Derek Prince and Demons

May 1972

On the second night Derek Prince taught in Jacksonville Beach arena, Derek told us aobut his struggle with certain personal sins. Even though he fasted and prayed, he never found victory until God revealed to him that he was possessed by a demon. No kidding, there was a demon possessing him and making him do whatever nasty things he was doing. He talked about bad habits people have - they were habits because demons were possessing us. Oh my gosh I had a demon, maybe even two.

Hundreds of us Christians went forward to be delivered from demons by Derek Prince that night and as he prayed for us I felt the demons leave, no kidding I felt them leave me.

I took that message to several other people (Chirstians) for the next months telling them they needed deliverence from demons (my favorite one was the demon of finger nail biting), but I would eventually come to a crisis of faith - my experience of being delivered vs. the Bible which seemed to point me to a different conclusion entirely, a conclusion stating that if I am in Christ I am free indeed. I don't remember the exact verses I was reading, but I do remember the internal dialogue. I was struggling between what I saw the bible telling me and my personal experience which was very real. I remember actually saying out loud, "What about my experiences?" Immediately afterward I looked at the bible and this verse stood right out: "Let God be true, but every man be found a liar."

I decided then and there that the bible would take precedence over any experience I had. I also decided that even though the Charismatic teachers I had been idolizing quoted a lot of scripture verses, they weren't always that scriptural.

But that decision was made several months after I had learned about how to cast out demons from Christians and in those months God did use my goofy zeal for casting out demons for good purposes as was the case one night when I got a phone call very early in the morning while I was on the ship. It was a Christian ship mate's wife who was crying and scared, asking me to come over as soon as possible.

To be continued...