Demon Possession

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I'm Dylan Hamilton and with me are Michael Deere and Andrew Hudson. We had a question sent in to us about demon possessions and we will jump right in.

Are there still demon possessions today? If so, how do we identify it and what do we do?

Michael? I know this is a question that has occupied some of the saints more than others.

I think it kind of depends on your background, how you were raised, and maybe who discipled you, perhaps some of your experiences and so on.

I think for some believers, for some saints, it's not something that it comes up very often and if it does, if the subject comes up and so on, they would, some brothers and sisters, would feel pretty uncomfortable talking about it because it seems like these are not necessarily safe waters to tread, to discuss, and to say anything with any great deal of certainty.

And probably in their lives, as they observe what goes on in the world around them, as they interpret things that happen, they're most likely never to identify anything that they see as the fruit of demon possession.

They'd probably always call it something else and maybe those other things are actually present as well, but there may also be demon possession, but they would never think of it.

I would say that there's another group of the saints and they're very familiar with the language, they think of it all the time, that it's something that they assume is happening all around them, and it often becomes the explanation for what they see.

It's near the top of their list for the phenomenon that they encounter in any given day. They see something, they think, ah, probably that's the diagnosis.

Yeah, they're probably dealing with demon possession, or... And then there's plenty of folks somewhere in the middle, in terms of how often do we think about it, how comfortable are we talking about it.

Now, I think that a lot of this needs to come back to reading the

Scriptures and seeing what actually takes place, and I would say especially in the

New Testament, as you're reading through, what does the New Testament have to say about demons, demon possession, and what

Jesus and the Apostles did about it. And so I think as we look at those stories in their context, given what was going on,

I think we are better equipped to understand the activity of demons in the

Bible as recorded in the Scriptures, and then that will help us understand better what's going on in the world around us.

Now, to answer the question very simply before we dive into the Word is, does demon possession still happen?

I reckon it does. How to identify it? I don't think it's as easy as some people tell you it is, and I don't think it's impossible, okay?

And what we do about it is, I think, more or less, depends upon the

Lord and trusting in Him and doing everything we can to honor

Him, honor Him in the moment, and... And do not commune with them. No, not at all.

Give no quarter or communion, and resist, and even tell them to leave, so on and so forth.

So I'll give one little personal anecdote background for myself so that you understand where I'm coming from.

I was raised with, on the peripheral of my life, there were those who talked about demon possession and doing spiritual warfare all the time, doing like active spiritual warfare, and so on so forth.

And some of those teachers had a small effect on my dad, who was a pastor.

And my dad, as a pastor of small Baptist churches and often in out -of -the -way places, has had his handful of moments where somebody comes to disrupt, to do something rather out of normal character for anybody should be doing, and my dad rebuking them in the name of Jesus and telling them to leave and be gone.

Okay, that was far more common, I think, in a previous generation than we think about it today.

But it wasn't something that would be thought of as all the time this was happening.

Everyone around you, if you have a problem, it's probably demon possession. Now there are some churches that have that perspective, that basically, if you have a sin problem, if you have any kind of temptation, you're having trouble overcoming, if you're just having a month of bad days, if you are feeling really really low, anything like that, they would attribute to the effect of demons in your life.

And you've got to go do some sort of active, formulaic even, combat against them using the words that work.

Ceremonial magic. Well, and they would be loath to call it that. They'd be really upset if you did call it that.

But sometimes it's hard to tell the difference if it's done as a matter of rote.

Right, right. And so I think that there is a, I'm not saying that there's no such thing as demon possession,

I'm also saying that sometimes what's in the bush is poison berries, not demons. You know, there are things that happen that are bad that are not demons.

Yeah, my background, I grew up charismatic, my father was not the spiritual leader of my home, so my mother was the one who took me to congregations.

She spent probably her entire adult life, basically all the time that I couldn't even remember, until the day she, well not the day necessarily, but until the time that she died, being involved with deliverance ministries, not being the one who's delivering other people from demons, but feeling this need to be delivered from demons continuously.

She never revealed what that was about, like this, whatever this issue was, it was a very private thing for her.

