June 12, 2025 • 63 mins
Acts 16 tells a story about a young fortune-teller girl who is more accurately identified as an Oracle of Delphi. In the mythology of the day, there was this idea that Apollo sanctioned a number of pythia (priestesses) who were known across the world for their prophecies.
Ultimately, though, Paul identifies the source of this prophecy not as the god Apollo, but as a demon. By casting this so-called "spirit of python" out of the girl, he shows God's ultimate power over demonic foes.
Not everyone agrees about where demons originated. Some believe they are fallen angels who rebelled against the Lord with Satan. Others believe they are the cursed spirits of the Nephilim. Even so, whatever you believe about demonic origins, know this--they are destined to pass away in holy fire.
P.S. Artistic license was taken with the intro, enjoy!
All music and sfx sourced from Pixabay.com under the Pixabay content license.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
It's the year 50 AD in the Macedonian port city of
Philippi. A young girl stands in the city
square, hundreds of gazes fixated on her as she shouts at
the top of her lungs. She's a fortune teller, a
priestess of the God Apollo. She's travelled from city to
city, prophesying for city officials, governors and kings.
(00:25):
She's one of the most powerful people in the land.
Yet for all that power, she isn't free.
She's a slave, forced to tell fortune to fill her master's
pockets. But all that is about to change.
2 strangers had arrived in town.Neither of them were much to
look at, but still she felt herself drawn to them.
If I can only reach them, she thought to herself, then I can
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be free. So day after day she pushed
through the crowds, calling after them at the top of her
voice. These men are servants of the
Most High God and have come to tell you how to be saved.
Day after day they paid her no mind, until one day, as if
filled with some unseen power, the man they called Paul turned
to her, laid a hand upon her forehead saying, I command you
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in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.
The next moments were a blur. They were shouting in the
streets. Her masters dragged the two men
away, shouting something incomprehensible, but all the
girl could think was thank you, I'm finally free.
I'm Timothy Willis and this is the Deliverance Dialogues.
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When I was about 19 years old, Iwas sitting preparing A sermon
when a man from Trinidad sat down beside me, took my notes
and began heavily critiquing what I was preparing to preach.
Now we had met a time or two butI didn't really know him.
So I looked over and said can I help you?
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And he starts giving all these suggestions on interpreting
scripture better and things thatI could do.
That's the story of how I got toknow one who'd become a dear
friend and mentor, Ebel Ramsundar.
Ebel taught me a lot, including much about casting out demons.
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Ebel had a Masters of Divinity, but few people ever knew it.
I remember asking him one day, Timothy, what his values are,
what was important to him in life.
And one of his answers really stunned me.
He said, well, a lot of people want to be known on Earth,
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Robbie, I would like to be knownin hell.
I said, you're going to have to unpack that for me a little bit.
And he said, well, when the seven sons of Skiva were trying
to cast out demons in the name of Jesus, who Paul preaches, the
demons spoke out of the individual and said, Jesus, I
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know and Paul, I know. Who are you?
Evidently Hell knew who Paul was.
He said. I think I'd like for Hell to
know who I am. Also, we live in a day when a
lot of ministers are admired on Earth, but I'm not sure how many
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are feared in hell. I think as we recapture this
whole concept of deliverance andthe central role that it plays
in the evangelization of the world in gospel preaching, the
role that it plays in carrying out the command, the Commission
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of Jesus Christ who said, behold, I give you power to
trample on serpents and scorpions and over all the power
of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you.
The command of the one that said, as you go preach, saying
the Kingdom of heaven is at hand, heal the sick, cleanse the
lepers, raise the dead, cast outdevils freely you have received,
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freely give. As we carry out his command, we
may have to rethink what real success in life and even in
ministry looks like. Now, with that said, I've always
said that if you want to prevailover the powers of the enemy,
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you need to know Jesus a lot better than you know the devil.
Now, that's pretty logical to me.
So one might ask then, why are we talking about demonology in
these couple episodes? I mean, in the last episode we
talked about some demonic origins, different ideas about
what demons are and where they came from.
(04:58):
And in this episode, we're goingto dive into some particular
demonology, including that of the apostles themselves and
expanding on throughout throughout the unveiling of
history. So Timothy, with that in mind,
what's your thoughts? Why do we even need to be having
(05:18):
this conversation? Obviously, what matters most is
that we know Jesus Christ, that we carry his authority.
So why this conversation? Why are we sitting here?
Today, you know, in, in the Bible, Paul kind of draws, he
draws spiritual matters as warfare, right?
So in, in Ephesians, he spends alot of time comparing the
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weapons of our warfare to the weapons of Roman warfare, right?
When he's explaining the, he's explaining the, the full armor
of God, the sort of the spirit, the helmet of salvation, the
breastplate of righteousness. These are all like Roman war
pieces that they would carry into battle.
And one of the most prolific writings on the philosophy of
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war is an ancient Chinese book called The Art of War by Sun
Zhu. And Sun Zhu writes in like the
5th century BC, something that Ithink is very profound.
He says if you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not
fear the result of 100 battles. If you know yourself but not the
enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.
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If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb
in every battle. So I think in order to know how
to combat the enemy, we shouldn't obsess over the enemy
himself, but we should definitely learn his tactics.
We should definitely learn the methods that the the enemy loves
to use to ensnare us and trap usso that we can know how to fight
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against them, so we're not losing a battle for every battle
we win. Ecclesiastes says there's
nothing new under the sun. So if we understand how the
enemy has worked throughout history, we may have some some
better understanding of how he'sworking right now.
The apostle Paul said like this.He said we are not ignorant of
the schemes of the enemy, but thank God we fight with
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spiritual weapons. Second Corinthians chapter 10
verse three to five says though we walk in the flesh, we do not
war after the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare
are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down
of strongholds, casting down imaginations and every high
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thing that exalts itself againstthe the, the knowledge of God
and and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience
of Christ. So even though we take some time
to study our enemy, we want to remember that it's not our
intellect, it's not our knowledge, it's it's not our
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training, but it is the authority of Jesus Christ and
the spiritual weapons that he's given us that makes us able to
prevail nonetheless. When you read throughout the
Scripture and throughout Unveiling Christian History, you
see that more than a little bit of thought is given to this
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concept of demonology. Now, the story that you began by
introducing us to Timothy is found in Acts chapter 16, and it
is unique among exorcism accounts in the New Testament in
that most of the time when you read about casting out demons,
you see them simply addressed asunclean spirits, evil spirits,
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demons, devils. Different words like this are
are used, but in this one you have the Apostle Paul and Silas.
They come to Philippi and they're preaching the gospel.
They're there in response to a vision.
A Paul had seen a man from Macedonia appear to him in the
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night saying come over here and help us.
So they go and here they are in the chief city of of Macedonia
and Philippi. And while they're preaching this
fortune teller girl, she has King James Version says a spirit
of divination. Quite literally the Greek says
she had the spirit of Pythonis or the spirit of Python.
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It is is in her. And thus your introduction, the
spirit of Pythonis is heavily associated with the Oracle of
Delphi. Now we have references to the
Oracle of Delphi all the way back to the 7th century BC.
This is well known, well known in history.
And although we're not going to dive into all the history
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surrounding the Oracle of Delphi, basically what happens
in in, in their, in the mythology of the day, there's
this idea that Apollo, Apollo had slain the dragon, the
serpent, the, the Python, if youwill, and taken control of the
Oracle. And now these Pythia, these
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priestesses would serve as as oracles that would declare the
things that Apollo wanted peopleto know.
The the the Pythia were sworn toperpetual virginity, and
although they had a great deal of respect, their prophecies
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were highly regarded. They certainly weren't free to
go on and do whatever they wanted either by by any means.
Now, what we don't know is this.We don't know the exact identity
of the girl that Paul and Silas encounter in Philippi.
We we know simply that Paul saysshe was possessed with a spirit
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of Pythonis. So he's making the text, is
making the reference between what is inhabiting her and the
Oracle of Delphi. By the way, the OR the Delphi
was not close by, nearly 400 miles away.
So are we being told that she's literally from there?
It sounds good, but maybe not. But what's clearly happening is
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that the Spirit she's prophesying by is being
connected in the minds of the people to what is happening
there at Delphi. And when Paul casts it out, he
passes up a great opportunity tocall it a demon.
And instead he just calls it what they would have known it by
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demonstrating that Jesus Christ is superior to the Oracle of
Delphi. And what might that communicate?
Perhaps he's superior to Apollo as well.
Well, how do they respond? They got real big mad over that.
Throw Paul and Silas in prison, beat them, lock them away.
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So when we look at this, there'sa lot of things going on.
One is the clear association that the Apostle Paul makes
between the Python spirit by illusion, the Oracle of Delphi,
and demonic possession. Another is the question of what
does it mean to be a Roman in that society.
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The Romans that have Paul and Silas thrown in jail are going
to go in to make the claim that they are bringing new customs
that it's not lawful for them toreceive because they're Romans.
Yet later the Apostle Paul says they have beaten US openly
uncondemed being Romans. So Paul's saying they believe
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they're the real Romans. I have the same rights they do.
And so he pushes back. In that sense, it raises
questions because we also live in a multicultural society with
a lot of different religious beliefs.
And it raises questions like, what does it mean to be a
citizen today? What some interpret as gods,
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others may interpret as demons. What some incur interpret as
spiritual, others may see as dangerous.
While some may claim that to be an American today means to be
accepting of a broad variety of religions, others, like the
Apostle Paul, might think it's not inconsistent with our
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patriotism to demonstrate the superiority of Jesus Christ to
the false gods that continue to enslave and bring destruction to
our world. Because, like the young fortune
teller girl that Paul exorcised,many people have signs of
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spiritual power, but they are infact not free.
So if there are things in Roman culture, you know, like the,
the, the the Oracle of Delphi, the the spirit of Pythonies that
Paul says, these are just demons, right?
Like you were calling them good things with these are just
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demons. Are there some similar things in
our culture today? The short answer is yes, but I
don't want to. I don't want to start there.
To answer that, let's start withwhat the next generation of
believers after the apostles hadto say, because they really
frame the conversation for us. And so I want to share some
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lengthy quotes from Justin Martyr, who lived from 100 to
165 AD, and look at how Justin was starting to evaluate this
whole issue of what are demons and and what are they doing?
Because I think that may help usthen unpack as we look at our
culture, how do we identify that?
How do we know? OK, just like there were things
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in the 1st century culture that were widely accepted, but were
were interpreted by the apostlesas demons from which people need
to be liberated. There is no question that such
things exist today. Justin Martyr, speaking in
defense of Christians who are being heavily persecuted in the
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one hundreds AD, wrote this. We warn you in advance to be
careful lest the demons whom we have attacked should deceive you
and prevent your completely grasping and understanding what
we say, for they struggle to have you as their slaves and
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servants. And now by manifestations and
dreams, now by magic tricks, they get hold of all who do not
struggle to their utmost for their own salvation, as we do,
who, after being persuaded by the Word, renounced them and now
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followed the only unbegotten Godthrough His Son.
