Let’s get one thing straight: It is honestly impossible to write a study course on demonology. You could learn what I know by working closely with me long enough to see how I do it, but you would still have to learn your own lessons, and some lessons may well be non-transferable.
This is rooted in the very nature of understanding the Spirit Realm in general. One of the greatest flaws in the English speaking world is the false assumption that all truth can be approached logically and systematically. Moral truth is living and active, and cuts like a two-edged sword. It’s contextual; context is everything. God didn’t simply engineer everything and walk away. The totality of Creation is alive and sentient. It interacts with us on the basis of Biblical Law and living moral guidance from a living God.
Demons are also alive. There are some restraints on them that we can teach. It’s all part of the fundamental issue that Biblical Theology is universal, while Systematic Theology is peculiar to the person making the system. It remains one of the biggest lies of Western Christianity that the truth can be systematized for human intellectual consumption. Reality is fungible; one man’s reality is as good as another’s. A very large portion of how you act on your faith will be yours and yours alone. The same goes for your interaction with the Spirit Realm in general, and demons in particular. What one soul experiences will be different from that of another.
For my own sanity, I make the following general statements when I share with others about Spiritual Warfare:
1. Demons are bound by Biblical Law. It works on two levels, just as Law does in everything else. On the obvious level of practical particulars, demons are limited in what they do to deceive any community. Notice that they are bound by the fundamental requirements that Law is tribal, feudal and covenantal. They respect the boundaries of moral dominion that God delivers into the hands of His servants. If you are not committed to any particular community covenant, you are wide open to Satan’s interference in your life.
But it also works on the higher, moral level of ineffable truth. Demons are bound by your convictions. All the more so when you consciously speak those convictions where you, and God, and all Creation can hear it. It means to Satan what it means in your heart. Your mission and calling are his battleground in your life. He cannot do to you some of the things he can do to someone else, because Jesus stands before the Father keeping things just according to His Father’s divine moral character.
2. Enforcement of Biblical Law against demons requires knowing the Father and His Word. This should be an obvious corollary of the previous item. You must know Biblical Law, because your effectiveness is limited by the depth of your knowledge. The stronger your heart-led convictions, and your awareness of them, the more authority you can wield to protect yourself and others from demonic interference.
3. Demons serve to personalize everything. The whole point in this imagery of spirit beings with dark powers demands that you embrace the idea of a universe populated by all kinds of other beings. The only way you can be effective in standing against deception and perversion is the sheer power of seeing it as all personal. When you begin to work in someone else’s life, the single biggest barrier will be human resistance to coming under your moral dominion. People instinctively seek to make you accountable for their protection, but without surrendering to your authority. Stay sharp on the moral limits of what you can actually do. The second biggest problem is that their demons will do what they can to come upon you and those who assist you in this fight.
4. It seldom makes sense on a human level. You’ll need to get used to the accusation from others that you are paranoid and delusional. Get used to thinking of yourself as an outsider to the common culture of the West, largely because Western Civilization was designed by Satan.
5. The bottom line: Satan is our Enemy, but not God’s The best way to understand how Satan operates is to see him as God’s loyal servant. He is God’s left-hand, the feudal enforcer and jailer. If you step outside of the boundaries of Biblical Law, Satan will be there to capture that part of your life. His primary profit is to absorb all the blessings God promised you under Biblical Law; he takes what belongs to you.
We are born in the situation where he consumes what God says is ours. The job we have is to remove ourselves from his captivity by bringing ourselves in line with Biblical Law and conviction, to reclaim those blessings. We need the mindset that Biblical Law is privilege, not restriction. It is a privilege to know what God revealed about His Creation and how things work. God’s Law is always in our best interest. Satan’s job is to tempt you away from that understanding.
6. There is no such thing as “demon possession.” To live in a fallen, mortal state is to be compromised by some measure of demonic presence in your life. The issue is reclaiming and occupying the territory of your soul. Some issues will forever be contested in battle. It’s on you, as God’s feudal servant, to guard the borders of your life and be ready to defend God’s claim on you. Your soul is the battlefield, not some external space-time turf.
The grounds for driving demons out of the lives of others is that demons are using that victim to intrude on your divine domain (AKA mission and calling). You have a much stronger position and authority if that person has sought your spiritual dominion, your moral covering. But by far, the vast majority of Spiritual Warfare is the victim doing their own “exorcism” by surrendering some troubled part of them to the Word and the dominion of Christ. You, as the servant of God, are merely His proxy in the daily details.
In other words, the business of Spiritual Warfare is simply the business of our feudal existence under Biblical Law. This is the perceptual context — the parable — under which we live daily. It’s not a question of obsessing over demons, but of taking for granted how they operate. It also means recognizing extreme cases as extreme, and that some things will forever be outside your hands because the Lord didn’t give that to you.
The key is to know your mission and calling, and to give expression to your convictions. Satan is constrained to honor that.
