When He said ‘spirits’ He was talking about demons.
By who? We’re powerless to do that on our own. That’s why the Holy Spirit comes and takes permanent residence when we invite Him in. The Holy Spirit is our seal. A seal that can’t be removed.
Angels and demons, Anthony. Use that Polygot you got and do a word search on the different ways scripture presents spirits.
Hebrews 1 is a good place to start - look at verses 13 and 14 specifically. The Greek word (in English) is aggelos which can be a messenger, an angel, a demon, even an animal. These are called “ministering spirits” sent out as servants.
Being demon-possessed is a phenomenon associated with humanity.
Nevertheless, being born again to the sonship of God, it’s not possible to be demon-possessed.
Do you recall, or perhaps you still see this today without knowing the background… but it used to be that when a person sneezed, those around the sneezer, would respond with “May God bless you!”
I still hear it all the time, in a shortened format-- “Bless you” -when someone sneezes.
If we look in the history books, we can find many different thoughts on how and why the**phrase “God bless you!” started. Some think “God bless you” started when Pope Gregory said it to those who sneezed. It was a time when many people were dying from a plague and they thought the sickness started with a sneeze. Some think “God bless you” was said because a person’s heart stopped or skipped a beat when they sneezed. They would say it so your heart would restart. Some thought evil spirits or bad things came out of the body when one sneezed and they filled the body up with good things by saying, “God bless you!” Some people just think that saying, “God bless you!” is good luck.
The thought was that in sneezing- ‘the spirit’ was leaving the body.
We see examples from scripture, like King Saul having the spirit taken from him, and later King David praying that the spirit NOT be taken from him.
Lots of so-called Christian miniters are possessed with demons of lies …
A born again Christian can not be demon possessed, because possession actually denotes ownership, not possible to a born again believer. However, they can be demonized and the original language they had two different words for it. Demonized means harassment. They entice us, tempt us, lie to us and all sorts of bad things to try to get us to sin. But when they came to possess, they couldn’t get in because the Lord Jesus was abiding there. So they come and go.
I think when all this earth is done and we’ve all crossed over to a place wherein is Only Truth, that we will marvel and be amazed at how many evil spirits there actually were all over the earth and the depth of the demonic oppression that we were (are) under.
Is it possible for people to open the door to demonic influence during their BC life – and will need deliverance from that influence in their AD life?
Yes. A Christian can suffer possession. Possession does not render a Christian insecure–a loss of salvation–it means that the Christian can be assaulted by the devils, and thus the devil can cause physical and mental harm. This is probably what, in many contemporary Protestant circles would be classified as “demonic oppression” rather than “possession”. In which case the issue could be a matter of semantics.
When dealing with exorcism it is crucial to not give into sensationalism; all other possibilities must be explored (for example ruling out naturalistic causes, such as mental health). But, yes, the historic position of the Christian Church has been that even Christians can be assailed by the devil in different ways; which is why “Resist the devil and he must flee” is such a crucial aspect of Christian life. It is why as Christians we must continually cling to Christ in faith, to live penitent lives of faith and devotion, to be consumed with prayer, and always being at the receiving end of Grace through Word and Sacrament.
Luther’s famous hymn is good here, on the one hand Luther writes,
For example in the first stanza we read,
“For still our ancient foe
does seek to work us woe;
his craft and power are great,
and armed with cruel hate,
on earth is not his equal.”
But then we see this in the third,
“And though this world, with devils filled,
should threaten to undo us,
we will not fear, for God has willed
his truth to triumph through us.
The prince of darkness grim,
we tremble not for him;
his rage we can endure,
for lo! his doom is sure;
one little word shall fell him.”
In the middle we see the difference:
“Did we in our own strength confide,
our striving would be losing,
were not the right Man on our side,
the Man of God’s own choosing.
You ask who that may be?
Christ Jesus, it is he;
Lord Sabaoth his name,
from age to age the same;
and he must win the battle.”
In our flesh we are helpless against the devil.
But Christ is Victor, strong, and true–having defeated the devil and destroyed the devil’s ancient and wicked power. So while we may be weak, He is strong–for Christ has disarmed and bound the strongman.
Let us therefore always abide in Christ. For Christ our Lord is our refuge.
I’m not sure if I’m a Protestant or not because I don’t pay that much attention to denominations, only messages and truth. But are you saying here that oppression and possesion are synonyms?
From what I learned from (Derek Prince) he said they could have a mental condition at first but that it many times leads to attracting the demons, and that the demons could have been there first with no mental condition and that possession many times leads to developing a mental condition.