The information I am about to deliver in this post can be an inconvenient truth at first hearing, but is a real truth nonetheless.

And after these truths are understood and applied, which may be a process, they actually become convenient truths. Conveniently powerful truths to benefit our ministries and the building of the church.

In fact, God’s word states that lack of knowledge causes our demise, and that rejecting His knowledge can even cause us to be rejected by Him.

“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.

Because you have rejected knowledge,

I also will reject you from being priest for Me”

Hosea 4:6

So Lord we pray for more knowledge.

Now, before I talk about demons in the church, I would like to talk about unbelievers in the church.

In a traditional church there are 3 types of people that attend. By traditional church I mean a church that follows the pattern of tradition of welcoming any person to join them in weekly/daily worship services.

The 3 groups that attend a traditional church are…

1) believers

2) seekers

3) unbelievers

This is different from a Book of Acts church or pretty much any church meetings up until the 300’sAD. Prior the 300’sAD churches followed the model of only allowing believers in attendance.

Thus the Biblical word “church” or “ekklesia” in Greek carries the meaning of the call out ones that have fully committed an allegiance to the kingship of Christ and have become a part of the governing body God’s government.

1 – believers are those that have made a full commitment to the Lordship of Christ in their individual lives. They do not entangle themselves in worldly affairs, living apart from the world. Their mission of attending church is to win the lost, and serve others.

2 – seekers are those that are interested in following Christ but have not yet made that full commitment. They still live partially in the world. So they have a mixture of godly and ungodly things in their life without a 100% allegiance to the Kingdom of God. They are still a part of two kingdoms.

3 – unbelievers are those that are further back on the spectrum of a committed allegiance. They may have a small interest in following Christ and intellectually believe that Jesus is the Son of God that died for sins, but are still far away from any real commitment to following Christ.

I do not think it is problematic to have a weekly service with any one welcome but the service should never be treated as a meeting of believers since it is not. So it should be more of weekly evangelistic event with the focus to encourage the seekers and believers towards a true commitment to following Christ & discipleship.

In my time of travels and consulting with many churches & pastor/leaders, I have seen that most traditional churches are comprised of the majority being seekers, a small group of believers, and a smaller group of unbelievers. For sake of discussion lets just say just say an average traditional church meeting may be 85% seekers, 10% believers, 5% unbelievers.

Often the true believer meetings within a traditional church are the prayer gatherings, or intimate Bible study gatherings usually comprised of a much smaller number.

Many pastor/leaders seem to be unaware of these groupings within their church but yet unknowingly follow a pattern of leadership ministry that caters to it. For example, pastors often use a combination of themselves shepherding and bringing in evangelists to minister at their church.

This combo of shepherd/evangelist is effective & needed since the church is comprised of so many seeker/unbelievers. But in reality we know that an evangelist should not spend their time ministering to the church but should be spent outside the church witnessing to the lost.

But since there are so many lost within traditional church services. An evangelist or evangelistic messages are a much needed tool to cater to this truth. So I love to tell pastor/leaders about these groupings to develop a more effective ministry targeted toward the correct believer types.

It is so important to understand this as I believe this is a major reason that the majority of pastor/leaders suffer from discouragement & depression, because they are attempting to shepherd so many uncommitted seekers having unrealistic expectations. One cannot expect an unbeliever or seeker to behave or have the fruit of a believer.

Ok moving on to demons in the church…

Now with my first point explained it may be easier to see the extraordinary presence of demons in the church, since a believer is the only group of people that has any real power over demonic forces.

The predominant force over the lives of seekers and unbelievers is still what Ephesians 6:12 calls “rulers of the darkness of this world.” So the lives of anyone except true believers have little if any protection from evil forces. And evil forces are predominantly in control of their lives.

So that means an all welcome sign for church services means an open invite to demons. I’m not saying not to do this, I’m just saying it’s vital to understand what’s going on.

Secondly, I’ve had the privilege & honor to cast demons out of many Christians even pastor/leaders that have come to me seeking freedom. And seen their lives completely change after these deliverances. Praise God!

I know this can come as a shock to many the idea that Christians can have demons.

I was also very shocked about this myself when I saw demons speaking through a spirit-filled believer in 2015 then had demons cast out of myself in 2019 while I was currently then a pastor/evangelist.

But I do believe according to scripture and experience these demons are inside the person and coming out. As Jesus always commanded the demons to “come out” of people and not “away from them.”

Plus I have witnessed demons speaking through these believers dozens of times. Sometimes in voices of the opposite sex or foreign languages unknown by the person they are dwelling in. And like I said these are true spirit-filled believers that speak in tongues and are sometimes pastors or leaders.

I do not believe that a believer can be possessed with demons but more so to say the person “possesses the demons.” I like to use the word “demonized.”

In the scriptures we see that 33% of the people Jesus physical healed were demonized. So 1/3 of sickness today is still probably caused by an indwelling demon.

I do not believe the demon can dwell in a believer’s regenerated spirit. I believe the demon dwells in either the person’s flesh or soul. As the Bible talks about many times a process of “becoming saved.” A process of transformation, a process of sanctification/cleansing is scriptural.

So with these two concepts understood that traditional church services only contain a small amount of believers, while the rest is still predominately ruled by the forces of darkness and that it is not uncommon for believers to have demons, it becomes easier to see how demons are in the church.

If you study church history you will see that this was satans plan. For the first 300 years or so after Christ, the church did a pretty good job of keeping satan out of the church.

But satan grew in wisdom and decided to stop focusing on attacking the church from the outside, and to focus on attacking the church from the inside.

My final point…

Each church is comprised of 4 spirits…

1) The Holy Spirit

2) heavenly angelic spirits

3) human spirits

4) evil spirits

Hopefully the majority of activity is the Holy Spirit as Christ is supposed to be the head of the church.

Now this understanding brings humility to ourselves and to our churches. Knowing that every church has 4 types of spirits in operation, we can never claim that our church is perfect or contains all the truth.

Every church no matter how clean or pure will always have these 4 types of spirits operating within it. I have been in the purest of pure settings and still seen demons cast out of a believer within that group.

We long for the day when the Bible prophetically says the church will be coming into the fullness of Christ and be without spot or wrinkle. But we must acknowledge we are not in that day.

No matter how pure you think your church, or movement, or Christian stream is, we must humble ourselves to see each & every one has strengths and weaknesses.

Demons operate in every church and yours is not exempt. If your church is doing great, that’s all the more reason for it to be under attack.

Churches may have different problems than others, but nonetheless, all our churches have problems of some type, though they may be different.

Let us love one another as it is easier to judge another’s problem that you do not struggle with yourself.

No church is perfect, no church has perfect doctrine, no church has fully arrived to the perfection of Christ. But we long for that day when we all together come into the fullness of Christ

Until that day let us humbly pray for one another and support in love for we all have the same enemy!

“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

Ephesians 6:12

Unfortunately, much of the church stops that verse short at “For we wrestle not.” And I know many reading this post will throw away what I have written and continue to never wrestle with the powers of darkness believing evil is not within our midst.

Sadly many Christians live their whole lives without ever casting a single demon out of anyone,

But brothers and sisters we are called to wrestle and we are called to win!

Hope this helps somebody, Much love!

Disclaimer: This teaching was shared with the permission of the Author.