Can a Christian be demonized? If you've ever wrestled with this question or the concept of spiritual warfare, then this episode is for you. I, Logan, want to take you on a deep dive into the realm of spiritual warfare and deliverance. We'll grapple with the differences between cessationism and continuousism - two theological perspectives that will expand your understanding of faith. If you've ever wondered why people are drawn to supernatural forces outside the church, we'll tackle that too. Plus, we'll challenge the notion of macro-evolution with some fundamental apologetics.
Ever heard of a deliverance ministry? This episode will unravel the mystery behind it and detail the role it plays in liberating Christians from internal and external forces of oppression. We'll also explore how Satan can leverage our roles and responsibilities to attack us. But fear not, armed with the power and authority of Jesus Christ, we can overcome such oppression. The conversation doesn't end there; we'll also discuss the implications of Jesus' resurrection and the critical role the Holy Spirit plays in our spiritual lives. This journey is sure to challenge your beliefs and deepen your faith. So, let's ignite the Fire Dove together.
Can a Christian be demonized? If you've ever wrestled with this question or the concept of spiritual warfare, then this episode is for you. I, Logan, want to take you on a deep dive into the realm of spiritual warfare and deliverance. We'll grapple with the differences between cessationism and continuousism - two theological perspectives that will expand your understanding of faith. If you've ever wondered why people are drawn to supernatural forces outside the church, we'll tackle that too. Plus, we'll challenge the notion of macro-evolution with some fundamental apologetics.
Ever heard of a deliverance ministry? This episode will unravel the mystery behind it and detail the role it plays in liberating Christians from internal and external forces of oppression. We'll also explore how Satan can leverage our roles and responsibilities to attack us. But fear not, armed with the power and authority of Jesus Christ, we can overcome such oppression. The conversation doesn't end there; we'll also discuss the implications of Jesus' resurrection and the critical role the Holy Spirit plays in our spiritual lives. This journey is sure to challenge your beliefs and deepen your faith. So, let's ignite the Fire Dove together.
Alright, here we go. So I got the first episode out of the way. I've had way too much caffeine, and welcome to FireDove. This is Logan.
Speaker 1:So in the first episode we talked about prayer. We talked about how important that is and how that is our main mode of warfare, because we know in Ephesians that we fought not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against spirits or against rulers of darkness that are. We know that our enemy is not a physical person, and one of the things I like about spiritual warfare so much is the fact that, once you become more aware of these influences that people have, it's a lot easier to love someone when you're like, oh, there's a spirit behind that, and then you can separate the spirit from the person. And what we're going to talk about today has a lot to do with more just defining terms as we start to talk about spiritual warfare and deliverance specifically and you know, is it for today and all the important aspects that come with this particular ministry. So, yeah, i spilled the beans, yes, it is for today And, with that being said, let's get into it, alright.
Speaker 1:So the first thing that I want to talk about is there's this word called cessationism, or a cessationist is a person. Cessationism is the belief that the gifts that you see the apostles do in the New Testament is no longer valid. It was for setting up the church and we do not need any of the gifts that we see them do. And yet, if you know what the word apostle means, it literally means sent one. It's used to describe Jesus in the book of Hebrews and it should be. For any person who is a follower of Jesus Christ, you are a sent person on behalf of the King of Kings, jesus Christ. So, picking up, in Matthew, chapter 10, verse seven, it says and this is a command from Jesus, as he's talking to his apostles as you go, proclaim the kingdom of heaven has come near, which means Jesus has come near, has come to this world, revealed himself. But it says in verse eight heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those with leprosy, drive out demons freely. You received freely. So if we can take the text right there and we can just plainly look at it, does it say for a time you should do this, or does it say that you know we need this to start things up? but then no, it doesn't say that. Take the text for what it plainly says, and that is exactly how we should be looking at. So the word for a person that's not a sensationist is a continuous So, one that sees that the gifts of the spirit are continuing and valid today. And it's important to distinguish those two things when you first start talking to someone, because if you're speaking with a sensationist, it's going to take a lot of prayer to come over.
Speaker 1:It's also a very Western thing when it comes to spiritual warfare. If you go to different parts of the world, you'll find that often they consider spiritual warfare just a normal part of life and it doesn't take the same type of persuasion that it does here. Here in the West. A lot of times we just see oh well, they must have something wrong with them, take this pill, and we've really taken the supernatural out of, out of so much of our awareness as a culture. And yet you see people looking outside of the church for supernatural. What do they do? They go and they go do horoscopes, they do tarot cards, they do.
