The Bible Nerd

The young woman was quite passionate and convincing as she told her story.  On a missions outreach, several team members had been plagued with bad dreams.  They decided it must be spiritual warfare, so they had a prayer time to ask God to reveal what was happening in the spiritual realm.  While one was praying, she was led to a picture that was in the room.  Someone said that God had revealed to them that the picture was cursed, and had demonic power attached to it.  They immediately took the picture out of the house, and the nightmares stopped that night.  Her conclusion then was that stuff, or objects, can be “cursed”, and need to be dealt with at times in spiritual warfare.

By now you know the routine of this blog.  Here is the point where I turn to you the audience and ask, “Is this principle or teaching in the Bible?”  Should we go through our whole house or apartment and ask God to reveal of any of it is cursed and needs to be disposed of?  Thankfully, Paul deals with this issue in detail in the New Testament because many of the new believers were converts from idolatry and occult like practices.  An issue that consistently came up in the New Testament church was meat sacrificed to idols.  Many meat markets either got their meat directly from pagan temples, or were actually right in the temple itself!  With all the sacrifices being offered to the gods, it was a big source of revenue for the temples.  Famous restaurants in these Greco Roman towns were also frequently located near or in temples, and served meat that had been sacrificed to false gods.  Some people had just stopped eating meat all together to avoid spiritual contamination.

Both 1 Corinthians 10:23-33 and Romans 14:1-4 contains Paul’s solution and teaching on this.  This should be a perfect example to look at the answer our question.  If any objects should be cursed and demonically tainted, it should be all the meat that was offered in pagan temples.  These sacrifices were accompanied often by services which included ritual sex with cult prostitutes, magical incantations, and “feeding” of the idol itself.  Paul makes it quite clear what is happening in these services in 1 Cor. 10:20, “that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons.”  So, if the young woman’s story is true, Paul should tell all the church to throw out and avoid this meat so as to avoid spiritual consequences.

Paul’s statement on the meat however comes out in 1 Corinthians 10:19, “What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? No…”, 1 Corinthians 10:25-26, “Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience. For “the earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.”; and Romans 14:6, “The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God.”  Paul makes it clear to me that the object itself has no curse or spiritual reason to avoid it.  Idols are “nothing” to Paul, and food is just food.  The main issue to Paul is if their actions will cause harm to the faith of their “weaker brother”, or if they feel they can just go to the temple or a temple restaurant and eat the food there as services are going on around them.

Paul says stay out of temple services because it is going back to their old life and opening them up to the demons present in the temples.  He says eat the meat in the market because there is no danger of spiritual taint, as long as you aren’t harming the faith of others.  If you are over a Christian’s house, think about where their faith is at, and don’t put your rights above their relationship with God (a much bigger teaching!).

I feel like a broken record in this series of posts on spiritual warfare.  The young woman who told me the story definitely didn’t agree with what I told her from the Bible.  For her, because she had “experienced” this, then it must be true.  She interpreted the Bible through the lens of what she had lived through.  Sound Biblical interpretation starts with the Bible though, and through it we must interpret what we see around us.  The picture in her story had no demonic power attached to it that was causing nightmares.  I believe it was their focused time of prayer that effected the change, reestablishing their faith in the power of Christ, and asking God to do the spiritual battle for them.  Fear was gone, and with it was the devil’s power.  Having said all this, I would probably go ahead and burn that Ouija board, old Dungeons and Dragons game, and voodoo dolls you have been keeping around until your next garage sale.

Almost everyone knows the story of Noah and the flood, even though a horrific, world ending event has been turned into a cute  children’s story.  What most people don’t know, however, is the gross and odd story about Noah and his son Ham.  Noah gets way too drunk, and passes out naked in his tent (try to make baby crib bumpers out of that!).  His son Ham enters and “sees his father’s nakedness” in Genesis 9:22, which is a Hebrew phrase often used for sex (see Leviticus 18:6ff).  The story gets even more tragic, because when Noah wakes up and understands what his son did, he curses Ham’s son Canaan in 9:25, “Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers.”  The descendants of Ham end up being idolatrous enemies of Israel (Canaan, Egypt, Babylon, Assyria).

This has led some to build a teaching called “generational curses”, which they describe as a spiritual, demonic curse that passes down from father to son in the generational line.  It is used to explain the stronghold of sin on an individual or nation, and usually then proscribes some sort of deliverance or breaking of the curse as necessary for freedom.  A person may be completely unaware of generational curses that have been passed down to them, and so spiritual discernment must be used to identify and break them.  Is there deep sin or spiritual oppression in your life or people group?  It could be a generational curse then.

