PART ONE
SPIRITUAL WARFARE

I.      THE REAL WAR

The Bible tells us:

We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. (Ephesians 6:12 RSV)

This passage was the beginning of enlightenment for me. Suddenly the struggle made sense.

For years, I had been trapped. The misery I was trapped in was of my own making, for I had plunged ahead according to my own will, against all common sense, and gotten married to yet another crazy man. My husband was a man who was sensitive, tender, kind and devoted, but when he was drinking - and that was more often than not, especiially in our early years - he was indeed crazy, violent, self-destructive, unpredictable.

Now, with three young children, I could not leave him: not because I could not survive without him, because I could; nor even because I knew there was a danger of his killing me if I left him, because there were places I could go that he couldn't find me. I could not leave him because I knew if I left him, it would kill him.

Although I hated my husband most of the time, I could not take away his children. I could not take responsibility for what would happen to him. Perhaps this was a selfishness or even a perverted pride on my part, for I had done no little destruction in my day. He was the first man I had ever been faithful to: it was indeed an atonement for the sins of my past life.

But it was more than that. I wanted him to be the father of my children. He was a good man, trapped though he was in a prison I did not understand. The man deep within was the one I had given my life to. If someday the bad in him came to outweigh the good, I might be forced to reconsider. But I could not escape the fact that I had loved him, probably deep inside - behind the solid walls I had built up foor my own protection - loved him still. I would remain his wife, even if it killed me.

There was some comfort in knowing that if he had the capacity to kill me, he probably would have already done it. Still, the emotional and physical toll that my marriage, and the pretense all was fine, took on me, was enormous. A little bit of pot at the end of the day was my sole means of coping. I was bitter, without hope.

When Ephesians 6:12 became a Living Word for me in February 1988, I was at a women's retreat, on St. Simon's Island on the Georgia tidewater. That weekend my life changed, and everything that has happened since has been a result of the revelation that God gave me then of the true nature of the battle - that first time I had ever had the chance to get away and just listen to Him.

Up until then, of course, I had been blaming my husband for his behavior. But now God began to show me that, although this man I'd married was far from innocent, he also was a victim, possessed and oppressed by demons: by the strongmen rulers of the his personal darkness and by the riffraff spiritual wickedness that comprised their entourage.

At the same time, God began to speak to me about my own darkness. I also was in prison. Through her sensitivity to a Word from God, evangelist Pat Hayes showed me that He knew exactly what I was going through, that He knew because He was with me. With this assurance of His love, I undertook the journey into His marvelous light. I have never looked back.

In charismatic churches, some people see demons everywhere; at the other end are those who blame the flesh for everything. These opposing positions make it very difficult for someone with a demon possessed husband to find him deliverance. You have, on one hand, those who do a magnificent job of spiritual warfare: shouting and stomping, binding and casting out. When the shouting is over, they figure the job is done and send you home. Tending toward extremes while practicing a simple faith, the typical charismatic approach ignores the pathway by which the spirits entered and took up residence. They may accomplish deliverance, but it will be short-lived. It will make the demons mad - or give them a good laugh at our expense.

On the other hand, you have those well intentioned people who acknowledge the reality of spiritual warfare, but - in reaction to those who cast and bind and stomp and shout - seriously doubt if your husband has a demon problem, just a flesh problem. They'll look at you and shrug and say, "It's sin; he needs to just say no." These innocents ignore the spiritual ramifications of the life of abuse, rebellion, and sin. They send you home confused and discouraged.

I confess that I am one who sees demons everywhere, although perhaps not as a cause for everything. Ephesians 6:12 was a true revelation to me, as if suddenly I understood the reason for evil in the world. An unseen world of darkness, a spiritual world more real than the world we function in, even seemed to allow for the totality of what I had previously believed, a total reality that was larger and more encompassing than any I had previously known. Suddenly all other partial explanations also made sense. We know in part, says Paul (1 Corinthians 13:12), and the more we know of God, the more we see the order to things that He has created.

I have always been someone who likes to know what is going on. If something is broken, I immediately set about to discover the way to fix it. My husband was broken; I needed to fix him. So I dealt with all the theories. Was his problem biological? Hypoglycemia seemed to partially explain it. But low blood sugar couldn't be controlled by diet because he rebelled against control. Was his problem psychological? A severely abused child always struggles with adjustment problems later in life. The answer should have been therapy. And while a wonderful therapist did make him feel better about himself, his behavior didn't change. How about the genetic explanation: the male child of the alcoholic father becomes a violent alcoholic. When he wouldn't go to AA, I got an injunction for involuntary commitment to prod him in the right direction; that measure met with a predictable lack of success.

