When I was in my late teenage years, I started displaying odd symptoms of altered personality and mania. My church family prayed for me and laid hands on me, and they weren’t sure if I was demon possessed. Then, several years later, another young woman at our church displayed similar symptoms. She was also prayed over with laying on of hands, multiple times (in fact it became a regular thing that was done at every prayer retreat and camp meeting), and her symptoms like mine did not go away with prayer.
At one point during a really bad mania I heard demon voices screaming at me and I thought I was possessed. In fact, I was convinced of it. (The voices turned out to be auditory hallucinations, but I didn’t know that at the time). I contacted pastors and had them pray for me, yet the symptoms did not go away. This sent me into a panic. Why wasn’t the name of God working to get rid of the demons? I knew Jesus was stronger than Satan, but the demons wouldn’t leave. This led to my faith being severely tried and several years of confusion. What was the key I wasn’t understanding that was preventing me from getting deliverance from this demon? I kept searching for this knowledge that seemed so hidden from view and from my understanding. I did unhealthy things like shut myself in my room and isolate from everyone for days while I prayed to God and sought deliverance in strange ways that made sense to me at the time.
How does a person get demon-possessed anyway? How does it happen? I think this is a very important question to ask .
We want the Bible to explain the process of becoming demon-possessed to us, and not get our information from human opinion or speculation. What does the Bible say?
The Bible shows us many accounts of demons gaining control over people. The story of King Saul is one of the best examples. Saul after his anointing as king was given the Holy Spirit; he was the farthest thing from demon possessed. But then he experienced a life test. The prophet and priest Samuel told him to wait until he arrived to offer a sacrifice to God. Kings were never to offer sacrifices, only priests as was written in the Levitical law. Saul went ahead and offered sacrifice, showing that he didn’t take the holy things of God seriously. He had a careless attitude. The result was that God rejected him as king. He should have repented and accepted that the throne would go to another, submit to God’s will and find peace in God. Who knows perhaps had he done this God may have restored to him the kingdom. But instead he grew bitter and resentful and an evil spirit troubled him.
But the Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD troubled him, 1 Samuel 16:14 . The Scriptures sometimes represent God as doing that which He does not specifically prevent. In giving Satan an opportunity to demonstrate his principles, God, in effect, would limit His own power. Of course, there were limits beyond which Satan could not go (see Job 1:12 ; 2:6 ), but within his limited sphere he did have divine permission to act.
Notice that the Spirit of God first departed from Saul and then an evil spirit came and troubled him. This is significant. It’s also true that the opposite actions to what Saul did when he harbored a spirit of pride and resisted the Holy Spirit more and more fully, cause a person to progress in their sanctification and to be more and more filled with God’s Spirit. When we surrender more and more sin and come into closer and closer relationship with God we become more and more filled with His Spirit. This isn’t random. People don’t just become possessed without warning and without cause. It’s not like falling sick with the flu. When Saul was surrendered to God when he first became king, he was filled with the Spirit of God, and when he became unrepentant, resentful and jealous demons gained control over him.
David was sent to play the harp for Saul and the demon left Saul when David played his harp. But while the demon would leave briefly, it always returned. What was causing it to return? Prayer is powerful. The Word of God tells us that “the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much,” James 5:16 Matthew 15:22-28 Tells us that a woman’s faith healed her daughter of demon possession. (It’s also important to note that children can be demon-possessed, not just adults and we should pray for our kids). We can pray for another and we can sing songs that glorify God and fight back the forces of darkness, but if that person keeps turning to sin and inviting Satan into their life, we can’t save that person from Satan taking control. They have to choose to resist Satan personally.
Saul initially loved and respected David, but one day after a day of battle the Israelite women danced and sang this song “Saul has killed his thousands, but David his ten thousands.” This aroused Saul’s jealousy and he tried to murder David by throwing a javelin at him. Murder was now in the heart of the king.
And Saul was afraid of David, because the Lord was with him, and had departed from Saul, 1 Samuel 18:12 .
David was a man after God’s own heart. Humble and submissive to God’s will. Saul was a jealous man with murder in his heart. This jealousy and murderous desire caused God’s spirit to flee from him, and allowed the evil spirit to enter.
