Christians Can Have Demons!
There is no doubt that the biggest point of contention over the ministry of deliverance is whether a Christian can have a demon. Most people in the modern church believe Christians cannot have demons, thereby cutting them off from the opportunity to receive deliverance in the first place. If you don’t believe it’s even possible for you or others as Christians to have demons, then you will never even seek deliverance or attempt to pray for those in need of freedom.
I believe the greatest lie the devil has spread throughout the church is that Christians can’t have a demon. This has effectively allowed him to demonize our churches with no resistance, no fight, and no confrontation. This argument can get very heated and emotional, so I’m asking you to hear me out and look at the case I present before you close the tab because you don’t agree with my stance.
In Don Dickerman’s book When Pigs Move In, a book that heavily inspired me to write mine, he says, “The presence of the Holy Spirit does not prevent evil spirits from dwelling in a believer’s body or soul! Until a believer can recognize and understand how demonic bondage occurs, he cannot be free. You can be Spirit-filled, memorize the Word of God, sing in the choir, teach Sunday school, and be a deacon, teacher, or preacher, but you still have demons. I deal with this almost daily! That believers cannot have demons is a dangerous, widely held but false belief. It is a myth.”
Those who believe this lie are effectively saying deliverance is only for unbelievers and if you’re a believer, you’re not able to be set free. Think about how crazy that sounds. If I want freedom, I must be an unbeliever because if I’m a Christian, deliverance isn’t for me. After all, if Christians couldn’t have demons, there would be no need for deliverance in the first place. If this were the case, our goal would be to get people saved, and all their demons would leave, so why would there be a need to do deliverance after that point? It makes no sense, and I’m going to do my best to explain why I know—not believe but know—Christians can have demons. I say I know because there is a difference between knowing and believing. You have to believe something first, and then once you know it, you no longer have to believe.
Let me give you an example. Say there is an old car in a garage somewhere, and you ask me, “Do you believe this car will start?” Because I’ve never seen the car start before, I might say I believe it’ll start. The owner then starts the car, and now I go from believing it will start to knowing it will start. If you ask me the question again—“Do you believe this car will start?”—I will respond, “I know it will start because I have seen the car start before.” In the same way, I know Christians can have demons because I’ve seen thousands of genuine Spirit-filled Christians be delivered from demons. I know not only because of my experience but also because I believe the Word of God teaches that deliverance is for the believer. So, why is there so much confusion around this topic? A few reasons; the first one is because of semantics.
Many people don’t believe Christians can have demons because of confusion around the word possessed. Much misunderstanding results from the King James Version having translated the Greek word daimonizomai as “possessed with devils.” The actual Greek translation of daimonizomai is “to be under the power of a demon.” There is a massive difference between being possessed—that is, being owned by a demon—and being demonized or under the power of a demon. To be clear, Christians cannot be possessed by a demon in the sense of being owned by a demon, but I also don’t believe the devil or a demon can own anything.
The right question we should be asking is not “Can a Christian be demon possessed?” but “Can a Christian have a demon or be under the power of demons?” To that, I would say absolutely. If you open a door and give the devil a legal right, he will come in. The New Testament never makes a distinction when speaking of demonization between being oppressed or possessed, and we should not either. To avoid confusion, I recommend taking the words oppressed and possessed out of your vocabulary when discussing deliverance.
Most people believe Christians can be oppressed, and the image they have in their mind is of a demon being on someone’s back or somehow influencing them from the outside. The problem is we never see this in Scripture; never once do we see Jesus casting demons off people, only out of people. That means principally demons live only inside of people and never live on the outside, in some way oppressing them. Oppression does exist in Scripture but not in relation to deliverance or the context of casting out demons. Sam Storms, a minister and author with more than thirty years of ministry experience, has a very informative article titled, “Can a Christian Be Demonized?” that I can’t recommend enough.
To learn more about Isaiah Saldivar’s new book, How to Cast Out Demons, visit MyCharismaShop.com