Those who once rejoiced in fornication now delight
incontinence alone. Those who made use of magic
hearts have dedicated themselvesto the good and unbegotten God.
We who once took most pleasure in the means of increasing our
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wealth and property now bring what we have into a common fund
and share with everyone in need.So Justin is making it clear
that demons inspire fornication,what he calls magic tricks,
greed, and all kinds of such things.
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But when we turn to Christ, we abandoned such things.
We also read this in Justin. The truth must be told.
In old times, evil demons manifested themselves seducing
women, corrupting boys, and showing terrifying sights to
men, so that those who did not judge these occurrences
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rationally were filled with awe.Taken capture by fear and not
understanding that these were evil demons, they called them
gods and gave each of them the name which each of the demons
had chosen for himself. When Socrates tried by reason
and with due inquiry to make these things clear and to draw
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men away from the demons, they, working through men who
delighted in wickedness, managedto have him put to death as
godless and impious, saying thathe was bringing in new
divinities. And now they do the same kind of
thing to us. Justin makes no bones about it.
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He sees demons as the ones that lie behind seduction, behind
irrational fear, behind the awe that is created that captivates
people with the spirit realm. And he sees demons as being
behind the murder of those who are truly godly and trying to
call people to the truth. Justin doesn't stop there.
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He makes the claim that everyonein that culture knows how
effective Christians have becomeat casting out such demons.
He writes this and now you can learn this from what is under
your own observation for Numberless Pontiacs throughout
the whole world and in your city.
Many of our Christian men exorcising them in the name of
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Jesus Christ who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, had healed
and do heal, rendering A helpless and driving the
possessing devils out of the men, though they could not be
cured by all the other exorcist and those who used incantations
and drugs. I want to read just another
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short quote from Justin. Then let's move into this matter
of of what things today might need to be under our
observation. Justin Martyr writes this
regarding the angels and how they transgressed.
God, when He had made the whole world and subjected things
earthly to man, and arranged theheavenly elements for the
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increase of fruits and rotation of the seasons, and appointed
this divine law for these thingsalso He evidently made for man,
committed the care of men and all things under heaven to
angels, whom he appointed over them.
But the angels transgressed thisappointment, and were captivated
by love of women, and begot children, who are, who are those
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that are called demons. And besides, they afterwards
subdued the human race to themselves, partly by magical
writings, and partly by fears and the punishments they
occasioned, and partly by teaching them to offer
sacrifices and incense and libations, of which things they
stood in need after they were enslaved by lustful passions,
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and among men they sowed murders, wars, adulteries.
Intemperate deeds and wickedness.
Now check this out. He goes on to write, Whence also
the poets and mythologists, not knowing that it was the angels
and those demons who had begotten, who had been begotten
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by them, that did these things to men and women, and cities and
nations which they related, ascribe them to God himself, and
to those who were accounted to be his very offspring, and to
the offspring of those who were called his brothers Neptune and
Pluto, and to the children againof these their offsprings.
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For whatever name each of the angels had given to himself and
his children, by that name they called them.
Justin Martyr makes some very strong claims right here.
Among those are he's quite literally saying that the Greek
and Roman gods were nothing morethan demons, and that people
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worship them as gods because thedemons communicated their own
divinity to the people. They made such claims, so then
people believe them. So what he's saying is that the
people in his day were killing Christians because they were
deceived by the very demons thatwere keeping them enslaved to
their own lusts, passions, murders, witchcraft.
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When you bring that into our current context and you step
back and look at the absolute devastation that our society is
experiencing, what do you see happening?
You see lust and unbridled passions in OverDrive.
We see perversion at a historic scale that has invaded our
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society and taking hold of people in the sense of mania and
and madness that now we call normal.
We see witchcraft going mainstream until now.
We, we, we don't have the the old divisions where you knew
that you were either a follower of Jesus Christ or you were one
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of these other things. There's a quote that I posted
actually tried Deliverance dialogues Facebook page that
that references. It's it's what's wild is this
was in a mental health article that was talking about how
witchcraft is not just for pagans anymore.
Now there are Christian witches and Jewish witches and atheist
witches and agnostic witches. Do you know what this is?
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This is self deception. This Is Us telling ourselves
that we can give things new names and change the very nature
of what it is. But Justin Martyr still speaks
pretty plainly to us that some of these things were actually
being named by the demons themselves.
So when you look at our society,you see things that are claiming
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the title of Christian that clearly are not.
For instance, having cast out several demons over the years, I
find it interesting. Though I don't necessarily
believe everything that my adversary tells me, I find it
interesting some of the claims that demons make.
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That is, I've cast out demons that claim to be kundalini
spirits. Well, where could that name
possibly come from? Oh, it's actually very
straightforward. It it comes from and its
association is with Kundalini yoga.
Now, that's not the only place that we find it, but it's a
common place. So in our society now, we have
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us renaming things that historically we knew what they
were, right? The practice of yoga, for
instance, is handed down to us through Hinduism, and the
postures are intended to align yourself to yoke you with one of
these Hindu deities. But me just making that
statement has somebody screamingat their phone right now, I
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suspect because we have a hard time calling things demons that
are. But we don't realize that things
are not really spiritually neutral.
They come from God or they come from the enemy.
Well, in deception, sowing deception and chaos has been a
tactic of the enemy from the very beginning, you know, and so
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I, I think what we're seeing on a, on this scale that we're
talking about what we're seeing where people are trying to
Christianize or despiritualize alot of different things like
yoga. It's a tactic of deception.
And, and it has been from the very beginning.
It's what the enemy has been doing since ancient times is
trying to deceive us and make usthink that what we're doing is
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OK. And and then it shows all this
chaos and you can't figure out why is my life going off the
rails? What's going on?
And it's because you're you're not paying attention to what
these things really are. Meanwhile, the warning label, if
you will, among some of those who are promoting Kundalini yoga
are warning about things like Kundalini syndrome.
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You know what Kundalini syndromeis.
This is a well done, a very dumbed down explanation, but
according to the yoga gurus, it's when you experience this
dramatic spiritual awakening that you weren't fully prepared
for and it affects your body andyour mind in ways that now you
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can't function. Isn't that crazy?
Well, and the reality is, is that, that, that it's like you
say all the time, nothing is spiritually neutral, right?
You know, either the the Bible says that every good and perfect
gift comes from the Father. So anything spiritual, it's
either from one of two places, it's from the Father or it's not
from the Father, in which case we should leave it alone, right?
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And, and, and The thing is, is if this if, if you have the
potential for yoga or any other spiritual practice to have a
severe negative impact on your spirit, it's probably not from
God and it's probably something you should leave alone.
This is very true, and what we find is that our modern
practices often are are linked to ancient practices and ancient
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demons in very clear and demonstrable ways.
We mentioned earlier our currentcultural obsession with all
things sexuality and with distorting human identity.
Well, guess what? That's not that's not new.
In fact, the fertility gods and goddesses of the past were
worshipped through sexual orgiesand all manner of things, and
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they tended to not really like the idea of monotheism either,
right? The idea of a holy, moral God
that calls us to live a different way has always been
offensive to a culture that wanted to celebrate debauchery.
Today we have this distorted identity.
You have humans that believe themselves to be animals and
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we're so confused about what that even means.
Why are we confused? In the history of humanity,
demons have always tried to lower us to be less than what we
are, which is created in the image of Almighty God.
Why would Satan want us to believe that we are no different
from the animals? Because we are stamped with the
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image of the one whose incarnation guaranteed his
destruction, and it is through the victory of Christ that we
receive the eternal Spirit who gives us victory over the things
of the world. I love what first John says in
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the 4th chapter. Whatsoever is born of God
overcomes the world. And this is the victory that
overcomes the world, even our faith.
So you, you have these spirits, these demons, if you will, that
are very caught up in a lot of practices.
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I had an experience not real long ago that was somewhat new
for me. I was casting a demon out.
And even though I, I really press against the idea of asking
demons what their names are, Jesus did it once in the Bible.
And it's a it's it's well attested among exorcists that
there were context in which theydid that.
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So I was casting a demon out some time ago and and it just
wasn't budging right now. Feel free to criticize me as
loudly as you want to. I know that the anti deliverance
people will have a heyday with this, so that's fine.
Have fun and enjoy. I asked the spirit who is it?
And it tells me that its name isAsmodeus.
And I'm like, OK, I mean, I've never encountered that, but I I
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do know where the name comes from.
The name is first found, to my knowledge, in the apocryphal
Book of Tobit. I'm not assuming it's true, but
here's how that plays out in Tobit.
In the Book of Tobit, there's a woman named Sarah.
Sarah has had seven different husbands, and each time before
she's able to consummate the marriage, the demon Asmodeus
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kills her husband. Well, finally, I guess that was
the 6th husband Will. Finally, the 7th man that God
comes and tells to go and marry Sarah naturally has some
nervousness about this right? I mean this is like the original
Black Widow. Well.
So God in the book of of Tobit sends the Angel Raphael to bind
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the demon Asmodeus, after which Sarah is able to get married and
bear children and live a happy and fruitful life.
So then what is Asmodeus? If we take that ancient
accounting to mean anything, Asmodeus is a demon that
disrupts marriages and attaches himself almost like a husband or
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in a possessive way over women. Why are we seeing a revival of
these kinds of things now? Frankly, it's because people
have been worshipping old demonsand the and the old demons came
back around. So now we have this scenario
where we have to realize that the answer is still the same as
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it's always been. The answer is through Jesus
Christ, through the cross of Christ.
But there very well may be a need for people to turn from
behaviors, ideas and actions that have led them to become
subjected to these kinds of spiritual entities.
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Another place that we see this and and Timothy, we were talking
about this just a little bit agois in the modern obsession in
the current obsession with killing unborn children.
Now, I realize that this may be the episode where people
abandoned us and they're like, Iwas enjoying that, and then you
had to go there. So here we are.
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I understand there's a lot of difficult conversations that
surround this subject, but we are in our nation murdering our
unborn at a staggering rate, primarily by all available
statistics, primarily for convenience.
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Now, this isn't new. The ancient sacrifice to Moloch
in which they threw their unborninto the fire in order to gain
some type of spiritual power. When I mentioned this before we
start recording Timothy, you mentioned, you mentioned
psychiatrist Richard Gallagher. Help me remember what we were
talking about there. Yeah.