Is this what Genesis 9 is teaching us?  are there other passages to back this up?  First of all, we must deal with Genesis 9.  First, it is important to note that it is Noah, not God, who places the curse on his grandson.  We have no proof here that God backed up Noah’s curse, or that there is a spiritual force at work.  Second, though these nations do end up idolatrous and evil, there are stories of individuals from these nations becoming part of God’s people (Egyptians in Exodus 12:38, Rahab the Canaanite in Joshua  6:25, Assyrians who repented in Jonah 3 and 4).  This could be the beginning of seeing what I would call generational sin, which is the anti God worldview and immorality that can be and is passed on from one generation to another.  Remember, unbelievers are open to demonic possession, and sin opens the door wide, so this generational sin would go hand and hand with demonic activity.  That doesn’t follow then that these demons or spiritual curses are “passed down” automatically from father to son.

A second verse that I have seen to support generational curses is Exodus 20:5-6, “for I the Lord your God am a jealous God,visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.”  The first part of the verse is focused on where God “visits the iniquity/sin” to the third or fourth generation.  Note that God says “visits the sin” and not “spiritually curses”.  “Visiting the sin” would fit with the generational sin explanation I just gave.  The main problem I have with interpreting this verse as speaking of curses, is that it ignores the second part of the verse.  God says He blesses to the 1,000th generation.  So if you take this literally, and speaking of curses, the opposite is true as well.  As long as you have someone righteous in your line, then you are blessed for 1,000 generations!  Who would worry about curses then?

It is important to remember a foundational principle about how God judges.  In Ezekiel 18:20, God rebukes the victum mentality of the Israelites by saying, “The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son.”  He had already made this clear in the law in Deuteronomy 24:16, “Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. Each one shall be put to death for his own sin.”  Generational curses would seem to contradict the way that God judges and deals with individuals.

Even if we were to allow for generational curses, we would still have to ask whether Christians can have generational curses or not.  Galatians 3:13 answers this emphatically, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”.  Jesus took on the curse for us on the cross, and broke its power over us forever!  Once again, fear has no place in the life of a believer.  Of course, generational sin must still be dealt with as Christians.  Sins that have been taught and passed down from our parents and culture are not broken easily.  They do have spiritual repercussions as we discussed earlier.  But, what God has blessed, no one can curse! (Genesis 12:1-4).  Don’t make Balaam’s mistake!

I love those type of videos that show how unity, intercession, and prayer change whole communities.  I could watch them again and again.  Seeing football stadiums full of believers praying and interceding for their city and nation has me grabbing the tissues every time.  However, it seems like many of them include Christians stating that they believe taking down “territorial spirits” was part of the spiritual warfare necessary to kick off the revival.  They discuss the long meetings they had, asking God to reveal these spirits, so they could be bound, broken, or cast down.  Only once that demon was removed, could true transformation begin.

The real question is, all these amazing personal stories aside, is there any Scriptural basis for territorial spirits and this step of warfare?  The main passage I have seen used in support of this teaching is in Daniel 10.  Daniel is praying and interceding for the Jews, fasting for over three weeks straight.  Suddenly, he is visited by a divine being and receives a powerful vision.  Some argue whether this is an angel or a theophany.  It would seem to be an angel, as he later says that the “Prince of Persia withstood me” and he had to have help from Michael.  I don’t think God (or Jesus if this was a Christophany) need any help from another angel to defeat anything.  The angel then proceeds to reveal to Daniel the battles that will take place between two parts of the Greek Empire over the land of Israel. The main point to Daniel is that though empires will battle, rise and fall, God’s kingdom will remain and He will save and protect His people.

Who is the “Prince of Persia”, and who is the “Prince of Greece” that the angel must go and fight later?  Since Michael and the one speaking are clearly angels (see Jude 1:9 and Rev. 12:7 for more on Michael), some say it is obvious that the Prince of Greece and Persia are angels as well.  Since they are fighting God’s angels, they must be fallen angels that we call demons.  First, it is not absolute that these two figures are demons at all.  Throughout Daniel, God reveals how He is working among the human kings of the earth; for example, chapter 4 Nebuchadnezzar “wrestles” with God and ends up mooing like a cow until he humbles himself.  In chapter 6, Belteshazzar blasphemes against God, and is judged that very night.  It is very possible that the Prince of Persia and Greece are referring to the actual kings (such as Cyrus and Alexander) that God will use to bring about His own plan.

