How Demons Can Cause Negative Thinking - Derek Prince
My description of demons is persons without bodies. It's very important to realize you're dealing with a person. In the early years of my ministry I suffered from intense depression that would come over me and rest upon me like a dark cloud and shut me in, keep me from communicating, and I struggled with it, I did everything, I pray, I fast it, I reckoned myself day and I knew the scriptures. And the more I prayed and fasted the worse had got. And I had no remedy, and one day I was reading Isaiah chapter 61 and it said in place of the spirit of heaviness the garment of pray. And the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said that's your problem, a spirit of heaviness of depression.
And when I knew that I was dealing with a person and not myself. You see I've been blaming myself for all of this. When I discovered it was another person, I was eighty percent of the way to victory. And actually I understood by revelation that it was a familiar spirit, that is a spirit that follows a family up, and I realized the same spirit had affected my father for many years.
So all I needed was one on the scripture. Let me share it with you, Joel 2:32, it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be delivered.
I called on the name of Jesus and I was delivered. This thing it was like a heavenly vacuum cleaner came down over my shoulders and just sucked this thing out. And I had struggled with it for years until I recognized it was not myself, it was another person seeking to afflict me. And I want you to understand when you once realize you're dealing with a person who is not yourself, you're about 80% of the way to deliverance.
Now as I understand it and I let me say I've been dealing with demons for more than 30 years. I first got involved in 1963. Some people said well brother Prince will soon give it up. He'll change his doctrine. I have to say at the age of 80, I haven't given it up and I haven't changed my doctrine. I tell you one reason it's scriptural and number two it works.
I wonder of you three objectives that demons have. Number one to torment and torture. They are the torturous. Number two to keep you from knowing Christ as Savior. And number three if you come to know Christ as Savior then to keep you from serving Him effectively.
Now we have to distinguish between two things what's called the flesh and demons or evil spirits. The flesh is the old carnal nature that every one of us had inherited from Adam. All of us are descendants from Adam, and Adam did not beget any children until he was a rebel. And every descendant of Adam has the nature of a rebel in him that's the old man. Now the other thing that we deal with is evil spirits, and it's important to know what you're dealing with because the remedies are completely different.
See I was dealing with the spirit of heaviness and I was trying to deal with it as if it were the flesh. I was trying to crucify it because that's the remedy for the flesh but you can't crucify a demon, nor can you cast out the flesh. You have to know what you're dealing with.
A man came to me once and he said brother Prince I want you to count this demon out of me. I said what's your problem and he began to tell tell me his difficulty in relating to his wife. I said I don't think I can cross that out. It's not a demon, it's your flesh and in nature. You have to crucify it. So we need to know am i dealing with my flesh or am i dealing with a demon.
And I will give you a little list of characteristic activities of demons.
Number one they entice. There's not a single person here above the age of six who has not at some time being enticed to do evil. Then often it comes in words, 'When you see that nice gold pencil there, pick it up, nobody'll know.' If you dropped your pencil they would do it to you. Anything that comes to you in words comes from a person. So you know that enticement comes from a person, a demon.
Number two they harass or I think when say in English Haris. I'm bilingual and I have to remember which language I'm speaking. Anyhow harass so Harris that's what they do. I have this little example in my mind it's just not directly based on any single experience.
There's this businessman. He's had a terrible day in the office, everything went wrong, the air conditioning failed. His secretary didn't timed his letters right and then he got in the car to go home and he got in a jam in the motorway and he spent an hour sitting in his car, I mean, it's all the fumes. And finally when he gets home his wife hasn't got supper ready and the children are running around screaming.
And at that moment as they say in America he blows his stack, he loses control, he begins to shout and scream. And that demon of anger that has been following him around all day, slips in, and after that he's a slightly different person. From after that at times something comes over him and he wounds the people he loves most, his wife and children. And his wife looks at him from time to time and sees something in his eyes she never saw before. And then he's repentant and penitent and he says, 'I'm sorry I don't know what made me do it.'
What we do know what made him do it, was the demon of anger. See it had harassed him or harassed him and in the moment of weakness, slipped in.
Then demons torment. They are the tormentors. They torment spiritually. With the suggestion, 'God doesn't love you, you're not really saved.' That's a common form of torment. They torment emotionally with fear. They torment physically with all sorts of horrible things like arthritis and so on. They are the tormentas and Jesus saying, 'Listen, if you don't forgive your fellow believer, God will deliver you to the tormentist.' Who are they? The demons. A lot of Christians in the hands of demons, because they've refused to forgive some other person.