Speaker 1:All kinds of people have gotten into witchcraft and satanism and they've gotten into Ouija boards and different things. Why are people doing that? It's because we are spiritual by nature and we have a desire for it. God has given us two types of ways of revealing himself. There's general revelation. General revelation means that when you look at nature, in the world and the universe and you can you can look at it and it's. It's apparent and obvious that it is extremely complicated and balanced and it is so far beyond the math of what an atheist or an evolutionist would believe that you have to believe that, yeah, there's probably something outside of this. We know that the universe is continuing to expand, which means it started at one point and it has to have an origin outside of its starting point. The Big Bang is a bunch of nonsense. Nothing doesn't create anything and when things change over time, usually it's not for the better, it's for the worse. We call it a mutation. It's not an evolution When animals start to change and have different adaptations. So there's a micro evolution, like maybe it changes its color or it changes the size or what type of things that eats over a period of time. For an animal like, that makes sense. But a macro evolution of fish does not turn into an elephant by accident. That just doesn't happen and it will never happen. That is some basic apologetics for you When it comes to deliverance.
Speaker 1:If you've ever seen the movie with Lee Strobel and his testimony and how he came to faith, called A Case for Christ, one of the main points in that movie is you go for the throat right. What is the number one issue in the gospel? that if it's not true, then it's not going to be worth pursuing the faith whatsoever, and that is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So the entire movie is about a reporter who is trying to disprove the resurrection of Jesus Christ and in the process, after having overwhelming evidence from people of every type of discipline, from psychologists and doctors and historians and priests and different people, he comes to faith because he realizes that it has to be true. The same thing has to be done when it comes to deliverance, because deliverance is the process of becoming set free from outside influences. And are spiritual entities still attacking today? and if they are, why would the Holy Spirit stop being available? that doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1:But, more importantly, the elephant in the room and the question that you have to ask yourself if you're a Christian and you're listening to this podcast. The question is can a Christian have a demon? Now just consider that for a moment, because that is a big question that has been never taught on in most churches it's completely ignored. You know, you can look at Matthew or look at the Gospels and you can see Jesus. And when he comes to the man who's running around in the tombs, he comes up and he's very obviously possessed. He's possessed by multiple demons and Jesus says you know what is your name and he says we are Legion because we are many. When you look at that, what? what other things are going on in this account of Jesus life? well, you've got a guy who's living in the tombs, completely out of his mind. He's cutting himself, he's obsessed with death, he's living in a graveyard and he's completely depraved of every normal part of his life. He's probably suicidal. It talks about how they try to bind him and he has supernatural strength.
Speaker 1:When Jesus cast these out, the demons ask permission to go to the pigs. Why do they go to the pigs? well, it's a spirit of death, it's a spirit of suicide. Think about how the agriculture, that point in history is at that point in history. Livestock and grain and farming, those are the things that were your money. There wasn't like paper money or anything that you would have. if you were wealthy, you would have a whole bunch of commodities like that. What happens is they ask permission, they go into the pigs and then what are the pigs do? the pigs can't handle it. The spirit of death. They all run off and kill themselves.
Speaker 1:Also consider the fact that it you know, all the people get really mad at Jesus. Why do they get really mad at Jesus? well, it's because they just lost a fortune, because Jesus allowed these pigs, or they blame him regardless for the loss of their livestock. So that's an easy account of people can be possessed, which means owned by a spirit. Right now, for the Christian, we don't use the word possessed, we use the word oppressed or demonized, because the word possessed actually is not in the Bible anywhere. So where do we kind of start to see those sort of things, people?
Speaker 1:if you're in Matthew 10 and if you back up a couple of verses to verse 4, it actually is listing all the people that are going out of the 12 and it says in Simon the zealot and Judas Iscariot who betrayed him. If you take that and then you go to the verse that we spoke about in just a minute ago, where there's a command to proclaim the good news. So the gospel always comes first. I can tell you from my experience it's very, very rare that I will ever do deliverance with anyone who is not already a Christian or interested in accepting Christ. And then it says to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those leprosy and drive out demons. So we can take that and we can look at it. We go okay, yes, judas Iscariot did this.
