Demonization Discussion with 3ABN | Dr. Conrad Vine

Conrad what is you're using a word that I've never heard used in the way in which you're using it so I want you to explain the root of it and what do you mean about demonization well that's a great question Shelly and uh we use the word demonization in a colloquial way in the west we say I will demonize somebody it means I make you out to be the worst possible of people in society but as a missionary we use the word demonization based on how the New Testament uses the words dionisi it's a verb and it's normally used in the in the passive sense which means to be demonized and uh to be demonized in the New Testament um we find there are basically three levels of of demonization and the first is harassment and a good example of that as an Adventist we're familiar with um Revelation 12:17 where Satan makes war on the remnant of God's children and so Satan attacks the children of God in various ways and then there is oppression and oppression takes place where um maybe through a cherished sin you give access to Satan to control a part of your life and that does happen among Christians and then you have full-on possession and I've never seen possession among a born again Christian someone whose life is filled with the Holy Spirit but I have seen it among animists Hindus and Buddhists many of whom will consciously invite a spirit to possess them uh because the attraction of the occult whether it's in the subcontinent of India and so forth or whether it's in America today is you gain access to knowledge and power but without any moral accountability for how you use it and so the occult um if you become a horoscope raing horoscopes or palm reading or fortune teller in the west it gives you money um whereas in other parts of the world it gives you Social Power because people are afraid that you know all of their secrets and will speak them out in public so when we use the word demonization as missionaries it's in a very specific New Testament way um based on what we see in the New Testament and how the New Testament uses the verb daon isai to be demonized okay harassment oppression and possession and you don't have to worry if you're filled with the Holy Spirit greater is he who's in you 1 John 4:4 than he who's in the world you don't have to worry about being possessed but we are seeing more and more people who've been through traumatic events they may be uh they believe in Jesus they've asked God to set them free so what causes demonization let's break that down so we've got harassment we have oppression and we have the possession possession so what causes so there are multiple CA causes of demonization that we see in the world today okay uh the number one cause among Christians is having a a cherished or a a private sin some area where you have not surrendered to the lordship of Jesus Christ in your life and uh in the west the number one cause is actually pornography and that is is a major problem among Christian men and also among Christian women increasingly uh we also see um a major cause of demonization or harassment is a history of childhood abuse AB yes and the the childhood abuse can actually lead to a fracture of the personality in the child yes it can also lead to the child believing lies about itself um an adult will say lies to a child and they will believe those lies and those are destructive lies and those are lies from Satan and when you act on the lies of Satan as if they are true they come true in your life just as when you act on the Promises of God they come true in your life that's good and then you also have um engagement with the occult and there are many many people in the west who are connecting with the occult sometimes intentionally maybe they play with an ouija board at a college um party um maybe they have their horoscope drawn up maybe they have their palms read uh fortune tell at a County Fair um but there are other people who have more uh intentional connection with the occult um so uh entry-level occultic activities might be Ouija boards tarot cards horoscopes uh medium level uh engagement with the occults might be visiting a medium I and uh having a seance and the channeling of a spirit like we have with Saul and The Witch of Endor and then you have very uh you might say Elite levels of occultic activity which is really um Satanic ritual abuse of small children and the Satanic ritual abuse of small children is the worship of Satan through the abuse of children and destroying them for life and so uh but in my experience as a pastor here in North America we find that uh among many Christians it's that entry level of occultic activity where they've they've unwittingly often allowed something into their life or into their home and they didn't think anything was serious at the time but from that moment on there is a shadow in their life that they cannot get rid of and they they know there's a shadow but they can't quite put their finger on it uh we also find that a lack of forgiveness um can also lead to harassment from Satan um so again if you've experienced a trauma in your life at the hands of somebody else a lack of forgiveness Satan will play on that and he will direct your thought thoughts and tempt you to think uh ill will towards somebody and so the cure for that is actually repentance and confession and forgiveness um even if the other person doesn't know about it because in so doing um you're closing the door for Satan to attack you in that certain way and another um Factor we see