Chapter 5: The Identity of Demons

Then He will also say to those on the left hand, “Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his angels.” (Matthew 25:41)

The Bible deals with the concept of the right hand and left hand with great importance.

Which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places. (Eph. 1:20)

The words right hand does not specify a physical location but a position of authority.

Then He will also say to those on the left hand, “Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his angels”. (Matt. 25:41)

The phrase “those on the left hand” refers to the people who do not have the faith that the Lord requires. It is important to note that this verse is not referring to angels but people. So “those on the left hand” refers to the unbelievers, as well as those who might appear to be Christians but do not have the faith the Lord seeks. At the end, they would be thrown into the lake of fire where the Devil and his angels would be cast.

Both believers and unbelievers live together in this world while they are in the flesh. However, a believer’s spirit goes into Paradise after death. Paradise is a part of the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God can be classified into the church, Paradise, and the Father’s house, according to temporal order.

The church is an assembly of God’s children on earth, who have received salvation. While we are on this earth, we have to bear with this weakness called flesh. The flesh cannot inherit God’s Kingdom, and it will return to dust and perish after death. But we still have to eat, clothe ourselves, and adjust in the society for the current wellbeing of our flesh. However, our spirit which has been born again as the child of God is now of the Kingdom of God and nurtured by heavenly things. The church is an assembly of people who are living on the earth in the flesh, but are of the Kingdom of God in the spirit, receiving heavenly sustenance.

There are people who attend the church only with their bodies. Their hearts and minds are elsewhere in the world with no assurance of salvation or hope in Heaven. Their bodies might occupy a space in the church, but in reality, their hearts are no different from unbelievers. Jesus compared these types of people to tares and gave the following parable.

Another parable He put forth to them, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared. So the servants of the owner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The servants said to him, ‘Do you want us then to go and gather them up?’ But he said, ‘No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.”’” (Matt. 13:24-30)

God separates people in two steps. First is the separation of believers and unbelievers through the church. Then at the end times, He will sort through the people inside the church to separate the grains and the tares.

When the Israelites were being saved from the land of Egypt, the saved were distinguished from the unsaved by the blood of a lamb. The Lord said that He would pass over the houses that have lamb’s blood on its doorposts. On that night, people who had the blood on their doorposts escaped the plague, while those who did not have blood on their doorposts were struck with great calamity. The people of Israel who were set apart by the blood were led by God into the wilderness.

The church today is in a similar situation as the wilderness that the Israelites had faced. Survival is impossible in the wilderness without God’s help and guidance. God nurtured the people of Israel in the wilderness. In the same way, the church is sustained and nurtured today under God’s care and guidance.

Though God cared for Israel in the wilderness, His wrath still came upon them. Being driven by their innate religiousness, they sought to rely on God in order to overcome their crises. However, this zeal led them to serve a false god rather than the true God. Moreover, their instinctive desire to see God misguided them to make a carved image and worship an idol. Though the wilderness was originally a place to set Israel apart from Egypt, believers and unbelievers among the Israelites were also separated in the wilderness.

Even in churches today, there are religious people who follow different spirits of the world. Think of how many of the so-called Christians have returned to the world! Some people have worked powerfully in Jesus’ name in the past, but later left the church to claim themselves as the way to salvation. They may have done great works in the name of Jesus in the past, but they cannot be saved. Even Judas Iscariot did many signs in Jesus’ name. Performing signs and wonders cannot be a measure that determines one’s salvation.

Though it is not currently apparent, there are people in the church who will be marked as tares at the end. If these people are not born again by God’s grace, if they have not accepted the salvific work of Jesus Christ as the absolute foundation for their faith, and if they have not been set apart through the salvific work of Jesus Christ, then they will certainly be marked as tares at the end. If people have not experienced grace and the forgiveness and cleansing of sins and just possess a passionate zeal, then it is an instinctive religiousness rather than faith. True faith is entrusting oneself to the salvation that God has revealed to the world.

People who do not possess true faith fall away on account of trifling temptations. Over the many years of my ministry, I have seen many people who previously had been fervent in their faith life with me, fall away from faith. Even more might fall away in the future. However we must never give up along our faith journey.

I have seen many cases where believers went to a retreat center for fasting and praying only to return with a mental illness. I personally do not cast out demons from people who are fasting. Demons go into a person to destroy his body. Thus if a sick person fasts, his body will become weaker only to provide a greater advantage to demons. Once, I even made an announcement to the congregation instructing them to eat well and return the next day so that I could cast out demons from them.

Trying to solve every problem with fasting is not the right way of thinking. Some churches put so much emphasis on fasting that they preach more about fasting than the works of Jesus. This emphasis on fasting might not seem that problematic in the beginning, but over time the congregation could possibly deviate from sound faith. We, as Christians, have experienced the power of the blood of Jesus. If fasting is emphasized more than the works of Jesus, then the people will not be able to go beyond their instinctive religiousness.

