's important so let's maybe summarize like just so people walk away with some handles here okay uh if there's a spirit and it's obviously manifest you have authority in the name of the lord jesus christ we've talked about why you have authority in other episodes but uh ephesians 2 6 you've been raised up with christ and seeded with him in the heavenly realms far above all principalities and powers you have authority in christ to cast those demons out so go cast them out tell them to go tell them to leave in the name of jesus and uh and if it doesn't work the first time talk to the person ask them to repent of their sins ask them if uh to confess their sins bring it into the light and uh to confess to repent and uh and we'll talk some more next week about if it gets to the real nitty gritty kind of working through some demonic strongholds we touched on it today but we'll talk about that uh some more next week but confess repent believe and command those would be my handles i like it it was i it that double iteration it works well yeah there you go miller what's your thoughts man uh last little boundaries i'd say is don't do it by yourself set appointments don't stay up all night with somebody there's no reason to do that you should never hold somebody down just a simple command is all that's necessary and remember that that in this it may involve discipleship and helping people tear down strongholds of the mind helping them renew the way they think uh replacing lies with truth and that is a process we don't just it's not a one and done thing for many people who've been living with these things for a long period of their life as i gave testimony i was demonized for a large chunk of my life spirit of abandonment rejection and that has taken a great deal of work of changing the way i think about myself and about god to live completely free so that's it and next week we'll we'll discuss uh strongholds of the mind more in depth excellent guys thank you so much for tuning into this episode got a lot of great stuff coming down uh if you haven't already subscribe to the channel lots of great content but we are entirely crowdfunded if you've been blessed by the ministry link's in the description to give there's discipleship content also in the description so if you're like hey i want to know where to get some good books there are some phenomenal books linked in the description a bunch of blogs written by dawson on the website thereimntradio.com and like i said crowdfunded so if you want to support us on patreon links are in the description you can read the book on buddhism with us uh anyway guys thank you so much for joining us once again next week monday tuesday wednesday from 4 to 5 pm central standard time we will see you then blessings guys

Channel: The Remnant Radio

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Length: 61min 2sec (3662 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 14 2021