WHY DO PROFESSING CHRISTIAN HAVE DEMONS?

by Pam Sheppard

What I am finding in my counseling practice with Christians, is that churchgoers

who are reporting that they are being tormented by demons DID NOT REALLY GET
SAVED WHEN THEY THOUGHT THAT THEY DID!!!!! Besides not understanding repentance
in a fullness, I believe that what some professing Christians miss is that a
resurrected body is the same body that died,---- the original body that has been
made new or "renovated." A glorified body is never subject to death again.
Lazarus was raised from the dead in his "same" body but his body was not glorified
because he would die again. Lazarus was not raised immortal.

Maria was the first client that manifested this problem. For a year, I did not
realize that Maria did not understand this concept. When people say "Jesus was
raised from the dead," those who don't understand are just repeating a memorized
phrase that they have accepted. But when you go deeper, those who have been made
confused by word of faith teaching will say "Oh, Jesus had a glorified body which
means he had a new body." I ask them "Well what happened to the old body?" Some
will say "it was buried, it decomposed, it floated away with his spirit, "I don't
know"or just "it disappeared in some supernatural way, like the work of a magician
who pulls a rabbit out of a hat!"

The root of the problem is that they have misuderstand the scripture in
Corinthians which says "it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body,
and there is a spiritual body." I cor 15:44. What they don't understand is that a
natural body is physical and a spiritual body is material as well. A natural body
is subject to death. A spiritual body is not. A natural body when dead will
decompose or be "corruptible." A spiritual body is raised "incorruptible." It
will never decay. That is the difference between the two.

So when I ask the key question, "was Jesus raised as a physical body or was He
raised as a spirit, the response will be "He was raised as a spirit." In spite of
the fact that Jesus showed his original yet glorified body to Thomas and said to
him "a spirit does not have flesh and bone as I have", they STILL miss it. A
crucial error that will determine where they abide in eternity.

I didn't write this.. Paul did. It is in I Cor 15:17: And if Christ is not
risen, your faith is vain (futile) AND YOU ARE STILL IN YOUR SINS. To still be in
your sins is to "not be saved or born again." So if you don't understand what
resurrection means, then how can you believe that "Jesus was risen?" So the
logical conclusion is that anyone who does not understand resurrection but came to
the Jesus of their understanding IS NOT SAVED!

As both a servant of God and a professional Christian counselor, I really

thought that when people said "He is risen," that they understood what that meant.
More than thirty years ago when I myself was unsaved, I understood resurrection
because I had no concept at all of what a spirit was. I was all flesh: a two part
being of mind and body. So since I didn't have an understanding of what the word
"spirit" meant, I was never confused into thinking that "to be raised" meant to
float away as a spirit. All I knew about resurrection was what I had seen in the
movies or heard at Easter. I laughed at this. I said "Christians must think
that people are stupid. It is very clear to me that when you are dead you are
DEAD and there is no coming back to life."

On the day that I got born again in my living room, faith to believe that Jesus
came back to life in the same body that He died in at the cross literally burst
through my mind and I was in a state of shock. After I repented for being a
sinner, the resurrection flashed into my mind immediately. Once I went to church
and became a minister, I didn't think that what happened to me was suppose to
happen to everyone that got saved, even after I read "confess the Lord Jesus with
your mouth AND BELIEVE IN YOUR HEART THAT HE WAS RAISED FROM THE DEAD! The Greek
word for "heart" is "cardia." Cardia means "the mind, the emotions, the thoughts
and the feelings." The spiritual heart is a part of the human soul.