Speaker 1:Was Judas Iscariot saved? that's up for debate, i guess, but I would imagine someone that spent that much time with Jesus probably was saved at one point or another. Think about this. So Judas Iscariot is pressed by Satan. Who else is oppressed by Satan? Peter? Peter tries to persuade Jesus Christ not to go to the cross. And what does Jesus say? he says get behind me, satan. Why does he do that? he doesn't say get out of here, get off of him, you're not Peter, he says. He looks directly at Peter and says get behind me, satan. Unless you're gonna argue that Peter wasn't saved, which is an entirely difficult thing to do, then that's an instance of a Christian, a Christ follower, being demonized by a spirit.
Speaker 1:There's other ones throughout the New Testament. You have Ananias, you have Ananias and Sapphira, and if you are in the book of Acts. In chapter 2 you have Pentecost, which is when the Holy Spirit comes into the world and comes in power. There's tongues of fire the Spirit and dwells the believers from that point on, in the temple of God, right in chapter 5, is when everyone is selling their stuff and they're, they're all coming together as a church and and for what it's worth. That is not a justification for socialism and communism.
Speaker 1:What was happening was that people were having all these different people from around the world were gathered together and they were so excited about the truth that Jesus Is exactly who he said he is and that the Holy Spirit had come, they wanted to kind of just extend the party and, as people were kind of running out of Money and resources, what do you find? Well, there's people selling their belonging, selling their things so that everyone can be in the early church Together, and then eventually, yes, they do go back to their regions and you'll see, especially with like different epistles Of Paul, you'll see that these churches are already started and no one has gone there. Well, someone has gone there and those are people that were there at head and cost. So, getting back to, and Anayas, you look him and, as you know the story goes, he sells this land. He lies about how much you sold it for he was keeping part of it himself and then he looks at the apostles and they say why has Satan entered your heart? right for him, both him and his wife and They both are struck dead right on the thing. now This is a warning showing that, yes, lying is extremely bad and God takes it seriously. God's not striking down every person that lies every single day. What is also showing is a representation that this person and Anayas would have been there at Pentecost And he did receive the Holy Spirit. He was saved, and yet God judged him on the spot.
Speaker 1:What about the Apostle Paul? when he has a thorn in his side, it says that there's a spirit that was sent to torment him, and you can look this all up on your own time and and really Dive into this, but you know it was to keep him humble, right? You don't think that Paul went to heaven? Yeah, he did. Let's consider that, looking forward from here, that, yes, a Christian can Have a demon, and it doesn't mean that they're owned by the demon, they're not possessed, but they are oppressed or demonized, and that can be external or be internal and we'll start talking about some of the different ways that that will happen and Life.
Speaker 1:It can be inherited through the bloodline. It can be a generational curse. It can be from extreme trauma. It can be from sexual trauma, emotional abuse. It can be from Just being extremely scared, like a PTSD kind of situation. It can be from most most commonly, for a Christian, it's either unforgiveness or holding bitterness towards someone. That is on dealt with and that gives a legal Right to a spirit to come and oppress an individual, whether or not they're a Christian. So this is not a salvation issue, this is a quality of life issue and for you to walk in full freedom.
Speaker 1:I just I cannot express enough how important the deliverance ministry is, because it's like you've been carrying this really heavy Backpack your whole life and then the next thing, after you go through deliverance, you're like well, i feel like I can just like. I can move and I can jump and I can do all these things. I didn't realize how much this was affecting me. It's powerful and We're commanded to do it by Jesus Christ. So, getting into that, looking at scripture, we see that Christians can can do it. So I can tell you from my experience, as you know, a practitioner or someone that goes out and and actively confronts evil, like I said, i normally only do it with with Christians and people that possess their faith, possess saving faith already, because it says, you know, that if we cast out a demon, that he'll look for seven more wicked And then they'll come back If the room is empty and the house is unfilled. So it's important for someone to be filled with the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1:One of the things that you'll kind of look at is okay, well, how can God and the Holy Spirit both, or how can the Holy Spirit? rather, the question is, how is it that the Holy Spirit and a Demon can both be in the same place? and the answer is they're not in the same place, as We talked about before in the previous episode that there's a part of you that's in heaven, there's a part of you in the process of being restored, so the part of you is fully restored, partially restored, and then your body is where the demons are after, and they're in your flesh, not in your spirit and soul. If you look at the Old Testament and you guys start going through it and You see the temple, and the temple has so much detail about every room and it's like this dimension by that dimension, and you're just like why? why is this all in here? I don't, i don't understand why it's continuing to go on and on and on.
