Demonic Activity and Areas of Residence

Number five, demons enslave. You see, let’s say you’ve committed a sin in the area of sex. You repent, you go to Jesus, you receive forgiveness and cleansing, you’re justified. Just as if you’d never sinned. That’s all finished with. But if, after all that, you still have this intense drive to commit the same sin again, even though you hate it, you’re enslaved. One very common example is masturbation. Now some psychologists and people say masturbating is all right, it’s healthy. I just don’t even argue about that. But I know there are thousands of people who do it and hate themselves for doing it. And every time they say never again, but it never works. They are enslaved. And there is a demon of masturbation. It’s very common. Let me tell you now before we go too far in the meeting, it has certain specific manifestations. What will happen is the person’s fingers will begin to tingle. I’ve had so many people say, “Brother Prince, what’s the matter with me, my fingers are tingling?” And sometimes they go stiff and they bend right backwards. And I just whisper in their ear, “Your problem is masturbation. Renounce it, claim the cleansing blood of Jesus and get rid of it.” But it is very stubborn. Many times people have to actually shake it out of their fingers, in the Name of Jesus, to get rid of it.

Now you put four and five together, four plus five equals addictions. Okay, compulsive – enslaving, you put them together, they’re addiction. We are all familiar with many forms of addictions. Some are very unusual. My first wife and I dealt with a young woman, a Pentecostal church member, who was addicted to nail varnish. She just wanted to smell nail varnish. She told us, “When I walk into the cosmetics department of a store I’ve got two options. I can either buy nail varnish or run out of the store. But I’ve got to do one or the other.” When she was delivered of that thing it came out screaming and it tore her. There are other addictions. You know, the commonest and latest is TV. TV is just as much an addiction as alcohol with many people. They cannot walk into the room with a television set without switching it on. They don’t even think, they don’t know what they’re going to see, but they just have to reach for the television set just like an alcoholic reaches for the drink. And I think probably it does more harm in the long run than alcohol.

Number six, they defile. They make you feel dirty and unclean. Especially when you’re worshiping God. You’re just about to get into the presence of God and this dirty image or this filthy word is projected into your mind. Anything that rises up when you’re about to worship God and opposes you is almost certainly demonic. Or when you want to read your Bible. One common example is the demon of sleep. You know, the Bible speaks about a spirit of slumber. Have you ever noticed people, if they want to read their Bible at 10 p.m., they’re asleep by 10:15. If they want to watch television, they can stay awake until after midnight. Now that’s not natural. There’s a supernatural force there that that enjoys them watching television, hates them reading their Bibles. You understand?

All right. Number seven, they deceive. They are the deceivers. I believe basically all forms of spiritual deception are demonic. And you know what opens the door to deception? Pride. I doubt whether there’s ever any deception that doesn’t come in through the doorway of pride. Pride inevitably leads to deception.

Number eight, they weaken, make sick, or tired [there’s a demon of tiredness]. I remember dealing with a woman once, she said, “I can’t stand this session any longer, I’m too tired.” I was about to get sorry for her when I realized it was a demon. I challenged it and it said, “That’s right. She’s always tired. She’s tired when she gets up, she’s tired when she goes to bed, she’s too tired to pray, she’s too tired to read her Bible.” That’s one of the ones that the others hide behind. Or they kill. Remember Satan is a murderer. He kills people physically. And there’s a spirit of death that he sends out to kill people.

All right. Now if we’re going to take one word to sum up, it would be the word restless. Demonized people are usually restless in some area. The person who can truly relax and be at peace probably doesn’t need deliverance.

All right. Now, the next thing we’re going to deal with is their areas of residence. Proverbs 25:28 says this:

“Whoever has no rule over his own spirit is like a city broken down without walls.” (NKJ)

So that compares the inner nature of human personality to a city. And when the person has no spiritual defenses, that city is open to almost any evil spirit that wants to come in. You take a drug addict, that’s his description. Anything can get into him because his walls are broken down. But in a city there are a lot of different areas. There’s the area where the wealthy live, there’s the slum areas, there’s the banking and commerce areas, there’s the sports areas, there’s the various ethnic areas. I used to live in Chicago and this was—you know—there was the areas where it was all Poles, all Swedes, all Jews and so on. And so inside you and me there is a city with various areas with characteristic residents in each area, you understand? I’m going to give you a little list of the areas. I am not a professional psychologist, this is simply based on years of experience.

The first area, number one, the main one is emotions and attitudes. And I put in parenthesis “gangs.” Because there are gangs of demons. And each one opens the way for the next. And if you meet one, you should start searching for the others. Now my personal opinion is behind every negative emotion and attitude there is an evil spirit. Anger, fear, loneliness, misery, selfpity, pride, jealousy, there’s a tremendous list. Now the fact that you experience anger doesn’t necessarily mean you have a demon of anger, but if your anger falls into the category of those verbs that we discussed, then you probably have a demon of anger.

There are certain root problems out of which the rest grow. I think the greatest single root problem is rejection. And rejection leads to a whole series. Loneliness, misery, selfpity, depression, despair, and when you’ve got that far, you’re headed one or other of two ways. Death, if it’s passive, suicide if it’s active. I don’t believe anybody ever committed suicide except under the impulse of an evil spirit. That’s my personal opinion. I can’t prove it.

Another very typical problem is rebellion which leads to resentment, to hatred, to anger, to violence and you know, produces the typical gang leader and so on.

Number two is the mind. In a way, the mind is the battlefield. Characteristic spirits that affect the mind are doubt, unbelief, confusion, indecision, insanity. And I’ve discovered that people who have been in the occult almost always have a problem with confusion. Depression, you can call it either emotional or mental, it doesn’t matter, but it’s there.

The next area is the tongue. There are a lot of characteristic demons of the tongue. The main one is lying. The Bible speaks about a lying spirit. There are people who are compulsive liars. They don’t even know when they’re lying. I had a friend like that, he was the president of the Full Gospel Businessmen in a certain city, he was also characteristically a salesman. He was a fine Christian, a wonderful talker. And he’d sit in our living room and start to talk and his talk would get more and more interesting but improbable. And my head would begin to swim and I’d think, does he believe what he’s saying? Do I believe what he’s saying? But it just kind of flowed out of the natural into the supernatural.

Now you know the reason I discovered how that spirit came in? He was an adopted son of wealthy parents, they had no other children, all their eggs were in that one basket. They wanted him to be everything. And he discovered that when he came home with his grades from school they were disappointed because they weren’t good enough. And when they registered disappointment he decided that wasn’t worth it so he just lied about his school grades. You understand? And that started him into the whole field of lying. I believe ultimately he was delivered. But it was such a revelation to me.

You see, compulsive liars are very deceptive because they don’t even know they’re lying. They can pass a lie detector test.