Second, even if we say that these two are demons, the whole teaching of territorial spirits does not follow.  It is God’s angels who are fighting against these demons, not Daniel.  Daniel is only shown what is taking place in the spiritual realm, he is not asked to “join in” and help them battle these princes.  Also, since nothing much is said about them, it is not wise to build a whole teaching that whole nations, cities, or territories have demons that rule over them and their power must be broken before revival can begin.  The main point of this passage is that God hears the intercession of His people, He is in control of kings and empires no matter what it looks like, and God will ultimately save and protect His people.  The spiritual warfare is shown to Daniel so that he understands that there is so much going on in the spiritual realm that he is clueless about.  God sends His angels to fight on our behalf!

The other passage I have seen used for this teaching is Deuteronomy 32:8-9.  The context of this passage is the prophetic song of Moses which lays out Israel’s rebellion against God, their judgment, and God’s eventual vindication of His people.  In verses 8 and 9, God is wanting Israel to see that although He created all nations, He gave Israel a special place and blessing.  In talking about the other nations, God says, “When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel.”  I put that phrase in bold because in the Septuagint (Greek OT) and the Dead Sea Scrolls it reads “sons of God” instead of “Israel” as in the Masoretic text (Hebrew text that is foundation of our OT).   Some say that sons of God is the most attested and should be used (ESV does).

What does this have to do with territorial spirits???  Sons of God is a phrase used in the OT to talk about angels (see Job 1:6).  If “sons of God” is the correct reading, some say that this shows that God established nations according to the number of angels.  Some angels rebelled with Satan, thereby becoming demons.  The position God gave them over a nation or territory was turned to evil.  The first problem is that Genesis 6 also uses this phrase “sons of God”, and there is argument whether it is referring to angels or the godly line of Seth (men).  The next problem is that there is manuscript disagreement, and it is always dangerous to build a teaching based on one disputed passage.  Finally, even if this was about angels, there is no instruction for Israel to “battle” against these demons, nor is there is evidence that these angels were ones who rebelled against God.

The bottom line is that the answer to the question, “are there territorial spirits?” is yes and no.  Yes, because demons can only be in one place at a time.  They are not God having the power of omnipresence.  As in the story of Legion, the demons were in the man, the pigs, and then somewhere else (the pit?).  In that sense, a demon is in a certain place or territory.  The answer is no in that the complex teaching that has evolved about fighting territorial spirits simply doesn’t have the backing in Scripture.  As we discussed before, our experience or interviews with demons are not a reliable enough source to base doctrine on.

The warning I leave you with is that the teaching of territorial spirits does have a lot of backing, the problem is that it is from idolatrous religions and animism.  God is constantly reminding Israel in the OT, that He is not a territorial god like the false gods of the pagan nations (see Ezekiel 1 for a beautiful picture of this).  The thing that worries me is that this teaching seems to give more power to demons and creates possible fear and glory for Satan that he doesn’t deserve.  Satan would love for us to think that there is complicated process of steps we have to do to defeat him.  It is just way too easy to cast out demons in Jesus name and preach the Gospel.

I remember the first year that I led a Bible school, a student asked to meet with me before the school started.  She proceeded to tell me that she would need a room to herself in the dorm.  I stifled a laugh, thinking, “Anything else you would like?  Your own personal fitness trainer?  How about a limo and driver?”.  Instead, I decided to humor her and see where this went, so I asked why she needed her own room.  She told me that her past roommates consistently complained about her, because she would wake up screaming in the night.  As a child, she grew up in a family who worshiped idols and false gods.  She had been dedicated to the goddess of her town, and that demon came and controlled her in her sleep.  She was a Christian, but was convinced that she was powerless to stop the demon due to her past.

First of all, I was glad I didn’t laugh or offer some sarcastic response.  Boy, would I have felt bad!  Second, my immediate thought was that Christians can’t be “possessed” or controlled by a demon.  I had never encountered something like this though, and went back to the Bible to research this and meet again with this woman.  Several passages stood out to me in this, and confirmed my initial reaction.  The word “possessed” or “oppressed” are not found in the Greek.  The phrase that is translated this way often is “he/she has a demon/unclean spirit”.  The Greek for “has/have” does indicate ownership or possession, so that is where we get the word we use in English to describe this state.

In Matthew 12:43-45 (also Luke 11:24-26), Jesus describes what happens in a person once a demon is cast out.  He says that the demon searches around for a new place to stay (waterless places refers to the Jewish belief that demons couldn’t travel through water), and will often decide to return to its original host.  Upon return, the demon often discovers, “And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first. So also will it be with this evil generation.”  Since this teaching is included in two Gospels, it must contain an important lesson for us.

