Derek Prince - Areas Where Demons Operate In
This is an excerpt from: Basics of Deliverance: How to Identify The Enemy
Now, the next thing we're going to deal with, and I think this will be the last although I wish I could go further because we haven't much time is their areas of residence. Proverbs 25:28 says Proverbs 25:28 says this: Whoever has no rule over his own spirit is like a city broken down without walls. 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. The area where the wealthy live, the slum areas the banking and commerce areas, the sports areas the various ethnic areas.
I used to live in Chicago. 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'm 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 parentheses ‘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. My personal opinion is behind every negative emotion and attitude there is an evil spirit. Anger, fear, loneliness, misery, self-pity pride, jealousy - there's a tremendous list.
If you are angry it doesn't necessarily mean you have a demon of anger, but if your anger falls into the category of those verbs that we've 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, self-pity, 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. Suicide is always 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. 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. When he came home with his grades from school they were disappointed. 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. That started him into the whole field of lying. Ultimately he was delivered. But it was such a revelation to me. Compulsive liars are very deceptive. They don't know they're lying. They can pass a lie-detector test. What else? There's the two churchgoing demons, criticism and gossip. I was in a church meeting and a lady came up with a demon. I said, Your problem is criticism. You spirit of criticism, come out of her. About four people around started to get delivered at the same time! Exaggeration, the ‘evang-elastic’ demon. Blasphemy. I was a slave of blasphemy when the Lord saved me. Absolutely incapable of speaking without blaspheming. Unclean speech and so on. Negative talking.
Number four, the thing that nobody talks about in church, sex. Because it's not discussed in church, people with problems in the area of sex go to a psychiatrist. He says: You have a guilt problem that centers in your religion. Give it up and you won't feel guilty. Now they don't all say that. But I would say if you sat in church for ten years and still feel guilty your problem is your religion. Really. I would change to another religion if that's all it can do is leave you feeling guilty. We have to say certain things about sex. First of all, sex is not evil. It's good. We have to clear away that misunderstanding. God created man and woman sexual beings. And after He checked on everything He created, He said it was all very good including sex.
One of the big problems in church is we just are not honest about sex, we're ashamed about it, we're prudish and we encourage problems by that attitude. I would say every form of compulsive sex aberration is demonic. Without exception. Masturbation, adultery, fornication homosexuality, lesbianism, effeminacy and all sorts of horrid perversions that we won't talk about. I would say every one of those is demonic. Now you don't have to feel ashamed but you do need to resolve your problem.
Number five. Lusts. We could have included it but it's such a distinctive area I kept it separate. Perverted desires and appetites. I believe all appetites initially were healthy. But by sin and demonic power they've been perverted to become unhealthy and destructive. First John 2:16 speaks about the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes. There is demonic power that controls eyes. Some men have to look at women in a special way. They're absolutely incapable of not doing that. That's a demon that's focused in their eyes. As I've said already, gluttony is a very clear example of a perverted appetite.
I had a woman once who traveled seventy miles in a snowstorm to Chicago to be delivered. She was the daughter of a Pentecostal pastor. Like many she'd rebelled against her parents and their religion, married an unsaved man and ended up miserable. She had three children. She came and got delivered from the demon of gluttony and she said to me afterwards: Mr. Prince, no one can tell me this isn't real. It's just as real as having a baby, and rather like it and I've had three. And then she told me she was so compulsive in her gluttony that she would take food off her children's plate and eat it even though she knew they needed it more than she did. You see, let's talk about addictions. Addictions grow on frustrations. They're branches on a trunk. And if you merely deal with the addiction you haven't solved the problem. Take alcohol and gluttony.
One woman is Episcopalian her husband runs around with other women, doesn't care for her doesn't give her enough money and so on. All right. She gets frustrated she's got to get some relief, she walks across the living room to the cocktail cabinet, becomes an alcoholic. The other woman is Church of God. Her husband does exactly the same. But for that woman to get to the cocktail cabinet would be a lengthy journey. So where does she go? To the kitchen and opens the refrigerator. But she becomes a food-aholic. But the difference is minimal, really. And in either case, to help them you've got to deal with the basic frustration which is their attitude toward their husband. We have to go on with the list.
Number six, the whole realm of the occult. I'm just going to write occult. But that is a vast realm. And every part of it is demonic. Even the respectable parts. And I would not involve you to be involved in Yoga exercises let me say that. I was in Yoga, I was a practicing Yogi. I would tell you, there is nothing in that I would touch with a ten-foot pole. You don't have to depend on Yoga for physical health. The Lord will give you physical health. I'm just saying, the occult is a deep, dark pit. It's one of those caves where all the steps, footmarks lead inwards and none ever lead outward.
All right, number seven. All false religions. Islam, Mormonism Jehovah's Witnesses, Buddhism Hinduism and in some respects, Judaism. All false religions have a demon about it. Satan is an expert in the field of religion. It's the main area in which he operates.
Number eight, all heresies. And by heresies I mean departures from the Christian faith. Let's turn to 1 Timothy chapter 4 for a moment. 1 Timothy 4. Now the Spirit expressly states the Spirit, capital S, the Holy Spirit Now the Spirit expressly states that in latter times that's the times in which we're now living, some will depart from the faith What faith? The Christian faith. Why? giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons. This is happening on a wide scale today. And then it goes on to say, he gives some examples of their errors. Speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared forbidding to marry, commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving.
Particularly on the West Coast of the United States you'll find hundreds of thousands of people to whom that applies. They're becoming super-spiritual, they decide not to marry, or if they marry they don't cohabit with their spouse, and they're going to be super-spiritual by what they eat. Now I believe in eating wisely, but I don't make a religion out of it. The moment it becomes a religious issue you're on the verge of the demonic. You'll notice that people who get into food fads can't talk about anything else. That's another mark of the demonic. No matter where you start, you always end up with food. Don't eat this and that. There are lots of things I don't eat but I do not make a religion out of it.
Number nine, the area of our physical bodies. And we've dealt with many examples in the gospels. Certain things I think are normally demonic, I would never say always. The first one I'd put on the list is epilepsy. And I have seen many many people delivered. Ruth and I were in Lexington, Kentucky about two years ago now, and I had a blessing. A woman came to me, she was probably about forty with her daughter about eighteen. She said, Mr. Prince, ten years ago you prayed for me and I was delivered from the spirit of epilepsy. Here's my daughter, she has the problem. Pray for her. I was happy for that testimony. We prayed for the daughter. I have no doubt that she was delivered.
I have seen scores of people delivered from epilepsy when it's treated as an evil spirit. If a person comes to me I'll say: Now I believe that's an evil spirit. I'm prepared to command it to go out, do you want me to? Are you prepared, because there may be a fight. There may be a struggle. If you don't want to, I won't do it. Some people say yes, some say no. That is as far as we can go. We've dealt with the primary activities of demons. That list of nine verbs. And here's the primary areas in which I have observed them operating. You see, a person may be completely clear in the area of sex but may be in a false religion. Or a person may have no spirits in the mind but may be bogged down in the emotions. Or a person, let's say, may be in a heresy but be perfectly healthy. So there's a whole choice of areas. That's the end of the first session. God helping us we'll complete this in the second session.