Then demons compel. They make us do things we don't really want to do that some of the things they compel you to do a really comical. I had a letter after the deliverance service from a woman aged 25 and she said, 'For the first week in my life that I can remember. I haven't been biting my nails.' What made her bite her nails? A demon. Can you believe that? I know it's true.
And then demons enslave. They make you slaves. You see, people can sin and stop sin if they decide. Well, since a man may get drunk and then to say I want get drunk and he doesn't drink anymore. He's sinned but he's not enslaved, but an alcoholic is a man who can't stop drinking, he is in slave.
Now if you put compel and in slave together, you get the word addiction. And in my personal opinion almost every addiction of any kind is demonic. And there are a lot of respectable addictions, some very unrespectable, some respectable. But if you are addicted, you have a problem. And your problem I think in 90% of the cases is a demon.
Demons defile, they make us feel dirty and unclean. They project evil impure images and thoughts and words into our minds. And I've talked with people at various times who said just when I'm getting closest to the Lord when I really want to worship Him these horrible things come into my mind and I said you can be sure it's a demon. Anything that wants to keep you from worshiping God is a demon.
Then demons deceive. They are behind all forms of religious deception Paul said in first Timothy chapter 4 and the last times some will depart from the faith, that's Christians, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons. And believe me my dear brothers and sisters there are a lot of different deceiving spirits with doctrines that are demonic and they're very near to all of us.
Finally demons make people weak or sick or tired or kill them. I dealt with a woman once, this is a remarkable situation, 72 different demons came out up. She was a respectable woman she was a registered nurse. She was charismatic Pentecostal but she had 72 demons. I didn't count them but there was a woman making little note of the names. And in the middle of this it lasted five hours, she said, 'Oh I'm so tired I can't go on I can't take any more.' And I thought well poor woman she really has time and then the launch would meet that's not the woman that's the demon. I said, 'You spirit of tiredness come out of this woman,' and it said, not the woman, it said, 'That's right, she's always tired, she's tired when she gets up, she's tired when she's going to bed, she's too tired to read the Bible, to tired to pray.' When that spirit came out of her she was no longer tired. We finished the deliverance. Demons make you go to sleep. There's a spirit of slumbers referred to both in the old and the new testament.
Have you ever considered that you can sit up till 2:00 a.m. watching something that you probably shouldn't be watching on the television, but if you decide to read your Bible you go to sleep in 10 minutes, is that right? That's not natural. There's something there, that doesn't mind you're watching television. In fact probably wants you to watch it but does mind you're reading the Bible or praying.
All right those are some activities of demons. Now the main areas in which they operate. I have to give this in a very condensed form you understand I'm writing a book about it. Please pray for me. It's not an easy book to write.
I discovered about 10 different kinds of spirits or demons mentioned in the Old Testament and about 20 in the new that's 30, but that's just a little sampling there are hundreds of different kinds of demons.
The main area that they affect I believe is emotions and attitudes and behind every negative emotion and attitude there is a corresponding demon.
That doesn't mean you've got the demon but the means of the demons they're trying to get you. For instance you can get angry and it's not a demon it's just you, it's your flesh, but if you get angry and can't control yourself and get angry when you don't want to get angry, that's a demon.
Let me give you a list of some of the communist names that I've dealt with, and another thing about demons is they operate in gangs. When one gets in it opens the door for the next. And if you find certain demons, you can always look for their friends. Let's take one pride, rebellion, rebellion almost always follows Pride. And then whichcraft, because first Samuel 15 verse 23 says rebellion is as the sin of wichcraft. Wherever you found rebellion look for wichcraft.
The great historical example of this is the young people of the United States in the 1960s. Almost a whole generation went into rebellion and almost every one of them ended in the occult, because rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft. I thank God I saw scores of them gloriously saved and delivered, but I learned the lesson.
Then one of the communist spirits as the spirit of fear. Paul says God has not given us a spirit of fear, so it doesn't come from God, but fear is something that we easily all of us give way to. And it's followed by other things like rejection, one of the commonest emotional problems in the church and in the world today is rejection. It's a sense of feeling unworthy, unwanted, nobody really loves me.
I'm on the outside looking in and I would say in my observation at least twenty percent of professing Christians today that I've met need deliverance from rejection. It's really due to the breakup of the family, because the thing that gives a child the sense of security is the love and the care of a father and where that is missing that's something that cries out, 'I don't know who I am. I don't feel secure. I don't know that people really love me.'
I want to tell you one thing, Jesus really loves you, but the devil will do his best to convince you it's true of everybody else but not you.
Thank you.
Source:
- Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. - (John 14:6).
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