Throughout the rest of Saul’s life, David and Saul’s son Jonathon tried to win Saul’s heart back to God. Saul began to start hunting David, but once in a cave when Saul found David, his heart softened and he determined not to kill him. He hugged him, apologized, and wept. Clearly Saul was struggling with the sin of jealousy as there were times he went back and forth between love and hatred toward David. He seemed like two different men.
But at the end of his life he allowed jealousy to take over. It says that he inquired of God, but that God answered him not.
And when Saul inquired of the LORD, the LORD did not answer him, either by dreams or by Urim or by the prophets, 1 Samuel 28:6 .
He had grieved God’s spirit away, but what did he do? He didn’t repent and turn from his sin, instead he went to the witch of Endor, a forbidden act. God had forbidden consulting mediums and seeing spiritists, calling these things an abomination.
Regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards, to be defiled by them: I am the Lord your God, Leviticus 19:31 .
He ended up dying in battle by suicide, still not repenting or turning from his murderous jealousy and now adding self-murder to his evil choices.
Saul’s story shows us how to lose the spirit of God. Being filled with his spirit involves doing the opposite – repent of your sin and believe in Christ, surrender your wrong heart attitudes, turn from your sins, do what you know to be right in Christ’s strength.
The story of Judas is similar. Like Saul he was once a follower of Jesus. Like Saul he had sins to overcome. And like Saul he gave in to those sins and let them overcome him. In the scriptures it says that Satan possessed Judas. How did it happen?
And supper being ended, the devil having now put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him; John 13:2.
He allowed Satan to put it into his heart to betray Jesus.
Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded.
James 4:7-8 .
Judas was not submitting to God and resisting the devil, he was cherishing the thoughts Satan gave him and making plans to betray his Lord. Jesus answered, he it is, to whom I shall give a sop, when I have dipped it. And when he had dipped the sop, he gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon.
And after the sop Satan entered into him. Then said Jesus unto him, That thou doest, do quickly, John 13:26-27.
Demon-possession is a spiritual illness, a moral illness. You can’t catch it like a cold. It’s not random. A person becomes demon-possessed by resisting the Holy Spirit and living a life of sin. The more you yield to Satan the more control he gets over you. The world will tell you that the choices you make in life are all equal and that there is no distinction. It’s common these days to live with your boyfriend or girlfriend before marriage for instance, and the world will tell you this is no different than marrying them and then living together. But it’s very different because one choice is a moral choice, and the other choice is an immoral one. One obeys God and the other grieves his Spirit. It’s our choices that can cause us to be filled with God’s Spirit or to become a habitation of demons.
So when determining if a person is demon-possessed or if it’s mental illness, ask them (with permission) about their history. Were they living in unrepentant sin before the symptoms started? If the person was a devoted Christian and living a godly life and then bam, the symptoms emerged, it’s unlikely to be demon-possession, no matter what it looks like on the outside. And we want to make sure we’re trusting God’s Word above our experience, and that we use God’s Word as the authority that interprets our experience, rather than trying to decipher what we’re seeing based on our very limited and fallible human analysis. It’s very common in our day and age to live a life of willful sin, so there could be a lot of people who are demon-possessed. And it’s possible for for someone to be both demon-possessed and have mental illness! Jesus healed a man who was both blind and mute and demon-possessed.
Then was brought unto him one possessed with a devil, blind, and dumb: and he healed him, insomuch that the blind and dumb both spake and saw, Matthew 12:22 .
We see Jesus healing people in the scriptures who had both physical ailments and demon-possession. The brain is a physical organ and when it malfunctions physically this is when we see the symptoms of mental illness emerge. It’s also possible for illness to start the other way – with sadness or severe psychological trauma (things outside of our control), or bad thought habits and worshipping self rather than trusting in God (things within out control), which causes the thoughts to react upon the body and bring about physical malfunction this way. (I’ve written another article that deals specifically with this subject and I won’t go into it in detail here).
In Jesus’ day many people were demon possessed.