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So when we were talking about this earlier, I was, I was
saying we we talked about Julia,one of his case studies in
another episode in a previous episode, 1 of the things that
that Julia had experienced was that she was a part of a of a
cult that was heavily involved in witchcraft that celebrated
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her as this like type of witch queen.
And they would have orgies. She would get pregnant just to
abort the baby, to sacrifice it to some false God or a demon to
gain power. Wow.
And we had a, we had a similar account in one of our our
previous episodes where we told Katisha's story where she shared
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about, about someone in the occult.
She knew they had done somethingvery, very similar.
So these things are shocking to hear.
They're shocking to think about.And yet, well, when you really
evaluate what's going on, it's not so surprising that the
demons that inspired fornicationin ancient times are inspiring
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fornication now. The demons that drove people to
murder their young and their unborn in ancient times are
still inspiring murder now. The demons that drove people to
participate in spiritual practices that enslave their
practitioners, while those doingthem claim to be doing nothing
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wrong, they're still doing that now.
So in the when we're talking about deliverance, in order to
experience liberation through Christ, there's got to be a
willingness to step back and take a look at what's happening
before us and realize, here's where our demonology comes in.
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Realize when we're looking at demons in action, and we got to
be willing to call that what it is.
And here's the thing, if you find yourself offended by this
and your feelings are hurt, justknow we're not setting out to
demonize people. We're not setting out to to to
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call people out and just say, Hey, you're evil.
What's wrong with you? What we're saying is there are
very real things in your life that you might need to take a
step back and look at honestly and saying, where is say, where
is this coming from? You know, if you're a Christian,
you need to evaluate the things that you do and say, is this of
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God? Is this positive or, or, or is
it not of God? Or is it negative to my life?
Because if it's a net negative to your life, maybe you don't
need it. You know, maybe it's not
something you should keep engaging in.
Absolutely. And to be clear, while we
believe demons are evil, we don't necessarily believe that
everyone who is demonized, who is harassed by demons is more
(34:59):
evil than someone who may not be.
In fact, if you happen to be newto this podcast or just dropping
in, I would invite you to go back and listen to episode 2,
where we talked about how demonization affected my own
household in a very direct in a very real and devastating way.
Yeah, people who suffer from demonization aren't they're,
(35:20):
they're not the problem. They're a victim, right?
Yes. That doesn't mean that the
victim has no responsibility fortheir own actions, but
ultimately, they're still a victim and they still need help.
That's exactly right. What I what I hope our listeners
can come to understand is that the world we live in is
inherently spiritual, not secular.
(35:43):
The spiritual realm is as real as the material realm, and most
humans throughout history have believed that to be true.
And if angels and demons and Godand Satan are real, then it
would stand to reason that it's important for us to know whether
(36:05):
spiritual powers are malicious or benevolent.
You might say we need to know what we're dealing with, what
we're facing, what we're seeing,and how then we can really move
forward. And as long as, as long as these
conversations are being restricted, as long as we can't
(36:25):
have them openly just because some of us disagree on values
with others, we're never going to be able to really get to the
bottom of how to help people. And there are a lot of people
that might disagree with some ofthe things we're saying here,
but they share our passion for seeing people restored to
greater mental and spiritual health.
So what I would propose is that we've got to learn to have
(36:47):
difficult conversations in nonviolent ways so that we can
learn what the truth is. So we have demons like the
Kundalini spirit, We have Asmodeus, we have we, we have
the spirits that are inspiring fornication, which leads to this
question. Probably one of the one of the
(37:08):
very common experiences among a lot of exorcists and deliverance
ministers is that when you're casting out demons, something
will identify itself as a spiritof fear, a spirit of anger, a
spirit of lust. So Timothy, what do you think?
Is there a demon named Lust? Is there a demon named fear?
Is there a demon named Anger? How do we process those things?
I mean, probably not. You know, you mentioned before
(37:31):
that some people could make the argument that the Bible says
that God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power,
love, and a sound mind. And, and you said that somebody
could make the argument that those are actual spirits,
although that doesn't really at all seem to be what the Bible's
saying. It really seems more like it's
it's poetic language. We've talked before about I
(37:54):
think in last our last episode, we talked about Doctor Diamond
and how he believes that there are some like intense human
emotions that overtake us and have a very similar effect to
possession. And I believe that that happens.
I don't necessarily believe thatthere are, there is a literal
demon walking around named Anger, you know, but maybe
(38:18):
there's demonically inspired anger for sure.
And I think I said before when we were talking about this, a
common tactic of the enemy is fear.
So the enemy has a lot of these,these common tactics that
inspire fear, they inspire confusion, they inspire anger, a
(38:39):
lot of these different things. And and so that's one side of
things that I think could be at play there.
I completely agree with you. And so while fear may or may not
be a demon's name, it is a common expression of demonic
harassment. The consensus of exorcists seems
(39:03):
to be the general consensus at least.
They're outliers that when a spirit identifies itself by a
proper name, you may be dealing with a higher ranking demon if
you buy into those kinds of things.
However, a spirit of fear, a spirit of anger is really
identifying itself by function. And these are probably maybe
(39:24):
weaker is not the not the right word, but these are probably
lower ranking demons in a sense.Nonetheless, if if we were to
talk about fear, let's just takethis And first of all, let me
let me give the disclaimer. I do not believe that all fear,
anxiety, panic disorders are a demon.
That is not all of them are demonization.
There are a lot of different causes for these kinds of
(39:45):
things. If we're going to concede that
fear could be demonically driven, and I'm going to say
from my understanding the scripture and from personal
observation and experience, I'm going to say it, it very well
can be. I dealt with a lot of crippling
fear in, in earlier life nightmares and, and a lot of a
lot of sometimes waking up and what would be today called sleep
(40:07):
paralysis. You can't move you, you can't
talk, things of that sort in order to really assess this.
I wonder how How broad of a problem do you think this is?
So how big of a deal is fear, anxiety, panic disorders?
So, I mean, we know that that that mental health disorders are
(40:32):
on the rise across the board. We've talked about this before,
but but here's some specific statistics that we were talking
about before we sat down to record this today.
So this is from the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
They write that anxiety disorderis the most common mental health
concern in the United States andthat 19%.
So one in five adults in the United States have a diagnosed
(40:55):
anxiety disorder in according tothe Los Angeles Outpatient
Center in 2025. In a survey done in 2025 shows
that an estimated 42.5 million US adults are living with
anxiety disorder and according to the previous year's surveys,
(41:17):
this is up 10% in the last two years.
That's staggering. Staggering.
I want to share a scripture withthe gist.
First to ponder. Jesus said the thief cometh not,
but for to steal, to kill him, to destroy.
But I have come that you might have life, and that more
(41:37):
abundantly. I really don't think that one in
five people being crippled by anxiety and fear is what
abundant life is supposed to look like.
Now, to be clear, many of those in that statistic are born again
(41:58):
Christians who love God. And while I'm not willing to say
that everyone with a anxiety disorder of some sort is
demonized or possessed or even oppressed, what I will say is
this. The very nature of being
(42:22):
crippled by fear is itself demonic.
It's the opposite of what God has for us.
I agree with your interpretationthat passed you quoted a minute
ago from from Timothy. For God has not given us the
spirit of fear, but of power andof love and of a sound mind.
I don't think that in the context of that passage, spirit
of fear rightly is referring to a demon.
There's plenty of ways the scripture communicates when it's
(42:43):
talking about demons, and I don't really think it's what
it's doing there. But what it is letting us know
is that crippling fear is the opposite of what God intended
for us. So sometimes breaking free from
it is a matter of discipleship. Sometimes it's a matter of
processing through past trauma. But but sometimes it is a very
(43:05):
real demonic oppression. And among those that I've prayed
with that have expressed deliverance, I'm going to say
that having a sense of absolute crippling fear is one of the
most common symptoms that is expressed by those that are
seeking out help. And it is anxiety and fear is,
(43:28):
as you said, one of the primary things that's driving people to
counselors saying, help me. There is a there is an awareness
in our nation that we need to overcome this.
Anger is the same way, right? Anger is a natural human
emotion. God experiences anger in the
Bible and, and, and, and as Christians, we certainly don't
believe God is guilty of sin or anger.
(43:49):
The Bible tells us be angry and sin not, so it's possible to be
angry and not move into sin. Yet we do know that anger, when
it's when it's repressed, when it's suppressed, when it's
pushed down, it's not processed in healthy ways, sometimes
becomes explosive and people carry out heinous acts of
(44:11):
violence. They make catastrophic life
ending mistakes because althoughanger is not itself a demon,
anger is one of the devil's veryfavorite tools to use.
So I'm going to tell you the story.
So one time I was, I was castingout this demon.
(44:32):
I didn't really want to In this particular case, I mentioned my
my old mentor Abel, who's with the Lord now.
I was in a prayer line next to him and Abel was was real prone
by the way I called him Abel when he was alive and one of
like a year before he died. He looks at me in a moment of
tension and he's like, you don'teven know that my name is Abel.
(44:54):
So here I am honoring his life by saying his name was Abel.
But I was not always able to saythat.
So with that, Abel looks at me, looks over at me, and then he
points his finger at a guy sitting in the back of the
church and he calls him by name.He says come here, I want to
pray for you. The dude stands up, takes his
glasses off his face and just flings them at the seat.
(45:17):
Dude's clearly mad and I remember thinking to myself,
glad it's you and not me going to pray for him.
When this man gets in front of Abel.
He looks over at me and says with a smirk Hey Robbie, pray
for him and he walks off. I was so mad.
So I reach up with less faith than any minister has ever had
(45:39):
when praying for somebody, put my hand on this guys shoulder
and start to pray. And as soon as I start praying,
he crumbles to the ground under the power of God.
People say, why do people fall down sometimes?
Because they can't stand up. That's the reason.
So he couldn't stand up. So he fell down and he's there
on the ground. And I'm like, thank you Jesus
for whatever you're doing in him.
I don't know. And then I hear him just
(46:02):
pleading with God for help and Iheard him say this.
Oh God, I don't want to be so full of anger anymore.
I don't want to be so full of hate anymore.
Please God, would you help me now?
What I didn't know at that moment was that that man had
said to himself, this is the last time I will ever step foot
(46:22):
in a church house again. I will go one last time and if I
don't find the help that I need,I will never be back.
He was sitting on the very back row when a bell called him out.
So when I hear him crying out toGod like this, I'm young, 20
something at the time. I lean down, I put my hand on
his shoulder and I prayed very quietly like this.
(46:45):
In the name of Jesus Christ, youspirit of anger, come out of
him. Timothy, what happened next I
had never experienced before. And by the good grace of God, I
have never experienced it since I'm 44 years old.
It's been over 20 years and if Idie without ever having this
happen again, I will be a happy man.