I suppose it was cathartic to her after these experiences that she would have with these people who could, who claimed that they could deliver her of what ailed her in the realm of the spiritual, but it was, it could have stemmed from all sorts of things in her childhood.

She would often talk about those types of things and I don't, I don't believe it at all that believers are subject to demonic possession, but she definitely struggled with something that she wanted to be delivered from.

So I have kind of a tangential question, or I guess a categorizing question.

Would you, because I think sometimes we have people that see demon -like works or demon -like, like, like you said, there's a difference between bad things happening that aren't necessarily demons themselves.

So things like, you know, like trans textbooks or something like that, where you've got, you've got obvious, like, somebody has communed with evil things and produced something wicked, you know.

So we're not, and they could have done so without necessarily being demon -possessed, right?

You could be a worshiper of demons. Right. Without being necessarily possessed. Inhabited. Right. And so, like, trying to differentiate those things, how would you go about that?

Yeah, so trying to remember our old definition for witchcraft is demonic appropriation of alternate authority, which is the idea of,

I'm not going to, I'm not going to depend upon God's truth and his standards.

I'm going to take ownership of that myself. I will be the determination of meaning for me, which of course was the original temptation of Satan to Adam and Eve.

You don't need God to say what good and evil is. You eat of the fruit so that you can determine objectively what the knowledge of good and evil is for your own self.

So demonic appropriation of alternate authority. So you're going to find witchcraft all over the place. And of course you would call it demonic.

Right. But you don't, I wouldn't say you walk up to the book that it's in the library talking about and start trying to cast the demon out of the book.

Okay. This is, that would be superstitious. Yeah. It's animistic, isn't it? Like, yeah, it would be, it'd be animistic.

And you don't have to then realizing that this is a book full of witchcraft where they're trying to put a spell on people and they're, they're trying to deceive them into destroying themselves.

Recognizing that as one thing, being opposed to that as good. But then you also don't think, Oh, this book is exuding demonic spirits into this library and I will now cast them out of the library.

But once again, that book may need to be cast out, like literally cast out of the library, but it's not a casting out of a, if you happen to, if you happen to borrow the book and fail to return it, burn it because you burned the thing.

I don't think that you exercise a demon out of the book or out of the library by doing so. And that wouldn't be a bad idea.

But the, the, the idea that spiritual warfare is spatial does not really jive with the language of scripture.

When we come in, we think about spiritual warfare and scripture is not about territory.

It's about truth. And this becomes all the more clear in the engagement that Jesus has with those who are possessed by demons.

And as you move forward through the New Testament becomes more and more clear. The demons were there to control and see they were holding on to, yes, they were in place, they were in people, but those people were in places and there was an area that seemed to be overrun with demons.

And I think specifically in this instance, this battle over truth in a place of the slave girl who was possessed, who was being used to control the truth.

Yeah. So, and there, so we find demon possession amongst the Gentiles and we find them amongst the

Jews. We, so we, we find that in the New Testament that it's more and more in place. And Paul in Corinthians 10 talks about there's the worship of idols is the worship of demons.

It's like there is a power behind the idolatry that there is something happening when you, you go to a pagan temple, there's something happening when you go and you bow down before Vishnu and worship the evil thing.

There's something that is evil behind the, the bowing down before the statue of Mary.

Okay. Idolatry is, it does involve demons. Yes. But I'm not, by that Paul's not saying the demon inhabits the statue.

Yeah. It's not a, it's not a thing, right? It's, it's just a thing. It's a thing. It's not a being.

It's an old being. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So when we think about what was going on with spiritual warfare in the

New Testament expression, we, time and again, are told that we're, we're not battling against flesh and blood, but we, and, and the battles that we have are engaged with issues of truth.

That's why you have a shield of faith and the sword, which is the word of the Lord. There are shoes of the gospel of peace.

This is all language about truth. We have the passage in second

Corinthians 10, in which we are pulling down strongholds, anything that is lofty and raised up against the knowledge of God.