Once I explain the resurrection to MOST of my clients who have been confused, they
become saved prior to dealing with the issues of being set free from demons. . For
some, it is immediate, for others, it takes a while. In some cases, the religious
demon is so entrenched in the person, that it must be cast out first so that the
person can believe in the resurrection. This was the case of Maria. Practically
EVERYTHING that she did that was under the power of a religious demon---a familiar
spirit, a spirit of divination: preach, praise the Lord, prophecy, speak in
tongues, discern spirits and see into the spirit world, was entirely counterfeited
by the religious demon that resides in her. Sometimes Maria herself was like she
was "not there." This is why she had no recall what transpired during
deliverance sessions. Since they were taped, she could not deny it once she
listened to them.

When you trace their alleged conversion to Christ back to the original source by
skillful asking questions during the plowing stage of counseling, the source of
the problem is almost always uncovered. For example, when some of my clients
came to Christ, they came for the wrong reasons under strange/demonic
circumstances. Religious demons "specialize." There are some who want to do
religious things, just like the Pharisees and the Sadducees of Jesus day.
Remember the words of the Lord to them?" He said "You will tithe even something
as small as a mint. Yet you are like whitewashed tombs, clean on the outside but
filled with dead men's bones. Your are of your Father, the devil. Vipers. A
viper is a snake, the snake representing counterfeit religion.

Someone posed the following question to me in an email : if a person is

operating off of only what they know and have been taught, won't the Lord make an
exception? Wouldn't that be another "specific" example? In other words, if someone
sincerely repents, loves the Lord, and accepts Him as their savior, and they die
before they have been TAUGHT and DISCIPLED, wouldn't the Lord take that into
consideration? Afterall, HE KNOWS THE HEARTS OF MEN, and we don't, RIGHT?"

This is the exact situation that each and every one of my clients have found
themselves in. The Lord has made an exception in each of their cases. He has
seen to it that they DO NOT DIE before they have been counseled. Teaching and
discipling is a part of the counseling process. The Lord has taken each
client's plight into consideration, by first opening my eyes and instructing me
on how to recognize the deception, and how to counsel, teach and disciple him or
her. Some have fallen under the category of II Cor 4:3,4: For if our gospel be
hid or veiled, it is hid to those who are lost, whose minds the god of this world
has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the golory of
Christ, whis is the image of God, should shine on them. So I will have to cast
out the religious demon first, BEFORE the client can be saved.

If I look at this problem from carnal eyes, then I could get discouraged. I can
only handle 20 clients at a time and it takes from 3 months to a year per client.
I just don't question God about what He is doing for these kinds of captives. I
simply DO MY PART which seems so small that it appears non existent when you
consider how many professing Christians may have already been deceived. God does
His part. For example, every one of my clients have had a dream that led them to
me or they were surfing the web and found me.
 I don't know how many others the Lord is using in like manner to these kinds of
captives free. People seeking Christ through the ministry of those who are
preaching "another gospel" and presenting "another Jesus" in churches of all
kinds and with folk who stay home and watch TBN are becoming mentally, spiritually
and even physically bound. People are picking up religious demons at pentecostal
altars, where they have been "tarrying" or "chanting" to receive the Holy Ghost
and to speak with other tongues. Some clients ended up with absolutely no
control over their bodies. Those I couldn't help refused to even consider that
they were not saved. Once the Pentecostals got a grip on them and they
"manifested" the speaking in a tongues, they became super spiritual. Peice by
peice, the demons took over. The demons spoke through several clients, using
their bodie to do various things. .You can read more on this in my book "Faces
of the Religious Demon."

In a strange case of a client I call "Carol." Carol is unique because she is

obedient, compliant, coherent and willing to do anything to be delivered, which
was not the case with others. I see no real fault in her as I have seen in some
of the others. She was simply watching TV, responded to a sinner's prayer
through a Mormon sponsered program, then began to feed off of the teachings of
mega TV preachers and was guided to a mega church by a vision that was demonically
inspired.

As it stands, I work with those that I can, and I plant a seed into those that I
cannot help, and pray that the Lord will direct them to true Christian who will
nurture and water that seed. For those who refuse to hear, I let them fire me and
I shake the dust from my feet and move on to the next captive.