Short Answer
People influenced or even deeply affected by demonic activity are not always completely helpless, but in severe cases they may need outside help through prayer and God’s intervention. Ultimately, true deliverance always comes from God—not from human power alone. In many situations, individuals must still respond by turning to God in repentance and faith.
The Overview
The Bible shows that during the time of Jesus and the apostles, there were extreme cases of demonic influence where individuals were so overwhelmed that they could not respond or help themselves. In those situations, deliverance often came through Christ or His apostles, demonstrating God’s authority over evil. These cases were intense and sometimes involved people who had lost normal control or reasoning ability.
However, not all situations are the same. In many cases, people today experience forms of spiritual bondage—such as destructive habits or persistent sin—where they are still able to respond, make choices, and cry out to God for help. In these situations, deliverance often begins when the individual turns to God, repents, and seeks His help through prayer and obedience.
There are also situations where a person may seem deeply affected—possibly even beyond their ability to respond clearly. In such cases, prayer from others becomes important, asking God to intervene. Still, even then, the power does not come from the person praying but from God Himself. Human effort, including prayer or fasting, is simply a way of depending on God’s power rather than replacing it.
It is also important to distinguish between spiritual issues and medical or psychological conditions. Some behaviors may have natural explanations, while others may reflect spiritual influence. In either case, the consistent biblical response is to seek God, rely on His power, and pursue truth, repentance, and restoration.
Key Takeaways
- Deliverance Comes from God Alone
No person has power in themselves to free someone from demonic influence. - Severity of Influence Varies
Some may still respond, while others may be more deeply affected. - Personal Response Matters
Repentance and turning to God are central in most cases. - Prayer for Others Is Important
Especially when someone seems unable to help themselves. - Not All Cases Are the Same
Some situations may involve medical or psychological factors.
Read Full Raw Transcript
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Jean, you’re on the air. How can I help? >> How can I help? >> Yes. Thank you for taking my call. Can you hear me? >> I can hear you just fine. >> Okay. My question is um there’s a passage in the Bible. I’m sorry I didn’t look it up to see where in the Bible is found, but it’s about um where um two or three of Jesus’ disciples were trying to um it was uh someone that was possessed by demonic spirits and u the disciples tried to um deliver the person to set them free and
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they were unable to do so. So later Jesus uh was able to um deliver set the person free from the demonic spirits. And when the disciples asked Jesus uh why they weren’t able to do it and I know in the um King James uh Bible it said that um Jesus said that um it this this uh kind takes um prayer and fasting. But in the NIV Bible, it omits the fasting part. But my main question is is when someone is possessed by demonic spirits, does does that mean that they are unable to be cleansed or delivered on their own? That someone
00:01:29
that’s filled with the Holy Spirit have to intervene on their behalf to set them free. Is is that right or not? >> Say that last question, that last line again. >> Okay. When some my my main question is is when someone is possessed by a demonic spirit, >> I’m thinking that they can’t be delivered. They cannot be set free unless someone that’s filled with the Holy Spirit intervenes on their behalf to uh deliver them or cleanse them from the demonic spirit. >> I got what you’re saying. Okay. Yeah.
00:02:12
Well, this is a good question because the way that we see the most extreme examples of demonization in Jesus’s day and even in the early parts of the apostles day in the book of Acts, uh the agency of deliverance comes through either Christ or his apostles. And that would seem to set up a pattern. And yet the reality of the work of Satan in an individual is varied. and the kind of of attacks upon people that that as we might say in our day get a foothold in people’s lives, right? There are oftent
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times people throwing themselves on the mercy of God, throwing themselves on the mercy of God and God giving them deliverance as they [snorts] put into action the uh the truth of God’s word. So, I see that in a lot of situations cuz there are all kinds of sins that Satan is enslaving people to as they sin. And I know many people that without the intervention of a third person have been set free from those sins. So I don’t think it’s an absolute although I think the demon activity during the time
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of Christ and the apostles was so severe. Some people were so severely overcome by demonic spirits which I always think is starting with an open door usually in most cases by the person themselves that um they needed a person to intervene and in that intervention right those are the examples we see that are highlighted in Christ’s ministry and in the apostles ministry and I would say they’re so badly given over to the demons they’re just completely passive which is actually what the word that we