I believe the lesson is that once a demon is cast out of an unbeliever, if they don’t receive Jesus and become filled with the Holy Spirit, the demon can just come back and take possession of that person again.  Without the Holy Spirit, the unbeliever is just as vulnerable to demon possession as he was before.  The disciples (and us) were supposed to understand that casting out demons is only the first step in the process.  It must be followed up with leading that person to Christ.  Without the “seal of the Holy Spirit”, they are still open to attack from the “prince of the power of the air”.  If this is the correct interpretation, the reverse is true, that once a person accepts Jesus, he is NO LONGER vulnerable to demon possession.

Romans 8:31-39 also speak to this protection we have in Christ, “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  Paul is convinced that no spiritual power, good or evil, can separate us from the love of God.  Paul hammers this home in Colossians 2:9-10, “For in him(Jesus) the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.”  If Christians can be possessed, then Christ’ and the Holy Spirit’s power is NOT ENOUGH to protect us against demons.  That has no basis in Scripture whatsoever.

So, how do I explain what was happening with this woman?  Only God knows truly what was happening in the spiritual realm, but I could only come to several conclusions from the Bible.  Through a lack of knowledge in the Bible, she had come to the wrong conclusion about demon’s power, and it was leading her through fear to give power to the demon.  In addition, she may have been suffering from childhood events that had not been fully dealt with through counseling and the Holy Spirit.  I didn’t feel that the last option was the case: that she had never had the demon cast out, so she wasn’t a Christian at all yet.

Satan would love for us Christians to all be in fear and think that he or demons can control and own us.  That way, he can bind us in sin and fear, and instead of leading others to Christ, we spend our lives on the sidelines.  For many of us, the enemy uses our shame and guilt over past and present sins to lead us to believe that we deserve to be afflicted by demons.  The truth is that we do deserve to be afflicted, but God’s grace has set us free.  Galatians 5:1 says it best, “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”  The house was swept clean, and now Jesus is living in that house.  No demons allowed!

One of my favorite cartoon characters as a kid was Foghorn Leghorn.  For those of you who don’t know, he was a rooster with a thick Southern accent on the Bugs Bunny show (Looney Tunes).  Foghorn loved to torment the the family dog who was usually chained up to his dog house.  He would paddle him on the rear, and then start running.  Of course, Foghorn knew exactly where the line was when the chain would yank the dog back and he would be safe.  The problem is that eventually, the dog would get off the chain or Foghorn would push his luck too far, and the dog would get his revenge, usually blowing all of the rooster’s feathers off in the carnage.  Foghorn would then exit naked, carrying his feathers, and say my favorite line, “Fortunately, I have all of my feathers numbered for just such an occasion.”

My point in all this (in case you were wondering) is that I find myself to be a lot like Foghorn when it comes to Satan and sin.  I often think that I can get away with running up to Satan and sin, having some fun, and then running back to God and safety.  The problem is that I eventually get “my feathers blown off”, and give Satan and the sin an opportunity to control my life.  I said in an earlier post that the only power Satan has over Christians is what we give him.  How do we give him power?  Through three main ways: ignorance, fear, and sin.  Ignorance and fear go hand in hand together.  If we don’t know the Bible, we won’t know the power that we have in Christ.  That is why we went through passages about Jesus and His authority in the spiritual realm.  Eradicate the ignorance, and the chance for fear goes way down.

Sin is an all together different matter.  Going back to the book of Ephesians (an amazing book full of spiritual warfare teaching), Paul lays it out for us in 4:26-27, ““In your anger do not sin: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.”  This comes from a section in which Paul is calling the Ephesians to put off their “old self” and live like their “new self”.  That means putting aside the sinful habits of the past, and living according to God’s standards.  Paul says, when we give into sin, like anger and hate, we are in effect “giving the devil a foothold”.  This word “foothold” has been translated as opportunity, place, or “don’t give the devil a way to defeat you”.  The Greek word used by Paul is used literally for a city, village, or place, but carries the figurative meaning of power or occasion for acting.

Do we really think of sin as giving a “foothold” in our lives to Satan?  In my experience, the deeper and more habitual the sin, the more power we give over to him spiritually.  For many of us, these sins were demonically inspired or influenced before we were Christians.  Now, we are “sealed by the Holy Spirit” as Ephesians 1:13 says, but we are kidding ourselves if we think we can just dive back into our old sinful lives and not suffer spiritual consequences.  I DO NOT think that Christians can be “possessed” or “have a demon”, and I will make that clear in the next post.  However, I do believe that Christians can experience what I would term “oppression” or “influence” from demons when we choose to have deep, habitual sin in our lives.  Satan can’t create or take his own foothold in a Christians life, but we can hand the keys over and start digging for him.

