Areas of Demonic Activity

Let’s take briefly the main areas in the city.

Now, I could illustrate this from Chicago. You have the Loop, with the businesses. A little farther west, you have the banks. You go a little south from the center of Chicago, you have the depots, the warehouses. Go farther south, you have a residential area, which is basically Negro. Go back to the Loop and go west, and you have an area which is primarily Polish. Go back to the Loop and go north, and you have an area which is primarily Jewish, and then another area which is primarily Swedish. And then you get out to the suburbs with their different characteristic levels of social success and prestige, and so on. So every area of the city has its own distinctive characteristic occupations and inhabitants. Now, this is like the city within you. It’s divided up into areas, each with its own characteristic inhabitant. And I’m going briefly through this list.

And I’m not going to dwell on any. I would say the first main area is emotions, attitudes, and relationships. And for every negative attitude, emotion, and relationship, there exists the corresponding demon.

Resentment, hatred, rebellion, fear, depression, loneliness, self-pity, envy, jealousy, pride, and a whole host of others. There’s a demon for each one. Now, the fact that you feel envy every now and then doesn’t mean you have the demon of envy, as I’ve said. But when it becomes compulsive, when it is persistent, when it is beginning to occupy a sort of major part of your life, then it’s a demon.

The commonest, I would say, is fear. I say about one in five persons need deliverance from the spirit of fear alone. As I said already, they go in gangs. Find one, and you can pick out the other. They go in succession. For instance, the problem of multitudes of young people in America today is this: resentment, always against their parents, hatred, rebellion. And when rebellion enters, first of all, it’s directed towards the parents, then the church, then the school, then the government, then God. It’s more or less that way. This explains what’s happened to multitudes of young people. Now, I would like to say that in most cases, it’s the fault of the parents. That is the problem with the children. And I would like to say to anybody who has problems as a result of their parents’ wrong treatment, remember, it isn’t your parent that suffers so much as you. I was talking to a girl a couple of days ago whose father had molested her sexually, and so on. And I was trying to urge her to forgive her father, and she was finding it a hard job. And I said, “Well, remember, he’s ruined the first years of your life. If you go on hating him, he’s going to ruin the rest of your life. Do you want him to do that?”

I remember talking to a woman once who said to me, well, her husband had run off after 15 years of marriage with another woman and left her with the kid. I said, “You’re going to forgive your husband?” She said, “Why? He’s ruined 15 years of my life.” I said, “Do you want him to ruin the rest?” Because as long as you go on hating and resenting him, he’s ruining your life. He’s not suffering one quarter as much as you are. Remember, in resentment, it’s not the one who’s resented that suffers. It’s the one who resents. You know, when a man has ulcers, you know the question that they ask. It’s not what the man’s eating, it’s what’s eating the man. And resentment just eats people up from inside. I don’t get eaten away inside.

Then there’s the realm of the mind, the thoughts. There are certain specific characteristic demons. Doubt, unbelief, indecision, procrastination, putting things off, compromise. These are mental, very, very real, very powerful. Many people have had unbelief injected into them by the seminary, by the church. They’ve been just fed on unbelief. Compromise is a remarkably powerful demon. A Lutheran minister came to me once. He had the baptism of the Holy Spirit, but he said, “I need deliverance.” And he had a problem with homosexuality. Another minister and I prayed with him. He was delivered, but he said, “I’m not fully free.” And I commanded the next spirit to name itself, and it said, “Compromise.” And I was astonished. I said, “Have you had a problem with compromise?” He said, “All my life, since I was a boy, I’ve never been able to make a clear-cut commitment on anything.” And when we commanded that spirit to come out of him, it was so powerful, it threw that man around like a rubber ball. And I realized what a hold. There’s a lady here, and I’m not going any way to get who she is. She wouldn’t mind if I did, actually. She’ll remember she had the demon of forgetfulness. And when I was casting that out, it spoke out of her and said, “I’m not coming out. I’m locked in her brain.” These are the mental demons, and there are others, but I’m just giving you a sample.

Then there’s the demons that specifically relate to the tongue. Blasphemy. Any blasphemer has a demon. That’s one sufficient evidence. Lying, unclean talk. And you know another one? Gossip. Ah, that gossip demon has ruined more churches, maybe, than the sex demons put together. If you are like a carrion bird feeding on the bad traits in other people, you have a gossip demon. Some so-called prayer meetings are just outings for gossip demons. And I’m sure they lick their lips with expectation when the prayer day rolls around every week. “Oh, sister, did you hear about Mrs. So-and-So? She really needs prayer.” Yak, yak, yak. How much prayer does she get? And how much good does it do her?

Then there’s the area of sex. As I’ve already said, sex is good, not evil. But it’s powerful. And if the devil can move in and grab that area, then he’s got a major measure of control over your personality. Something that will drive you, thirst you, enslave you. Now, my personal conviction is every form of sex perversion is demonic. That, again, is sufficient evidence. Any form of homosexuality, and there are many different forms, in my opinion, is the manifestation of a demon. And I have seen homosexuals of all shades delivered when it has been dealt with as a demon. There was a man in Chicago, and again, I could mention his name, he wouldn’t mind. He’d been a homosexual for many years. And when I preached on this, ultimately, he received deliverance. But he said to our daughter later, he said, “I never got deliverance until I was willing to face the fact that it was a demon, and I had to deal with it that way.”

Another demon in the sex area, which is tremendously common, and I know this doesn’t sound good for a preacher, but I’m going to tell you nevertheless, is masturbation. Now, I know that doctors and psychologists say it’s harmless and it’s a safe outlet, and so on. Well, it’s demonic. Now, again, a person may have a fall, a slip, repent, confess, be forgiven and cleansed. That’s it. But when it becomes enslaving, it’s demonic.