This is not to disparage the value of secular psychology or therapy. It is valuable to a point - that is, to the point where the battle becomes spiritual. Secular psychology, like drugs, can deal with some of the symptoms of emotional or mental illness. But these remedies are limited. They cannot touch the spiritual impulse to sin nor the spiritual consequences of sinful acts. And indeed, psychology does not recognize the concept of sin, the cause of all corruption on this earth. At best it creates functional people.

There is nothing wrong with being functional; to some, given the degree of their disfunction, living a normal life is an incredible source of pride. But the Bible says of Jesus: Neither is there salvation in any other; for there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved (Acts 4:12). Man is primarily a spiritual being. Unless his spirit is free, he is but dust in the wind.

At the same time, spiritual rebirth without the understanding of past motivations, as well as the acceptance of personal responsibility for choices made, does not guarantee a changed life. You need Christian counseling that can feed both soul and spirit with the truth needed for growth. The battle remains spiritual, but man has obligations to both body and soul.

But we wrestle not with flesh and blood. My husband was not wrestling with the effects of low blood sugar, with the frustration-aggression syndrome that leads to abuse, or with genetic markers. He was wrestling with principalities and powers and rulers of spiritual darkness and spiritual wickedness in high places; these beings, having dominated his physiological and psychological processes since before his birth, generated the symptoms that doctors and specialists, having not eyes to see, treat as the causes of human disfunction.

Then I met the strongman. In the darkened bedroom, the spirit manifested when my husband passed out; he was not aware of its presence at all. And yet, in hindsight, it was readily distinguishable from him. When my husband was speaking, he was bitter, taunting, and complaining. When the spirit took over, it made its entrance speaking in a voice devoid of sarcasm, nakedly evil, saying things like: "I'm going to kill you. I'm going to cut you up in little pieces." My whole being was flooded with adrenalin, the physical manifestation of an unholy fear.

Very early in my marriage, I had discovered how dangerous it was to wake my husband up out of a deep sleep. He was not just ornery; he was ugly, threatening, sometimes violent. At times, rising up out of the blackout without the slightest awareness that he was doing it, he could become insanely destructive and do great damage to himself and others. (I had attributed this practice to an overdose of sugar to the brain.) Now, for the first time, I saw distinctly where my husband left off and the evil one began. In fact, no one who has ever encountered a demon continues to doubt their existence. "Blood," it called out to me from the bedroom, "Christine, it's blood. It's all blood. They're killing them all."

At one point the demon actually said, "You don't even know who I am. You just think you know who I am, but you don't even know who I am."

I was reluctant to give the wrong answer, under the circumstances. But I figured this was an easy one. Since I first discovered this present darkness, I had been trying to tell my husband he was demon possessed. In a manner common to the demon-possessed, he'd denied this possibility. So now, to protect myself, I said what I believed he would wish me to say: "You're my husband."

"That's where you're wrong," it replied in a cold, inhuman voice. "I'm not that person."

I can't begin to describe what I was feeling: terror, utter amazement, and yet something more, a moment of discovery, of confirmation. Immobilized by a fear that went to the depths of all that I was, I nevertheless had to know.

"Then who are you?" I asked.

"I'm Antoine," it boasted.

"Antoine!" I exclaimed. And we played a scary little game of repeating its name till it was satisfied that I knew it. Knew its name!

I was totally astounded by what was happening, and not just by the waves of fear that paralyzed me. What it had become was one of those completely holy moments, when what you've read in the Bible and what you experience in life on earth divulge, when eternity breaks through and confirms itself - that moment when you cross the line. Onlly if you have been there, and perhaps you have, could you imagine what I was experiencing; in the grip of terror, in the very midst of chaos, with my adrenalin pumping away in overdrive, God had proved Himself yet again.

I do not think it will affect my credibility if I say that I can see and recognize demons everywhere in this world of self indulgence, sin, and disorder. Not only is this theory Biblical, but it's also been proven to me beyond a doubt. Furthermore, I am in good company: Jesus saw demons all around Him too and spent a good deal of His time casting them out. Modern theory maintains that Jesus, not having understood the concept of mental illness, personified it. Clearly it's the other way around: secular psychology, not understanding the personal nature of evil, calls it mental illness, or in the DSM-IV vernacular, "problems in living," behavioral disorders.