The good news is that we are still Christians, and repentance is always an option!  James 4:7 promises us, “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”  Submitting to God means confessing our sin, getting help from others in counseling and accountability, and walking out a daily choice to not allow that sin to continue.  I don’t know about you, but I am tired of getting my feathers blown off.  Satan is on a chain, and I want to quit walking over to where I know I can get bit.  Time to take back those footholds, and be a smart chicken for once.  We all love Kentucky Fried Chicken over here in Taiwan, but I will pass at being a tub of original, extra crunchy, deep fried lunch.

I am amazed sometimes how little faith I have.  You would think after God has supported my family and I for over 17 years in missions, I would get that God can provide for us.  Seriously, God brought in $15,000 just so we could move here to Taiwan.  Yet, just the other day I was doubting and stressing over the money we would need to do a family outreach trip here in Asia.  Sigh!  I would like to blame my Jewish roots, and say that as a people group we excel at worrying, but the reality is that we all struggle with this at times.  I can hear my own pathetic thoughts, “God, I know you created the universe, but I just don’t think you can come up with a few thousand bucks!”

The stories we are looking at today are what happens when exorcisms go wrong. In one, the problem is extremely obvious, people are trying to use Christianity like magic.  The other is the kind of passage that keeps Bible nerds up all night, for several reasons.  Let’s take the easy one first, Acts 19:11-17.  Seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Sceva saw the power that Paul the apostle had in his ministry in Ephesus.  Evil spirits were getting cast out right and left.  These guys claimed to be “Jewish exorcists” which may seem odd to you.  In modern times, Judaism as a majority does not practice exorcism, and many Jews don’t even believe in it.  In Paul’s day, everyone believed in evil spirits, and the Jews were no exception.

Unfortunately, these Jewish exorcists seem to have been influenced by a pagan worldview.  They attempt to use the name of Jesus and Paul like a magic spell, believing that the power was in the name alone with no connection to their personal beliefs or lifestyle. Wrong!  I love what the demoniac says to them (oops, that sounds bad to love what a demoniac says) in 19:15, “Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?”  He then proceeds to open a can of rear end kicking, and the Jews leave buck naked and beaten up.  This failed exorcism is to show one thing: Christianity is not magic!  You can’t just use their God’s power like a mystery cult.  Without your own personal faith and relationship to Jesus, you end up running away naked and smacked down.

Building on this lesson, Matthew 17:14-21 (also in Mark 9:14-29 and Luke 9:37-43) contains the only other “failed exorcism” story with the disciples.  A father brings his young son to Jesus and complains that the disciples couldn’t cast the demon out.  The demon is tormenting the boy with seizures and often throws him into both fire and water.  The father’s faith is at an all time low after the disciples can’t do it, so he says to Jesus in Mark 9:22, “if you can do anything…”  Jesus rebukes the lack of faith, which brings the famous statement of the father, “I believe, help my unbelief!”  There is something not quite right with that, and eventually I will figure out what that is.

Jesus immediately casts the demon out, and everyone is amazed at His power.  The disciples, completely embarrassed, approach Jesus privately to find out what they did wrong.  Jesus’ answer in Matthew 17:20 says it is “because of your little faith”, but His answer in Mark 9:29 is that “this kind can only come out through prayer.”  Well, which is it?  Not only does the contrast of answers cause us difficulties, but most Bibles will offer a footnote to both passages saying “some manuscripts add BY PRAYER AND FASTING.  That is a big difference if fasting is added, so was that part of what Jesus originally said or not???  In dealing with manuscript differences, the conservative rule is to follow the careful research of the translation teams.  Here, most translations I can find choose to put “fasting” in the footnote, showing that they do not have enough evidence to consider it part of the original work.  There are too many ancient manuscripts of Matthew and Mark that don’t have that inserted.  When dealing with something like this, the last thing we want to do is build a whole teaching out of it without other clear passages! (so much for my best selling book, “Fasting for Casting”).

That leaves us with trying to put together Jesus’ two answers of prayer and faith.  Because of Jesus’ initial response to the father and crowd “O faithless and twisted generation”, it seems clear that the main issue is one of faith.  Even though the disciples had seen Jesus do miracle after miracle, and they had also seen him move through them to cast out demons, in this one occasion, they doubted.  Maybe it was something about the boy’s appearance or manifestations; maybe it was simply a “bad faith” day for them.  They were human, and like us all, they lost faith when confronted with a supernatural battle.  Perhaps the comment on faith points to their using Jesus name like the sons of Sceva.  Instead of “praying” and “believing in faith” for the demon to come out, they simply tossed out Jesus name like a magic spell.  They weren’t looking to God for the power, but thought they now had the “anointing” all by themselves.

