Derek Prince - How Demons Gain Entry Into A Person
This is an excerpt from: How To Expel The Enemy
In this session we are going to begin by answering on of the most important particle questions in this all theme. One that many people are concerned about, that is: How do demons come in? How do they gain entry to human personalities and lives? My answers that I'm going to offer to you are based on experience and I'm not by any means suggesting that they are totally complete. But I will list seven different ways in which they may be able to come in. The first one is what I call occult background. In other words, somewhere in your family history there has been involvement with the occult. And when you talk about the occult you realize that you're dealing with false gods. That's really what it is. There has been a breaking of the first two commandments which are the basic commandments: Thou shalt have no other god beside me. Thou shalt not make any graven image to worship.
All forms of idolatry automatically expose people to demons. And in connection with those two commandments the Lord said that He would visit the sins of the fathers to the third and fourth generation. I don't believe it applies so much to the other commandments, but it's given in the context of the first two commandments. And so if your father, your grandfather, or your great-grandfather, or some other corresponding relative was involved in the occult, or a false religion, or idolatry... then there is an opening into your life for evil spirits. You might say, That's not fair! Well, the truth of the matter is: the devil isn't fair. But what I want you to understand is no one is condemning you for having the problem. Condemnation will only come to you if you reject the solution. That's where condemnation comes.
The second way is through personal occult involvement. And I think probably we'd better read a Scripture at this point. There is a saying in English, I don't know whether you've ever heard it: He who sups with the devil must use a spoon with a long handle. I just want to tell you there is no spoon made with a handle long enough to make it safe to sup with the devil. You give him your little finger and he's grabbed above your elbow. There is just no way that it is safe to be involved in the occult. I'm going to read Deuteronomy 18, verses 10-12: There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire... That is, offering your children in a living sacrifice to a pagan god by putting them in an oven.
Now I want you to see that the other things that follow by God are classified in the same list as having your children offered as living sacrifices by fire to a pagan god. There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, or one who practices witchcraft or a soothsayer that's a fortuneteller, or one who interprets omens or a sorcerer, or one who conjures spells, or a medium or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. That's a pretty comprehensive list. I think every kind of occult practice is included. For all who do these things are an abomination to the Lord. So many Christians just play with horoscopes and then think there's no harm in it. If you'd played with horoscopes under the law of Moses you would have been put to death. That's God's estimate of that kind of involvement.
The third is what I call prenatal influences. Things that happen while you are still in your mother's womb. And many people have an evil spirit enter them in that phase of their life. The commonest single reason is rejection. A mother resents the baby she's carrying in her womb. Maybe she wasn't married and it's going to be an embarrassment. Or maybe she's not getting on well with her husband. It's a burden in the family. Or maybe the financial situation makes it difficult for them to care for the children. But whatever, she just resents that little life that's starting in her womb and that little person in the womb is very sensitive to attitudes. It's not just a fetus. It's a person. And it comes out with a spirit of rejection already in it. Or a woman is pregnant, may experience some kind of a shock a moment of fear. She yields to the fear, the spirit of fear enters her has two options: It can stay in the woman or stay in the infant in her womb. It may find it more convenient to stay in the infant, you understand?
So when the infant is born, it comes out with the spirit of fear. Let me show you a Scripture which most people don't notice in 1 Peter chapter 3 which is advice to wives. I just want to bring out this one aspect of it. Telling wives that the pattern for them in the Bible is the attitude of Sarah to Abraham, and I'm not laboring this point, don't get nervous. 1 Peter 3:6: As Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord, whose daughters you are if you do good and it doesn't end there and are not afraid with any terror. To be a daughter of Abraham you have to be able to resist the sudden shock of fear. It's very obvious, I think that women are more liable to sudden fright or panic than men. And again, I've dealt with many cases of people who needed deliverance because of some shock that came to the mother while they were still in the mother's womb.
Another interesting thing is: I noticed when I was full-time in this ministry or let me say much more engaged in it than I am regularly now, that there were people in a certain age group in the United States, many of whom seemed to need deliverance from rejection. And I began to think, Maybe they were all born in the same period. And then I began to say: What period were they born in? And I discovered they were born during the great depression. And I reasoned out the mother already had six mouths to feed and not enough money and here comes the seventh child. And she may be a good woman but she inwardly resents the responsibility of that next child, and it is born with a spirit of rejection. We don't have time to dwell on any of these.