When the even was come, they brought unto him many that were possessed with devils: and he cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick: Matthew 8:16
I don’t believe it’s any less common today. Our world is even more wicked today than it was in Jesus’ day, and if demon-possession was not uncommon back then, it’s probably even more common now. But whatever the person’s illness was – physical, mental, or spiritual – Jesus healed them. And Jesus is still the Great Physician today. He has commissioned his church today with authority to “Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give.” Matthew 10:8. Demons will flee when God’s people meet and pray. And, unlike physical healing, which God may say no to, or may sometimes give only a partial healing, God will always cast out a demon. The answer is never no if you pray over someone who is demon-possessed. This subject is like salvation; God’s will is always say yes, and only the person themselves can stop the blessing from happening. (God wants all to be saved, 1 Tim. 2:4 and 2 Pet 3:9 )
With mental illnesses like bipolar and schizophrenia, there can be psychosis which can complicate things and make them much more confusing. Psychosis involves a loss of reason. It’s similar to being fully drunk on alcohol and then there is usually anxiety and irritability from adrenaline levels spiking (and sometimes dopamine also). So the person is like a drunk on caffeine. It’s common for the person to run around and do many immoral things during psychosis. Add to this the symptom of religiosity and fascination, with the occult that is so common with schizophrenia and bipolar (I believe this happens because when the frontal lobe is compromised there is nothing to keep in check the fleshly desires and also because when the body is in an inflamed state there is an increased desire for sins of the flesh, I won’t go into all of this in this article though), and you can be very confused as to whether the person has demon possession from getting into the occult, or whether they became psychotic and got into the occult because of a lapse in judgment.
This is something I had to sift through in my own life. During bipolar psychosis I had consulted mediums thinking that Jesus could speak to me through them. I lost my ability to understand the Bible so the passages where God forbids seeking mediums I could not understand. I thought the Bible was a coded book and wasn’t speaking outright about these things. I thought I had special ability to understand deep things in the Bible that others didn’t have; that I could interpret more of the code than other people could. ‘Grandiose’ delusions like this are common with bipolar disorder.
This created confusion later when I thought I might be demon-possessed. Was I demon-possessed from going into the occult? Yes, a person can certainly become demon-possessed by getting into the occult.
And it came to pass, as we went to prayer, a certain damsel possessed with a spirit of divination met us, which brought her masters much gain by soothsaying: Acts 16:16 .
Consulting mediums and engaging in occult rituals of any kind breaks the first commandment. Thou shalt have no other gods before me, Exodus 20:3 It is idolatry and it is worship of demon spirits. Any false worship practices are done to demons, as Satan is the author and the subject of all false worship.
No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God. And I do not want you to be participants with demons. 1 Corinthians 10:20
But the Bible makes a distinction between sins done without knowledge and sins done with knowledge. Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin, James 4:17 .
This verse defines sin as knowing to do right and not doing it. Showing that you must have a knowledge of right and wrong in order to sin.
The Bible also tells us that all rational human beings do have a knowledge of right and wrong, even those who have never heard the gospel or the 10 Commandments.
Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the work of the Law is written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts either accusing or defending them, Romans 2:14-15 .
To be saved and forgiven of our sins, a person must also be rational. God appeals to our reasoning powers to make a decision for Christ. If we can’t reason we can’t choose Christ. Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool, Isaiah 1:18 .
Even our earthly courts have something called innocent by reason of insanity.
Taking these things into account, and knowing that “true and just are God’s judgments” ( Rev. 16:7 ). We can conclude that God will not allow a person to become demon-possessed who does immoral things during complete psychosis; neither will he allow that person to be lost if they were saved prior to falling into psychosis. You don’t have to worry that the things you did while insane will lead to Satan gaining control over you. Satan can only gain control if you know to do right and choose to do wrong instead and thereby grieve God’s spirit.
But people with mental illness are often not in complete psychosis. Many have some symptoms of psychosis, but not enough to have lost their reasoning powers completely. It’s here that I believe constitutes the most dangerous situation for a mentally ill Christian. If you still have enough sanity to know right from wrong, but your brain is compromised, then Satan will try to tempt you to do wrong, and you have an increased desire for lusts of the flesh due to the inflamed state your body and physical brain is in, and blunted perception of right and wrong and it takes extra effort to control your impulses due to your brain being compromised. You’re in a vulnerable position and he will try to take advantage of it. This is the state many find themselves in, and if you are in that state, I recommend praying daily and hourly and relying on God for strength, and pay special attention to your health. Do anything that you can do to build your physical brain up will help you in this conflict. (consider diet, exercise, and something called the Walsh protocol for mental illness that really helped me, etc.) If you haven’t learned to pray I recommend a book called ‘With Christ in the School of Prayer ‘ by Andrew Murray.