So once again, this is about truth. What, where, where folks get the idea about territory is that when you read the gospels, as Jesus is doing his ministry and doing ministry in Galilee mostly, but also he, you know, dip into Judea and go for the

Decapolis and other areas. We have all these stories of demon possession in this area.

And, and, and Jesus is casting out demons all over the place it seems.

And you got to wonder why are there so many demons in Israel?

Like what is the, there's a distinct increase when you're, when you're reading your Bible and you're like, wow, where did all these demons come from?

Yeah. It you know, there's like 400 years between Malachi and Matthew and, you know, over a couple of centuries, you know, the demons will build up,

I guess. But I mean, when you're reading through the, you don't really find prophets battling demons in, in the old

Testament. And all of a sudden it's happening a bunch in Jesus' ministry. And that seems a little bit surprising.

But one of the questions you might want to ask is why are the demons, why do they feel so at home in this?

Why are they just everywhere? And why didn't, why did not seem to be any, any success?

Now the, the idea of the Jewish exorcist, they were well -known. The Jewish exorcist had quite a profession.

But one of the things that marked the Jewish exorcist was he was always in a good living. Recurring income stream, right?

Yeah. Even though he was, there was a sense in which everyone understood the

Jewish exorcist is going to help you out. He's going to get rid of that demon. There's also a sense of, you know, he's not going to be that successful because he's just going to be doing it over and over and over again.

Maybe not with you, maybe with you, but maybe with somebody else. And, and this was just expected, it was expected that this was going to happen again, recur again, so on and so forth.

Now that's, that's not what Jesus was doing. That's not what he came to do.

And one of the reasons why demons had such a foothold and were so at home was that the leaders of that wicked and perverse generation, the religious leaders of the

Jews, were, they were, they were so well adjusted to Satan, Jesus called them his sons.

They took after their old man, right? Remember this in John 8? That's a big burn right there.

It was huge. They were saying, sons of Abraham? Yeah. No, your sons of, your sons of Satan, because you, you do his works.

You're just like him. You're liars and you're murderers and you're seeking to kill me and you're lying to my face.

And that's who you are. And they're getting along great with him. No wonder there's so many demons everywhere throughout their, throughout their major area of influence.

Now remember, if you were living in this time and maybe you were a Jew who grew up, you know, somewhere over in Galatia or maybe you grew up on the

Italian Peninsula and you were a Jew, you were very Hellenized in their, in their eyes. If you were to come visit

Jerusalem and come see the temple, everyone, the Jews there, they would consider themselves to be the most holy, most privileged because they live in that area.

And east of there, everything east of there was still considered the promised land, the holy land.

And so, but this was the area where we see the most demonic activity.

So why are they so welcome here? Well, because the, the leaders, they're not opposing

Satan. They're making him welcome. The Jesus called the synagogues the synagogues of Satan.

You know, that's his prerogative. He, he knows best. He's calling it what it is.

So when we think about all of that and then we see what Jesus is doing, he is opposing the demons, casting out the demons.

And once upon a time there was somebody was going on that the, the

Jewish leaders had to come up with some sort of theory as to why is Jesus of Nazareth so successful in casting out demons?

Aha, I know how. Yeah, how would they say the Lord of the demons, that's it. Now that's, that's pretty ludicrous, but do you hear their mindset?

If you, if you are in good with the Lord of the demons, you can control the demons. What a strange idea.

If I reflect on some Talmudic teaching, I would say that that fits, that fits. Yeah. And so Jesus says, well, but Jesus says, well, that's, that's ludicrous.

That's ludicrous. And he, he says in verse, he says verse 28 of Matthew 12, but if I cast out demons with the

Spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you. Meaning he's saying, I'm casting out demons by the

Spirit of God. That means the kingdom is here. Hi, I'm the king. The kingdom is advancing and the foes of that kingdom are being pushed back.

And then he puts a little illustration to it verse 29, or how can one enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods unless he first finds the strong man.

See what Jesus just said. He just says the kingdom of God has come upon you. Why? Because he showed up, he's arrived. And then immediately says an illustration.

It's like entering a strong man's house. The kingdom of God is coming in, like someone's entering a strong man's house.

