![]() ![]() OppressionĪs mentioned above, oppression is one of the characteristic ways that the devil and his demons seek to influence people. I have seen people set free from eating disorders, bondage to pornography, uncontrollable anger, and other destructive behaviors through the casting out of evil spirits. When there is an enslavement to sin or a harmful practice, deliverance needs to be considered as a possible solution. When a person sincerely desires to be free and has a repentant heart, yet still cannot seem to overcome a sinful practice, it is possible that what they are dealing with is not simply the flesh that needs to be crucified, but a demon that needs to be cast out. It could be lustful thoughts, a drawing toward pornography, compulsive lies, addiction to a substance, or various other enslavements. But the person who is in bondage is seeking to live a holy life but cannot seem to get free in certain areas. They have no sorrow for sin, no desire to be free from it, and willfully run from God. The person living in rebellion is in outright disobedience to God, knows it, and likes it. There is a difference between a person who is in rebellion and a person who is in bondage. ![]() The devil’s goal is not simply to tempt us with sin, but to enslave us to it. Pharaoh, as a symbolic type of Satan, demonstrated two of the ways that evil spirits try to influence people: bondage and oppression. When Stephen was describing how Abraham’s descendants would be slaves in Egypt, he said this: “But God spoke in this way: that his descendants would dwell in a foreign land, and that they would bring them into bondage and oppress them four hundred years” (Acts 7:6, emphasis added). Instead of being caught off guard, we can follow the example of Jesus to defeat every temptation by using the Word of God as our weapon. We need not be alarmed or frazzled when we face temptations it is part of life on earth, and Jesus faced temptations of every kind. A spirit of anger compels you to uncontrollable rage. A spirit of adultery tries to push you toward being unfaithful to your spouse. A lying spirit seeks to compel you to tell lies (or to believe the enemy’s lies). While we all face temptation simply by living in a fallen world, and while much temptation is simply a work of the flesh, we also need to be aware that sometimes the temptations that come to us have a demonic origin. It would make logical sense that demons, like the devil whom they serve, would also be masters at temptation. He makes sin look appealing, highlighting its pleasures while cloaking its destructive nature. He twists truth and plants seeds to try to pull people into all kinds of sin and disobedience to God. We see from the first time he appears in Scripture as the serpent in the Garden of Eden that the devil is a master at temptation, using deceptive methods and appealing to mankind’s innate desires. One of the titles of Satan is the tempter. “Now when the tempter came to Him…” (Matthew 4:3). There is overlap between some of them, and the list is not comprehensive, but it shows some of the main ways that evil spirits seek to influence people. Below are some of the common characteristics or types of demonic influence. Not every demon is the same in type, function, strength, or even wickedness. One of the things that we learn about evil spirits in the Bible is that there are specific kinds of demons. Below is an excerpt from Keys for Deliverance on various types of demonic influence: ![]()
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