Religiousness can be considered an innate inclination of humans. Man searches for God but finds a spirit of the world instead. He seeks to see an image of God and consequently creates idols. He desires to hear the voice of God, and ultimately listens to the voice of mediums. Every person has an innate religiousness. Yet, this religiousness cannot save man. Only the works of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, can bring salvation to mankind.

There is not a single verse in the Bible which says that prayers are answered through fasting. Not one verse teaches that salvation comes through fasting either. Even the cross that Christ bore cannot be the condition for man’s salvation. The cross is simply the tree on which Jesus died. Our salvation is only in the death of Jesus Christ on the cross, the blood He shed, and His name. I am not denouncing fasting and prayer itself. It is actually more beneficial to fast and pray than not. However, if fasting is emphasized more than the works of Christ, it could produce an unexpected outcome.

Emphasizing all-night prayers has the same dangerous effect as emphasizing fasts. I myself participate in all-night prayers, but I do not emphasize it. People pray all night as they feel the urge to pray about a particular matter. However, if people are forced to stay up all night to pray, the resulting effect could be the same as forcing people to fast, in that they might develop mental problems.

The church surely is a part of God’s Kingdom. But just as we have seen so far, it is possible for unbelievers to be in the church also. Believers who are truly of the church will go into Paradise the moment their spirits leave the body. Like the church, Paradise is also a part of God’s Kingdom. The Bible describes the state of believers being outside the body as having fallen asleep. Though the world calls this death, believers call it sleep since they know that their souls will not disappear. Paradise is where the saints who have fallen asleep temporarily rest.

Paradise is different from the Father’s house. The Father’s house is the final destination of the saints after resurrection. When Jesus returns, the saints who are asleep will resurrect and enter the Father’s house.

And Jesus said to him, “Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.” (Luke 23:43)

Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to Me, for I have not yet ascended to My Father; but go to My brethren and say to them, ‘I am ascending to My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God.’” (John 20:17)

Jesus told the thief on the cross that he will be with Him in Paradise that day. Then after He resurrected, Jesus told Mary that He had not yet ascended to the Father. We can see from these words that Paradise is not the same as the Father’s house.

Paradise is similar to a waiting room for the saints before the resurrection. Countless people have gone into Paradise until now, but only Jesus Christ has entered the Father’s house from Paradise. Many people erroneously think that saints go directly into the Father’s house after death. However, the Bible explains that Christ is the firstfruits of resurrection, and afterwards will be those who belong to Him at His coming (1 Cor. 15:23). In other words, the saints who are already in Paradise will resurrect when Jesus returns and enter into the Father’s house with Him. Some people claim that they have visited God’s Kingdom and seen the Lord. They even say that they saw someone they knew standing with the Lord with a crown on his head. This cannot be true. The Bible clearly says that no one can go to the Father’s house until the second advent of Jesus.

The church, Paradise, and the Father’s house are all part of God’s Kingdom. Coming into the church is similar to entering the courtyard. Entering Paradise is the same as going into the living room. Arriving at the Father’s house would be the same as entering the bedroom. On the contrary, when an unbeliever dies, his spirit goes down to Hades. At the appointed time, the souls in Hades will be detained in the abyss. After the millennial reign of Christ, they will all be resurrected and thrown into hell.

The important question here is ‘Where is Hades?’ People who are opposed to the idea that demons are spirits of dead unbelievers say, “If the spirits of unbelievers go directly into Hades after death, how can they become demons and torment people in this world?” But this “Hades” where unbelievers go to is where the Devil and his agents exist. Then where do the Devil and his agents exist right now? They are currently in this world. Thus Hades is actually referring to this world.

There are temptations, afflictions, and oppressions in this world because the world is ruled by the Devil and his cohorts. That is why Jesus referred to the Devil as “the ruler of this world” (John 12:31). And since this world is Hades, Jesus also called the Devil “the gates of Hades” (Matt. 16:18). Furthermore, Jesus called him “the prince of the power of the air” because he rules over the entire universe (Eph. 2:2).

So far, not a single soul has gone to hell. Unbelievers will be cast into hell after their resurrection. The Bible explains that both believers and unbelievers will resurrect (John 5:29). The unbelievers will resurrect with eternal bodies and be cast into hell after Jesus returns. So to say that the unbelievers go straight to hell after death is actually far from the truth. This world is where their souls temporarily remain after death.

When I cast out demons, I ask them if they had seen any souls of dead believers. The answer is always “No”. There was a time when I cast out a demon that had been executed during the Korean War. The demon said that there were five of them executed together at the time, three of whom were Christians. As soon as they were shot to death, the three Christians immediately vanished but the two of them remained and had been wandering together ever since.

In another incident, I was casting out a demon from a young man and he said, “I went into my wife originally. I hate her! We used to be so close, but after I died, she became a Christian and started to despise me! I went into her body and gave her cancer to kill her. But when she died, she just disappeared and I couldn’t find her anywhere. So I went into our son to take him also. But now even he believes in Jesus. What am I suppose to do? I feel so bitter and resentful!”