(47:07):
He grabbed me with one arm and threw me across the sanctuary as
though I was a Lego. Now I was not expecting to be
thrown with one arm by the man Iwas praying for.
This was not something I was prepared for in any way, shape
or form. You would think if you had just
thrown someone you would leave them alone, having made your
(47:28):
point, not him. In the next few moments he jumps
on top of me. His face is red, he has veins
bulging out of his head. There were over 100 people in
that local church, including strong big men, and they all hit
the walls to watch the show. Not one, and I mean not one of
(47:51):
them came to help me in the nextfew moments.
He's on top of me. The only way I can describe what
this look like through my eyes. If you've ever seen Lord of the
Rings and you've seen Gollum, when he's trying to attack
Frodo, in my memories, it looks real similar to that snorting
and and breathing and trying to choke me.
And he starts coming from my throat.
(48:12):
Now I'm fighting, I'm on my back, I'm disoriented.
I'm fighting this man with everything I have.
You say, well, Robbie, you just said the weapons of our warfare
are not carnal. No, they are not.
But when I'm terrified, I was just trying to not die.
I'm still trying to figure out why this guy's trying to hurt
me. I just prayed for God to help
him. Now I don't know what your
(48:35):
church experience is like, but this is not normal.
So he's on top of me trying to choke me and I'm fighting him
off. He's clearly stronger than I am.
And I look up and I I rememberedbeing taught when I was young
that God gave us power to bind and to loose.
Now, in Bible college, they toldme that this doesn't mean this,
(48:56):
but I was willing to use any available tool that might work.
So this is what I did. If you don't like the
hermeneutics or the interpretation, that's fine, I
get it. But I looked up and I said these
words. In the name of Jesus Christ, you
fouled demon, I bind you, get off me.
And in that moment, this individual fell to the floor as
(49:18):
though somebody had shot him through the chest.
All that hatred that was on his face suddenly vanished away, and
his eyes began to clear up. And that moment I heard him
calling out to Jesus Christ for salvation, pleading with God to
transform his life. Now, was that a spirit of anger?
(49:43):
The short answer is yes. Was that a demon whose name is
Anger? I think that's a gross
oversimplification of what this man was experiencing.
I can tell you that I'm not a small guy and most people don't
throw me with one hand. There was, from my vantage
(50:05):
point, some real preternatural strength being exercised there.
I had had no conflict with this man before, and I had no
conflict with him afterward. He had no natural reason to
attack me. Yet in that moment it really
appeared that he wanted to kill me.
God came down and gloriously sethim free.
(50:28):
So for our understanding of a New Testament demonology, it is
helpful to know that while theremay or may not be a demon named
Anger, Satan absolutely preys onthe weak, seeking to exploit our
fear, anger, our lust, or our other tendencies for his own
(50:51):
purposes. These are the realities so real
human emotions get manipulated by diabolic forces in order to
bring about the destruction thatSatan has planned for the human
race. Now, Tim, you've probably heard
(51:13):
me tell this story before. I retell lots of stories.
You were not yet born. Help me unpack this.
Any thoughts? Not really.
OK, then let's try again. Sorry.
(51:34):
So, Tim, when, when we're looking at the, the, the
spectrum of issues here, on the one hand, we have spirits like
the spirit of Pythonis that's clearly tied to an acceptable
practice in, in, in the ancient world.
But for the apostles, it's demonic.
(51:55):
And we know that we have things that, if evaluated that same way
in our country are going to be the same way or in our time are
going to be the same way. There are practices that are
acceptable culturally, but biblically they are demonic.
What do we do with that? On the other hand, sometimes
people are enslaved to their ownemotions, and that may be
(52:16):
trauma, it may be a mental illness.
It may be demonic, it may be a mixture of those things.
So here's one aspect of demonology.
The other aspect is there are these real spiritual forces that
are out there. But I do see something.
You notice that the Apostle Pauldid not go looking for the young
(52:39):
Pythia. She came after him in very much
the same way as the demons used to come at Jesus, crying out,
what have we to do with you, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?
And Jesus silenced them and refused to refused to accept
(53:00):
their public witness of who he was.
Paul treats that demon in very much the same way.
He doesn't go looking to cast out the Delphic the the, the,
the Delphic Oracle. He doesn't go looking to cast
out the Pythia. He doesn't go looking to cast
out the spirit of Python is thatthere's the phrase I was trying
to find that entire time. This young girl comes after him
(53:22):
over the course of some days, when he finally responds and
when he confronts that demon, everything melted down.
Here's the reality. When we start speaking to the
demons that are accepted in our culture, we better expect
(53:42):
meltdowns to ensue. Why then would we have those
conversations? For my part, it's because people
are enslaved to those demons, and while they believe
themselves to be free, they verymuch are not.
What's your thoughts? We've said this the whole time,
but in this realm of thought anddemonology, what we're looking
(54:05):
at is the origins of things. So like, where do these things
come from, right? So it's much the same way in
mental health counseling. A lot of times whenever
somebody's experiencing a problem in their life, it's got
a root somewhere deep in the past, right?
And in order to actually uncoverwhat's causing this problem,
whether it might be depression, whether it's anxiety, whether
(54:28):
it's other like the problems that are cropping up in your
marriage and your job. Usually those things have some
sort of root in some kind of trauma that happened in your
past. And in order to get down and fix
the problem, you have to be honest about evaluating, OK,
where did this come from? I think it's a it's, it's a lot
the same way with with spiritualthings and with spiritual
(54:50):
problems. When you're experiencing a
spiritual issue, when you're experiencing spiritual
disintegration, what you have tobe honest about is, OK, where
did this come from? What's the origin?
So in the case of the fortune teller girl, she has this, the
spirit that came from the demon that called itself Apollo,
(55:11):
right? And, and, and at some point she
had to recognize that she neededhelp.
I, I, I believe that the reason she's chasing after Paul is that
on some level she wanted to get help, right?
I agree. And so that's the first step is,
is realizing that you need help.But then our job as deliverance
ministers acting in, in the place of the exorcist is you
(55:34):
have to look at where is this coming from, right?
Because we, because it's like inEcclesiastes, you said earlier,
there's nothing new under the sun, right?
The enemy is repetitive. The enemy acts in much the same
way throughout history. And, and, and, and so we can
look and we can see, OK, there'sthis pattern, right?
And we can identify those patterns and utilize them to
(55:58):
cast the demons out today, right?
And, and so that's, that's to me, that's why this is useful,
right? It's, it's not just to obsess
over some demon named Asmodeus, right?
It's because if you can identifypatterns throughout history, you
can identify ways that you can help people.
(56:18):
That's what it really comes downto.
Absolutely. In his book, In the Name of
Jesus, Doctor Graham 12th Tree makes this statement.
The New Testament shows very little interest in demonology
except as it relates to soteriology.
Soteriology is the study of or the doctrine of salvation.
(56:42):
I wholeheartedly agree with Doctor 12th Tree.
If we start studying demons for just the sake of wanting to know
more about demons, we risk beingensnared by the very things that
draw people into paganism. So our obsession needs to be
with the salvation that the God of the universe offers to us.
(57:07):
So many people are settling for worshiping the universe, but we
worship the creator of the universe, and that's a
beautiful, marvelous reality. So as we get ready to wrap this
up, I want to bring it back to what the historic church knew.
The apostles cast out demons. Jesus cast out demons.
(57:28):
The generations that followed the apostles cast out demons.
We know that we have their writings clearly saying so, but
they didn't do so just to prove that they were effective
exorcists. Although we talk a lot about the
therapeutic value of deliveranceand exorcism, I want to also
point out they didn't just do itfor therapeutic reasons.
(57:51):
The apostles understood and we must understand that the Kingdom
of God is breaking forth upon the earth right now,
overthrowing the Kingdom of darkness.
And the Kingdom of God has a king.
His name is Jesus Christ. And exorcism or deliverance is
(58:13):
about the King Jesus exercising his authority over humanity and
over demons. And so our call is not be free
from demons, but it must be surrender to Christ.
When you read the New Testament,baptism itself is seen as
(58:36):
embodying this exorcistic power that that aids in our transition
from the Kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of God.
I don't mean just that the wateritself does it, but but rather
that the whole conversion experience that is typified in
baptism is really what translates us from one Kingdom
(58:56):
to the other. Colossians chapter 2, verses 12
to 15 says this, having been buried with him in baptism, in
which you were also raised with him through faith in the
powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead by
canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its
(59:18):
legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to
the cross. He disarmed the rulers and
authorities and put them to openshame by triumphing over them in
Him. Through our salvation, through
our baptism, we participate in the victory of Jesus Christ
(59:42):
through the cross and through His resurrection over demon
powers. Riding in the two hundreds AD,
Cyprian of Carthage spoke of howsometimes local exorcist were
unable to liberate people, though they used every means
available to them. But then he writes this.
(01:00:04):
When, however, they come to the water of salvation and to the
sanctification of baptism, we ought to know and to trust that
there the devil is beaten down, and the man dedicated to God is
set free by the Divine Mercy. For as scorpions and serpents
(01:00:25):
which prevail on the dry ground when cast into water, cannot
prevail nor retain their venom, so also the wicked spirits which
are called scorpions and serpents, and yet are trodden
under foot by us, by the power given by the Lord, cannot remain
(01:00:47):
any longer in the body of a man in whom, baptized and
sanctified, the Holy Spirit is beginning to dwell.
That's awesome. So what does Cyprian of Carthage
say needs to happen for those that are under the control of
demons? They need to repent of their
(01:01:09):
sins. They need to be baptized in
water. They need to experience the
sanctifying grace of the Holy Spirit and identify firmly under
King Jesus. To that I say, Cyprian, Amen.
Thank you for bringing us such apowerful word of salvation.
(01:01:33):
So our demonology gives way to soteriology because God has
created us to be new in Jesus Christ.
Everybody doesn't agree about where demons originated, but the
Bible is uniform in where they're going.
(01:01:56):
The destruction of the hell fireawaits the Kingdom of darkness.
You know what the Bible says? The Bible says that hell was not
created for man, it was created for the devil and his angels.
So whatever you believe about demonic origins, know this.
They are destined to pass away in holy fire, but we are called
(01:02:20):
to experience God's glorious salvation.
If you're still listening today and you find yourself suffering,
being oppressed or tormented by the enemy, we want you to know
there's hope, there's healing, there's peace.
That's why we're here. We're not just trying to have a
conversation. We're issuing the call for
(01:02:43):
healing, health transformation, and I believe eternity is going
to tell the story of those who finally said, I refuse to spend
one more day demonized. I am surrendering all to Jesus
Christ.