increasingly in America today are ancestral spirits and with ancestral Spirits um a a let's say Your Grandparent was a medium or you say your maternal Grandma was a medium and uh she may in order to get her power she may do a deal with with a demon that says my family line is devoted to you from now on but the family doesn't know about it and so what happens is the spirit will often jump from generation to generation missing a generation so a spirit will reveal itself as a familiar Spirit to the grandma but when the grandma dies the spirit will attach itself to the granddaughter who has no knowledge of this who may be in a baptized Christian family and being raised a Christian and then suddenly um things start going profoundly wrong in that young lady's life and so we talk in the west about cursed families like the kennedies some families that everything just seem that can go wrong does go wrong um but when you work in West Africa you see very powerfully these these ancestral spirits and people will often uh live in a state of despair because they believe their family is under the control or the curse of a given spirit and so as we have a more Multicultural Society in America um people are coming in from around the world and they're bringing with them ancestral spirits and so in the early church from the 2nd to the 4th centuries because people were coming from a pagan background the church would often have a ritual service of Deliverance before they were baptized wow to make sure that they weren't bringing the garbage of the past into the church um we see in Mark chapter 1 and when Jesus is preaching there is a man sitting in the synagogue with a spirit and he's listening to the preaching he's listening to the reading of the Torah he's listening to the hymns of praise to Jehovah God and at the end he cries out to Jesus what have you to do with us Jesus Son of the most high God and here you have an example of a man with a spirit sitting in the synagogue listening to Jesus and the spirit doesn't appear to be troubled and so there are many causes of demonization that we find in our world today some are intentional some are unintentional and some are completely unknown to the victims because it may be an ancestral spirit that has attached itself to them ministered with people one one family that uh they before they became Adventists they bought their children the whole Harry Potter series and they were playing around with white magic thinking it was you know charms and all of these things were nothing and then they started having a lot of problems and then we had a couple two doctors that came down from India and you know what two medical doctors administ never had a problem been married 20 years and all of a sudden I'm going to say this so don't write in because this is what happened all hell broke loose in their their life and they came down to a camp meeting to have JD and I pray for them and as we were praying in a season of prayer all of a sudden I was impressed to ask them what have you recently received from a relative and her grandmother in India had left her in her will a very expensive ring but the light went on remember it was like yeah it's after we brought that ring or received that ring into our home that everything went crazy and come to find out the grandmother was a spiritist yes yeah and I mean and what what Tak it a step further which brings in kind of you got to be kidding is that said you know that the bed would move it would bounce around everything stuff would go flying off of and M and if that is in in a western World especially in a naive Western World I guess you would say that seems like oh you're kind of making this up well one of Satan's greatest victories in the west is for to make people think he's just a figure of fun he's a cartoon figure and that is why when people experience the symptoms of demonic attack they are almost embarrassed to talk to anybody about it because they think people will think I'm crazy and so they don't know who they can open up to about these challenges in their lives and uh when I work with people who complain of these kind of symptoms um in the west I use a questionnaire that goes through a very very personal inventory of their past and I have long ceased to be surprised at how many yeses I get from practicing Christians there's a lot of stuff junk in their past and you might say this way um if you want to get rid of the rats in your basement you first need to get rid of the garbage and if there's no garbage the rats have nothing to feed on so you can try and kill the rats but as long as there is garbage the rat more rats will keep coming and so part of um Deliverance for people who experiencing this kind of harassment is cleaning up the spiritual garbage for the P from the past and uh asking forgiveness and confession of sins and asking for the Holy Spirit to seal that part of my life so that Satan no longer has the right to attack me in a certain aspect of my being yeah and if if once again go through the difference between harassment oppression and possession okay so uh Revelation 12:17 says that Satan was Wrath with the woman went off to make war with the remnant of her children and so we know that Satan attacks God's children in order to discourage them and to destroy their faith he wants to drag as many as he can to Eternal destruction and so this might mean as simple as um if you have an Evangelistic series as a pastor uh the week before my computer dies my car breaks down the roof develops a leak my daughter