People in general have many misconceptions about demons. One of them is that they think of demons as supernatural beings. There is an old common saying in Korea, “he is as clever as a demon” or “he is as quick as a demon”. Likewise, many tend to believe that demons are all powerful and knowledgeable. However, demons are certainly not omniscient or omnipotent.

Demons are just unbelievers who have lost their bodies. No matter how clever demons are, they cannot be any cleverer than they were in the body as unbelievers. The same goes for power; they cannot be any stronger than they were as unbelievers. They are certainly not omnipresent beings. We just have to treat demons in the same way that we treat unbelievers, as those who have offended God. The only difference is that demons have no flesh. If they had flesh, they would not be any different to living unbelievers.

There is a fixed timeframe as to how long the spirits of dead unbelievers can remain in this world as demons. God has limited the lifespan of man to one hundred and twenty years (Gen. 6:3). If an unbeliever’s given lifespan was set at one hundred years and he died of cancer at twenty, the remaining years of his natural lifespan would be eighty. He would be a demon for the next eighty years in Hades. None of the unbelieving ancestors from hundreds of years back can be active in this world as demons. There are some demons that claim to be five hundred years old, but they tell the truth in the end after a stern rebuke.

Demons are always trying to enter people’s bodies. And their targets are usually their family members. For example, an unbelieving dead husband would enter his wife’s body as a demon. After killing his wife, he would go into his children, and then his nephew or niece, then his sister-in-law, and so on. Demons likewise transfer from one body to another until they live out their natural lifespan.

If an unbeliever with a natural lifespan of one hundred years dies at eighty years of age, he would be active as a demon for twenty years. The longer an unbeliever lives in the flesh, the shorter his time would be as a demon on earth. On the contrary, a person who dies at a very young age would be a demon for a very long time. Undoubtedly, if a person dies at a young age and operates as a demon in his family, the household would suffer from curses for a long time. Thus, if a believer brings the whole family to Christ, none of the family members would become demons. In fact, there would be blessings down to the third or fourth generation in a Christian family. However, if the opposite happens, there would be curses down to the third or fourth generation on account of a single demon. This is why the Bible says that the iniquity of the fathers will be passed down to the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate God (Deut. 5:9).

Where do these demons go after their natural lifespan is over? They go to a place the Bible calls the abyss. Once they enter the abyss, they are unable to escape until the return of Jesus Christ. If this were so, then what about the unbelievers who live out their full lifespan? When an unbeliever lives his natural lifespan and dies, his spirit goes straight into the abyss. That is the reason why we do not come across a single demon during demon expulsion that claims to have died from old age. All the demons that are active in this world have died from unnatural causes like sicknesses, accidents, or suicides before their appointed time.

In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, the rich man died and went into Hades. To be more specific, he went into a place in Hades called the abyss. On the earth, he lived extravagantly to the end of his natural lifespan and died. For that reason he went into the abyss as soon as he died and could not come out from where he was. If he had died before the end of his natural lifespan, he would not have said, “Then I beg you, father, to send him (Lazarus) to my father's house” (Luke 16:27). He would have directly gone to his family as a demon and tormented them. The fact that the rich man could not leave that place shows he was in the abyss.

Demons are active in this world to the end of their natural lifespan and afterwards, enter the abyss. On the most part, demons are active in this world for less than a hundred years. For example, if an unbeliever dies at fifty and his natural lifespan was seventy years, then he would be active in the world as a demon for twenty years seeking and tormenting his family. When the twenty years are over, he would go into the abyss where he can see his family no more. How tragic and pitiful is the death of an unbeliever! The words, “Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his angels,” are the inescapable, grim pronouncement towards all unbelievers from our Lord Jesus Christ (Matt. 25:41).

We have learned that if an unbeliever dies, then he would become a demon. We have also learned that demons are always trying to enter people’s bodies. When we think about whom the demons possess, we understand what Paul meant when he said, “Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness?” (2 Cor. 6:14).

Where is your passionate zeal coming from? Is it from religiousness or mysticism? Or is it from true faith unto salvation? Salvation cannot be guaranteed by a feeling or an emotion. If you forsake your faith because of somebody else’s offense, then your faith was merely religiosity and a superstition. We have to know the real meaning behind the will of God that sent His only begotten Son to this world to die and shed His blood for such insignificant beings as us. If you forsake your faith because your business does not prosper, then the blood of Jesus Christ was never in you. Some people attend church services but have no heart or desire for the blood of Christ. When I ask, “I didn’t see you at church yesterday, what happened?” They would say, “Oh, I had to go and borrow money to pay a debt.”

Our faith is not something that is easily shaken on account of money, nor can it be given up just because our businesses are failing. Faith should not cease because of a war either. Our faith started because of the precious blood shed by the Son of God. God said concerning Jesus Christ, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17). Apart from Jesus Christ, no one else has ever received this testimony from God. God gave the blood of His most beloved Son to us. Therefore we must realize how precious our faith is, and ensure we are not of the tares entangled in the church.