It's the year 50 AD in the Macedonian port city of
Philippi. A young girl stands in the city
square, hundreds of gazes fixated on her as she shouts at
the top of her lungs. She's a fortune teller, a
priestess of the God Apollo. She's travelled from city to
city, prophesying for city officials, governors and kings.
(00:25):
She's one of the most powerful people in the land.
Yet for all that power, she isn't free.
She's a slave, forced to tell fortune to fill her master's
pockets. But all that is about to change.
2 strangers had arrived in town.Neither of them were much to
look at, but still she felt herself drawn to them.
If I can only reach them, she thought to herself, then I can
(00:47):
be free. So day after day she pushed
through the crowds, calling after them at the top of her
voice. These men are servants of the
Most High God and have come to tell you how to be saved.
Day after day they paid her no mind, until one day, as if
filled with some unseen power, the man they called Paul turned
to her, laid a hand upon her forehead saying, I command you
(01:08):
in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.
The next moments were a blur. They were shouting in the
streets. Her masters dragged the two men
away, shouting something incomprehensible, but all the
girl could think was thank you, I'm finally free.
I'm Timothy Willis and this is the Deliverance Dialogues.
(01:31):
When I was about 19 years old, Iwas sitting preparing A sermon
when a man from Trinidad sat down beside me, took my notes
and began heavily critiquing what I was preparing to preach.
Now we had met a time or two butI didn't really know him.
So I looked over and said can I help you?
(01:54):
And he starts giving all these suggestions on interpreting
scripture better and things thatI could do.
That's the story of how I got toknow one who'd become a dear
friend and mentor, Ebel Ramsundar.
Ebel taught me a lot, including much about casting out demons.
(02:17):
Ebel had a Masters of Divinity, but few people ever knew it.
I remember asking him one day, Timothy, what his values are,
what was important to him in life.
And one of his answers really stunned me.
He said, well, a lot of people want to be known on Earth,
(02:40):
Robbie, I would like to be knownin hell.
I said, you're going to have to unpack that for me a little bit.
And he said, well, when the seven sons of Skiva were trying
to cast out demons in the name of Jesus, who Paul preaches, the
demons spoke out of the individual and said, Jesus, I
(03:04):
know and Paul, I know. Who are you?
Evidently Hell knew who Paul was.
He said. I think I'd like for Hell to
know who I am. Also, we live in a day when a
lot of ministers are admired on Earth, but I'm not sure how many
(03:27):
are feared in hell. I think as we recapture this
whole concept of deliverance andthe central role that it plays
in the evangelization of the world in gospel preaching, the
role that it plays in carrying out the command, the Commission
(03:48):
of Jesus Christ who said, behold, I give you power to
trample on serpents and scorpions and over all the power
of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you.
The command of the one that said, as you go preach, saying
the Kingdom of heaven is at hand, heal the sick, cleanse the
lepers, raise the dead, cast outdevils freely you have received,
(04:13):
freely give. As we carry out his command, we
may have to rethink what real success in life and even in
ministry looks like. Now, with that said, I've always
said that if you want to prevailover the powers of the enemy,
(04:37):
you need to know Jesus a lot better than you know the devil.
Now, that's pretty logical to me.
So one might ask then, why are we talking about demonology in
these couple episodes? I mean, in the last episode we
talked about some demonic origins, different ideas about
what demons are and where they came from.
(04:58):
And in this episode, we're goingto dive into some particular
demonology, including that of the apostles themselves and
expanding on throughout throughout the unveiling of
history. So Timothy, with that in mind,
what's your thoughts? Why do we even need to be having
(05:18):
this conversation? Obviously, what matters most is
that we know Jesus Christ, that we carry his authority.
So why this conversation? Why are we sitting here?
Today, you know, in, in the Bible, Paul kind of draws, he
draws spiritual matters as warfare, right?
So in, in Ephesians, he spends alot of time comparing the
(05:42):
weapons of our warfare to the weapons of Roman warfare, right?
When he's explaining the, he's explaining the, the full armor
of God, the sort of the spirit, the helmet of salvation, the
breastplate of righteousness. These are all like Roman war
pieces that they would carry into battle.
And one of the most prolific writings on the philosophy of
(06:04):
war is an ancient Chinese book called The Art of War by Sun
Zhu. And Sun Zhu writes in like the
5th century BC, something that Ithink is very profound.
He says if you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not
fear the result of 100 battles. If you know yourself but not the
enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.
(06:25):
If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb
in every battle. So I think in order to know how
to combat the enemy, we shouldn't obsess over the enemy
himself, but we should definitely learn his tactics.
We should definitely learn the methods that the the enemy loves
to use to ensnare us and trap usso that we can know how to fight
(06:46):
against them, so we're not losing a battle for every battle
we win. Ecclesiastes says there's
nothing new under the sun. So if we understand how the
enemy has worked throughout history, we may have some some
better understanding of how he'sworking right now.
The apostle Paul said like this.He said we are not ignorant of
the schemes of the enemy, but thank God we fight with
(07:09):
spiritual weapons. Second Corinthians chapter 10
verse three to five says though we walk in the flesh, we do not
war after the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare
are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down
of strongholds, casting down imaginations and every high
(07:30):
thing that exalts itself againstthe the, the knowledge of God
and and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience
of Christ. So even though we take some time
to study our enemy, we want to remember that it's not our
intellect, it's not our knowledge, it's it's not our
(07:51):
training, but it is the authority of Jesus Christ and
the spiritual weapons that he's given us that makes us able to
prevail nonetheless. When you read throughout the
Scripture and throughout Unveiling Christian History, you
see that more than a little bit of thought is given to this
(08:14):
concept of demonology. Now, the story that you began by
introducing us to Timothy is found in Acts chapter 16, and it
is unique among exorcism accounts in the New Testament in
that most of the time when you read about casting out demons,
you see them simply addressed asunclean spirits, evil spirits,
(08:36):
demons, devils. Different words like this are
are used, but in this one you have the Apostle Paul and Silas.
They come to Philippi and they're preaching the gospel.
They're there in response to a vision.
A Paul had seen a man from Macedonia appear to him in the
(08:57):
night saying come over here and help us.
So they go and here they are in the chief city of of Macedonia
and Philippi. And while they're preaching this
fortune teller girl, she has King James Version says a spirit
of divination. Quite literally the Greek says
she had the spirit of Pythonis or the spirit of Python.
(09:17):
It is is in her. And thus your introduction, the
spirit of Pythonis is heavily associated with the Oracle of
Delphi. Now we have references to the
Oracle of Delphi all the way back to the 7th century BC.
This is well known, well known in history.
And although we're not going to dive into all the history
(09:40):
surrounding the Oracle of Delphi, basically what happens
in in, in their, in the mythology of the day, there's
this idea that Apollo, Apollo had slain the dragon, the
serpent, the, the Python, if youwill, and taken control of the
Oracle. And now these Pythia, these
(10:02):
priestesses would serve as as oracles that would declare the
things that Apollo wanted peopleto know.
The the the Pythia were sworn toperpetual virginity, and
although they had a great deal of respect, their prophecies
(10:24):
were highly regarded. They certainly weren't free to
go on and do whatever they wanted either by by any means.
Now, what we don't know is this.We don't know the exact identity
of the girl that Paul and Silas encounter in Philippi.
We we know simply that Paul saysshe was possessed with a spirit
(10:49):
of Pythonis. So he's making the text, is
making the reference between what is inhabiting her and the
Oracle of Delphi. By the way, the OR the Delphi
was not close by, nearly 400 miles away.
So are we being told that she's literally from there?
It sounds good, but maybe not. But what's clearly happening is
(11:13):
that the Spirit she's prophesying by is being
connected in the minds of the people to what is happening
there at Delphi. And when Paul casts it out, he
passes up a great opportunity tocall it a demon.
And instead he just calls it what they would have known it by
(11:35):
demonstrating that Jesus Christ is superior to the Oracle of
Delphi. And what might that communicate?
Perhaps he's superior to Apollo as well.
Well, how do they respond? They got real big mad over that.
Throw Paul and Silas in prison, beat them, lock them away.
(11:58):
So when we look at this, there'sa lot of things going on.
One is the clear association that the Apostle Paul makes
between the Python spirit by illusion, the Oracle of Delphi,
and demonic possession. Another is the question of what
does it mean to be a Roman in that society.
(12:18):
The Romans that have Paul and Silas thrown in jail are going
to go in to make the claim that they are bringing new customs
that it's not lawful for them toreceive because they're Romans.
Yet later the Apostle Paul says they have beaten US openly
uncondemed being Romans. So Paul's saying they believe
(12:40):
they're the real Romans. I have the same rights they do.
And so he pushes back. In that sense, it raises
questions because we also live in a multicultural society with
a lot of different religious beliefs.
And it raises questions like, what does it mean to be a
citizen today? What some interpret as gods,
(13:00):
others may interpret as demons. What some incur interpret as
spiritual, others may see as dangerous.
While some may claim that to be an American today means to be
accepting of a broad variety of religions, others, like the
Apostle Paul, might think it's not inconsistent with our
(13:20):
patriotism to demonstrate the superiority of Jesus Christ to
the false gods that continue to enslave and bring destruction to
our world. Because, like the young fortune
teller girl that Paul exorcised,many people have signs of
(13:43):
spiritual power, but they are infact not free.
So if there are things in Roman culture, you know, like the,
the, the the Oracle of Delphi, the the spirit of Pythonies that
Paul says, these are just demons, right?
Like you were calling them good things with these are just
(14:05):
demons. Are there some similar things in
our culture today? The short answer is yes, but I
don't want to. I don't want to start there.
To answer that, let's start withwhat the next generation of
believers after the apostles hadto say, because they really
frame the conversation for us. And so I want to share some
(14:27):
lengthy quotes from Justin Martyr, who lived from 100 to
165 AD, and look at how Justin was starting to evaluate this
whole issue of what are demons and and what are they doing?
Because I think that may help usthen unpack as we look at our
culture, how do we identify that?
How do we know? OK, just like there were things
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in the 1st century culture that were widely accepted, but were
were interpreted by the apostlesas demons from which people need
to be liberated. There is no question that such
things exist today. Justin Martyr, speaking in
defense of Christians who are being heavily persecuted in the
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one hundreds AD, wrote this. We warn you in advance to be
careful lest the demons whom we have attacked should deceive you
and prevent your completely grasping and understanding what
we say, for they struggle to have you as their slaves and
(15:33):
servants. And now by manifestations and
dreams, now by magic tricks, they get hold of all who do not
struggle to their utmost for their own salvation, as we do,
who, after being persuaded by the Word, renounced them and now
(15:54):
followed the only unbegotten Godthrough His Son.
Those who once rejoiced in fornication now delight
incontinence alone. Those who made use of magic
hearts have dedicated themselvesto the good and unbegotten God.