Speaker 1:And Once you start to understand the spiritual applications of the Old Testament, it starts to just open your eyes and you start to really appreciate what God's word is saying there. And so the temple, a representation of where the spirit dwells right, it's where the spirit dwells, not where Jesus dwells. It's not called the fruit of Jesus or the temple of Jesus, called the temple of the spirit, right? And Jesus says that he will, yeah, rise again and three day. The temple will rise again in three days, and he was talking about his body, right? So you take something that's clear in scripture and you take things that are less clear in scripture and use those to Bring the conclusion through prayer, through testing with other people and testing against the word, anyways.
Speaker 1:So the way it works is, if you are the temple of god, you have different rooms. Well, what are those rooms for you? Those rooms are your roles in responsibilities, in life, things that often you haven't really Chosen, but they are the way that God designed to use. For instance, one of the largest rooms for me is going to be being a man, being a husband, being a father, being a Christian. Those are the larger rooms.
Speaker 1:Those are the rooms that Satan wants to go after. Why does he want to go after? because he can tear you down the fastest, doing that with his spirits right. And in the same way, they're gonna be really small rooms, like the fact that I'm a fifth cousin of Brandon And I don't even know that, but I'm you get my point. That's a room closet. That's a really small room. Why is that a small room? because satan's not going to go after your connection being a fifth Cousin. What he's going to go after, what is a man, what is a woman? He's going to attack that because he's attacking the image of God. Satan can't hurt God, but what he can do and is allowed to do for this point in history is he does have the ability To hurt God's people and that's the only way that he can hurt God. And because we have free will and that love is a choice when it comes to accepting Jesus and our father in heaven In the spirit, then he attacks the Christian. Think about this and maybe you've never thought about this, but you know, if you've accepted Christ and you've been baptized, if you ever considered the fact that baptism is a form of spiritual warfare, it's a form of spiritual warfare because you are publicly declaring which side of heaven you stand for.
Speaker 1:It's important, and believe me, that there are entities out there watching the entire thing happen. Spirits aren't dumb, and so when you're dealing with the spirit, really what you're dealing with is you're dealing with the personality or an entity. The word demon that we use, is it literally just means intelligence, is what diamante means in the latin, and what that means is you're dealing with basically a person without a body who hates God with every bit of their existence And it has emotions, it has feelings like emotions and feelings. It has Memories, it has knowledge, has all the things a person has except for a physical body. So it likes to attack God, hurt God, and that's what it's calling in life is a spirit of the Nephilim, and that's a completely different topic of where they come from And how they got here.
Speaker 1:When you're dealing with that, they they tend to have names. They have names that are indicative of what their role is. Right, they're going to have names like anger, fear, suicide. Every now and again you will deal with a demon that just has some really stupid name, like fred or floyd or Fill or something, and you're like why do you have that dumb name? It's every now again. That's kind of an unusual thing. But when it comes down to it, when you're doing deliverance, usually you'll find Spirits will be in gangs, will be in groups that make sense, and it's usually a ladder.
Speaker 1:So if somebody, for instance, struggles with an unnatural level of anger and they're like I don't even know what happened, i just got so angry, like I just got so rage, rageful is that a word? rageful, i don't know? Full of rage, they were full of rage. What happens is, you know you may end up, through the authority of Christ, in Jesus' name, i command the spirit of murder to come out And somebody is like whoa, what, what the heck? I've never murdered anybody. Like that doesn't make any sense, i've never murdered anybody. Well, it was waiting in place for the time that your anger had the perfect opportunity for you to go all the way, because think that most of us are not planning to murder anybody. And when you look at people, sometimes in prison and everything like. I don't even remember what happened. It just it just happened. It was the wrong moment, the wrong time is the perfect storm, and so when you look at that, you can cast a spirit of murder out of someone, even if they haven't committed murder.
