Demonic Entry

In this session we’re going to begin by answering one of the most important practical questions in this whole 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 am going to offer to you are based on experience and I am 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. In other words, there has been a breaking of the first two commandments, which are the basic commandments: Thou shalt have no other gods beside Me and 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 greatgrandfather 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. Now 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. All right?

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 have 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 before you can turn around he’s grabbed above your elbow. There is just no way that it’s safe to be involved in the occult. I’m going to read Deuteronomy 18:10–12.

“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 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...” (NKJ)

So many Christians just play with horoscopes and then think there is no harm in it. Let me just point out to you that 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.

All right. 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 and she just doesn’t want another 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 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’ll not labor in 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.” (NKJ)

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.

All right, we don’t have time to dwell on any of these. But let me say, if you go to a fortune teller or some such person to find out what will 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.