Demons Operate Under Identities, Not Names
In modern-day America, identity seems to be everything. Race, sexuality, and gender are only a few of the hundreds—if not thousands—of ways in which people “identify” themselves. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, identity is defined as, “the distinguishing character or personality of an individual.” Aside from humans, do you know what other entities use identities to define themselves? Demons.
Although casting out demons is a universal call for Christians, we must be equipped with how to do deliverance. Simply shouting a demon’s “name” won’t drive the evil entity out of a person—It goes by its identity, not its name. Even more so, in a deliverance session, the person is the priority! We are ultimately ministering to a person, not a demon, so we must focus on comforting and setting him/her free from demonic control. The individual needs to come to Christ to truly be set free.
In John Ramirez’s latest book, Exposing the Devil’s Playbook, he discusses why deliverance is more about an identity than it is about a name: “Demons operate under identities, not names. They take up names to communicate with you, to connect with you so you can understand and have a bridge between the real world and the demonic world. Jesus easily could have said, ‘Your name is this. Your name is that. This person is in there. That person is in there.’ He could have called each demon out by name, all two thousand of them, one by one at the drop of a hat because Jesus is God.
Jesus was addressing the identity of the demon that plagued this man. Demonic forces had stolen the man’s identity. It’s like when we say infirmity, we’re describing the condition of the person. When we say tormenting spirits, we’re describing the action and condition of the person. When we say homosexual spirit, we’re describing the condition of a false identity in a person because the demon itself is not homosexual. The demon is a foul spirit.
Because demons were fallen angels in heaven with Lucifer, they don’t have names. They probably did have names when they were in heaven, but Jesus never disclosed the actual names of the angels that fell, other than Lucifer. The only other angel names that have been revealed to us as believers are Michael and Gabriel.
In the spiritual warfare world, when we fight for deliverance, when we fight to set people free at conferences and events or when we do personal deliverance one one-on-one, we’re dealing with identities of demonic forces that are plaguing, incarcerating, tormenting, inflicting, and hijacking people by stealing their true identities. The Book of Job says, ‘So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and afflicted Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head’ (2:7). Satan himself afflicted Job. The Bible didn’t call it an infirmity spirit or a python spirit or a Jezebel spirit. The devil did not call himself an infirmity spirit. The devil inflicted upon Job what the devil wanted to execute on him spiritually and physically: sickness.
When people experience sickness and go to the doctor’s office, but the doctor can’t put his or her finger on the condition, we know it’s an infirmity. But what is its identity? What is the root issue? The doctor will ask questions to get to the root of the sickness or condition and identify why the person is sitting in the office feeling that way: ‘How long have you been feeling this way? Is this something that runs in your family?’ The point I’m trying to convey is we need to deal with the identity of what the demon is bringing to the battle. It’s not just ‘Come out, Python. Come out, Jezebel. Come out, marine spirit.’ It’s more than that.
We need to get to the root and the identity of the demonic attack so we can shut the door on it once and for all.
Marine spirits own the oceans and rivers—or so they think. When I was into the demonic world, the demons wanted us to visit rivers and oceans and cemeteries to perform contract ceremonies and rituals. A marine spirit is a demon that uses the ocean as a point of reference to incarcerate people by having them partake in rituals of the ocean. They use it as an open door to gain legal rights over you. But the devil doesn’t live there. He visits and uses those places, but he doesn’t live there. So instead of chasing after names, I chase after the root of whatever is afflicting my brother or sister. That is how you engage in spiritual warfare and destroy the attacks in a person’s life.
The root of the demonic, satanic attack, the identity of it, is what we need to confront so we can hit it head-on by the power of the Holy Spirit. Remember, demons, devils, and principalities don’t have names. They have identities that they use—like homosexuality, for example. A demon is not a homosexual. He messes with your identity. The demon steals your original identity like an identity thief and gives you a fake one so you have a false idea of what God created you to be. He plagues and afflicts you with that false identity and then makes you act out what you’ve been plagued with.
It’s the same thing with pornography. When a man or woman is addicted to porn, he or she is afflicted by the spirits of lust and perversion, which are demonic identities from the kingdom of darkness and the devil’s playbook.
Demons that operate in hospitals use infirmity attacks (in spiritual warfare and deliverance we call them ‘infirmity spirits’ or ‘premature death spirits’) on people to torment them and rob them of the healthy life that God created them to have. The same thing happens at asylums. Demons use these spirits of affliction to try to destroy you and your body because the enemy knows the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. They use systems and methods to bring this demonic, satanic chaos into people’s lives. We dress these spirits up with names like ‘infirmity,’ ‘premature death,’ and ‘sickness,’ but they are all methods that demons operate with to get their way.
The same is true with drug and alcohol addictions, gender confusion, abuse, and everything else the devil uses to steal, kill, and destroy. Because I lived in the demonic world for twenty-five years, I know the language, the behaviors, and the actions of devils, demons, and principalities. I know how they work. So I won’t go and say, ‘Come out, Jezebel. Come out, Ahab. Come out, Julio.’ I’m going to deal with the root issue, whether it is a generational or bloodline curse or anything else.
Don’t beat up the name. Beat up the identity of the demon, what’s happening to the person being victimized by spiritual warfare, so the person can be set free through Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. It’s not about the demons’ names. Stop chasing names. We have to battle more than a demon’s name to set the captives free. Start destroying demonic identities with the power of the Holy Spirit. Smite those devils and bring the judgment of God upon their heads. Cast them out in Jesus’ unmatchable name.”
For more information on John Ramirez’s new book, Exposing the Devil’s Playbook, visit MyCharismaShop.com