04. Prayer Was Not Enough: China

CHAPTER FOUR PRAYER WAS NOT ENOUGH: CHINA In China we had numerous cases of demon possession. The Chinese, even the non-Christians, seem to identify it very quickly and have no trouble detecting the difference between demon possession and mental breakdown; though in some cases the manifestations might be similar. Our first case of demon possession was brought to us when a young soldier knocked at our door, while we were serving the Lord in the province of Honan. His question was, “Is your Christ allpowerful?”

I said without hesitation, “Of course He is!”

He then said to me, “My wife is in the courtyard, and she is demon possessed. Twice the demon has ordered her to kill herself, once by hanging and once by jumping into the moat. Both times she obeyed him, but I was able to rescue her. However, I do not know what to do now as I must go back to my battalion. I had heard that Christ was able to heal those who are demon possessed, and so I have brought her to you.” My wife was standing behind me listening to the conversation and encouraged my own heart and faith with this Scripture, “He is the same yesterday, today, and forever!” I asked the Bible woman to take the demon-possessed woman back to the women’s compound and dismissed the soldier. We had prayer and went to the compound to pray that the woman would be delivered.

I confess that I prayed in doubt, wondering if I would need some special gift of healing. As we prayed, the demon-possessed woman would take words from our prayers and make ridiculous poems out of them; this, of course in the Chinese language. She would scream and yell and make fun of what we were doing. Apparently, our prayers were of no avail. For three days we struggled and prayed, and still the woman got no better. On the third day, the soldier came to get his wife. I asked for more time, and also asked about idols. He acknowledged that they had some in their home. I ordered him to go home and destroy them. The next day as we approached the woman, she was in great mourning and weeping, saying that her home had been destroyed. Of course, this was the voice of the demon, using the vocal chords of the woman and acknowledging that the soldier had taken the idols and thrown them away, so that I actually knew it before he came back to report to me. In our reading of the Scriptures, we were going through Ephesians 1 and 2, and God suddenly revealed that we were not only identified with Christ in death and in His resurrection, but that we were “seated with Christ in heavenly places far above principalities and powers”; that we had ascended with Him.

Taking this new position, our Christian postmaster, my wife and I sang in the presence of the woman, “There’s power in the blood,” and then after singing, we commanded the demon to come out of her in the name of Jesus. She was instantly delivered! Glory to His name! From this and later cases, we learned some very precious lessons.

I suppose the most important one was that we are identified with Christ and seated in the place of authority... that the Bride of Christ can enter into the arena of Satan and what medical science cannot do Jesus Christ can!

One’s position must be taken, of course, and claimed, and I believe that Ephesians 6 comes in here. We must have on the whole armor of God - helmet, breastplate, girdle, sword and shoes.

We learned further that it is not enough to pray or to sing, though I believe that Satan hates both prayer and song. We must resist the Devil and command that he depart. The moment one is delivered, then we must immediately start packing into his heart the Word of God. In your commanding, do not take a “no.” This certainly has nothing to do with the gift of healing. It is not a gift, but a position.

We further learned that the demons have no fear of the sons of Adam, and that faith is not necessary on the part of the possessed. The demons will answer your questions, and from them you can get their names just as Jesus did in the New Testament.

We also learned from them that it is their purpose to destroy the ones they possess, not just to indwell them. Demons confessed to having destroyed others previously, whom they had possessed.

Demons certainly fear the name of Jesus. I believe that when that name is reverently breathed or spoken, demons tremble. Their tactics seem to be the using of pride, fear, lies and passivity. In the Orient, in particular, they use fear. In the cases we handled, if there was any question about whether it was demon possession or a mental case, we would use 1 John 4:2-3.

We never once had a demon-possessed person acknowledge that “Jesus Christ had come in the flesh.” My own thinking is that it was the Incarnation that dealt the deathblow on the work of Satan and no demon is willing to acknowledge it. God becoming Man, taking upon Him the form of a man so that He could die for my sin, destroyed the works of the Devil.

Orient Crusades Dick Hillis