Gonna burst in and take him. Jesus came into a strong man's house and he's gonna plunder his goods.

He's gonna, he's gonna deliver people from demons. He's gonna save them from their sins. He's going to rescue them for his kingdom.

Okay. So what is he doing as he enters the strong man's house? Well, he binds the strong man.

So he's, he's taking down the demons. He's pushing back Satan. But what did he just call, wait, wait,

Jesus, you know, the house? You're six feet. Well, what's the house in his illustration?

Israel. He just called Israel a strong man's house. Well, I'm here to bind that strong man and plunder his goods.

So what is he saying about Israel? See, these are the kinds of things that he says more than once.

And then all of his activity in casting out the demons and rescuing people is a, is a sign that he is the anointed one.

He has the power. And yeah, sure Saul killed his thousands, but David is ten thousands, right?

He, he's the anointed one. And the other ones are the jealous, the jealous ones from whom the kingdom has been torn.

And they want to kill David, don't they? Sure do. Right? So this story looks a little bit familiar.

And I think it's helpful to have that background when we're reading about all of these, you know, some people call them exorcisms, but when

Jesus is casting out demons by the power of God, what is going on here? And so a little bit later on in the same chapter, he tells a story in verse 43.

He says, when an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places seeking rest and finds none.

Then he says, I will return to my house from which I came. And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept, and put in order.

It's an idea of this unclean spirit had made a wreck of this man's life.

But once this man was delivered, the demon goes away, and this man puts his whole house in order, and the man's fine now.

But then, verse 45, this unclean spirit goes and takes with him seven other spirits, more wicked than themselves.

And they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that man is worse than the first. I imagine that this is something that the people there could maybe relate to and understand, like, yeah, you know, the exorcism didn't work well, and then the guy ends up far worse than he was before.

Maybe it's something they've seen. But Jesus is not telling them a story that they think that they've heard before.

He goes on to say, so shall it also be with this wicked generation.

So, Jesus is the one who he swept through Israel, casting out demons left, right, and center, putting everything in order.

But you know, if these people don't repent, and there's no

Holy Spirit in their lives, and doors still open, what's going to happen?

Jesus says, it's going to be sevenfold way, way worse with this wicked generation.

This is going to, this wicked generation. He's not talking about a race of people.

He's not talking about a class of people. He's talking about this wicked and perverse generation, upon whom which he declared particular judgment many, many, many times over in Matthew.

And the destruction of this generation is recorded for us in Revelation, where demonic, overwhelming demonic forces are prophesied of from the perspective of John.

So, I find, so Jesus said this was going to happen. I think it did happen. And I think John records how it happened in the destruction of Jerusalem, that there are many, many people filled with demons and tormented by demons.

And it was a, not a slang word, but it was basically a hole from hell. It was a hell hole in the actual apocalyptic sense of the word.

So, when we find Jesus dealing with demons and casting them out and so on, that's recorded for us in the

Gospels as part of the story of how Jesus is the true deliverer. Jesus is the true anointed one.

And this is in contrast to the religious Jews, who would be doing this for a price, and who were not doing it either well or right or legitimately.

And the kind of religion that they were promoting was the one in which demons were everywhere.

And that's, that's the story that we need to grab hold of as we read these texts.

I mean, the question was, does it still happen today? How do you, how do you identify what you do about it?

Right. Okay, so if it does exist, how do we know if this scenario is actually a demon possession?

Right. And then finally, what do we do about that? Yeah. And so, what we have with, what

Jesus is doing is particular to his proclamation of the Gospel. Okay, so it has to do with him saying who he is, even as much as he was healing the sick, restoring the lame, giving sight to the blind, even raising some dead people.

Also this. This was all proving who he was. And when we have the

Apostles, we have, we have them caring for the authority of Christ, showing how he is the

Lord of glory and the true King over all things, over all realms, as they go forward and preach in the Gospel of Acts.

And, you know, I call it the Gospel of Acts. But you have Paul casting out demons. I think we have maybe

Peter. I don't remember if he cast out demons or not. It'll come to me. But as you, as you look at the various instances, you see victory of the, of the

Apostles of Christ over spiritual opposition in many different arenas.