Spiritual warfare is a war that lasts our whole life here on earth.  We have to know that some times, we have the faith to see Legion cast out.  Other days, one puny, little demon can send us running as we cry out to God, “I believe, help my unbelief!”  We must never forget though, that our power to cast out demons isn’t magic, but comes from our relationship and faith in Jesus.  Since I definitely would prefer NOT to get stripped and beat up by a possessed guy, I for one am going to try to remember this.

Since direct demon confrontation is a part of spiritual warfare, we need to talk about what guidelines or steps the Bible gives us about this. Unfortunately, there is no Exorcisms for Dummies book that you can buy or download onto your Kindle. There are plenty of books out there by various authors, but as Christians, we should always start with the What you Need to Know about Being a Christian for Dummies book, otherwise known as the Bible (not that the Bible is dumbed down, but that is our intellectual state). I don’t really like using the word “exorcisms” by the way, as it makes me think of those stupid, Hollywood movies. Seriously, how many movies about demon possessed people can they make these days???

The problem is that there are really only two detailed “casting out demon” stories in the Gospels, and only two in Acts.  Most of the time, it simply states that Jesus’ ministry involved this activity like in Mark 1:39, “And he went throughout all Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons.” (a little scary that demons and synagogues seem to be connected here).  No detail is really given, just the facts:  Jesus kicking demons back into hell.  Since there are only two longer stories, there must be something significant in them for us to understand.  The real question is though is what that “something” is.  In this post, we will deal with the story of Legion, and in the next post, we will handle the boy the disciples couldn’t heal. (there are other stories like Mark 7:24-30 and Luke 13:10-17, but the demon possession seems secondary to the main point of the story)

Mark 5:1-20,  and it’s parallel passages in Luke 8:26-39 and Matthew 8:28-34, gives us the longest exorcism story of Jesus’ ministry.  I have read many books that combine this story with people’s own personal experiences to give instructions on how to cast out demons.  One that I have read often is that in order to cast out or bind the demon, we must know its name in order to have power over it.  This could be a personal name, area of sin, or geographic area (Legion, spirit of slavery, prince of Persia, etc…)  They come to this conclusion from the fact that Jesus asks the demon it’s name, and then casts it out.  In fact, it says Jesus tells the demon to come out, then asks the name, and then it comes out.  Their conclusion being that Jesus first attempt was unsuccessful since he didn’t know its name.  This is a very important teaching, the problem is that it is not Christianity.  The spiritual practice it belongs to is called magic or witchcraft, and the religion it belongs to is called idolatry or satanism.

What???  Am I saying this story about Legion shouldn’t be in the Bible?  No, I am saying that we have allowed occult or pagan practices to affect our interpretation of this story.  In Jesus day, the Asian mystery cults, as well as Babylonian magic, believed that to learn the “secret name” of a spirit or deity would enable a human to have power or influence over that spirit.  They would give loads of money to “holy men” or mystics who promised that they had learned those secret names, and that if used, could grant the person power.  We need to take the whole of the Gospels in context, where Jesus’ normal routine is to silence demons, not conduct an interview.  See Mark 1:25, 1:34 and Luke 4:35, 4:41 for how Jesus would tell the demons to shut up.  If this is Jesus’ normal way of doing things, why does He change for this one time?

I believe Jesus does this because He knew what the reply would be and what it would inspire within his disciples.  The demon’s answer is “Legion, for we are many.”  A Roman legion was a military grouping comprised of around 5,000 men.  Now, I don’t know if there were 5,000 demons in this guy, but the point is there was a truckload!  You can imagine the fear it inspired in the disciples as they realized that one possessed person could actually contain this many demons inside, thus in their minds, being that much more powerful.  Yet, Jesus wants them to understand one basic fact; one demon or thousands of demons, NOTHING is more powerful than the authority of Christ!  Jesus sends them flying off into the pigs, which creates a mad stampede into the ocean.  Not even the demon backed power of Rome (Caesar and his legions) can stand in the way of the kingdom of Jesus.

