An Interview With An Exorcist: Can A Christian Be Demon Possessed?

Sister Abigail:  Right, see the ministry of deliverance, gets attacked from within the church by ministers, pastors, preachers, that just don’t understand the subject.  By saying, umm, okay, demons are real, the devil is real, but they can’t bother christians.  Have you heard that?

Rev. Richard Grund:  Yeah I have heard that.  That also flies in the face of the writings of Peter, Paul, James and John. In first Peter, he tells us that there is a roaring lion seeking to devour, and that word devour means to violently tear apart, he is telling us that he is out there and who is he writing to. He is writing to the leaders, he’s not writing to the world.  And then right after that he says when you are done suffering, and there is a topic that no one wants to preach on.  Are you telling me that I might suffer in the midst of this attack?  Yeah he’s real and he is going to attack us, but we have been given an authority, we have been given an ability  through the power of the Holy Spirit which will take us to another topic. We have a father that loves us so much that he did not leave us unprotected in this fallen world. I mean what kind of dad would that be, to say okay we are reconciled but now you are caught in a war between heaven and hell and there is this roaring lion out there and he is going to destroy you but it is okay, you are going to come home with me.  That is not a loving father, that is not what he did. He didn’t leave us high and dry.  He gave us this power, that we call the Holy Spirit, and the Hebrew, Ruach Hako’desh, in the upper room that basically said, hey, you’re in the world but not of the world.  And as long as you stay close to me, and you walk in my authority you aren’t subject to it either.  But that is just my experience on it.

Sister Abigail:  Well, amen, there is a lot of talk of a lot of scriptures that come to mind when we talk about this subject and right now I have been teaching every Sabbath evening on a website with a ten to fifteen minute audio blurb through the gospel of Mark.  And I have been going verse by verse.  We are in chapter three now, but chapter one there was a real significant passage, Jesus went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and there was a man inside the synagogue that cried out, and Jesus proceeded to cast this demon out of the synagogue. My question is, if believers can not have a demon then what is this an example of here in the synagogue?

Rev. Richard Grund:  It is a situation of ,here is what explain to people. I’ve gone to what we call in the church; a deliverance, and other people call them exorcisms. In the 22 years, I have stopped counting at 300. Now some of them were people with moderate bondage issues and couldn’t get free of certain things that were demonic and some were fully possessed. We went through the whole gambit of it.  But most of those people have been sitting in pews for years.  And here is how I explain it, because it really messes up people’s theologies, salvation is instantaneous and sanctification is a process.  But it says in James draw near to God, and he would draw near to you.  And it is a process to draw near to God; through study, through prayer, through the word, through all the things that we are supposed to do.  And he is such a loving God.  I was talking to someone the other day, I went through three deliverances, which means I went through three times where I had to be cleaned of the amount of demonic bondage that I was in.  It wasn’t until the third time that I finally got the strongman, the lead spirit. And somebody said, why didn’t you get set free all at once?  Umm, because God loves me.  He’s not gonna just rip everything out of me and leave me as an empty shell.  Very lovingly, he took layer upon layer, that first layer allowed me to take my walk to get closer to him.  The second layer, as I got closer to him, as I got closer to the fire, as I got closer to his holiness, it’s just like a sludge came up to the top. And the third deliverance I went through, was totally triggered by prayer, praise and me just standing in his presence and there was no one  available to help me. The man that is my spiritual father and mentor was unavailable.  And the Lord, himself showed up and delivered me and took that final thing out of me and then I was set completely free.

Sister Abigail:  Well, amen. You know there is a scripture in the old testament that talks about little by little how God was going to drive out these nations, little by little. Today, we see the demonic nations, when it gets applied to deliverance ministry exactly what you are talking about.

Rev. Richard Grund:  Right, and people don’t understand that.  Well, just in the name of Jesus they should all go. Well, that is just not how it works.  And I am talking from an experienced mouth of 22 years, I wish that it worked that way.  But I have seen enough to know. We have to know  that when you cast something out, you have to replace it with something.  And that something is the Holy Spirit and that something is the Word.  It talks about in Luke 11, when he talks about the casting out of demons and he talks about one in verse 24,he talks about  when a not quite spirit comes out a man he goes to the dry places and that is a literal place.  There is a place in the Middle East, it is in between Israel, Jordan and I think Iraq.  It is an area where people definitely believe it is called the valley of the demons. And we know from Isaiah that talks about the dry places and to the clinging of the rocks.  So the spirit goes through the dry places, seeking rest and he finds none.  And he says I will return to my house from which I came, which we know is a person.  And when he comes, he finds it swept and put in order, which means it is empty.  It is swept and it is in order but it is empty.  And he takes within seven more, which means the person was more worse than before.  The house needs to be filled with the Holy Spirit. If the Lord just came in and ripped everything out of you, the second condition could be so much worse because you are going to be empty.  You’ll be swept, you’ll be in order but you won’t be filled with the Spirit.  You won’t be filled with the Word. You won’t know what to do the next time those things show up.  It is like when you teach a baby to walk, you don’t just stand them on their feet, give them balance and say okay you are on your own.  It is a process.  And the same thing happens with deliverance.  It is a loving process.  They don’t do it anymore, but they used when they removed breast cancer they’d just come in and cut everything out; good tissue, bad tissue, muscle tissue they would call it a radical mastectomy.  They’d get the cancer but they’d get everything else too.  And what I would tell people is that your father loves you so much that he’s not going to do that, he’s not going to just come in and rip everything out and leave you scarred.  He is going to lovingly, like you said a little bit at a time drive these things out.

Sister Abigail:  Amen. You know that is a great way to explain that. Now you know that man is a tri part being.  So you know, we get the question how can we get in the Holy Spirit and a demon reside in the same temple. So we understand that we are tri part beings with a spirit, a soul and a body.  We realize that while our spirit is saved and redeemed, our soul which is our mind, intellect and emotions have to be renewed by the word of God. And of course our body is still awaiting a future redemption.  And one thing that comes to mind is , you know when Jesus went in and cleansed the temple.  Well, we know it wasn’t in the holy of holies.  You know they weren’t buying and selling in the holy of holies, no no it was in the outer core.  And the scriptures say that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit.  It is amazing the parallels as we look through scripture.

This was certainly an interesting conversation!  It was a blast having Rev. Richard Grund on the program.  So are demons real?  Can a Christian be demon possessed?  Would love to hear your thoughts?

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