Although the Word of God requires no corroborating evidence, still it's no coincidence that the truths it contains are repeatedly played out among His people. There's Howard Pittman's testimony, for instance, which you can't hear without believing there's a significant spiritual population inhabiting this present darkness.

Howard Pittman [Howard O. Pittman Ministries, PO Box 107, Foxworth, MS 39483] died one afternoon, and while dead, he was shown around the earth by angels, then given a mission to return to earth to tell what he had seen. No wonder we are directed to put on the whole armor of God. He saw that there were demons everywhere. They were especially thick in the areas around hospitals, which makes some sense, and gas stations, which makes less.

Satanism, witchcraft, some Eastern religions, and most native religions consciously worship and use demon power to a greater or lesser degree. In fact, except for Satan's humanist allies, only Christians, to whose destruction the evil one and his armies are dedicated, refuse to acknowledge the existence or importance of this unseen world. Or if they acknowledge it, as charismatics certainly do, they refuse, even amid the visible disintegration of the fabric of our society, to admit that Satan, although ultimately defeated, is not bound just because they say so. This is what Mario Murillo calls the "Honey, I-shrunk-the-devil syndrome." Let's get real!

Saints can be as oblivious as sinners. It's far easier for Christians to write hate mail to radio talk show host Bob Larsen than it is to minister in their churches to the teenage throwaways and ritual abuse survivors who find compassion and salvation through his program. It is far easier to continue to reject the rejected - to compartmentalize or gloss over evil as the property of a certain type of antisocial young people - than it is to recognize the truth of Satan's existence in all our lives. Many Christians simply cannot perceive the reason why: why their marriages fail, why their kids go bad, or why their credit card purchases are not approved when they're standing in line on a crowded Saturday afternoon at the Mall. Satan, the temptermeister, is the author of sin on this earth, and he snags all, great and small, in his demonic net.

In the ambulance with no vital signs, Howard Pittman went on a spiritual tour. He saw that all of us have a couple of demons, not so much in us as dogging our every step, moving in to exploit our weaknesses, creating havoc. He also saw people, like my husband, who walk around amid a whole hierarchical collection of spirit beings dedicated to bringing their dreams to ruin and seeing that they pay not only for their own sins, but also for the sins of their fathers before them.

Nevertheless, an explanation of why there is evil in the world cannot stop there. Spirit beings, having no bodies, can do no damage by themselves. They cannot sin. They cannot lie, cheat, or steal. They cannot commit suicide, homicide, regicide, or genocide. Only people can sin. Demons must inhabit people to disseminate their evil. And that they do.

This message I bring you is absolutely real. I have seen black demon eyes glare out at me from the eyes of the person I love, seen the destructive fury with which unleashed demons use their human victims to spoil and take revenge. Many times I have wondered if I would survive. But I always did; demons cannot make a man a killer. Only the will of a man can cause him to kill.

So what is the connection?

It's painfully clear that there is a necessary interconnection between spiritual wickedness and the choices we make in our lives for good or evil. In fact, we wrestle also with flesh and blood; temptation merely comes - we make the choice to give in to it or not. What is the connection between spiritual wickedness and the flesh of man, between the temptation and the sin? A professor of theology explained it:

The principle of sin is not fundamentally some impulse, biological or psychological, which belongs essentially to fallen human nature, but rather is a spiritual dynamic, alien and distinct from human nature at the same time that it is immanently present within human nature. The operation and function of this spiritual dynamic are to enslave and condition the biological and psychological drives of human life in the service of sin.[1]

As we yield to temptation, Satan captures the desires of our fallen nature and uses them to enslave us. Therefore, we can see that casting out spirits will not do any good so long as the person is allowing his biological and psychological drives to seduce him into sin. It does not matter whether the person is strong willed, pitting himself against God, or is simply weak willed, conditioned to a life of giving in. Just as with any unwanted guests in your house, you have to get serious with evil spirits before you can convince them to leave the place they have come to regard as home. You have to clean up your act.

You can't sit on the fence. And if you enjoy the privileges of self will or the pleasures of sin, then you don't really want your guests to go. So forget about deliverance. They won't go.

