HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, June 6, 2025 – The early Church had no trouble discerning and identifying evil spirits. In fact, a large chunk of Jesus’ ministry was casting out them out. Demonic attacks didn’t appear to be a rare affliction but an everyday reality for the people of the time. Was that because it was an unusually evil age, or have our spiritual spidey-senses grown dull to the presence of evil spirits manifesting in people’s behaviors?

I think we born-again believers know the answer to that. It can be dangerous to speak unfiltered truth to the world. Several years ago, not long after I was reborn, I witnessed a man on a street in Toronto who was clearly in the throes of demonic possession. Someone had called the police, and a crowd had gathered to watch him rage. When I came upon the scene in passing, a female police officer was ordering the onlookers not to approach the man or try to restrain him. I went up to the officer and mentioned that the man had demons and should be dealt with accordingly. She turned to me abruptly and told me she could arrest me for saying that. Startled by her threat, I asked her what she meant, but she looked away and muttered something into her collar mic. I took that as my cue to leave.

Making God’s truth illegal to speak, write, or even think is a growing trend, so it’s not surprising that many people who are knowledgeable about demonic affliction choose to remain silent about their expertise. This includes not only clergy, but people working in medical and academic fields. Like most of us born-again believers, I learned about evil spirits from scripture, but I also learned about them from dealing with them first- and second-hand. Specifically, I had demons in me prior to my rebirth, and I’ve seen demons working in others, both before and after my rebirth.

I share my knowledge and personal experience about evil spirits when God gives me guidance to do so. I didn’t have God’s go-ahead to talk about demons with that police officer in Toronto all those years ago, which is why it turned out as it did: a lesson in what not to do. Like Jesus, we’re not to go looking for people who are unduly afflicted by evil spirits, though if they come to us freewillingly, genuinely looking for help, or someone comes to us on their behalf, God will give us the ability to help them. By “unduly afflicted”, I mean demonic affliction that exceeds what has sadly become the world’s everyday reality of low-level demonic activity. Everyone who is not born-again is afflicted by evil spirits to some extent; some more, some less. We born-again believers are surrounded by evil spirits and will remain surrounded by them until we get Home.

Although we, by God’s grace, cannot have demons in our soul, we can be a target of evil spirits through temptations. We know this both from scripture and from our own experience. Evil spirits cannot reside in the same soul as God’s Holy Spirit, which means that a soul either has God’s Spirit in it or evil spirits; there is no third option. Up to the time of my rebirth, I had evil spirits in me; since the time of my rebirth, I’ve had God’s Spirit in me. No-one can convince me otherwise, the change was so instantaneous and radical, and my love for God and his Word so all-consuming and enduring. Nothing but spiritual rebirth can do that to a soul.

I’ve mentioned here on this blog before (and also here, here, and here, etc.) that spiritual rebirth involves the exorcism (casting out) of evil spirits to make way for God’s Spirit. The same soul cannot simultaneously host God’s Holy Spirit and demon spirits: This is a spiritual law that cannot be broken. When God signals that his Holy Spirit is about to enter a soul, the demons occupying it must vacate. They have no choice but to vacate. I don’t know exactly how many demons had to vacate my soul just before my rebirth, but I do know that it was more than seven. That’s because, later on my rebirth day, when I was reading the gospels for the first time and got to the verse on Mary Magdalene where it says: “out of whom went seven devils”, God said to me: “That’s what happened to you, only there were a lot more than seven.”

Demonic affliction is neither new nor rare. It’s the default spiritual state for everyone who isn’t born-again. I lived with progressively worsening demonic affliction prior to being reborn, and I now live with God’s Holy Spirit in me, so I have deep, personal, first-hand experience of both states of being. When God gives me leave, I will discuss my experiences here further.

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