Okay. But again, this is all laying the foundation of the church. Christ the cornerstone, the

Apostles and the prophets are keyed to that cornerstone. They are the foundation of the church. Now, what does that have to do with us today?

Well, we're built on that foundation. So should we be, number one, should we be really, really concerned and scared about demons and what they might do?

No. Scared? No. No, I'm not concerned about it. Yeah. If, how do they act in the

Scriptures? Well, for the most part, they act to the detriment of human life.

To the detriment of human life. That's right. And in, in some fashion, some kind of deception is going on and usually it's really loud in your face.

And it's, and it's really harmful to human, human life. And bodies. And bodies.

So we could look around today and we see people in parades, we see people in protests, we see people doing strange things on security cameras and so on and so forth.

And you look at that and you say, I don't know if that's demon possession or not. I wouldn't be surprised if it was. Okay. That's, that's my perspective on it.

It's like, I, I've seen the stories in the Scriptures. I see what they're doing to themselves. Some of them say, well, this is a drug addiction.

I think, sure it is, but what else? Right? Yeah. But what else? It's not like only one thing can be true at a time.

And so there's a lot of stuff that can be happening at the same time. Now, what do we do about it?

I can, I can, I can possibly identify some things, but then what do you do about it? What is your responsibility in these situations?

I don't think you have a responsibility to go on a crusade and hunt down demons and cast them out of people. That's, you know,

I don't think that's your, I don't think it's your calling. I don't think that's what you're supposed to be doing. It, it occurs to me that given how long

Paul was trying to bear with the annoying slave girl who was, you know, continuing to blast out, you know, these are the servants, the most, you know, just annoying.

It took him a little while. And he finally, out of a sense of exasperation, cast the demon out of the girl.

Right. He didn't, he wasn't setting up shop as an exorcist.

That's true. The course of his work. Yeah. You see, but you see some in the scriptures who did try to make a living that way, like the sons of Sceva, right?

But they were charlatans. I think there's, I think there's some good, sincere people who perhaps are very sensitive to these things.

And they have a lot of stories to tell about how they rescued, or they were involved in the delivery of this person and that person and so on, and how these people are better off today and their lives are better because of that.

And I'm, I'm not like 100 % against all of that. I'm just saying,

I don't think that's the main thing. And it was an old saying, the main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing.

And I don't think that's the main thing. What are we supposed to do about it? I, I'll look at more of it, like in terms of self -defense.

If I've got some crazy person coming into the church service or coming at my family or so on and so forth,

I will do whatever I can to protect my family. You know, I may not have the presence of mind to recognize demon possession, but I might have a presence of mind to use self -defense.

If there's someone who is incredibly violent and screaming coming at my family, you know, I'll use lethal defense to protect my family.

That's not the, that's not the cleanest way of exercising a demon, but it still works. In the case of something a little bit different,

I might have the presence of mind to say, this seems to be really, really odd. And I'll, yeah, that happened to me one time.

I was out at the abortion mill back when they were still doing surgical abortions in Oklahoma.

And we had our signs out and we're there with some other fellow believers. And there was a lady turning left onto this side street where we were standing.

I was out of the corner and she's still in the middle of the main road and she's got her head out the window and she's screaming at me, just screaming at me.

And she turns left into the neighborhood area, you know, where the majority of the folks were standing, her head's still out the window and she's screaming at us as she drives past.

I mean, wow, like her hair wasn't even dyed and she was doing that, right? She came right past and then a woman drives back.

She drives back and she parks in the parking lot across the street and she starts screaming and cussing using the worst language you can possibly imagine.

And she's yelling at my grade school children who were out there holding signs, saying awful things to my girls, saying awful things to them.

And so I walked across the street towards her. She's still sitting in her

Jeep. And this is about two years into the COVID thing. So I walk across the street towards her and she starts screaming at me and she puts a mask on and tries to roll up her window.

But then she rolls it back down and takes her mask down so she can scream at me some more. And I realized that if I just hold my sign and move closer to her

Jeep, she's going to feel so threatened by me being six feet away from her that she'll liable go run for her life.

