Big Healing Book - How Can You Tell If a Certain Condition Is Demonic?

How Can You Tell If a Certain Condition Is Demonic?

Obviously, if the person you are ministering to suddenly starts writhing on the floor like a snake, screaming, “Don’t say that name (Jesus)!” you have a good indication that a demon is involved. I saw this just after I got saved. By that I mean I faced the situation; I was not the one on the floor. I had been involved in the occult and a certain girl and I were trying to organize a Ouija board party for our dorm floor. But that week I gave my life to Jesus, and I knew that Jesus and the Ouija board were not friends. (I had asked a Ouija board if Jesus was real and it said “no.”) So I informed that girl that I was calling off the Ouija board party because I had given my life to Jesus, and she shrieked, “Don’t say that name!” Being the contrary sort (my mind hadn’t had time to get renewed with the Word much at that point), I said “JESUS!” She screamed, “Don’t say that name!” So I said, “JESUS! JESUS! JESUS! JESUS! JESUS!” Although she was a big girl who probably weighed twice what I did, she fell to the floor and started writing and covering her ears, still screaming, “Don’t say that name! Don’t say that name!” This was my first introduction to the power in the name of Jesus. I hadn’t had time to read about it in the Bible yet – I was biblically illiterate, having been a militant atheist for years.

An old woman who went around trying to burn people with lit cigarettes said to me, “You can’t cast me out – you don’t have enough experience!” Someone else blurted out, “You can’t have him! He’s mine!” It’s kind of a giveaway when something like that happens that you’re dealing with a demon.

In general, people in countries where Christianity is prevalent rarely exhibit true demon manifestations outside of mental institutions. However, there still are such manifestations. All the ones I just mentioned happened in the United States. Many weird people are just totally in the flesh and that’s all there is to it. They are doing adultery and fornication and divorce and abortions because those are fleshly things. You will hardly ever meet anyone truly driven by demons. But I’ve been places where I’d be surprised if DIDN’T see some form of demonic manifestation.

It is hard to put into words how you tell if a demon is present if there is no outward manifestation. Maybe it is trite to say that you just know, but that’s about the best way to put it. If you spend time developing your spirit through prayer and time with God and His Word, you will pick up things like that. Some people who are used in the gift of discerning of spirits pick up on this kind of thing very quickly.

Never assume that there is a demon present unless you are sure there is one. You can do untold damage by attempting to “cast out” a nonexistent spirit. When nothing happens, the person may still think he has a demon! In the majority of cases, there is nothing explicitly demonic going on, and you are always on safe ground to act as though there isn’t. Never assume that there is a demon present just because the person has a certain condition. (See Is All Sickness Demonic?.) I’ve been around people who think that just about everything is caused by a demon. It seems like anytime they pray for someone, they’re trying to cast a demon out. That’s spiritual immaturity. It confuses people and makes demons look more prevalent than they really are, which just magnifies Satan’s kingdom.

Some people would immediately hop on anyone who has a seizure and try to cast a demon out, but some people have physical conditions that cause seizures without a demon being present. The devil is the ultimate source of all sickness, but that doesn’t mean that you try to cast a demon out of every epileptic you encounter. The NKJV uses epileptics in place of lunatick, which appears in the King James Version, so you could look at Matthew 4:23-24 and try to build a case that epileptics and those “possessed with devils” are two separate classes. However, that “proof” fails because Matthew uses the same word lunatick (it’s the same in Greek, too), to describe the boy with the demon that often threw him into water or fire to try to kill him. That notwithstanding, there are medical problems (for example, encephalitis) that cause seizures as well as demons that cause seizures, and you don’t want to be in the position of “casting out” a nonexistent demon!

Other people use demons as excuses, as if to say, “The devil made me do it.” They will ask you to cast out a demon in them that isn’t there! One man wanted prayer because he said that a spirit of adultery would come on him and he’d just have to commit adultery when that happened. I told him that adultery is a work of the flesh (Galatians 5:19) and that he just needed to keep his flesh under. He got mad! He insisted that a demon was responsible, and he didn’t like it when I told him that he was responsible. Demons can’t make you do anything. If 2,000 of them couldn’t stop the madman of Gadara from running to Jesus and worshiping Him, they can’t “make” anyone else do anything. Don’t get your theology from horror movies – get it from the Word! Get your theology from the King of Kings, not Stephen King. Get your theology from the Heavenly Potter, not Harry Potter.