Can a Demon Invade and Inhabit a Christian?
What the church, both evangelical and Pentecostal, rejected for years, that a Christian can be demonized, has come to be accepted by modern-day deliverance ministries.
Despite there being no clear scriptural example of a believer ever inhabited by a demon, these deliverance ministers cite more than twenty passages that they say prove Christians can be indwelt by a demon.
Every verse they cite, however, is easily refuted. All of them!
Another distinct difference between the newest deliverance ministry and Scripture is this: Scripture documents ongoing evil from the beginning of Genesis to the end of the New Testament, and yet even among all this evil, demonization was somewhat rare.
This is not at all the perspective of the newest deliverance ministers. They believe that demonization is not rare but common, and not just among the unsaved but among believers.
In their book, The Common Made Holy, Neil Anderson and Robert Saucy state, “We estimate that approximately 15% of Bible-believing Christians are living free, productive lives.” 1 Anderson estimates that 85 percent of all Christians are struggling with various levels and depths of demonic bondage.
Redefining Demonization
The radical differences between Scripture and what we see in the modern deliverance ministries also include what demonization looks like.
Bible commentator Ray Stedman observed, “In the Bible, demonization involved easily recognizable phenomena”2 —a wild man charging down the countryside, a boy throwing himself into a fire, strange voices speaking from within, that kind of thing.
However, the new deliverance ministers inform us that none of these behaviors need to exhibit. Neil Anderson says most Christians suffering from demonic control live relatively normal lives, and that no causes are evident.3 This means the scary, the sensational, and all that’s weird and whacky won’t be the obvious clues.
One reason the new deliverance ministers believe there are so many demonized people in the congregation is because of the mistaken idea that if a believer has lost a measure of control, it is likely that demons caused this.
Accordingly, if you have an anger problem, bouts of depression, a reoccurrence of unwanted thoughts, temptations presenting after repentance, low self-esteem, bad dreams, etc., then the hyperventilating deliverance minister is here to warn you of demons.
In his book, The Biblical Guidebook to Deliverance, Randy Clark states, “Sin is the inroad for the demonic.”4 Every modern-day deliverance minister believes this; and to them, the sin doesn’t have to be one that is criminal, socially repugnant, morally reprehensible, or injurious to others. Any sin opens the door to the devil.
Why do these new deliverance ministers say something like this? There’s a bit of history here that helps to explain.
Relinquishing Scripture’s Role As Interpreter
Jessie Penn-Lewis’ book, War on the Saints, written more than a hundred years ago, set a template for their thinking when she candidly admitted:
Knowledge of the powers of darkness may be gained by an understanding of Scripture combined with personal experience ... Scripture apart from experience does not allow the believer to know ….5
Seriously? On a teaching this important, Scripture is inadequate?
Scripture says of itself that it is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that we may be complete and thoroughly equipped.
Therefore, it would be nothing less than astonishing to suggest that for a topic of such immense importance—the battle between God and Satan for victory in our lives—that Scripture omitted truths critical for our understanding.
This is a perilous premise, unwise in its construction and potentially deceptive in its operation. Any “Scripture plus” formula opens the door wide open for less than inspired thought, if not frequently inaccurate thought.
Rethinking Criteria for Demonization
The aftermath of this book, War on the Saints, was a fork in the road regarding this deliverance issue. Featured on center stage now is scripture-twisting to support an unbiblical premise.
For example, Jesus said in John 8:34 “… whoever commits sin is a slave of sin.” So, that’s one form of bondage, one where no demonization is involved.
Not so fast! — the new deliverance minister will say. Demons have to be involved here!
But to suggest that “being controlled” is symptomatic of demonization is, at the very least, problematic. The critical issue is the source of the control: Is it a demon? Or is it the flesh?
Disturbingly, the new deliverance ministers conflate these two options. As demonstrable proof, Neil Anderson sets forth this argument.
In Romans 13:14 we are instructed to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts.” But what if we do make provision for the flesh by giving Satan an opportunity in our life through sin? Do we have blanket immunity from Satan’s invasion? No, that protection is conditional on our responsible participation in God’s plan for our protection.6
“Satan’s invasion”? The text didn’t say anything about that. But Anderson, wanting this linkage between flesh and demons, just wedged it in there in his attempt to make a point Scripture doesn’t make.
Unfortunately, this forced and fallible method is commonly used by Anderson. One commentator called it “textual torture.”