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often translate demon possession literally literally means being having a demon-caused passivity. So if you’re so passive that the demons are saying, you know, we are legioned and I’m living among the tombs and I’m cutting myself and I’m not in my right mind. Well, then we can’t sit down with an open Bible and maybe reason with that person. So I can say there may be just by way of example and reasoning through the scriptures that there there is a kind of passivity where Satan has become so dominant that
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it would take an outside individual to to to be an agent of God’s deliverance if that was going to come. But that in part was to show us that Christ and the apostles were speaking for heaven. And you and I are not speaking for heaven. We’re not writing scripture. So, I don’t know if that’s going to be something that we’re able to do. Uh, and I don’t even see the kinds of uh the outbreak of demonization, at least in our country right now, the way that I see it and read about it in the Gospels in the book
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of Acts. But I can say if it were in that situation, perhaps God would be gracious because as it says in Jude about Michael and Satan, right, we’re not really exercising any power in and of ourselves. We don’t have any power. Any power we have is derivative power. And all we’re doing is trusting that God will answer our prayer to deliver someone. But usually the normative situation is someone is delivered when they themselves engage their valition, their decision-making power to say,
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“God, please deliver me. God, please help me. God, please, I’ll stop. I repent of my [snorts] sin. I’ll stop doing what’s gotten me into this mess, and I want to follow you.” And Christ gives them the power to overcome that. So that’s a hard question you ask because I think there are some very unique situations in the gospels where the kind of demonization is so severe the person can’t even reason with you. As opposed to most people today that I talk to have very clearly demonic issues
00:05:40
going on of enslavement to particular sins, but they can still have a conversation with me. And usually what happens is they sit there and say, “I don’t want to. I don’t want to. I don’t want to. I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to follow Christ. I don’t want to give up my sin.” and I realize they’re enslaved and they’re blinded. As 2 Corinthians 4:4 says, Satan is blinding their eyes. I can have a conversation. They seem like they’re in their right
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mind, but in fact, you know, all I can do is pray for them. And if God delivers them, great. But I don’t see the kind of, well, let me just sit down and pray. Uh, [snorts] or if you were to take the textual variant there and I’ll fast for a week and it’ll come out. I don’t know. Although I do know the prayer of a righteous person accomplishes much. So, we ought to be praying for people like that. There are people I know addicted to to gambling, right? They can’t they can’t stop giving their paycheck away to
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the casinos. Okay, well that’s terrible, right? Satan is is out to steal and kill and destroy. And that’s exactly what this gambling addiction does. Well, I want them to be free. Well, they don’t want to stop. Well, I pray for them and I get people to pray for them. And in God’s grace, maybe at times we see people turn aside from all of that, but at times we don’t. So, I’m always going to call the person who’s engaged in something that is clearly demonic because it it wraps them up in in
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perpetual sin. I’m going to tell them to exercise their valition and to do what’s right because that is the normative experience of everyone who’s in sin. They’re supposed to call out to God and say like that parable Jesus told that that tax collector, have mercy on me, a sinner. That’s what I want to hear from people that are in the hands of the evil one. And and if they can’t say that, of course, I want to pray for them. if they’re so just illogical, I of course I want to pray that. But I don’t know that
00:07:21
I have any guarantee that I can uh can effectuate that even if I fast all week and pray every hour. But I I think if it’s a loved one for sure, I mean, we find ourselves doing that without even trying. We pay in we pray incessantly, don’t we, Jean? That that someone you be free from that problem. So that’s kind of a an an answer that may not be as clear as you wanted, but uh that is what I’m finding as I look at the differences between what I normally deal with today and what Jesus and the apostles were
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dealing with in that period of time. Does that help? >> Okay. [clears throat] I I have a comment um if you have time. Of course. Um, one is I I think it’s interesting that as I said earlier that in the King James uh version of the Bible uh in the one uh specific passage that that I’m thinking of and as I said, I’m sorry I don’t I didn’t look to see where it’s found in the Bible. >> Yeah. Mark chapter 9 verse 29 is the passage you’re thinking of, but go ahead.