We who once took most pleasure in the means of increasing our
(16:16):
wealth and property now bring what we have into a common fund
and share with everyone in need.So Justin is making it clear
that demons inspire fornication,what he calls magic tricks,
greed, and all kinds of such things.
(16:40):
But when we turn to Christ, we abandoned such things.
We also read this in Justin. The truth must be told.
In old times, evil demons manifested themselves seducing
women, corrupting boys, and showing terrifying sights to
men, so that those who did not judge these occurrences
(17:02):
rationally were filled with awe.Taken capture by fear and not
understanding that these were evil demons, they called them
gods and gave each of them the name which each of the demons
had chosen for himself. When Socrates tried by reason
and with due inquiry to make these things clear and to draw
(17:26):
men away from the demons, they, working through men who
delighted in wickedness, managedto have him put to death as
godless and impious, saying thathe was bringing in new
divinities. And now they do the same kind of
thing to us. Justin makes no bones about it.
(17:49):
He sees demons as the ones that lie behind seduction, behind
irrational fear, behind the awe that is created that captivates
people with the spirit realm. And he sees demons as being
behind the murder of those who are truly godly and trying to
call people to the truth. Justin doesn't stop there.
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He makes the claim that everyonein that culture knows how
effective Christians have becomeat casting out such demons.
He writes this and now you can learn this from what is under
your own observation for Numberless Pontiacs throughout
the whole world and in your city.
Many of our Christian men exorcising them in the name of
(18:35):
Jesus Christ who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, had healed
and do heal, rendering A helpless and driving the
possessing devils out of the men, though they could not be
cured by all the other exorcist and those who used incantations
and drugs. I want to read just another
(18:57):
short quote from Justin. Then let's move into this matter
of of what things today might need to be under our
observation. Justin Martyr writes this
regarding the angels and how they transgressed.
God, when He had made the whole world and subjected things
earthly to man, and arranged theheavenly elements for the
(19:17):
increase of fruits and rotation of the seasons, and appointed
this divine law for these thingsalso He evidently made for man,
committed the care of men and all things under heaven to
angels, whom he appointed over them.
But the angels transgressed thisappointment, and were captivated
by love of women, and begot children, who are, who are those
(19:41):
that are called demons. And besides, they afterwards
subdued the human race to themselves, partly by magical
writings, and partly by fears and the punishments they
occasioned, and partly by teaching them to offer
sacrifices and incense and libations, of which things they
stood in need after they were enslaved by lustful passions,
(20:06):
and among men they sowed murders, wars, adulteries.
Intemperate deeds and wickedness.
Now check this out. He goes on to write, Whence also
the poets and mythologists, not knowing that it was the angels
and those demons who had begotten, who had been begotten
(20:27):
by them, that did these things to men and women, and cities and
nations which they related, ascribe them to God himself, and
to those who were accounted to be his very offspring, and to
the offspring of those who were called his brothers Neptune and
Pluto, and to the children againof these their offsprings.
(20:50):
For whatever name each of the angels had given to himself and
his children, by that name they called them.
Justin Martyr makes some very strong claims right here.
Among those are he's quite literally saying that the Greek
and Roman gods were nothing morethan demons, and that people
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worship them as gods because thedemons communicated their own
divinity to the people. They made such claims, so then
people believe them. So what he's saying is that the
people in his day were killing Christians because they were
deceived by the very demons thatwere keeping them enslaved to
their own lusts, passions, murders, witchcraft.
(21:33):
When you bring that into our current context and you step
back and look at the absolute devastation that our society is
experiencing, what do you see happening?
You see lust and unbridled passions in OverDrive.
We see perversion at a historic scale that has invaded our
(21:58):
society and taking hold of people in the sense of mania and
and madness that now we call normal.
We see witchcraft going mainstream until now.
We, we, we don't have the the old divisions where you knew
that you were either a follower of Jesus Christ or you were one
(22:21):
of these other things. There's a quote that I posted
actually tried Deliverance dialogues Facebook page that
that references. It's it's what's wild is this
was in a mental health article that was talking about how
witchcraft is not just for pagans anymore.
Now there are Christian witches and Jewish witches and atheist
witches and agnostic witches. Do you know what this is?
(22:43):
This is self deception. This Is Us telling ourselves
that we can give things new names and change the very nature
of what it is. But Justin Martyr still speaks
pretty plainly to us that some of these things were actually
being named by the demons themselves.
So when you look at our society,you see things that are claiming
(23:06):
the title of Christian that clearly are not.
For instance, having cast out several demons over the years, I
find it interesting. Though I don't necessarily
believe everything that my adversary tells me, I find it
interesting some of the claims that demons make.
(23:30):
That is, I've cast out demons that claim to be kundalini
spirits. Well, where could that name
possibly come from? Oh, it's actually very
straightforward. It it comes from and its
association is with Kundalini yoga.
Now, that's not the only place that we find it, but it's a
common place. So in our society now, we have
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us renaming things that historically we knew what they
were, right? The practice of yoga, for
instance, is handed down to us through Hinduism, and the
postures are intended to align yourself to yoke you with one of
these Hindu deities. But me just making that
statement has somebody screamingat their phone right now, I
(24:14):
suspect because we have a hard time calling things demons that
are. But we don't realize that things
are not really spiritually neutral.
They come from God or they come from the enemy.
Well, in deception, sowing deception and chaos has been a
tactic of the enemy from the very beginning, you know, and so
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I, I think what we're seeing on a, on this scale that we're
talking about what we're seeing where people are trying to
Christianize or despiritualize alot of different things like
yoga. It's a tactic of deception.
And, and it has been from the very beginning.
It's what the enemy has been doing since ancient times is
trying to deceive us and make usthink that what we're doing is
(25:00):
OK. And and then it shows all this
chaos and you can't figure out why is my life going off the
rails? What's going on?
And it's because you're you're not paying attention to what
these things really are. Meanwhile, the warning label, if
you will, among some of those who are promoting Kundalini yoga
are warning about things like Kundalini syndrome.
(25:22):
You know what Kundalini syndromeis.
This is a well done, a very dumbed down explanation, but
according to the yoga gurus, it's when you experience this
dramatic spiritual awakening that you weren't fully prepared
for and it affects your body andyour mind in ways that now you
(25:43):
can't function. Isn't that crazy?
Well, and the reality is, is that, that, that it's like you
say all the time, nothing is spiritually neutral, right?
You know, either the the Bible says that every good and perfect
gift comes from the Father. So anything spiritual, it's
either from one of two places, it's from the Father or it's not
from the Father, in which case we should leave it alone, right?
(26:04):
And, and, and The thing is, is if this if, if you have the
potential for yoga or any other spiritual practice to have a
severe negative impact on your spirit, it's probably not from
God and it's probably something you should leave alone.
This is very true, and what we find is that our modern
practices often are are linked to ancient practices and ancient
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demons in very clear and demonstrable ways.
We mentioned earlier our currentcultural obsession with all
things sexuality and with distorting human identity.
Well, guess what? That's not that's not new.
In fact, the fertility gods and goddesses of the past were
worshipped through sexual orgiesand all manner of things, and
(26:52):
they tended to not really like the idea of monotheism either,
right? The idea of a holy, moral God
that calls us to live a different way has always been
offensive to a culture that wanted to celebrate debauchery.
Today we have this distorted identity.
You have humans that believe themselves to be animals and
(27:14):
we're so confused about what that even means.
Why are we confused? In the history of humanity,
demons have always tried to lower us to be less than what we
are, which is created in the image of Almighty God.
Why would Satan want us to believe that we are no different
from the animals? Because we are stamped with the
(27:36):
image of the one whose incarnation guaranteed his
destruction, and it is through the victory of Christ that we
receive the eternal Spirit who gives us victory over the things
of the world. I love what first John says in
(27:57):
the 4th chapter. Whatsoever is born of God
overcomes the world. And this is the victory that
overcomes the world, even our faith.
So you, you have these spirits, these demons, if you will, that
are very caught up in a lot of practices.
(28:19):
I had an experience not real long ago that was somewhat new
for me. I was casting a demon out.
And even though I, I really press against the idea of asking
demons what their names are, Jesus did it once in the Bible.
And it's a it's it's well attested among exorcists that
there were context in which theydid that.
(28:42):
So I was casting a demon out some time ago and and it just
wasn't budging right now. Feel free to criticize me as
loudly as you want to. I know that the anti deliverance
people will have a heyday with this, so that's fine.
Have fun and enjoy. I asked the spirit who is it?
And it tells me that its name isAsmodeus.
And I'm like, OK, I mean, I've never encountered that, but I I
(29:05):
do know where the name comes from.
The name is first found, to my knowledge, in the apocryphal
Book of Tobit. I'm not assuming it's true, but
here's how that plays out in Tobit.
In the Book of Tobit, there's a woman named Sarah.
Sarah has had seven different husbands, and each time before
she's able to consummate the marriage, the demon Asmodeus
(29:26):
kills her husband. Well, finally, I guess that was
the 6th husband Will. Finally, the 7th man that God
comes and tells to go and marry Sarah naturally has some
nervousness about this right? I mean this is like the original
Black Widow. Well.
So God in the book of of Tobit sends the Angel Raphael to bind
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the demon Asmodeus, after which Sarah is able to get married and
bear children and live a happy and fruitful life.
So then what is Asmodeus? If we take that ancient
accounting to mean anything, Asmodeus is a demon that
disrupts marriages and attaches himself almost like a husband or
(30:14):
in a possessive way over women. Why are we seeing a revival of
these kinds of things now? Frankly, it's because people
have been worshipping old demonsand the and the old demons came
back around. So now we have this scenario
where we have to realize that the answer is still the same as
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it's always been. The answer is through Jesus
Christ, through the cross of Christ.
But there very well may be a need for people to turn from
behaviors, ideas and actions that have led them to become
subjected to these kinds of spiritual entities.
(30:57):
Another place that we see this and and Timothy, we were talking
about this just a little bit agois in the modern obsession in
the current obsession with killing unborn children.
Now, I realize that this may be the episode where people
abandoned us and they're like, Iwas enjoying that, and then you
had to go there. So here we are.
(31:18):
I understand there's a lot of difficult conversations that
surround this subject, but we are in our nation murdering our
unborn at a staggering rate, primarily by all available
statistics, primarily for convenience.
(31:38):
Now, this isn't new. The ancient sacrifice to Moloch
in which they threw their unborninto the fire in order to gain
some type of spiritual power. When I mentioned this before we
start recording Timothy, you mentioned, you mentioned
psychiatrist Richard Gallagher. Help me remember what we were
talking about there. Yeah.