The reality we will have to face is that the Bible doesn’t give us a complicated list of steps to follow in casting out demons.  It is usually as simple as Acts 16:18, where all it takes is one verse to tell us that “Paul, having become greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And it came out that very hour.”  I worry that in making it such a complex procedure, it is really saying that we don’t have enough faith in the actual power of the name of Christ alone.  Why do we need more than the blood and name of Jesus?  It sure doesn’t make for a ticket selling, drawn out  movie though.  It would be way too short and anti-climactic in the real “Paul” version.  Where is the fun in that?

I am the king of excuses sometimes.  When I was young, I saw the art of justifying what I did as a skill to be developed into a fine weapon.  Now, God is getting the last laugh.  He gave me four children.  I do love the creativity it inspires in them as they squirm and try to find a way to absolve themselves of their latest crime against humanity.  My favorites are probably 1) blame brother or sister (which is our fault since we had so many); 2) blame teacher (who is out to get me); 3) all my friends get to do that (sinister plot of parental oppression); and finally 4) I am just a sinner saved by grace.

Oh, wait a minute, that last excuse is my favorite one, not my kids.  Having an understanding of what Paul calls “the flesh” (NIV translates as sinful nature) has had an all together negative effect on my personal accountability.  It gave me the ultimate parachute for sin, “God knows I am a creature of the flesh, and until I get my glorified body, this is just who I am.”  The last main area of spiritual warfare that we are going to discuss is the flesh, or our sinful nature.  Demons are out there, the anti God worldview and culture is surrounding us, yet I think the flesh might be our toughest enemy.  Why?  It is us.

What is the flesh anyway?  Some people believe that it is a spiritual taint that is literally in our flesh and blood; a curse leading us to gross sin and immorality.  If that is what we think, then we agree with a lovely group of people we call ascetics.  Time to pick out your favorite form of self-abasement and beat yourself silly.  Beat that sin out of you I say!  Thankfully, this isn’t a Biblical understanding.  In Romans 7:5, Paul gives us a clear definition, “For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.”  Our sinful passions are the things we want to do, believe will bring us pleasure, yet lead us to death in all its forms (spiritual, emotional, and physical).

Galatians 5:19-21 breaks it down into the practical, everyday fruit of our flesh, “Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.”  We need to go back way further to see where this all began, Genesis 2-3.  God created Adam and Eve with a free will, and then told them what were the right things to do (tend the garden, multiply, etc..).  The only thing He said NOT to do was to eat of the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil”.  Why wouldn’t God want them to have a knowledge of good and evil?  Wouldn’t that help them avoid choosing evil?

Though we are made in God’s image, He held a few things back just for Himself: omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence.   What do you need in order to truly decide whether your action will be good or evil?  bad or good consequences?  You need to know the future, you need to have all the information currently available (people’s feelings, reactions, etc..), and you need to be able to see any or all ripple effects (be everywhere at once).  In other words, though God gave us free will, He didn’t give us the full ability to be able to decide good from evil.  That seems like God was setting us up for failure.

The truth is that God created us to be dependent on Him, created us to be in relationship with Him.  We have to submit our free will to God and trust Him that He knows what is best for us and for the world.  When we rebel against Him and don’t trust Him, we are choosing our “flesh” and our sinful nature is in full effect.  So, we fight against the flesh in spiritual warfare by living a life of submission to God.  We listen to the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, read and know the Word of God which teaches us, and are daily transformed into the image of Jesus Christ.  Sinful nature doesn’t make you do squat.  You are sinful nature!  Trust, obey, and submit, or choose to make the same mistake as Adam and Eve.  Apple anyone?

Watching the movie the Exorcist and then Nightmare on Elm Street, throughly traumatized me as a young kid.  You see, the church I grew up in believes that demons really do exist, and that part of spiritual warfare is to battle against them.  So, I witnessed deliverance ministry at church and heard about demons, and then watched these super scary movies where vampires would laugh as they crushed a crucifix.  If Satan had shown himself to me then, I would have needed a fresh change of undies no doubt!

The first time I can remember personally confronting demonic powers was on my first missionary trip to Costa Rica.  There was a city that had a very dark spiritual atmosphere, and both drugs and violence were an issue.  I remember getting off the bus and then waiting for our contact to pick us up.  A demon possessed girl came and stood across the street and stared at us for one hour (because of course it took an hour for someone to show up — it was a YWAM outreach you know).  Later that week, as we were interceding for the city late one night, the hair on the back of my neck stood up.  Suddenly I had a vision of a large red dragon over me and the city, and I knew it was Satan.  Needless to say, since that trip, I am a firm believer that PART of spiritual warfare is demonic oppression.