Number four. But let me say, if you go to a fortuneteller or some such person to find out what'll happen to your baby when it's born you have started that baby off with two strikes against it before it even comes out of the womb. Number four, soulish domination. There's a difference between the spirit and the soul. I can't go into that. But there are many people who control and manipulate other people by what I call ‘soul thoughts,’ soulish domination. The most common example in contemporary American culture is a mother dominating her children, especially her sons. There used to be a best selling book in the Jewish community entitled How to be a Good Jewish Mother. And one of the lessons was: How to Get Your Son to Play His Violin in Public Using no Other Motivation but Guilt.
Well, when you know the Yiddish yamomo... I mean, they are the perfect example of what I am talking about. You know about the lady in the big theater who shouted out: Is there a doctor in the house? A man stood up and said: Yes. And she said: Boy, do I have a daughter for you! But it goes a lot beyond that. I have met successful businessmen, bank presidents and people like that, who never developed in emotional maturity because they still were tied to their mother's umbilicus. The spiritual umbilical cord had never been cut. Their methods of manipulation are endless. I think of a mother who dominated her family because every time things went wrong she got migraines. All the family had to tiptoe around don't talk, don't make a noise, mother's got another of her headaches. She kept them from doing anything she didn't want them to do by having migraines. There are two dirty words in this context. Dominate and manipulate. Wherever you meet them, you've met the devil.
All right, number five. I've had to say to some people: If you want me to help you, I've got to be honest. The fact is your mother is a witch. You've still got to honor her but she's a witch. I've had to tell people who got delivered: You're just not free to go back to your parents' home. You'll have to stay away, because you don't have the spiritual strength to stay free from that dominating, manipulating influence. Number five. Pressures in early childhood. I have discovered that a child's spiritual and emotional defenses are not strong enough to keep out persistent demon pressure.
Now it says in James 3:16 something that's worth bearing in mind. James chapter 3 verse 16: For where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there. So where there's an atmosphere of strife and disharmony between the parents, it generates a condition in which the children will be automatically exposed to demon influence. I would say more than ninety percent of children are incapable of keeping them out. My observation is that eighty percent of demon problems have started in a person's life before the age of five. And the parents are responsible for that situation, you understand?
Number six, moment or place of weakness. It can be emotional weakness, it can be physical weakness. A woman is standing on a street corner and a horrible automobile accident takes place in front of her eyes. She's exposed to the spirit of fear. Or a woman has only one child; this is a case I actually dealt with. A boy at the age of five, he died. She goes into depression and stays in it for years. She has opened up to the spirit of grief which is a very powerful spirit. Or a woman is expecting to get married and at the last moment the engagement is canceled and she yields to the spirit of disappointment and goes through life an incomplete person.
I was teaching once in a certain place and there was a lady who was Pentecostal and very spiritual sitting on the front row. And I happened to name the spirit of disappointment. And I watched her face. It convulsed. She changed totally. Her whole personality changed until she was delivered from that spirit of disappointment. If you build your hopes on something and it doesn't work out, you're probably exposed to an evil force.
Now, another kind of weakness is physical weakness. Let me give you this example. I've talked about epilepsy as being produced at times by an evil spirit. Some years ago, my first wife and I had a girl of about eighteen who came to us. She'd heard my tapes. She was a confirmed diagnosed epileptic, on medication but she believed that it was an evil spirit. She came to us for deliverance. So Lydia and I prayed for her and we felt that the spirit had left. But then the Lord seemed to say to me: Your job isn't finished. So I said to the girl: Now tell me, how did this start? Did it start with a physical injury? Yes, I was struck on the head by a baseball and after that the seizures started. I said: The physical injury was purely physical, but it opened the door to a spirit of epilepsy. Understand. The place of weakness was the injury to her brain. I said: I believe the spirit has gone out, we need to close the door.
So Lydia and I put hands on her and prayed for the healing of her brain. I was in contact with her for about three years after that. She took no more medication, never had another seizure. But I give that simply as an example of a moment or a place of weakness. And the last one is sinful acts or habits. If you persist in a certain sinful habit you can be sure that sooner or later it will become demonic. An example of a sinful act: I had to pray for a young woman who had gone to see the film The Exorcist. She knew she shouldn't go. She went and something entered her. She had to come, confess as a sin she had gone on territory that was forbidden, and then she was delivered. Or a person may go to a pornographic movie and some kind of sex demon will enter, a demon of lust. But you won't get delivered until you confess the sin that opened the way for the demon.