How Demons Enter into Children By What They Watch

Now, when I look back on my own life, and I’m older than some of you, I won't even tell you how much older. I realized that by the time I was nine years old, the devil had got a lot of his bad spirits into me. I didn't know what they were. I’ll tell you something. I was a little bit of a lonely child. I had no brothers or sisters. I was quite clever with my brain. I was always good at class, could do my lesson, get good grades. And I got a little bit shut off from other people, and I would spend hours talking to myself. Do you ever do that? And I would always talk to myself in the plural. “Shall we do this? Shall we do that? Shall we go here?” And I realized many years later, that was bad spirits in me, talking to one another. There was a kind of parliament going on inside me.

I had bad spirits in me from the age of two. I was born in India. I’ll tell you a little bit about myself. And my mother and my father were good people, but they didn't have much time for me. And so, my mother handed me over to an Indian woman. They call them an Ayah in India. And this woman was a Hindu. She wasn't Christian. And I had much more to do with this woman when I was a little baby than with my mother or father. Now, the Hindus in India, they worship devils, idols. And the whole of India is just full of demons. And there's no doubt in my mind that before I was two years old, that woman had got a lot of those Indian demons into me. You say it isn't fair, but the devil isn't fair. Now, one of my big problems in life has always been getting angry. ‘Cause none of you have ever had that problem, didn’t you? You did.

And I wrestled with this for years. And then when I became a Christian, after a while, God showed me when this problem started. And in a way that only God can do, He took me back in my mind, step by step, right to the time when I was a very small boy. I was two years old, and I was sitting at a table in the dining room of our home in India, eating a melon. Now, for some strange reason, my father, and he was really a good man in many ways, thought it was a good thing to tease little boys. See? I think he thought we ought to get tough young, you know? And so, on this time, he deliberately teased me. And he said something to me to distract my attention, turn me away, and when I wasn't looking, he took my melon. Well, I turned round, and my melon wasn't there, and I got violently angry. And in those days, I could speak Hindustani just as well as I could speak English. And I got mad with all the Indian servants and scolded them in Hindustani, but they hadn't taken my melon. Now, the whole family always remembered that incident because of the way I scolded the Indian servants. See? But when I looked back, I realized that at that moment, the demon of anger entered me. And from then on, one of the pressures in my life was anger. Now, I’m telling you things I don't often tell in public because I hope it’ll help you.

From then on, I’m sure other spirits entered, and I’m not going to tell you all of them. But when I was about 12 years old, I was at a boarding school in England, and I was playing with a football, and another boy took the football from me. You’ve never had that happen, I’m sure. And I got so angry with that boy, they had to hold my arms down. I would have killed him if I could. And you know the demon that entered then? Murder. Now, I’ve never murdered anybody, thank God. But the Bible says,

“If you hate your brother in your heart, you are a murderer already.”

So, I know from personal experience, also from helping many others, that little boys and girls, two and three and upwards, especially if their parents are not good Christian, can easily have these bad spirits enter them. Now, your parents may be Christian. They may be Baptist. But shall I tell you something about Baptists? They sometimes quarrel and fight amongst themselves. Did you know that? And if our parents quarrel and fight, something comes into that home which makes these evil spirits feel welcome. And there's nothing that attracts evil spirits so quickly as parents quarreling and arguing and fussing with one another, though they may be good Baptists or Roman Catholics. Doesn't make any difference. And those parents don't know it, but they're exposing their children to these bad spirits. And one after another, these bad spirits will come in like thieves. You won't know exactly when they came or how they came or even what they are. But it’ll happen in your life that things will begin to happen to you that you can't control.

Some of you know what it is, without any good reason, to get so mad that you don't know what to do about it, don't you? Hmm? Well, if you tell the truth, the answer is, “Yes.” You get mad with your mother, mad with your brother, mad with your sister. All right. There's another problem that many small children have. It's fear. How many of you are afraid of the dark? You don't need to put your hand up. Well, why should you be afraid of the dark? Now, all of us feel fear sometimes. But when fear gets a grip on us and drives us and torments us, that's not just me. That's a spirit. The Bible calls it the spirit of fear. Now, that was one of the many spirits that entered me. I’ll tell you how it entered me. Again, my father was responsible. My father's dead now, and I’m not speaking evil of him, but when I was about 13 years old, my father was one of these people who liked detective stories. I can't see any good in detective stories myself, but anyhow. He also liked thrillers. And one day, he took the family, including me, to see a play about a man who was called The Gorilla, because instead of one hand, he had a gorilla's paw. And he killed people with his gorilla's paw. I can't believe how intelligent people can enjoy watching things like that, but they do. And this man had a long green cloak that he put on and a long green hood that he put over his face. And I sat there reluctantly and watched this thing and didn't like it. Got home that night, went to bed, and you know what there was in my bedroom? Long green curtains hanging by the window. There wasn't many minutes before I could see The Gorilla in those curtains. And I started to scream and cry, and I got out of bed and rushed upstairs to my parents’ room. And my poor father, he had to get out of bed and sleep in my bed. And that happened many nights. It taught him a lesson. He didn't have a good night's sleep for weeks. But something got into me. What was it? Spirit of fear. I have a good friend. Some of you have heard of him, Don Basham. Some of you know him. He was listening to a tape that I’d preached about the spirit of fear and about how evil spirits enter people. And in this tape, I said that in many cases, the spirit of fear will enter a child when he’s watching something on TV, a horror film, or Dark Shadows, or something like that. The impact of that thing is too strong for that child's defenses. Now, Don Basham is a good friend of mine. He was listening because he’s writing a book on these things. And as I began to speak this, he realized that he had in him the spirit of fear. And God showed him how it entered. When he was a boy of about 10, his elder brother took him to a movie. Now, it was supposed to be a good cowboy, Indian movie, but his brother didn't want to go to that, so he went to another, which was a horror film. And Don had to sit there through that film because he couldn't go out without his brother, and his brother wouldn't go out. And he said, “I just cowered there and tried to close my eyes and shut this thing out, but I couldn't keep it out.” And he said, “From then onwards, there was always a certain kind of fear in my life that controlled me in certain ways.” And it was only when he heard this tape of mine that he fully realized what his problem was and called on the name of Jesus and was delivered from that spirit of fear. Well, he was over 40 years old when that happened. So, he must have had that thing in him for over 30 years. Now, many of us have these things in us, but we don't really know what they are or exactly how they work. The wonderful thing about the Bible is that it tells us what these things are and how to get rid of them.