What is the main way we fight against demons?  I believe the main weapon we have is to first know what our authority and identity in Christ truly is.  All kinds of books have been written about step by step exorcisms or deliverance ministries.  We will discuss that more later.  More important is to know Scriptures like Colossians 2:13-15, “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.  He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.”  Note the past tense of the word “disarmed”, as in Jesus has ALREADY beaten all spiritual powers of darkness through the power of the cross.

Another favorite of mine is Ephesians 1:13-14, “In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.” Being “sealed” carries two connotations from its use in Greco Roman culture.  You would seal a letter or document back then to provide 1) protection- you would have to break the seal in order to read the contents; and 2)ownership- your family crest or symbol would be impressed into the seal so that as soon as you saw the letter, you would know who is was from (or who owned it).  The meaning here is that the indwelling of the Holy Spirit “seals” us as believers, meaning we have both protection and we are spiritually owned by God.

When you put these two passages alone together, the one thing Christians should never have in spiritual warfare is fear!  Neither Satan nor Freddie Krueger has power over us as Christians.  Why?  First of all, our identity is now in Christ, and Christ is clearly Lord over all spiritual forces.  Second, we have 24 hours a day, 7 days a week protection through the Holy Spirit.  In a later post, I will show how Scripture tells us that the only power Satan or demons have over us is what we give them through sin or fear.  Before being concerned about how to do deliverance, you must know who you are and what you have in Christ.

So, the next time you are tempted to say, “The devil made me do it”, remember that the devil can’t make you as a Christian do anything.  Better just to confess that you are lame and gave in to sin.  Otherwise, you imply that Jesus and the Holy Spirit aren’t powerful enough to stop Satan or protect you.  If that is true, well, that is the end of our blog series on spiritual warfare.  Game over.

I have never been the uber Puritan type to throw away all my tv’s, movies, and “secular” stuff to remove all “worldly” influence from my life.  For sure, some NWA and Easy E tape cassettes had to be burned in the fire (ok, I got rid of my Beastie Boys too).  However, there is no denying that what Paul calls the “world” in Ephesians 2 is one of the most powerful tools that Satan uses against us.  Direct demonic confrontation would probably cause more people to actually believe in God, whereas no one thinks twice before watching Jerry Springer every afternoon (or insert your tv show here that you watch and feel guilty every time).

The “world” as discussed by Paul in this context has nothing to do with the physical realm that we live in.  It is the anti-God culture and worldview that is all pervasive around us.  Neo might call it the Matrix, but unfortunately there is no Morpheus for most people, urging them to take the other pill.  John the apostle also speaks of this often in his letters, for example 1 John 2:15 -17 gives us our best definition. “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world— the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.”

What is our ultimate weapon in fighting “the world”?  The Bible.  Only through a thorough knowledge of the Bible can we recognize the parts of our culture and worldview that don’t line up with God’s truth and law.  Because most of us are taught the “world” by our parents, schools, tv, magazines, movies, friends, and society around us, we come to think of it as “normal” or just the way things are done.  When we read the Bible, it is like King Josiah in 2 Kings 22:11, who rips his clothes in grief when he realizes how far he and his culture are from God’s truth and law.  In Josiah’s time, the Bible (book of the law) had been lost for so long that they didn’t realize how bad they had become.  2 Kings 23 includes a horrendous list of sin and idolatry that had become commonplace due to the ignorance of the people.  There were even male prostitutes in the temple itself!

Revelation 17 – 18 gives us a more graphic representation of the “world” in the whore of Babylon.  Babylon is a power hungry prostitute riding the beast of evil government.  She is the evil city of the world drunk on the blood of the saints.  I believe Jesus was revealing to John how ugly man’s society and culture can be.  In chapter 18, God judges Babylon, and the greed and materialism are shown for what they are.  Our media makes places like Las Vegas and Bangkok look like vacation destinations of pleasure with pictures of pretty women, big buildings and temples, and even families going there for fun.  You won’t see too many travel brochures with pictures of disgusting, blood thirsty prostitutes riding on hideous, demonic beasts, but Revelation exposes our world for what it really is.  If what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, then whoever dives wholeheartedly into the culture of this world shouldn’t be surprised how far from God they are.

Again, I am not saying that I hope evil cities fall into the sea, nor am I telling you to go join a monastery or covenant.  What I am telling you is that a huge part of spiritual warfare isn’t just demons, it is a whole culture and worldview that creeps into our lives and distorts our view of God and morality.  The main weapon we have is the Word of God as in Hebrews 4:12, “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”  We need to keep reading and teaching the Bible to fight this plan of Satan.  Let’s rock this “world”!