And then she'll stop cussing out my little children. That was my goal. Defense mechanism. Yeah. So I moved a little bit closer to her and the way she was talking, all of a sudden

I just stopped and said, how many demons do you have? And she said, I have many gods in me.

You know, it just got really weird. Wow. Yeah. And I said, and then I asked her,

I said, because, because what she was saying, the particular language she was using, I asked her,

I said, well, did the, did the government send you down here to do sex ed for my children that you're out here talking about all of these different sexual acts to my, to my grade school kids across the street?

Because that's the kind of language she was using. Yeah, sure. And all of a sudden she just kind of shut up and then she drove off.

Now there's my store. I don't know if she's demon possessed, but I would say pretty good candidate to me.

It was like, I'm going to go confront her with truth. I'm going to be open face, bright eyed, speaking truth calmly to her.

And my theory, given the language of scripture is darkness flees from light.

So that that's how I handled it. But I don't know, someone's going to say, you know, you didn't use a formula or something like that.

I don't really know what happened. I'm not an expert in that. I know it upset the people across the street who were from another church.

They thought I was, you know, an awful person for doing that, that I would, that I would tell her to stop and then run her off.

And a lot of these cases too, we're talking about like formulas, entire theologies built off of them.

And so in the formula side, I see the spirit being left out and they say like, so they say that the spirit is like the main thing behind it.

But if you are kind of determining how it's, if you are yourself determining how this is going to go, how each scenario is going to go and the formula is going to work, but you, it's like, you're almost boxing in how the spirit is supposed to be working through you in any given situation to make you wise into what to say or do.

I don't know how you guys see that, but that's what I'm hearing from the formula side of stuff. Yeah. I would say there's no prohibition against doing what the scriptures say about praying, right.

Having, having fasted. If you, if you go into a situation already suspecting that this, this is a demonic possession situation, pray and fast and then go and then commanded to leave.

Right. Even that, that seems like a reliance on the spirit and something like, instead of a man -made construct, like theological construction to, you know.

Well, yeah, because I'm just going to, you know, the scripture is going to tell me how, how should I, how should I do this

Lord? And then I read what the scripture says. Is he not pleased with that? I think, I think, yeah, have the faith of a child.

And it's overwhelming to be in the situations too, but I would say, you know, pray fast, talk a lot about Jesus. I mean, you know, and because when

Jesus got close to, you know, they're wailing. Yeah. What are you, what are you, what are you, what are you doing?

You know, and they, before the time, what are you doing to him? They wanted to get away from him. And in this sense, this also works against practitioners of witchcraft who are trying to destroy people's lives through all manner of deceit.

If you are prayerfully dependent upon the Lord, trusting in him, and you talk a whole lot about Jesus, they don't want to be around you.

You know, they can't stand you. You know, you just watch the, just watch the anger meter break. It's just pegged, just redlining.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And so, I mean, so I think the instructions are fairly, fairly simple.

I don't think that these, it seems to me that when it comes to issues of demon possession and so on, that it's,

I'm not saying it's the same thing, but it seems to me that it's on the same type of level as serious corrective church discipline.

And I would say we have way more information about that as far as what to do and how to do it than we do about what if somebody's demon possessed, but it's not something we do all the time.

Yeah. Like you're saying, one seems to be an everyday, or there is an emphasis on things that happen inside the church versus what seems to be happening on the outside of the church.

But I will say that there is a case in which sometimes churches are kind of built on the idea of, we're here to fight demons, kind of in our daily and weekly lives.

But most of this comes from a misidentification of the demonic. You can have a bad day, you can be depressed, you can be struggling with temptation, and there wasn't a demon fluttering behind those issues.

You're not played with demons, okay? And you don't need to go see somebody to especially deliver you so that you don't feel that way anymore.

Relying on this form of so -called spiritual warfare is an incredibly poor and impoverishing substitute for actual godliness and holiness and growing up in Christ.