Speaker 1:Many times the spirits are very patient. They don't like being brought into the light and they do not like you knowing their name, because it's a lot easier to take them down once you know their name. It's important to not fear. They actually feed off of fear. So if we're doing deliverance with someone which we'll be doing later today actually and if someone in the room gets completely fearful, what will end up happening is they will actually it'll make it harder for the team to get the person into freedom. It's actually strengthening them, and so that's kind of a more advanced issue. But normally I only do deliverance when it comes to working with Christians And I do it with a team of either three or four people, because it just it protects everyone involved.
Speaker 1:And also what I've seen. I've seen the Holy Spirit work in such powerful ways where he will give a word of knowledge, which is like people will be in the room and they're just praying and they're just focused And they'll just keep hearing this word in their head And maybe it's anger or lust or whatever it may be, and you'll see like anger, and then the other person will turn to like, yeah, hey, hey, logan, we're hearing the word anger, okay, and then I go after anger. Anger come out in the name of Jesus, and it's interesting to see how that all goes about. When it comes to that, i've also seen divine revelation, where people have supernaturally found out things about the past So they had no idea about. I have seen a word of knowledge like as in the Holy Spirit giving someone direction And then after that they end up finding out, you know, sometimes terrible things like that they're. You know, one of their family members had committed suicide in this specific way, in this specific place, like it's. It's bizarre after you talk to them later after the prayer session, because deliverance really is just a focused, targeted prayer And it gives breakthrough in ways it is beyond the ways I can ever describe. You simply have to see it.
Speaker 1:But when you see the name of Jesus Christ being proclaimed over someone and you see them physically change in front of you And in the middle, yeah, they're doing goofy stuff, because demons like to try and scare you And sometimes it's not the person that you're talking to originally, talking to you anymore. It becomes very clear when someone eyes go black and their face looks totally different And they have like a totally different voice and personality. You're like I see you And certain spirits have a like a profile. They meet certain things, you know, they meet certain. They just have certain tendencies that they take on because of what their role is. When you see that and you confront that in a person and they may not even remember, it's kind of like a murky dream. And then, after they get the breakthrough and that that demon is cast out, what happens is that you feel it in the spirit, you feel the room change, you feel the temperature in the room change, you feel this peace that you can't really explain, and that's what spiritual warfare feels like in the natural.
Speaker 1:It does manifest in the physical world, and one of the things that Maybe will help you understand is often when we see the word heaven in scripture. It's heavens, it's plural, and so we know that there are at least three. We know that there is first heaven, which is the world that you and I live in. There's the second heaven, which is the spiritual realm, and there's the third heaven, which is the kingdom of God. Now, potentially there could be other places, but you know there's instances where some of the saints are called up to the third heaven and Into God's presence, and so we know that there are at least three. So just take that and then take imagine, just for to help you Understand conceptually. Take the second heaven, put it on top of the first heaven and just realize that there are things going on around you Constantly. There are Structures in the spiritual and their strongholds which are like altars in the spiritual realm. There are entities all around you and that you have no natural sense of it.
Speaker 1:One of the cool things is you still have, you have a Spiritual parallel to all your senses. You have a spiritual sense of sight, of smell, of touch, of taste, and it's interesting that different points Those may come through as God reveals his gifting for you. For myself, it has come through in ways that God has Prophetically giving me words and just the right moments. I'll walk up and I'll say things that just don't make sense in the moment. I'll walk up to somebody and say God just told me That you're holding on to a lot of unforgiveness for your father, and then the person will immediately respond. They'll either start crying or they'll agree with me. I don't do that just because I think it's cool. I do it because God makes me do it.
Speaker 1:And you know, having a prophetic calling on your life Means that. Not a whole lot of people like you, because you have to say a lot of mean things to give breakthrough. But you know what in it, and if you keep eternity in sight, what is most important Is for our brothers and sisters around us to surrender every aspect of their life to Jesus, because he has already paid for it. He's already paid for everything that we are carrying. Set your burdens aside. Jesus says my yoke is light. He means that, like his, his workload is is light and that he will always be there to the very end. So I have thrown down, caught a bit right there.
Speaker 1:It will continue in future episodes to talk about how this works as a a Process, but deliverance is for today. I reject cessationism And I am excited to see how the Holy Spirit is Awakening this generation to the realities that they have been ignorant of for so long. So long have the Western Church ignored the realities that are just Everyday life and so many other parts of the world. You can do this through the power and the authority of Jesus Christ. Thanks for listening. I'll catch you, guys, soon.