For Anderson, the control doesn't have to be observable to outsiders. Any control attributable to sin qualifies as suspicion of the presence of demons. Neil Anderson stipulates the range of demonization includes normal behavior, a teaching that the inspired writers of Scripture never knew.
Actually, Anderson is forced to furnish an explanation like this, once he redefined demonization the way he did. This redefining, though, is based on an incorrect view of the Greek word, daimonizomai.
Anderson says this word does not mean a demon possessing anybody.7 However, the Greek lexicons and theological dictionaries all translate daimonizomai as “to be possessed by a demon.”8
Strong’s Concordance translates this word “to be possessed by a demon.”
Thayer’s Greek Lexicon translates it “to be under the power of a demon.”
The NAS Exhaustive Concordance translates it “to be possessed by a demon.”
W.E. Vine translates the verb this way: “To be possessed of a demon, to act under the control of a demon.”9 Moreover, the parallel phrase “to have a demon” also means demon possession in the Greek New Testament.
This truth alone stands as a major objection to Neil Anderson’s approach, an approach also adopted by these other deliverance ministers.
In his book, The Biblical Guidebook to Deliverance, Randy Clark asserts that this word daimonizomai “makes no distinction between possessed, obsess, and oppressed. It is just one word with a diversity of meanings ….”10
Randy Clark does acknowledge that “most English translations of the Bible use either the term ‘possession’ or ‘those possessed’;’’11 nevertheless, he states, “I consider that a poor choice of words.”12 And by what authority does he do this? Clark offers no lexigraphic citations for proof. None.
This preferred view (certainly not a proven view) gave deliverance ministers the loophole they wanted. Once they dismissed the biblical notion of possession—which, given its emotional negatives, is certainly convenient to their theory–they then devised their own ideas. They morphed being influenced by Satan into being controlled by Satan.
Scripture doesn’t do this, and for good reason: The power of each is different, and therefore the approach to each is different.
By then substituting Satan for self as the primary generator of moral defeat, and by also failing to distinguish between Satan as an external influencer from actual demon habitation, more confusion contaminated the counsel that should have been given.
In a paper titled, “Deliverance Ministry in Historical Perspective,” David Powlison writes:
The classic texts on spiritual warfare—Ephesians 6:10-20; James 3:14-4:12; 1 Peter 5:6-11—teach a mode of fighting the devil’s bid for lordship that centers on the Word of the living God, faith, repentance, prayer, and obedience in the power of the Spirit. There is no hint of exorcistic methods in these passages, because the Bible does not view the problem of sin, especially in Christians, as linked to an indwelling demon who must be evicted. The underlying paradigm that defines the demon deliverance movement remains unsupportable on biblical, theological, and practical grounds.13
Can a demon, or group of demons, get inside a Christian? The new deliverance ministers say: not only can they but in most cases they have.
More on this in the next post.
Notes:
1. Neil T. Anderson and Robert L. Saucy, The Common Made Holy, (Eugene, Oregon, Harvest House Publishers, 1997), p.236.
2. Ray Stedman, “Deliverance Ministry,” posted online: www.raystedman.org/thematicstudies/doctrinal-topics/deliverance-ministry
3. Neil T. Anderson and Robert L. Saucy, The Common Made Holy, p.349.
4. Randy Clark, The Biblical Guidebook to Deliverance, (Lake Mary, FL, Charisma House, 2015), p.94.
5. Jessie Penn-Lewis, War on the Saints, (New Kennsington, PA., Whitaker House, 1996), p.13.
6. Neil T. Anderson, The Bondage Breaker, (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1990), p.103.
7. Neil T. Anderson, Robert L. Saucy, The Common Made Holy, p.349.
8. Louw and Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the NT Based on Semantic Domains, (New York: United Bible Society, n.d.), 1:147; Bauer, Ardnt, Gingrich, Danker, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 169; Gerhard Kittel, ed., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964), 2:19; Colin Brown, ed., New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986), 1:453.
9. W.E. Vine, An Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1966), 1:291.
10. Randy Clark, The Biblical Guidebook to Deliverance, p.49.
11. Ibid., p.49.
12. Ibid., p.49.
13. David Powlison, “Deliverance Ministry in Historical Perspective.”
Dr. J.W. Phillips is the author of the book, Swatting the Saved, a major, well-researched work (more than 400 pages, almost 700 endnotes) that exposes the ministerial malpractice of deliverance ministries.