To be told that if you do bad things, it's because the devil got the best of you. If you end up having an adulterous relationship, and you are unfaithful to your wife, and you break her heart, and you end up getting a divorce, and then your kids hate you, and then you walk away saying, yeah,

I didn't fight hard enough against those demons, did I? But I'll get them next time. It seems therapeutic to me to say that I don't have the responsibility over this, so I need somebody else to come do a work on me, and then

I'm delivered when I don't, and I don't have to do the repentant. I mean, I'm not sure that they're going to say

I don't have to repent, but it seems to be offloading some responsibility in a therapeutic manner.

And the idea is that... You got this woman that you gave to me. Well, the idea is that by fighting all these demons, like those who don't do these kinds of things, those people who don't go through their homes before they go to bed at night and cast all the demons out of the bedrooms, those who don't recognize...

When they have had three or four days full of sin, and they realize, oh man,

I've been on tilt, oh, it was a demon. I'm going to battle against the demon now.

And the idea is if you don't have that mindset, if you don't have that approach, then you really are lacking in your tool belt to be able to fight against sin.

You're handicapping yourself if you don't recognize all this demonic activity going on. If you're only just relying on these other tools, then you're handicapped.

Whereas if you have this, then you really are in the deep things and you can really fight.

However, the reverse is true. The folks that make a big deal about all the demonic activity, the fruit is not there.

The holiness fruit is not there. It's actually become excuse -making for allowances of sin.

And it's like, no, your problem wasn't that a demon tricked you. It's because you desired something over here to sin against your

Lord more than you loved your Lord. That was the problem. And you were full of yourself, full of pride.

I think it's important to remember that you're not that important, that the devil himself has come in to trip you up.

No, you're not even in his deck of playing cards, to borrow a metaphor from the

Iraqi War. He ain't hunting you down. You're not even in the top 52. So don't say, oh, the devil came and made me.

No, he didn't. No, he didn't. So yeah, you do have to fight for holiness. You do need to recognize your responsibility to fight against sin, but you're not going to get it by pretending every bad thought you have is some sort of demon that you have to fight.

Well, I think we have answered that as sufficiently as we possibly could. What do you recommend,

Michael? Well, I'm going to recommend something free. So there's a YouTube channel called

Spurgeon Sermon Series. And please tell me that they are better voice recordings than the ones that I used to listen to on sermon audio, where somebody with an absolutely dry, the driest delivery on the planet would read

Spurgeon sermons. I'm not sure. Okay. I don't know. Okay, man.

So the guy, the guy's name is Gavin Childress and this is a growing collection.

So he's, he's still doing new ones all the time. And he's, he's

British. So, and he is rather soft -spoken, but I don't know if that's the, no, that wasn't out.

It wasn't necessarily that this guy wasn't soft -spoken. It was just, oh man, just the delivery on the planet. And you know,

I would say he does a pretty good job and I really like I'm, I'm subscribed to it.

And very often a new one comes out and I like to listen to them if I'm, if I'm going on a run or maybe if I'm working on a project in the garage or something, but something that just goes on.

And I've gotten to the point now where I'm, I'm in, I'm, I'm, I've got

Spurgeon's rhythm now. I can, I can sense how he's walking through and it has a unique, he has a unique way of preaching and I can see why it was so popular, so helpful for so many.

And I'm, I'm learning from that too, but I have that Spurgeon sermon series.

So I would recommend that. All right, Andrew. During Christmas time, I was listening to Luke chapters one through,

I think we listened through four, but specifically listening to the King James version being read aloud out.

What's, what's his name again? Do you, do you know the name of the British sounding gentlemen that recorded the

King James version? Scorby? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And just how, how wonderful that was to listen to, to be reminded of the literal timing of the incarnation this holiday season.

And during Christmas time, it was, it was wonderful just to listen to it and to reflect upon it.

And it's the way he, he speaks, it was just almost like it transported you to a different time and place.

Like you were there, you know, it's, it's, it's interesting how accents sometimes can do that, but I would,

I would just recommend finding a quality audio Bible for your travels. I know a lot of times people claim they have busy lives, right?