Or if they do go, being commanded by someone whose authority in Christ they recognize, they'll come back, bringing with them their friends and their bosses, to fortify their squatted domain and escalate your downhill slide. The ultimate end of a deliverance from demons, unless you are striving consciously to crucify the flesh by putting on the mind of Christ, can be increased bondage. God does not play games. And for most of us, although miracles do happen, there is no easy fix to a life that has been rooted and grounded in sin these many years.

So does deliverance do any good? Jesus seems to have delivered as often as he healed, and though we have no record of whether his subjects "kept their deliverance," we can assume that He knew what He was doing. And when we see the delivered maniac sitting at His feet, fully clothed, what's he doing? He's listening to the Word, renewing his mind.

And it's the same with the delivered of today. Surely the deliverance of a 17 year old prostitute, who was being bitten by demons in the Bilibid Prison in Manila, is one of the greatest of such stories in the modern world. Dr. Lester Sumrall tells of how he was used of God to set her free:

There was a raging battle, with the girl blaspheming God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Her eyes were burning coals of fire and full of hate. I commanded the evil spirit to loose her. After a three-day confrontation with the devil in her, the miracle of God came upon her. She relaxed, smiled, and said, "He's gone." [2]

What a story Dr. Sumrall tells of this deliverance in the prison, with hardened prisoners falling on their knees and even the newspaper reporters, there for headlines, openly weeping. But this deliverance - which sparked a great revival in the Philippines - would have been shortlived if Clarita Villanueva had gone back to the streets. But she did not. She was immediately brought into the Church where, schooled in the Word, she learned to make the right choices. She married, brought up her children in the Church, and remained a testimony to the power of God and the faithfulness of his servant.

Delivered people are given obligations for their deliverance. They must fill their hearts with the Word of God, must renew their minds, must change their ways. If they do these things - as many do, so relieved are they to be free from the darkness - there is no reason why they can't stay free. As the Son has made them free.

Not everyone will stay free. God requires submission; submission takes time. For some, like my husband, who knew freedom, briefly, following salvation, the price is too great to pay, the time is too short. Back comes the spirit with seven friends more evil than itself (Matthew 12:45).

How does a person get to be demon possessed? As the Proverb says: The curse causeless does not come (Proverbs 26:2). If you have demons in you, they are there as guests in your house. Through your behavior you have invited them there. This is true, I believe, even in the case of family demons, who are an inherited curse - good to three (and perpetual) generations. The curse will be broken with the generation that chooses righteousness. You are always the product of choices, even through they were impossible choices.

Many of us picked up our demonic companions at a very early age. Satan has never been known for fair play: often he forces on children choices they are not equipped to make. What develops from these choices are patterns of behavior directed toward survival, ways of dealing with pain that lead to more pain, and a state known to psychologists as equilibrium. What is normal to demoniacs is aberrant to the rest of us. Today's demoniacs, the psychopaths, sociopaths, and social deviants, are labeled with this or that disorder. They fit uncomfortably somewhere along that mythical line society has drawn between insanity and wrong behavior - although if Geoffry Dahmer can be determined to be sane, it is clear that that line is not where it used to be.

Unfortunately, what is normal to many of us is often based on similar, if less severe, patterns. Satan has been applying the pressure steadily all our lives, conditioning patterns of behavior that destroy achievements, aspirations, relationships, beliefs. We all have unwanted guests, and if they are not in the house, still they are encamped around it, at the windows, on the roof, scuttling about in the attic.

In order to be delivered, you have to ask your guests to leave. In fact, it's not enough to ask them to leave. You have to remove from your life every avenue by which they gained access in the first place. You have to renounce what is wrong and affirm what is right, put off the web of falsehood, gird yourself with truth. You have to alter your behavior. Say no to the flesh. Renew your mind. Submit your will to God's will: replace hate with love, bitterness with forgiveness, selfishness with charity. Then, you must love your enemies, and pray for those who spitefully use you. Rejoice in tribulation.

Is this transformation possible? Jesus put it this way: With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible (Matthew 19:26 KJ).

NOTES

[1] Dr. Fred Layman, quoted in Thomas B. White, A Believer's Guide to Spiritual Warfare (Ann Arbor: Servant Publications) 27.

[2] Lester Sumrall, Alien Entities (South Bend, Indiana: LeSEA, 1984) 137.