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The Bible shows us that a person who is born again can never be possessed by a demonic spirit.
Indeed, this truth can turn beliefs upside down, because we can hear everything and anything.

There is no passage that would explicitly say that a born-again person cannot be possessed by a demon. Nevertheless, there are truths in the Bible that show it.
I'll explain it.

First of all, I'm not here to convince, or put any pressure on your way of thinking. I am here to inform you, and it is the Holy Spirit who is in charge of convincing you. That is why I strongly recommend, after reading these explanations, to take time with Him, so that He can confirm this to you.

Let's quickly see what are possession and demonic oppression on a person. These two things are totally different on the one hand, but sometimes similar (on some points only) on the other hand on the form.

A possession is when an evil spirit (a demon) enters into a person's body.
This can be done by different kinds of ways, but a general rule is that a demonic spirit will never ask permission to enter a physical body. He will wait for a favorable opportunity like:
A depressive state, extreme hatred, relaxation meditation, but also of course, spiritual contacts with occult entities in all their forms, a curse, etc...
A demonic spirit will wait until a person experiences thoughts related to evil, and generated by evil, in order to find a favourable echo to his lies, and enter that person.

In this case this spirit will physically enter and cling to the inside of the person's body, causing all kinds of disorders, diseases, pains, behaviour change, unusual attitudes for a human, in extreme cases there can be deformation of the body, etc... The only time a demonic spirit will come out of the person, will be at his physical death (he will have won), or by the power of the name of Jesus.
Apart from these two cases, there is no way out. I won't go into detail.

Now there are also demonic oppressions. Which is totally different.

The approach is the same, but with the difference that the demonic spirit has not entered the person's body. He's still out there.
The damage can be just as terrible if the person follows satanic instructions. The only difference will be that this spirit will not be able to influence the physical, such as causing pain, taking control of the body and soul, as he could in the case of possession. He will not be able to do it directly as in a possession. But of course it will be enough to persuade the person that he or she has great pains, to see some time later pains generated by the psychic, but nevertheless very real physically.
So many diseases can occur through simple thought.

A friend told me that a woman was convinced that she had cancer. He himself had prayed to cast out this cancer, this woman was healed after the prayer, supported by medical evidence.
Some time later she came back to see my friend to pray for her because she said: "My cancer has come back". This woman had no physical signs, it was all in her mind. This woman was cured, the medical documents proved it, but she would stick to her thinking, that she had cancer again.
She eventually died, but the most obvious thing is that she no longer had cancer for the doctors, so an autopsy had to be done to determine the causes of death. The autopsy revealed no cancer in her body. She eventually died of her thought, which she held on to firmly for years.

Demonic oppression would be, if we had to image it, a loudspeaker located in front of each of my ears, constantly uttering satanic evil thoughts.

So of course we don't really know how it works in practice. I mean, we don't explicitly know the means, or the entry that is used to introduce thoughts into a human being's thinking. What is certain is that a spirit has the capacity to suggest thoughts to us.

We see this phenomenon in:
2 Corinthians 12:7 And that I should not be swollen with pride, because of the excellence of these revelations, I was put a thorn in my flesh, an angel of Satan to blow me away and prevent me from being proud.

Paul's problem was a demonic spirit that constantly suggested false thoughts about himself, which he called his thorn in the flesh.
This phenomenon affects all born-again Christians. The Bible gives us radical ways to remove them, but that's another subject.

So to come back to these oppressions, the results may be very similar to possession.
Why?

Because when a born again person listens to demonic thoughts, and takes them as truth, for days, months, sometimes years, even without really noticing it, but simply for lack of teaching, then we end up with results almost similar to possession.

I have seen people converted for years, including a man, whom I knew perfectly well, roll on the ground, skim, scream with a hoarse voice. It really seemed like possession. But it wasn't one at all. Because after some discussions with him, he realized that he had simply given credit to demonic thoughts that told him: "you are demon possessed". All this is supported by a strong desire on his part to be noticed because of a lack of affection.
The spirit took advantage of an emotional lack in this man, and a lack of education, to make him believe that he was possessed, and it was only a matter of time before he began to act like a demon possessed person.

I prayed for people who were possessed, and I was also present when this man deceived, and I can say that there were similarities, but I felt in my spirit that it was a masquerade. To give an example, he did not react strongly in the name of Jesus, as do people who are really possessed. There were also no obvious signs of self-destruction in his life, as can be seen in a person possessed, thoughts of suicide, physical abuse of himself, etc. The worst thing is that he was not pretending, he really thought so. It was only after these discussions that he realized that he had been deceived.

This is only one example, but I understand that it does not constitute formal proof.

That is why the Bible says this:

There is no passage in the New Covenant, where we are given instructions, or even an example of how to cast a demon out of a born-again person. If this had been the case, it seems to me that God would have given instructions through the apostles to do the right thing in a similar case.

In Mark 16:9, or Luke 8:2, it is well explained that Jesus had cast out 7 demons from Mary Magdalene, and that she then followed him among other men and women.
It can easily be said that if Mary Magdalene followed Jesus it was because she had a great interest in His teachings, she approved them, and therefore she had gone through the new birth.
Although the new birth was not really fully effective, because sins had not been taken on the cross yet. But we can consider what I call a period of overlap, where people who accepted Jesus' teaching and put it into practice, were saved, but without fully experiencing all the benefits of the new birth. This is due in particular to the cross and the Holy Spirit that have yet to arrive.

Some doctrines say that Mary Magdalene was born again with 7 demons in her. I do not think, therefore, that we can say that Jesus cast out 7 demons from Mary, after her new birth. There is no way to say that. But there are rather elements showing the opposite, as I have just explained.

Passages such as: Ephesians 6:10-18 James 4:7 1 Peter 5:8-9, show means that God has given to Christians to keep satan harmless.

But also 1 Corinthians 3:16 Paul was not only talking about the spirit here, but also about the body and soul, for He confirms it in 1 Corinthians 6:19.
How could my body be the temple of the Holy Spirit (just after my new birth) and at the same time be the temple of a demonic spirit?
I remind you that temple here means: the place where the divinity dwells, but also a holy place, a sanctuary. This is therefore a fact, our body is His temple, the sanctuary of the Holy Spirit.
In the following verse 20, Paul says that God has redeemed us, including our body. It is God's property, so it is hardly conceivable that God would be "sharing room" with satan or one of his demons in the body of a born-again person.

1 John 4:4 also shows us that He who is in us (God) is greater than he who is in the world (satan). In this case, how could satan force the door of our body and soul inot it, if the one inside us is stronger than the one outside?
How can the one outside enter?

When a demonic spirit possesses a person, it is not confined only to the body, or only to the soul, he takes the control of both (the spirit being encased by the soul). One cannot say that an evil spirit would remain in a soul without going into the body. An evil spirit does not come out through the person's thought but through his body.

This is what all the biblical examples show us on this subject. A demon will therefore always also be in the body in a case of possession.

Once again, oppression, that is, a demonic spirit that suggests thoughts, can make a born-again person act in a way that is completely abnormal, even mean for the weakest ones. But in this case it's not a possession, it's a deception because the person is mistaken for a pawn, he follows satanic directives suggested to him in his thoughts.

The born again people to whom this happens have been deceived, they are led to believe that the demon is in them, that it pulls the strings, but that is totally false. Humans are capable of anything when they believe it, that is what the Bible shows us, both in good and in evil.
satan knows that believing is a powerful weapon for humans, which is why he strives to make Christians believe thoughts of lies, to contain and control them.

If you think you are tied up, that you are convinced of it, but you have no way of checking it, then you will act exactly as if you were tied up.
Or if you are blindfolded and convinced that you are on the edge of a several hundred meters high cliff , then you will not move forward because of fear of falling, even if a great danger were to come towards you in the other direction.
What I mean is that when we are convinced of something, when we have engraved a thought in us, then nothing stops us. We are capable of anything. And satan knows it, which is why his job is to persuade us, and we do all the rest stupidly sometimes.

It is enough for him to make Christians believe what he says, and the trick is done. So making Christians believe that they are sometimes possessed will serve the devil's actions. But it's a huge deception. He wants to make it look like he has control, but he has nothing at all. But if a person firmly believes it, then he will act exactly, outwardly, as if he were possessed.

Genesis 11:6 And the Lord said, Behold, they are one people, and they all have one language, and this is what they have undertaken; now nothing would prevent them from doing all that they had planned.

These people of Babel had all the same thought, they believed in what they had undertaken, it was an assurance. And that was wrong, but God nevertheless said, that nothing could have stopped them. That is why satan makes us believe that he can possess us, simply to keep us under his control. He's a zero, a liar. In the instance we are talking about now, it is Christians who give satan his power because he does not have any. By the credit that Christians give him, he draws his power, and people are like puppets in his hands. But the truth is that we are more than victorious over all things.

There are also false doctrines saying that today demons could take on human form.
Again, this is a deception.
Everything happens through thought, because our thought is, as I said, very powerful, in both senses, good and bad. The characteristic of a satanist is that he is demon possessed. It is therefore very easy for a demon to allow hallucinations, to give visions of monsters or other animals. Hard drugs give you this kind of effect, a demon who possesses a person is also quite capable of it.

The problem is that Christians forget what the Bible says about satan. He's a liar, it's written dozens of times. In the same way that God is love, satan is a lie.
John 8:44 You have the devil as your father, and you want to fulfill your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and he does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks the lie, he speaks from his own heart; for he is a liar and the father of the lie.

Here the father of lies means that satan created the lie, he is its "progenitor".

Of course when his powers will be given back to him for a time, after Jesus' return, we have examples where demons take on animal form, but for the moment it is impossible, we are still in the dispensation of grace.

Now we could ask ourselves, "Then why are there deliverance "ministries" for Christians?

There are many people who claim to have a ministry of deliverance. What can be said about this is that there is no example in the Bible of a person exercising a special ministry for deliverance.
Some denominations have called this exorcism, and many people take it up in evangelical circles towards Christians, in what they call a ministry of deliverance.
This has nothing to do with what the Bible teaches about Christian life.

On the other hand, the Bible tells us that Christian life includes a life in which we are totally victorious, over satan and his demons, without any exception of situation, and that we can work it out on our own, when we have the right method.
This shows us that these kinds of "ministries of deliverance" are not mentioned in the Bible, but also that very often the people who are in these activities have not understood what the Christian life should be.

I have never heard anyone in these "ministries" teach that everyone can do the same, that we should not fear evil spirits, because we have already won victory over them through Jesus. On the contrary, it is often notions of fights, battles, etc.... whereas the battle has been won for more than 2000 years, it is only necessary to proclaim it.
So indeed, towards Christians, they drive out oppression for people who are born again, nothing more.
But quite often (I don't say all of them) they think that chasing evil spirits is a great battle, and these same people see evil spirits everywhere.
This is often the purpose of demonic oppressions, they suggest false things to us, we believe them out of naivety or lack of knowledge of the Bible, and we do the rest of the work.
Just as satan did with Eve, he launched a lie, created a doubt, and Eve did the rest of the work alone, like a big girl.

Bye for now.

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