What does demon-possession look like anyway? We know from the scriptures, as stated earlier, that Judas when he betrayed Christ was demon-possessed. Here we see a man appearing logical, composed, and in his right mind making a profoundly immoral business deal with the Pharisees. This tells us that demon-possession doesn’t always involve foaming at the mouth, and that people can be demon-possessed and not appear to be. The only trust-worthy sign of demon possession is in the degree of evil. Judas was a sinner and he had done evil things before this, but the Bible doesn’t tell us he was possessed by Satan until he made the decision to betray his Lord. It seems much more likely then, that oppressive dictators, abusers, and people who do great evil are possessed, rather than someone who looks to be out of their mind and is out-of-control. Immorality and evil is how someone becomes possessed. A child with full psychosis who flings themselves around the house and can’t understand right from wrong can’t do evil and can’t become demon-possessed.
If you know two people – one who looks demon-possessed but is living a godly life in alignment with God’s Word, and another who looks perfectly fine, but is living a life of sin, it’s much more likely that the person living in sin is demon-possessed than it is that the person who simply acts bizarre and has personality changes is demon-possessed.
Demons are intelligent fallen angels, and if they are possessing someone, they can make it look like whatever they desire it to look like; whatever will suit their deceptive purposes. They’ve made it appear to be epilepsy, muteness, and many other manifestations. So demon-possession can mimic actual physical illness, or it can not even be visible as was the case with Judas.
“And one of the multitude answered and said, Master, I have brought unto thee my son, which hath a dumb spirit; And wheresoever he taketh him, he teareth him: and he foameth, and gnasheth with his teeth, and pineth away: and I spake to thy disciples that they should cast him out; and they could not,” Mark 9:17 , 18 .
It’s important that when a person repents and leaves their life of sin, that they leave it for good, not just temporarily. Jesus explained what would happen if a person who was demon-possessed yielded to Satan a second time:
“When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first,”
Matthew 12:43 .
Only in Christ’s strength can we part with sin. It’s a work he has to do in us. “For it is God who works in you to will and to do of his good pleasure,” Philippians 2:13 .
Jesus is the Great Physician and our Savior from sin. He’s the healer, not us. We depend on him for every healing and every victory. He is “among us as a God who serves,” Luke 22:27 . Like a doctor or a paramedic, he ministers to us and we are the patient. What a wonderful thought! It may take some time to get the victory over sin, but he will never abandon us to Satan or fail to give us the victory.
A light bulb finally went off in my mind after I saw a natural doctor and was given high dose vitamins for a physical illness, that what I had wasn’t demon-possession. I think the vitamins I was taking caused my brain to think more logically and I was able to decipher better what was going on. I had been having bad brain fog, delusions, and other mental symptoms. And it just hit me that I had had pastors pray over me and recently had had a prayer warrior who was studying at the seminary fast and pray for me and I had prayed too – and I was still having symptoms. I just knew it wasn’t demon-possession at that point.
And later as I pursued mental health treatments and started to improve, this was only confirmed more and more.
Very recently I’ve been studying more into the biochemistry and neurology of psychosis and altered perception and I’ve learned some important things. As we all know, our brain is responsible for all our perceptions, even the very basic ones that we don’t consciously think about, like our ability to gauge when we are in an upright position and when we are tilted to the right or left or turned upside down. Our brain is also responsible for perceptions of the self such as when we look at our arm we know it’s ours and not someone else’s. It turns out that with dissociative symptoms (which I had along with my bipolar disorder and which often co-occur with psychotic disorders), a person can lose their sense that their body is there’s and is being controlled by their own brain, and that their thoughts are their own. This can cause a person to feel like another entity is controlling their thoughts or their body movements. Below, at the end of this article is a link to a scientific study that talks about this symptom.
Once again, this just shows how important it is that we filter all our experiences through the Word of God and that we use the Word of God as our authority and not our experience! There are conditions out there that are beyond the current knowledge of modern medicine and neuroscience. Not only this but the full knowledge of how demons and the supernatural world works is beyond our current understanding also. There’s much we don’t know. God tells us what we need to know in the scriptures, and we don’t need speculation or human opinion, or to desire knowledge hidden from us for our own good, but to obey and believe these scriptures. We will be safe and right with God if we do this. The nervous system and the brain are very complex. Our brain gives us our perception of the world around us. At the time I came down with what I thought was demon-possession dissociation and its symptoms were outside of my knowledge and understanding. But what I needed to do was trust God’s Word that Jesus was stronger than Satan and that if I was seeking Him with all my heart, and turning from sin that He would receive me and I could not be demon-possessed. No matter what it felt like or seemed like was happening. God’s Word is truth, always.