goes to hospital with a broken wrist something like that where everything that could go wrong in the family goes wrong and it all happens in the three days before an Evangelistic series and you realize that Satan is trying to distract me and discourage me and give me other things to focus on rather than praying and fasting which you do before an Evangelistic series like um Elijah or John the Baptist um then uh I say one thing we always warn people when they come to work here yes it seems that people who've never had really harassment from the devil they make a commitment to come to work here and all of a sudden everything that can go wrong goes wrong Absolut and they're like what's going on and I always warn people before we hire that's absolutely true and and Satan does he just throws these roadblocks in your way yeah and when you realize this is what is happening the solution is to turn to God and ask for deliverance and for God to rebuke the attacks of Satan and turn them back upon him and to turn what was intended for a curse into a blessing but you know what so funny I can be talking to someone on the phone they're sharing their trouble and I'll be going you're under spiritual attack this is spiritual warfare well you need to put on the full armor of God but you know what we're slow sometimes to recognize it in our own lives and I had that experience last year that I had a very bad week and it was just like what's going on and I finally said to the Lord what's wrong with me Lord and I realized it was a spiritual attack I just wasn't using spiritual warfare if you want resources for spiritual warfare you can go uh Conrad is graciously brought this information to us and it is called set free in Christ .org we encourage you to visit that website let me let me ask this and this is uh maybe spirituality 101 okay ask for deliverance MH it's easy to sit here and say it's you're being attacked intellectually you know that I'm being attacked and you know that you can go to the creator of the universe and you know that you can say Lord please in the name of Jesus say whatever you know uh deliver me from this but it seems like oh that won't work mhm now what's not lining up here does this guy not have enough Faith or what how uh cuz that's ask a lot MH well that's a really good question so um how we work with people the first thing Jesus taught us in Matthew 6 in the Lord's Prayer where he said uh and lead us not into temptation but Deliver Us from Evil Vil but the evil he's talking about is not rain on your wedding day uh the from Evil is literally from the evil one so Jesus if because we pray the Lord's Prayer on a daily bra daily basis give us this day our daily bread therefore as we pray the Lord's Prayer on a daily basis we ask our heavenly father on a daily basis for deliverance from the attacks of the evil one which implies Satan's trying to discourage us and attack us on a daily basis so the first thing is we lift our eyes to God and we put the battle in him his hands amen secondly in the book of Acts chapter 19 the the people of of Ephesus they burnt their books of magic in the Public Square and we call that a house cleansing service and so in Deliverance Ministry we will walk through somebody's house look in their draws we look at their internet viewing history look at what they're feeding their mind with in particular their videos their music and it's surprising what you find there may be trinkets there may be a lord Buddha from Thailand there may be a face mask from Haiti from a trip there may be a trinket like from India like you mentioned earlier and so anything that has no place in God's kingdom we say that needs to be taken out of your home and out of your life and see some people absolutely think that is ridiculous but trust me if we are naive in the western world if you visit in Africa or uh actually in Louisiana you can go down there where they're practicing spiritism there is definitely you bring home some Trophy and you think that this is just an object of art but there are but there are spirits attached and then the third thing so there's a house cleansing and in the Old Testament whenever a good King like Josiah or Hezekiah came to the throne the very first thing that the book of Chronicles tells us is that they would cleanse the land they tore down all the alars they destroyed the high places they ground up the the sacred places so there was no Spirit Worship paraphernalia left in the land and so when we work with somebody we want their home and their life to be cleaned of any um entry points for Satan and then there is confession and asking the Holy Spirit to fill my house with your presence and then the third thing uh that we encourage people to do is put on the armor of God am and and this is you know there's the shield of Faith um but I just want to focus for a few minutes on the sword of the spirit which is the word of God now you know we have before us this is the word of God um and Jesus is the word of God but um the word that is used most often in the New Testament is logos that's the word word so in the beginning was the logos and the logos was with God and the logos was God but the Apostle Paul doesn't use the word logos this verse it's Rama exactly which is the spoken word of God yes and which means that when Satan attacked Jesus Jesus says it is written and he spoke truth back to Satan yes and every temptation is not a matter of power it's matter of Truth and falsehood every temptation is a lie because Satan says if you do this it will be