Month: June 2023

As an exorcist I spend much of my time helping people get rid of their demons. Many individuals want to walk close to the Lord and have a successful Christian life. But they are hindered because of indwelling evil spirits. No matter how much they try or how often they go to church and read their Bible, they don’t spiritually progress as they wish. They seem to be constantly held back from achieving their freedom due to demonic impediments. Once their demons are gone, they are then able to make healthy decisions and walk in spiritual consistency. For this kind of person, they must FIRST get their demons cast out before they can know the fullness of Christ. But I want to speak to you about another set of circumstances that is the reverse of what I just described.

Instead of needing demons cast out to release their full spiritual potential, certain suffering souls need to make fundamental changes in their lives BEFORE their demons can be made to leave. I bring up this possibility because of a virtual ministry encounter that I recently did with a woman who lives half a world away. There was no question that she was under severe spiritual attack. Her demons readily manifested with facial contortions, violent shaking, and screams of, “I hate you, Bob Larson!”

As I proceeded further with ministry, I realized that this woman’s demons were not going anywhere. Why not? Her personal life was in disarray, giving the demons a stronghold to stay. As I’ve previously pointed out in our International School of Exorcism, the first department of Bob Larson University, there is a difference between a demon’s legal right to remain and its stronghold to abide in someone’s soul. The legal right is a spiritual technicality, like an unbroken curse. The stronghold is an emotional bondage in the soul, such as bitterness, unforgiveness, or rejection. In this case the stronghold was the woman’s moral lifestyle.

She loved God. She was saved. She knew she had demons and wanted to be free. But she had tragically fallen into moral sin that kept her bound by soul-tie circumstances. She had gotten illegitimately pregnant and remained in a relationship with the father of her child. They lived apart but met several times a week to have sex. She didn’t want to marry him, and he hadn’t asked her. She wasn’t sure she loved him, but she felt obligated to stay in this arrangement for the sake of the child. I told her this was wrong, dead wrong. She needed to set some boundaries until she worked out God’s will for her life. She took my advice. Because of her decision to stop living in sin and bring spiritual order to her life, the strongholds of the demons were pulled down, and they were cast out.

What’s your situation? Do you have demons that you need to have exorcised so you can move forward for the Lord? Or do you have things in your life that need to FIRST be addressed so you can be delivered and THEN move forward. Whatever your situation, beware. Bringing spiritual order to your life may be more important than immediately trying to cast out your demons. They likely won’t leave anyway because of your moral equivocation. Get your life right with God and then the demons won’t have anything to hang on to. Don’t be like the person in the proverbial expression Jesus used in Luke 9:62 — putting your hand to the plow and looking back on the attachments of your former sins.

I’m no stranger to controversy, so I’m going to stick out my neck and say something that will upset some folks. Many people who do deliverance aren’t going to like it. But I can’t stay silent. Too many attempts at deliverance are inadequate. Most pastors, priests, and lay ministers who try to relieve people’s suffering from demonic torment mean well. They are sincere, and I don’t question that. But based on what I’ve seen in decades of deliverance, demons don’t go until they’re made to go. And they don’t leave if they don’t speak, or at least confirm their presence in some direct manner.

There’s a school of thought in some ministry circles which accept forms of “lite” deliverance, that demons don’t have to speak and provide information for the host to be free. Some go so far as to say that demons SHOULD NOT be allowed to speak, let alone forced to speak. That’s old school, and it’s not backed by either scripture or experience. I know. Any normal week I cast out more demons than the average deliverance minister will face in a month, or even a year. I don’t say that to sound self-assured. I’m just stating the facts to establish that I’ve had the opportunity to accumulate sufficient data to back up my conclusion that an exorcism is usually not complete unless demons manifest and speak.

From a biblical standpoint it’s obvious. The training from Bob Larson University (BLU) clearly establishes that fact exegetically and epistemologically. From an empirical perspective, here’s what I encounter daily—people come to me saying that they have been told their demons are gone, but they still suffer significantly. I always ask these individuals the same question, “Did the people ministering deliverance require the demons to speak?” Most say, “No.” To which I reply, “That’s why you are still suffering. The demons never left.”

As our BLU courses teach, only by a distinctively verbal interrogation can one know for certain what demons are there, how they got there, when they got there, what strongholds they are exploiting, and whether they have truly been cast out. Forensically acquired facts are the only objective way to determine if demons are gone. Skip over or ignore that and the process of deliverance will likely be incomplete.

I understand there are exceptions to most any rule, including my insistence on demonic, vocalized interrogation. Sometimes in rare cases I don’t get the full force of combative, demonic expression that I’m after. But with the majority of deliverance cases, demons can speak and will speak if forced to. Having that confirming reciprocation is one sure way to know that a person’s oppression truly is demonic. My concern is for suffering souls who want to be truly free indeed. I don’t want to see them passed over lightly by those with sincere motives but lack adequate investigation. The position I’ve stated may run counter to what many healing ministries teach, but I’ll stand by it until I’ve cast out my last demons. If demons don’t speak most likely they are still there!

Forget about the scary movies you’ve seen regarding demons and the devil. That’s fiction. From “Ghostbusters” to “The Exorcist” and all the horror movies in between, these accounts of what Satan wants from humans aren’t accurate. What do demons really want from you? What is the worst thing the devil can make you do?

In fact, the devil cannot make you do anything. So, let’s put the question a different way. What is the worst thing that the devil can tempt you to do? What DOES a demon want from you that will please the devil and drive you away from God?

Your mind likely imagines a list of the worst moral evils – murder, blasphemy, stealing, or sexual perversion. Those things are bad, and if the devil could get you to do one or more of them, he certainly would try. He would fill your mind with thoughts of lust, hate, greed, anger, and revenge. But that’s not the worst thing the devil could get you to do.

The worst temptation of the devil has nothing to do with moral failure or intellectual suicide. Those things are bad, but they do not represent the ultimate intention of evil. To get the answer to this question, we can simply consider the garden of Eden and the book of Genesis for the answer. Genesis 3:1 tells us what happened: “Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?”

There you have it. The fall of mankind took place because the devil tempted Eve to question what God had said. The worst thing the devil can get you to do is to doubt God. To doubt his love. To doubt his warnings about sin. That is what the devil really wants from you. In short, to doubt the Word of God. Every other kind of sin starts with questioning God, His existence, and His moral law.

If God does not exist, or if what He says about moral disobedience is not true, then nothing else matters. If you deliberately choose to rebel and refute the warnings of God about sin and Satan, you have committed the worst evil. Once you question what God says, you have no answer for the existence of the world and the reality of human beings as unique creations of God. It all just happened, and therefore what we do with creation is a matter of presumed decency and collective moral order. But the Bible says our actions will be judged eternally based upon what God has said in His word. The worst thing the devil can get you to do is to deny the existence of God and the spiritual authority of the Bible. Do that and you are lost for all eternity. That is what demons really want from you.