Yeah, we all have busy lives. Some are more busy than others. Find yourself a good audio

Bible, stay in the word, even whenever you're traveling, whether it be for, for work or just general driving.

Amen to that. Well, since we're talking about supernatural things and demons and stuff, the ultimate demon hunters at Hanukkah cosmos, the podcast,

I don't know, they get weird. So I don't subscribe to everything that they say, especially the, your mom jokes, but I'm there for the your mom jokes.

I think some of those are, some of those are great, but now they, they do a good job, high production, you know, that's for sure.

Really high production. I don't know what their depth of research is like, but they do enough to where they can, they can build out a narrative episode, you know, that's an hour and a half to two hours long.

And speaking of listening to things while you travel, it's one of those things that's at more of an entertainment value while you travel.

Although they will, they will try to apply principles from the scriptures to some of these situations, whether they get it right or not.

I mean, I don't know some of the time and they are dealing with, they're kind of like applying it anachronistically where they're it's stories that they don't really know all the details to, but it's like, given, given what we know about this story, probably, probably should have done this, this, and this differently, or just start blasting, but it's a very enjoyable podcast.

And I know it's been, I know you've at least recommended it on our podcast before a while back, but since we're talking about demons,

I thought I'd go ahead and repeat that. Michael, what are we thankful for? Well, I'm thankful for it being birthday season at my house.

We have two in December, two in January, and two in February, all six of our children. And, and so it's, it's very busy, but every time we're turning around, we're celebrating and we're also reflecting, remembering all the blessings.

And that the older my children get, the more they are very much joining in and perpetuating.

Do you remember when, and telling those stories and laughing and, and just kind of, they just add exponentially to the celebration as we rejoice over the life of each one of, each member of our family.

So. Amen. Andrew? I'm thankful to the Lord that he has sustained me to this point in my academic pursuits.

You know, since I retired from the United States Air Force in 22, he has saw fit to have it to where I get to go to school and they pay for it.

This is my final semester coming up and I thank the Lord for sustaining me to this point.

I look forward to the things that will come of it. Amen. I'm thankful for your preaching,

Michael. I know what, some of the stuff you've hammered home on over the past few years, we've done, we've gone through witchcraft stuff,

Sons of Issachar, like things that really come to mind. But the last like two or three years, we've been talking about the covenants and we've been talking about the newness of the new covenant.

The, the, the, someone better than Moses has come, someone better than David, someone better than Solomon, all these, all these things, it's better, better, better.

And I'm thankful for that preaching because I started to be around other people of, of different views on the covenants.

And I'm able to like, kind of, it feels like it's like an exponential growth on being able to take from what, what you've said and sermons at church and then spill it on other people and then go, what, what?

I haven't heard that. Like, what are you talking about? So it's kind of like a, like an icebreaker thing. It reminds me of a, there's this, there's this joke that I've heard recently about talking to women about sevens.

And the question it's, it's weird, but you'll get it. They, the question they, they, and this is single men talking to single women, by the way.

So it's, it's not a pickup thing, but it is a way to get a woman to talk to you.

And they say, how many buildings, buildings fell on 9 11? And the women almost, almost to a woman says two.

And he says, oh really? And so she starts to like go, what, what happened?

And so she looks it up. She Googles it. She starts asking her friends. And then the conversation about building seven comes up.

And then what happens is she takes that information and she goes and tells everybody she knows that there was a third building that fell.

And it, it feels like that where it's like the talking to them about sevens where they haven't heard this before.

And then virality. Yeah. Oh man. And it just like spreads because it blows their mind.

But seeing that in action and knowing that it's come from your preaching at church all by the

Lord's providence and hand, I am, I'm very thankful for that. And to, to know that I, I have the opportunity to like kind of pass that along.

Cause it's going to go to my kids too. Right? Like it's like, it's not just like other, it's going to go to my family and then their, their families hopefully thrown up treasures.

Oh yeah. I mean that it's such a blessing from the Lord to see that happen. So I'm very thankful for your preaching and the

Lord's work through it. And that wraps it up for today. We are very thankful for our listeners and hope you will join us again as we meet to answer common questions and objections with happy, not read.