RTF 4: Demonic Oppression
Christian folklore has painted a very distorted picture of what things are like in the spiritual realm. In a lot of people’s minds there is one God and one Devil, and that there is somehow an evenly-matched struggle going on between them. This has made its way into a lot of people’s thinking, with the notion being that the Devil is an evil version of the Holy Spirit: present everywhere and knowing everything, and able to do pretty much anything he wants, which he does unless stopped by God in response to a celestial voting system called prayer.
If everyone in the whole world is constantly under some temptation or other, and Satan is not omnipresent, how does he manage it? Or is he, plus a comparatively small number of demons, just involved with a few really evil people, and the rest of us are tempted by our own evil nature, our own “flesh”? (That is what used to be taught in my own church.) The reality is, Satan is more like the Godfather of the Mafia or the head of the KGB. He gets his vast numbers of minions to do all the work while he supervises. The kingdom of darkness is a hierarchy of principalities and powers, and we generally only come into contact with the footsoldiers.
That can raise the question of how many demons there actually are (as far as we understand they don’t reproduce, so there aren’t any more now that there were in Jesus’ time). Some people say we see demons at every corner. If only they were that rare! People who say that tend to think of the probability of encountering a demon in the UK is as likely as meeting the Hound of Baskervilles on Dartmoor: i.e. very unlikely and largely in the realm of fiction anyway. Whereas, it’s more like the London Underground in rush hour, where it’s difficult to do anything but be swept along by the crowd.
One way of seeing them is like germs, but I don’t go around with a bottle of Dettox. With germs, we have a natural immunity, though with some people it’s somewhat weakened, and they get whatever’s going round. We take standard precautions with things like cooking and the washing up, and we otherwise just ignore them, unless we are ill. Our natural immunity to the demonic is our conscience, but we still get infected, and there are times when we need to specifically deal with those infections in an appropriate way.
Leaving aside the way that the demonic realm is trying to herd everybody into doing evil, it is very common that we have allowed demons to sink their meat hooks into us, such that they pretty much control certain aspects of our behaviour. Compulsive habit patterns are often a sign of demonic oppression, as is sudden uncharacteristic behaviour, as in “What possessed you to go and do a thing like that?” (I believe in 16th century Olde Englishe, the word possess meant to control rather than own). Very commonly, though, demonic influence is passed down from one generation to the next, and in RTF, the deliverance that is done very often matches the same issues as in the Sins of the Fathers.
It is at this point that I feel compelled to digress and talk about dogs. I have noticed that some people only seem to be able to control their dogs by shouting at them angrily. Such people have a poor grasp of canine psychology. Dogs only do what you tell them on the basis of reward if they obey and punishment if they don’t. If you train them in this, then you can get them to do what you want even with a whisper or a just subtle hand movement. When you have reached this stage, they know what will happen if they don’t obey and what will happen if they do, and they know that you know that they know as well. The same is true of demons. Once their legal rights for being there have been removed (i.e. once sin has been confessed and forgiveness received) then they will ultimately go if told to, when we are confident that we have the authority to tell them to go. They are motivated by the threat that comes from the authority we represent, namely Jesus. If they don’t go, they know their lives will get pretty unpleasant, so it usually a matter of standing your ground and being insistent. And so shouting at them doesn’t achieve anything, except to upset or frighten the person being delivered. Also, we don’t need to put up with unpleasant manifestations: Jesus didn’t.
In RTF, the person being delivered is a much involved in the casting out process as the person doing the ministering. It’s true, that a person can be so demoniacally blocked that someone else needs to take authority on their behalf, but this is the exception rather than the rule. Having the ministry receiver actively involved trains them to do it themselves, and it also makes sense as that person will need to keep demonic forces at bay in their own lives afterwards.
If there is any training needed for deliverance, it’s being able to discern when they’re gone. In this country, it seems (in my experience) to be a primary enemy tactic to convince people that they’re not actually there, and to be completely silent when being cast out, for the same reason. Again, part of the ministry process is to train the ministry receiver to be able to discern for themselves.
As with all the other areas, I don’t do this on my own (you can technically, but I prefer not to). I start by making sure that I have forgiven and been forgiven for all things relating to the demons to be cast out. We then (out loud) bind the basic blocking demons such as unbelief, deception, passivity and victim. We refer to the demons by the characteristics and behaviours they induce, by the way.
Typically, demons co-operate in groups to create a stronghold (an ungodly way of thinking and behaving). So we deal with the group, casting out the primary demon followed by the associated demons one at a time. This is what is said:
In the name of Jesus, I renounce and break all agreement with the demons (stronghold) of ……… , including all associated demons of ……… , ……… , etc. I take authority over the demons (stronghold) of ……… and command you to leave me now based on the finished work of Christ on the cross and my authority as a believer.
And then we both continue to tell it (them) to go until we sense that they have each gone.
I have found the Peter Horrobin books on Healing through Deliverance (Foundation and Practice) very helpful in understanding about the demonic realm and how it affects us.