(31:59):
So when we were talking about this earlier, I was, I was
saying we we talked about Julia,one of his case studies in
another episode in a previous episode, 1 of the things that
that Julia had experienced was that she was a part of a of a
cult that was heavily involved in witchcraft that celebrated
(32:22):
her as this like type of witch queen.
And they would have orgies. She would get pregnant just to
abort the baby, to sacrifice it to some false God or a demon to
gain power. Wow.
And we had a, we had a similar account in one of our our
previous episodes where we told Katisha's story where she shared
(32:45):
about, about someone in the occult.
She knew they had done somethingvery, very similar.
So these things are shocking to hear.
They're shocking to think about.And yet, well, when you really
evaluate what's going on, it's not so surprising that the
demons that inspired fornicationin ancient times are inspiring
(33:06):
fornication now. The demons that drove people to
murder their young and their unborn in ancient times are
still inspiring murder now. The demons that drove people to
participate in spiritual practices that enslave their
practitioners, while those doingthem claim to be doing nothing
(33:29):
wrong, they're still doing that now.
So in the when we're talking about deliverance, in order to
experience liberation through Christ, there's got to be a
willingness to step back and take a look at what's happening
before us and realize, here's where our demonology comes in.
(33:49):
Realize when we're looking at demons in action, and we got to
be willing to call that what it is.
And here's the thing, if you find yourself offended by this
and your feelings are hurt, justknow we're not setting out to
demonize people. We're not setting out to to to
(34:11):
call people out and just say, Hey, you're evil.
What's wrong with you? What we're saying is there are
very real things in your life that you might need to take a
step back and look at honestly and saying, where is say, where
is this coming from? You know, if you're a Christian,
you need to evaluate the things that you do and say, is this of
(34:33):
God? Is this positive or, or, or is
it not of God? Or is it negative to my life?
Because if it's a net negative to your life, maybe you don't
need it. You know, maybe it's not
something you should keep engaging in.
Absolutely. And to be clear, while we
believe demons are evil, we don't necessarily believe that
everyone who is demonized, who is harassed by demons is more
(34:59):
evil than someone who may not be.
In fact, if you happen to be newto this podcast or just dropping
in, I would invite you to go back and listen to episode 2,
where we talked about how demonization affected my own
household in a very direct in a very real and devastating way.
Yeah, people who suffer from demonization aren't they're,
(35:20):
they're not the problem. They're a victim, right?
Yes. That doesn't mean that the
victim has no responsibility fortheir own actions, but
ultimately, they're still a victim and they still need help.
That's exactly right. What I what I hope our listeners
can come to understand is that the world we live in is
inherently spiritual, not secular.
(35:43):
The spiritual realm is as real as the material realm, and most
humans throughout history have believed that to be true.
And if angels and demons and Godand Satan are real, then it
would stand to reason that it's important for us to know whether
(36:05):
spiritual powers are malicious or benevolent.
You might say we need to know what we're dealing with, what
we're facing, what we're seeing,and how then we can really move
forward. And as long as, as long as these
conversations are being restricted, as long as we can't
(36:25):
have them openly just because some of us disagree on values
with others, we're never going to be able to really get to the
bottom of how to help people. And there are a lot of people
that might disagree with some ofthe things we're saying here,
but they share our passion for seeing people restored to
greater mental and spiritual health.
So what I would propose is that we've got to learn to have
(36:47):
difficult conversations in nonviolent ways so that we can
learn what the truth is. So we have demons like the
Kundalini spirit, We have Asmodeus, we have we, we have
the spirits that are inspiring fornication, which leads to this
question. Probably one of the one of the
(37:08):
very common experiences among a lot of exorcists and deliverance
ministers is that when you're casting out demons, something
will identify itself as a spiritof fear, a spirit of anger, a
spirit of lust. So Timothy, what do you think?
Is there a demon named Lust? Is there a demon named fear?
Is there a demon named Anger? How do we process those things?
I mean, probably not. You know, you mentioned before
(37:31):
that some people could make the argument that the Bible says
that God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power,
love, and a sound mind. And, and you said that somebody
could make the argument that those are actual spirits,
although that doesn't really at all seem to be what the Bible's
saying. It really seems more like it's
it's poetic language. We've talked before about I
(37:54):
think in last our last episode, we talked about Doctor Diamond
and how he believes that there are some like intense human
emotions that overtake us and have a very similar effect to
possession. And I believe that that happens.
I don't necessarily believe thatthere are, there is a literal
demon walking around named Anger, you know, but maybe
(38:18):
there's demonically inspired anger for sure.
And I think I said before when we were talking about this, a
common tactic of the enemy is fear.
So the enemy has a lot of these,these common tactics that
inspire fear, they inspire confusion, they inspire anger, a
(38:39):
lot of these different things. And and so that's one side of
things that I think could be at play there.
I completely agree with you. And so while fear may or may not
be a demon's name, it is a common expression of demonic
harassment. The consensus of exorcists seems
(39:03):
to be the general consensus at least.
They're outliers that when a spirit identifies itself by a
proper name, you may be dealing with a higher ranking demon if
you buy into those kinds of things.
However, a spirit of fear, a spirit of anger is really
identifying itself by function. And these are probably maybe
(39:24):
weaker is not the not the right word, but these are probably
lower ranking demons in a sense.Nonetheless, if if we were to
talk about fear, let's just takethis And first of all, let me
let me give the disclaimer. I do not believe that all fear,
anxiety, panic disorders are a demon.
That is not all of them are demonization.
There are a lot of different causes for these kinds of
(39:45):
things. If we're going to concede that
fear could be demonically driven, and I'm going to say
from my understanding the scripture and from personal
observation and experience, I'm going to say it, it very well
can be. I dealt with a lot of crippling
fear in, in earlier life nightmares and, and a lot of a
lot of sometimes waking up and what would be today called sleep
(40:07):
paralysis. You can't move you, you can't
talk, things of that sort in order to really assess this.
I wonder how How broad of a problem do you think this is?
So how big of a deal is fear, anxiety, panic disorders?
So, I mean, we know that that that mental health disorders are
(40:32):
on the rise across the board. We've talked about this before,
but but here's some specific statistics that we were talking
about before we sat down to record this today.
So this is from the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
They write that anxiety disorderis the most common mental health
concern in the United States andthat 19%.
So one in five adults in the United States have a diagnosed
(40:55):
anxiety disorder in according tothe Los Angeles Outpatient
Center in 2025. In a survey done in 2025 shows
that an estimated 42.5 million US adults are living with
anxiety disorder and according to the previous year's surveys,
(41:17):
this is up 10% in the last two years.
That's staggering. Staggering.
I want to share a scripture withthe gist.
First to ponder. Jesus said the thief cometh not,
but for to steal, to kill him, to destroy.
But I have come that you might have life, and that more
(41:37):
abundantly. I really don't think that one in
five people being crippled by anxiety and fear is what
abundant life is supposed to look like.
Now, to be clear, many of those in that statistic are born again
(41:58):
Christians who love God. And while I'm not willing to say
that everyone with a anxiety disorder of some sort is
demonized or possessed or even oppressed, what I will say is
this. The very nature of being
(42:22):
crippled by fear is itself demonic.
It's the opposite of what God has for us.
I agree with your interpretationthat passed you quoted a minute
ago from from Timothy. For God has not given us the
spirit of fear, but of power andof love and of a sound mind.
I don't think that in the context of that passage, spirit
of fear rightly is referring to a demon.
There's plenty of ways the scripture communicates when it's
(42:43):
talking about demons, and I don't really think it's what
it's doing there. But what it is letting us know
is that crippling fear is the opposite of what God intended
for us. So sometimes breaking free from
it is a matter of discipleship. Sometimes it's a matter of
processing through past trauma. But but sometimes it is a very
(43:05):
real demonic oppression. And among those that I've prayed
with that have expressed deliverance, I'm going to say
that having a sense of absolute crippling fear is one of the
most common symptoms that is expressed by those that are
seeking out help. And it is anxiety and fear is,
(43:28):
as you said, one of the primary things that's driving people to
counselors saying, help me. There is a there is an awareness
in our nation that we need to overcome this.
Anger is the same way, right? Anger is a natural human
emotion. God experiences anger in the
Bible and, and, and, and as Christians, we certainly don't
believe God is guilty of sin or anger.
(43:49):
The Bible tells us be angry and sin not, so it's possible to be
angry and not move into sin. Yet we do know that anger, when
it's when it's repressed, when it's suppressed, when it's
pushed down, it's not processed in healthy ways, sometimes
becomes explosive and people carry out heinous acts of
(44:11):
violence. They make catastrophic life
ending mistakes because althoughanger is not itself a demon,
anger is one of the devil's veryfavorite tools to use.
So I'm going to tell you the story.
So one time I was, I was castingout this demon.
(44:32):
I didn't really want to In this particular case, I mentioned my
my old mentor Abel, who's with the Lord now.
I was in a prayer line next to him and Abel was was real prone
by the way I called him Abel when he was alive and one of
like a year before he died. He looks at me in a moment of
tension and he's like, you don'teven know that my name is Abel.
(44:54):
So here I am honoring his life by saying his name was Abel.
But I was not always able to saythat.
So with that, Abel looks at me, looks over at me, and then he
points his finger at a guy sitting in the back of the
church and he calls him by name.He says come here, I want to
pray for you. The dude stands up, takes his
glasses off his face and just flings them at the seat.
(45:17):
Dude's clearly mad and I remember thinking to myself,
glad it's you and not me going to pray for him.
When this man gets in front of Abel.
He looks over at me and says with a smirk Hey Robbie, pray
for him and he walks off. I was so mad.
So I reach up with less faith than any minister has ever had
(45:39):
when praying for somebody, put my hand on this guys shoulder
and start to pray. And as soon as I start praying,
he crumbles to the ground under the power of God.
People say, why do people fall down sometimes?
Because they can't stand up. That's the reason.
So he couldn't stand up. So he fell down and he's there
on the ground. And I'm like, thank you Jesus
for whatever you're doing in him.
I don't know. And then I hear him just
(46:02):
pleading with God for help and Iheard him say this.
Oh God, I don't want to be so full of anger anymore.
I don't want to be so full of hate anymore.
Please God, would you help me now?
What I didn't know at that moment was that that man had
said to himself, this is the last time I will ever step foot
(46:22):
in a church house again. I will go one last time and if I
don't find the help that I need,I will never be back.
He was sitting on the very back row when a bell called him out.
So when I hear him crying out toGod like this, I'm young, 20
something at the time. I lean down, I put my hand on
his shoulder and I prayed very quietly like this.
(46:45):
In the name of Jesus Christ, youspirit of anger, come out of
him. Timothy, what happened next I
had never experienced before. And by the good grace of God, I
have never experienced it since I'm 44 years old.