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>> Okay. That’s that’s the one where um where uh uh Jesus is telling his disciples that >> this kind comes by uh fasting and praying but the NIV Bible omits the fasting part. So I just think that’s kind of interesting too >> and but the other >> well I can explain that but which is nothing nefarious. There’s nothing evil going on there. There’s definitely a textual variant there and the later manuscripts will deal with that that addition of fasting which in this case
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if fasting were a part of really what Mark wrote there be really hard for them to walk into a town and have any period of fasting right this is u you know all they can do at that particular time is prayer but it seems like because the fasting conversation was had elsewhere that the the transcribers of this by hand added the added the phrase and fasting. So I I don’t think it’s a an easy decision for textual uh translators to translate it. But it it is um interesting that uh even in the context
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be hard for them to be accused of not fasting when they had just come upon this man that was terribly convulsing and they couldn’t cast it out. But go ahead. It’s not because the NIV says, “Well, we don’t like the fasting part, so we’re leaving it out.” There’s good textual evidence for leaving it out. That’s all I’m saying. Maybe that is not what Mark wrote. And if Mark didn’t really write that, then we don’t want that in our Bibles. The Bible talks
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elsewhere about fasting, but I’m not sure it really does in Mark 9 29. But anyway, go go ahead. And the other thing that um I wanted to mention um I um have a loved one that uh is diagnosed with um uh mental illness and um just um I have seen the loved one uh speaking speaking to you know when he’s in a room by himself he’ll be having a conversation with with someone. Okay. Right. >> And um there was an occasion, one occasion when uh uh well several occasions actually when I would ask the
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ask them, well um who are you who are you speaking with? And uh the one spec specific incident where the person told me the name of this person that they were speaking with. And um anyway, as I said, since this happened on more than one occasion, when they would be having a conversation with someone that nobody else could see, um when I would ask them what the person was telling them or you know, they would always say like the uh person was that they were these voices that they were hearing would always tell
00:11:20
them to do something that was bad for them like right, >> you know, uh I need to smoke more or whatever something to that effect. So um anyway uh I can uh there are several uh several situations that um where voices I didn’t experience this myself but I was told that the same loved one when they were um that someone heard numerous different totally different sounding voices coming out of this person’s mouth you know >> right >> so um like I that that’s um that’s why
00:12:02
you know I you know asked that question about whether someone if they are really possessed by demons whether they are able to uh accept Jesus and be delivered on their own or whether they are helpless and they have to have someone that’s filled with the Holy Spirit to intervene on their behalf. >> Well, I always think it’s a good thing when they do. Gan, this is a great question and I have some experience with this. Um, I used to run a uh worship service in a nursing home in the south
00:12:38
side of Chicago and uh a lot of people were just dumped there who had all kinds of uh mental disorders as they might call it, what the nurses there might call it. Not that they were the best nurses in the industry, but as I dealt with these people every Sunday uh and got to know them, I realized that some of them uh just had issues of dementia and Alzheimer’s as we would call it now. And they they had um they could have a real medical diagnosis of something in their brain that didn’t allow them to
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have the cognitive functions. But then I had other people that maybe a doctor would say, “I don’t see much wrong with this person at all.” But they were very hostile when we came to to sing songs to Jesus and talk about the Bible. That’s when this one man would go off and scream profanity the whole time. We literally had to roll him in his wheelchair into another room and face him in a corner because he was that way until we left. And some of the older ladies that would come to our service
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would say, “You know, he’s not like that until you guys come.” Well, we’ve never done anything wrong to this guy. We’re just preaching Jesus and singing about Jesus. and the guy goes nuts. In that case, I say, “Okay, yeah, I I can see where you’ll know them by their fruits.” And sometimes the fruit is not just someone who can’t make sense of a sentence or does, you know, things that are inappropriate, but they’re doing things that clearly, as you said, uh, in
00:14:03
the one case you gave me the example of, they’re doing they’re hearing voices that are telling me to do things that are always destructive. There’s a consistency to it. It’s never good. It’s never go worship or never go serve someone. It’s always destructive. And that’s where I think you can know them by their fruits. At some point we recognize sin and Satan who is all about and it’s really his demons because you know Satan’s got can only pay attention to one thing at a time. But the demons
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that go out around the world to do their work I do think have an effect on some people that maybe they are beyond uh anybody beyond doing this the solving the problem themselves which really is what you’re asking and and I I would agree with that. But what I would never say, even though I want to be that person, and I felt like I tried to be that, particularly when I had that assignment of of leading this service in this very run-down uh nursing home in the south side of Chicago, I I I recognized that no one gets there on
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their own. In other words, or no one’s no one’s taken there by the demon. In other words, always there seems to be some on-ramps to what they end up being overcome by because they’ve made moral decisions about their own lives, giving themselves to sin and then God, as it says in Romans 1, gives them over. So, I’m never going to sit there and say, “Oh, poor you. You You can’t get out of this on your own.” I do feel bad and I get mad because Satan is the destroyer. But I realize it’s not as though they’re
00:15:26
morally neutral or morally innocent. Because these people that act that way or hear voices that tell them to do only terrible things or people that curse when the Christians show up, these are these are people that have made decisions throughout their lives and Satan has found a a very um a very willing home for them to work through. But yes, I would love for you and I when we see people that seem to be beyond the ability to help themselves to help them. And I do think the thing about fasting, maybe the reason even it was a
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discussion elsewhere in the gospels is because that puts our focus on doing what we should be doing and that is relying on the Lord, praying to the Lord, beseeching the Lord uh even as Jesus did with loud cries uh to say God we need you and we can’t do this without you. And even as Michael said to Satan, you know, the Lord rebuked you. I’m not going to rebuke you, but I need God involved in this cuz he’s the only power ultimately that can deliver uh from the strong arm of demonic work. And I do think that that is a helpful perspective.