Of course in my particular case I believe my psychosis prevented me from being able to understand God’s Word so I couldn’t do that at the time. But God is always just and always good and even when we don’t understand what is going on and even though we may lack the ability to be logical due to a mental illness, He is always infinite and omniscient and almighty, able to help us, and the answer to all problems, even though we are completely finite and limited by our illness. He knew I needed vitamin therapy and He made sure I got it at the right time and in the right way, according to His plan. I was willing to pursue vitamin therapy because I could decipher I had physical symptoms even though I had the symptom of anosognosia which is a cognitive symptom that prevents a person from being able to tell they are psychotic. I had chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia and I could tell I had these problems, and so I was willing to seek the help of natural doctors for these symptoms, and as I did so the vitamins also helped my brain and my thinking become more logical.
It was in 2009 that I came out of the delusion that I was demon-possessed. I had this delusion from about 2005-2009.
I actually ended up going off the vitamins and getting discouraged because one of the big reasons I was taking them was for chronic fatigue, and my fatigue didn’t budge on them which felt psychologically defeating and lowered my morale. So for several years I went off them. At the time I didn’t realize just how much they were helping my brain and how much I needed them. Lots of black mold grew in our house starting in 2012, and it was then that my mental health began to take a downward spiral again (and also my physical health).
I got back on vitamins after a 3 week crisis of intense anxiety, nerve pain and tingling, and insomnia. Nothing the doctors could do could help, but I took lecithin, which is needed for the body to make bile and which coats the nerves and which acts as a mold binder and removes mold from the body, brought me out of the crisis.
I was then on-board to keep taking vitamins and saw the necessity of them.
But I still didn’t know I had a psychotic disorder and delusional thinking.
In 2016 I was put on lithium for the worst psychotic break I’ve ever had in 2016 (this time I believed I had the ability to open dimension portals and was chosen to open them to let angels into our world to fight off demons and bring about the second coming – a very grandiose, and very illogical delusion), and it was then that I came out of the symptom of anosognosia. I was diagnosed with bipolar 1 at this time. I then knew I had a psychotic disorder and had been experiencing psychosis in varying degrees for all those years, and I was able to connect the dots in my mind. After coming out of psychosis, I saw Functional Medicine doctors again, this time for the purpose of improving the symptoms of logic and perception specifically, as I now knew I had a psychotic disorder.
I went on something called the Walsh protocol for mental illness, which you can find information about online (Dr. William Walsh’s book is called Nutrient Power and it’s available on Amazon), and the zinc in it particularly helped me in the area of logic and further brought me out of some of the milder delusional thinking I was still experiencing even after being put on antipsychotics. The rest of the nutrients in the Walsh protocol calmed and balanced my mood. I also went on supplements to treat mold illness because I’d been exposed to toxic black mold which raised my histamine and caused my immune system to be dysregulated, bringing on a condition called CIRS (Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome). I took herbs to restore blood flow to the deep regions of the brain and to boost something called BDNF (Brain Derived Neurotropic Factor) that repairs and regrows neurons. Ginkgo biloba, an herb that gets blood flow to the deep regions of the brain, really reduced my derealization symptoms, and calcium really helped too with that in a big way. I was low in Vitamin D and boosting immunity with vitamin D helped in a big way to get blood flow going too, and vitamin D brought me out of more of the mild delusions and made me think in an even more logical way. When vitamin D is too low, immunity is not robust and it weakens. When immunity weakens blood flow becomes sluggish. And when blood flow becomes sluggish nerve tone is affected, and nerve signaling is impeded, including the nerve signals in the brain. You then get connectivity issues in your brain, where parts of the brain that should be connected and signaling one another are disconnected, and wrong connections are made instead, and when wrong signaling occurs the brain experiences illogical, delusional thinking. Because the frontal lobe where logic occurs becomes disconnected from the other parts of the brain. MRI scans show connectivity issues in the brains of people with psychotic disorders, and also OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder).