Do I Have the Authority to Cast Out Computer Viruses?

Nothing in Scripture says that you do.  Even though the word virus is associated with a disease, a computer cannot get sick by being oppressed by the devil.  A computer virus is a set of computer instructions that makes your PC lose data or malfunction, or perhaps encrypts the data and demands a ransom payment in untraceable currency to get it back.

I share in this book some neat testimonies of times when the Holy Ghost supernaturally fixed computer equipment, but these would all fall under the category of manifestations of the Spirit.  You can’t claim any Bible promise to cast out computer viruses by faith.  This goes right along with sound system problems at church.  As one preacher said, you don’t need to cast the devil out of your sound system –you need to fix it!  (Or get someone who really knows how to run it, in some cases.)

If you are a technical person, you can believe God for wisdom according to James 1:5-8 to find out how to solve seemingly impossible computer problems.  I have worked this out on a daily basis and had many, many answers to such prayers!

If your machine has a virus, there is virus-removal software out there, though it won’t work with some ransomware.  (Ransomware is malicious software that encrypts your files so that you can never use them again unless you pay the hacker his ransom.)

If you can’t do it yourself, some companies will remove most (but not all) types of viruses for you for a considerable price.  Computer viruses are not going to go away just because you speak to them in the name of Jesus.  I realize that with God all things are possible, and I’d love to hear a testimony of some victim of real, hard-code ransomware being delivered by the name of Jesus, but I’ve never heard one yet.  God COULD work a miracle along those lines, but you have no Scripture that guarantees you such a miracle.  Perhaps someone will be used in the “gift of faith” to accomplish this someday; I’ve been used that way to fix “impossible” hardware failures.

I did have a customer call up with a ransomware virus message and the Lord nudged me immediately that it was fake and easy to work around, and I got rid of it.  However, the only other times I’ve encountered it, the only solution was to restore the data from a backup.  (You DO back up your important files, right?)

The most extreme case of divine coding help I ever witnessed was when there was a bug in an inventory management system I wrote a long time ago.  The plant manager had the source code, but he wasn’t a programmer and I was leaving to go on vacation for a week.  I promised him that I would fix it when I got back.  When I returned, this Spirit-filled manager informed me that the bug was gone.  I knew that the bug couldn’t have just disappeared – that’s not how code works.  He then told me that He asked the Lord how to fix the bug, and the Lord gave him the fix, keystroke by keystroke!  He just kept hitting the specific keys the Lord told him to hit.  When I checked the code, the bug fix was brilliant (of course)!

So let’s not limit God.  A certain prophet was had an urgent word for my mentor a long time ago, but my mentor was in another state for Christmas.  This was before cell phones were common.  The prophet said, “I can’t give him that word; I don’t know what number he’s at.”    The Lord said, “I do.”  And the Lord gave him the digits to call one by one and the prophet reached him!  My mentor was rather shocked, but I can assure you, he paid attention to that word!

Of course, you can take common-sense precautions to prevent viruses from getting onto your machine in the first place.  If you practice “safe computing,” you’re unlikely to get electronically-transmitted viruses.  A Christian is sinning when he violates a software license agreement by making or using illegal copies of software.  You have yourself to thank for your trouble if you're a thief.  I am flabbergasted by the number of Christians who think nothing of violating copyright laws, whether dealing with computers or music.  Especially preachers.  One church lamely and FALSELY claimed to me that it was exempt from copyright laws because it was non-profit.  That’s just as dumb as saying that your church has the right to shoplift at the local department store because it’s non-profit – it’s stealing either way!  I refused to help preachers (or anyone else) with pirated copies of software on their PC’s.  Doing the work of God doesn’t justify doing the work of the devil to get the software you need.  Learn to believe God for the money to license it legitimately!  Of course, you already have my permission to copy the PDF version of this book (available at cstephenyoung.com) and give it to everyone in the world for free, so go ahead!