It's been over 20 years and if Idie without ever having this
happen again, I will be a happy man.
(47:07):
He grabbed me with one arm and threw me across the sanctuary as
though I was a Lego. Now I was not expecting to be
thrown with one arm by the man Iwas praying for.
This was not something I was prepared for in any way, shape
or form. You would think if you had just
thrown someone you would leave them alone, having made your
(47:28):
point, not him. In the next few moments he jumps
on top of me. His face is red, he has veins
bulging out of his head. There were over 100 people in
that local church, including strong big men, and they all hit
the walls to watch the show. Not one, and I mean not one of
(47:51):
them came to help me in the nextfew moments.
He's on top of me. The only way I can describe what
this look like through my eyes. If you've ever seen Lord of the
Rings and you've seen Gollum, when he's trying to attack
Frodo, in my memories, it looks real similar to that snorting
and and breathing and trying to choke me.
And he starts coming from my throat.
(48:12):
Now I'm fighting, I'm on my back, I'm disoriented.
I'm fighting this man with everything I have.
You say, well, Robbie, you just said the weapons of our warfare
are not carnal. No, they are not.
But when I'm terrified, I was just trying to not die.
I'm still trying to figure out why this guy's trying to hurt
me. I just prayed for God to help
him. Now I don't know what your
(48:35):
church experience is like, but this is not normal.
So he's on top of me trying to choke me and I'm fighting him
off. He's clearly stronger than I am.
And I look up and I I rememberedbeing taught when I was young
that God gave us power to bind and to loose.
Now, in Bible college, they toldme that this doesn't mean this,
(48:56):
but I was willing to use any available tool that might work.
So this is what I did. If you don't like the
hermeneutics or the interpretation, that's fine, I
get it. But I looked up and I said these
words. In the name of Jesus Christ, you
fouled demon, I bind you, get off me.
And in that moment, this individual fell to the floor as
(49:18):
though somebody had shot him through the chest.
All that hatred that was on his face suddenly vanished away, and
his eyes began to clear up. And that moment I heard him
calling out to Jesus Christ for salvation, pleading with God to
transform his life. Now, was that a spirit of anger?
(49:43):
The short answer is yes. Was that a demon whose name is
Anger? I think that's a gross
oversimplification of what this man was experiencing.
I can tell you that I'm not a small guy and most people don't
throw me with one hand. There was, from my vantage
(50:05):
point, some real preternatural strength being exercised there.
I had had no conflict with this man before, and I had no
conflict with him afterward. He had no natural reason to
attack me. Yet in that moment it really
appeared that he wanted to kill me.
God came down and gloriously sethim free.
(50:28):
So for our understanding of a New Testament demonology, it is
helpful to know that while theremay or may not be a demon named
Anger, Satan absolutely preys onthe weak, seeking to exploit our
fear, anger, our lust, or our other tendencies for his own
(50:51):
purposes. These are the realities so real
human emotions get manipulated by diabolic forces in order to
bring about the destruction thatSatan has planned for the human
race. Now, Tim, you've probably heard
(51:13):
me tell this story before. I retell lots of stories.
You were not yet born. Help me unpack this.
Any thoughts? Not really.
OK, then let's try again. Sorry.
(51:34):
So, Tim, when, when we're looking at the, the, the
spectrum of issues here, on the one hand, we have spirits like
the spirit of Pythonis that's clearly tied to an acceptable
practice in, in, in the ancient world.
But for the apostles, it's demonic.
(51:55):
And we know that we have things that, if evaluated that same way
in our country are going to be the same way or in our time are
going to be the same way. There are practices that are
acceptable culturally, but biblically they are demonic.
What do we do with that? On the other hand, sometimes
people are enslaved to their ownemotions, and that may be
(52:16):
trauma, it may be a mental illness.
It may be demonic, it may be a mixture of those things.
So here's one aspect of demonology.
The other aspect is there are these real spiritual forces that
are out there. But I do see something.
You notice that the Apostle Pauldid not go looking for the young
(52:39):
Pythia. She came after him in very much
the same way as the demons used to come at Jesus, crying out,
what have we to do with you, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?
And Jesus silenced them and refused to refused to accept
(53:00):
their public witness of who he was.
Paul treats that demon in very much the same way.
He doesn't go looking to cast out the Delphic the the, the,
the Delphic Oracle. He doesn't go looking to cast
out the Pythia. He doesn't go looking to cast
out the spirit of Python is thatthere's the phrase I was trying
to find that entire time. This young girl comes after him
(53:22):
over the course of some days, when he finally responds and
when he confronts that demon, everything melted down.
Here's the reality. When we start speaking to the
demons that are accepted in our culture, we better expect
(53:42):
meltdowns to ensue. Why then would we have those
conversations? For my part, it's because people
are enslaved to those demons, and while they believe
themselves to be free, they verymuch are not.
What's your thoughts? We've said this the whole time,
but in this realm of thought anddemonology, what we're looking
(54:05):
at is the origins of things. So like, where do these things
come from, right? So it's much the same way in
mental health counseling. A lot of times whenever
somebody's experiencing a problem in their life, it's got
a root somewhere deep in the past, right?
And in order to actually uncoverwhat's causing this problem,
whether it might be depression, whether it's anxiety, whether
(54:28):
it's other like the problems that are cropping up in your
marriage and your job. Usually those things have some
sort of root in some kind of trauma that happened in your
past. And in order to get down and fix
the problem, you have to be honest about evaluating, OK,
where did this come from? I think it's a it's, it's a lot
the same way with with spiritualthings and with spiritual
(54:50):
problems. When you're experiencing a
spiritual issue, when you're experiencing spiritual
disintegration, what you have tobe honest about is, OK, where
did this come from? What's the origin?
So in the case of the fortune teller girl, she has this, the
spirit that came from the demon that called itself Apollo,
(55:11):
right? And, and, and at some point she
had to recognize that she neededhelp.
I, I, I believe that the reason she's chasing after Paul is that
on some level she wanted to get help, right?
I agree. And so that's the first step is,
is realizing that you need help.But then our job as deliverance
ministers acting in, in the place of the exorcist is you
(55:34):
have to look at where is this coming from, right?
Because we, because it's like inEcclesiastes, you said earlier,
there's nothing new under the sun, right?
The enemy is repetitive. The enemy acts in much the same
way throughout history. And, and, and, and so we can
look and we can see, OK, there'sthis pattern, right?
And we can identify those patterns and utilize them to
(55:58):
cast the demons out today, right?
And, and so that's, that's to me, that's why this is useful,
right? It's, it's not just to obsess
over some demon named Asmodeus, right?
It's because if you can identifypatterns throughout history, you
can identify ways that you can help people.
(56:18):
That's what it really comes downto.
Absolutely. In his book, In the Name of
Jesus, Doctor Graham 12th Tree makes this statement.
The New Testament shows very little interest in demonology
except as it relates to soteriology.
Soteriology is the study of or the doctrine of salvation.
(56:42):
I wholeheartedly agree with Doctor 12th Tree.
If we start studying demons for just the sake of wanting to know
more about demons, we risk beingensnared by the very things that
draw people into paganism. So our obsession needs to be
with the salvation that the God of the universe offers to us.
(57:07):
So many people are settling for worshiping the universe, but we
worship the creator of the universe, and that's a
beautiful, marvelous reality. So as we get ready to wrap this
up, I want to bring it back to what the historic church knew.
The apostles cast out demons. Jesus cast out demons.
(57:28):
The generations that followed the apostles cast out demons.
We know that we have their writings clearly saying so, but
they didn't do so just to prove that they were effective
exorcists. Although we talk a lot about the
therapeutic value of deliveranceand exorcism, I want to also
point out they didn't just do itfor therapeutic reasons.
(57:51):
The apostles understood and we must understand that the Kingdom
of God is breaking forth upon the earth right now,
overthrowing the Kingdom of darkness.
And the Kingdom of God has a king.
His name is Jesus Christ. And exorcism or deliverance is
(58:13):
about the King Jesus exercising his authority over humanity and
over demons. And so our call is not be free
from demons, but it must be surrender to Christ.
When you read the New Testament,baptism itself is seen as
(58:36):
embodying this exorcistic power that that aids in our transition
from the Kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of God.
I don't mean just that the wateritself does it, but but rather
that the whole conversion experience that is typified in
baptism is really what translates us from one Kingdom
(58:56):
to the other. Colossians chapter 2, verses 12
to 15 says this, having been buried with him in baptism, in
which you were also raised with him through faith in the
powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead by
canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its
(59:18):
legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to
the cross. He disarmed the rulers and
authorities and put them to openshame by triumphing over them in
Him. Through our salvation, through
our baptism, we participate in the victory of Jesus Christ
(59:42):
through the cross and through His resurrection over demon
powers. Riding in the two hundreds AD,
Cyprian of Carthage spoke of howsometimes local exorcist were
unable to liberate people, though they used every means
available to them. But then he writes this.
(01:00:04):
When, however, they come to the water of salvation and to the
sanctification of baptism, we ought to know and to trust that
there the devil is beaten down, and the man dedicated to God is
set free by the Divine Mercy. For as scorpions and serpents
(01:00:25):
which prevail on the dry ground when cast into water, cannot
prevail nor retain their venom, so also the wicked spirits which
are called scorpions and serpents, and yet are trodden
under foot by us, by the power given by the Lord, cannot remain
(01:00:47):
any longer in the body of a man in whom, baptized and
sanctified, the Holy Spirit is beginning to dwell.
That's awesome. So what does Cyprian of Carthage
say needs to happen for those that are under the control of
demons? They need to repent of their
(01:01:09):
sins. They need to be baptized in
water. They need to experience the
sanctifying grace of the Holy Spirit and identify firmly under
King Jesus. To that I say, Cyprian, Amen.
Thank you for bringing us such apowerful word of salvation.
(01:01:33):
So our demonology gives way to soteriology because God has
created us to be new in Jesus Christ.
Everybody doesn't agree about where demons originated, but the
Bible is uniform in where they're going.
(01:01:56):
The destruction of the hell fireawaits the Kingdom of darkness.
You know what the Bible says? The Bible says that hell was not
created for man, it was created for the devil and his angels.
So whatever you believe about demonic origins, know this.
They are destined to pass away in holy fire, but we are called
(01:02:20):
to experience God's glorious salvation.
If you're still listening today and you find yourself suffering,
being oppressed or tormented by the enemy, we want you to know
there's hope, there's healing, there's peace.
That's why we're here. We're not just trying to have a
conversation. We're issuing the call for
(01:02:43):
healing, health transformation, and I believe eternity is going
to tell the story of those who finally said, I refuse to spend
one more day demonized. I am surrendering all to Jesus
Christ.
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