good for you in this way that's the essence of every Temptation and so um we respond to falsehood with truth but the only 100% thing true in my life that I know of is the word of God because it's his word and so Jesus when he modeled for us how to respond to Satan's attacks he said it is written three times there in Matthew's gospel and so when we come under Satan panic attack Satan may say how can God love you because you're such a rotten sinner look what you did last week and therefore if you if I know that Satan attacks me with full skilt like that I will memorize two or three verses dealing with God's promises of forgiveness and when Satan attacks me I'll say it is written and I'll say it out loud and I'll quote a promise about forgiveness if Satan attacks me with um with a sense that um I I've maybe I've been brought up in a terrible family I have no sense of Love around me and no real relationships and I feel very Alone um I may may quote him talk about the promises about the coming of the comforter the Holy Spirit and so each of us in our individual lives we know our character weaknesses and we know our past and we know how Satan attacks us he knows which buttons to press and so quoting back to Satan when those buttons are pressed particular quotes from scripture that are the truth of God to that sat to the LIE from Satan it drives Satan away and then the other very important aspect to Deliverance Ministry is connecting somebody with with a brother or sister who is an accountability partner and who helps them have a life that is filled with the holy spirit because Jesus taught in the gospel of Matthew that if a spirit is driven out it wanders in in waste places and it comes back and finds the house where it used to reside empty and swept clean and it goes and finds seven more Spirits more wicked than itself and invites them to come and live in that person and then Jesus says and that person's latter condition is worse than the former and what that story teaches us is that it's not just enough to command a spirit to leave somebody's life um you need to fill that person's life with the life of the Holy Spirit that's a life of witness a life of worship a life of Bible study and prayer a life of Christian Fellowship a life of shining for Jesus in your community um because when your life is filled with the Holy Spirit Satan can't get access back into your life again amen and he can't do what he used to do to you so Deliverance Ministry isn't just a one-off event it's it's it's starting someone on a lifelong journey of of meaningful discipleship amen and what we find in the west is that um people may come and they say over there is the kingdom of Satan and over there is the kingdom of God but I I want to be free of Satan's attacks but I want to live in this neutral No Man's Land known as a secular life but the reality is there is no secular spot in in humanity there is either the kingdom of Satan or the kingdom of God and so when somebody comes and says I would like to be set free from Satan's attacks as a pastor the ethical thing to do is to say well Jesus can be the savior in this situation but do you want him to be Lord of your life as well because if you just want to be set free without filling your life with the spirit and being a meaningful disciple those spirits will come back and make your latter condition worse than the former so Deliverance Ministry is about discipling people into a meaningful Walk With Jesus being filled with the spirit and living a life of of a vibrant discipleship what about oppression because this can oppression can happen to a Christian absolutely yes and let's talk why so a classic example is found in Matthew chapter 16 okay where from verse 21 um Jesus has been repeatedly teaching the disciples that he's going to go to Jerusalem be handed over to the chief priests and the Gentiles he'll be he'll be killed then he'll rise again and this conflicts with what Peter's vision of the kingdom of God is all about and and so Peter takes Jesus aside in verse 22 of Matthew 16 and begins to rebuke Jesus and uh in the synoptic gospels Matthew Mark and Luke whenever the verb rebuke is used it's normally used of Jesus rebuking a spirit and so when Peter rebukes Jesus he's suggesting that Jesus is speaking under satanic influence and Jesus turns to Peter and turns the whole thing around and says no you get thee behind me Satan and so what we see there is that when a disciple of Jesus knowingly willfully deliberately contradicts a plain teaching of Jesus they are allowing Satan to speak through them it may be unwitting it may be unintentional but in this case here because Peter was contradicting a plain teaching of Jesus and saying no no no what you say Jesus is not correct what I say is correct then Peter was allowing Satan to speak through him in that in that moment and so boy the oppression really came on him didn't it it really came on him and and Peter didn't realize this but Jesus recognized that when I as a Christian willfully knowingly deliberately intentionally go against the plain teaching of Jesus I am allowing Satan to operate in that part of my life at that moment so that for the first time I understand then when G uh Peter ended up denying Christ three times he had already given access to the demons and I want to tell you one thing real quick cuz we're talking about Satan Satan is a single being Satan's not omnipresent God's not worried about Satan's power but when we mention Satan we're talking about and his demonic forces because he has all these fallen angels that he leads and he can assign one to you people talk about their Guardian Angel but if you open the door to Satan he can sign assign a demonic Angel to you and so um this often happens among Christians today when they have a cherished sin in their life and and often times you know I live a publicly Christian life but there's something happening in my life that has no part in God's kingdom uh it may be that I have a violent Spirit towards a spouse it might it may be that I am I'm verbally abusive towards a member of my family it may be that I'm dishonest with my finances you know there's a hold that Satan has over some aspect of my life like you said earlier pornographies probably pornography is the number one issue that I see in America today among Christians and it's men and women who are both affected by this and then what happens is you hear phrases like I don't know what I was thinking of or I don't know what came over me or I don't know I found myself doing something or when I'm hungry angry lonely or tired you know halt HT this is my go-to self-medication and I hate it but I find myself doing it and then it ends up with acting out sexually in in immoral ways and that leads to childhood sexx abuse maybe of minus adultery fornication and things like that and so when we have a cherished sin in our life or when we go against the the the plain teaching of Jesus Christ um we're allowing Satan to speak through us and to take control of that aspect of our life and so the good news of the Gospel is that uh is that Jesus has never lost a battle with Satan you when there was war in heaven in Revelation 12 Satan lost and was cast out and when there was The Showdown in the wilderness in Matthew 4 beginning of jesus' ministry Satan was driven away in defeat and then Jesus was challenged by the Pharisees he said it's by the spirit of be elub that you cast out demons and Jesus said no you can't plunder a strong man's home unless you first uh tie up the strong man and the message is that in the showdown in the wilderness Jesus overcame Satan and from that moment on he would go around setting free Satan's captives and then on in Gethsemane Jesus overcame Satan on on Resurrection morning he overcame the power of death and when Jesus comes again we see in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 that at his coming the forces of evil will be destroyed amen and in Revelation chapter 20 Satan will go into that Lake of Fire and I actually it may sound strange but and I know you've seen this a lot when you see human suffering and you see people struggling with cancer and divorce and disease and depression the idea that the source of all evil will one day be consumed in that fire to me is good news oh amen that there will be no more human suffering it's just amazingly good news it's not just I get to go to heaven but all human suffering comes to an end and so part of the good news of Jesus Christ is he's never lost a battle with Satan and he will destroy Satan once and for all um in that book of Revelation chapter 20 and so I look forward to that and because Satan knows that he's angry but when we if we focus on Satan we become discouraged if we turn our eyes to Jesus and we look in faith to him he gives us victory in these challenges of life conr speak to something because it's interesting we seem to have two different kinds of phone calls and that is people who are experiencing uh demonic harassment or oppression but there are some people and there's even some Churches out there that preach that mental illness is demon possession and we want you to be assured it's not not but how do you know the difference because sometimes it manifests itself in the same way MH that's a very very commonly asked question and I think it's really important not to assume that somebody is experiencing demonization because if you just say to somebody oh you're demonized or you have a demon or you're possessed many people just give up the battle then because they say I can't fight against a demon and so in 1 Corinthians chapter 12 and verse 10 um the the Apostle Paul writes that one of the gifts God gives his church is the discernment of spirits and so the ability to discern between a mental a genuine mental health disorder or a case of demonization is actually a gift from God and so um you know I I had a battle with depression about 15 years ago and it was caused by a traumatic life event it led to depression depression was caused by internalized anger and lack of forgiveness and I knew what the problem was the solution was to forgive and when I eventually did God lift my depression lifted it wasn't that I was experiencing demonization but uh there are common mental health problems that have nothing to do with demonization um anxiety or panic attacks are two classic examples and so we cannot bipolar bipolar yes get and uh some people are abused as children they have multiple personality disorders that's a defensive mechanism to cover the pain inside and so we cannot assume that mental health the problems are automatically demonization but that does not mean that some cases of mental health are not caused by demonization which is why we need the gift of discernments to figure out what's going on here so again exploring someone's family history does the family have a history of mental illness um has this person engaged in activities that may have harmed the Mind drug or alcohol use in particular can actually affect how somebody thinks particularly the modern marijuana