Setting Captives Free by Jake Kail

Author:Jake Kail
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780768454376
Publisher: Destiny Image, Inc.

7

DELIVERANCE FROM DEMONIC OPPRESSION

It is always powerful and encouraging to hear stories of captives who have been set free. I often minister deliverance to large groups of people at one time at retreats, conferences, or church services. Many people receive deliverance in these settings, but I will not always know all of the details or hear of the testimonies. It is not uncommon for someone to share with me months or even years later about how they were set free in one of these meetings. Such was the case with Catherine, who told me about her freedom from captivity a year after it had happened.

Catherine had been under a dark depression for several years. She often wrestled with suicidal thoughts and couldn’t seem to find relief. One day, she visited a church service where I happened to lead the congregation in a deliverance prayer. At one point I said, “I command the spirit of oppression to come out in Jesus’ name!” At that moment, Catherine felt something coming out and lifting off of her. She testified that from that day forward, the depression and suicidal torment was gone. Praise the Lord!

Demonic Oppression

Oppression is one of the characteristic ways that the devil and his demons seek to influence people. When the first martyr, Stephen, was describing how Abraham’s descendants would be slaves in Egypt, he said this: “But God spoke in this way: that his descendants would dwell in a foreign land, and that they would bring them into bondage and oppress them four hundred years” (Acts 7:6). Pharaoh, as a symbolic type of satan, demonstrated two of the ways that evil spirits try to influence people—bondage and oppression. We covered bondage in the previous chapter, and now we will look at oppression.

The apostle Peter, in preaching to the house of Cornelius, summarized the ministry of Jesus like this: “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him” (Acts 10:38). The devil is a cruel oppressor who does not have the capacity for mercy or love. He only comes to steal, kill, and destroy, even though he will often first appear in a deceptive way to lure people into his trap. The more of a stronghold he gets in a person’s life, the more he shows himself to be the cruel task-master that he truly is.

The word oppress means to exercise harsh control over. Evil spirits seek to weigh people down with heavy burdens—to dominate and harshly control them. Such was the case of the young boy whom Jesus delivered in Mark 9. The father of this boy desperately sought help from the Lord after His disciples were unable to cast out the demon. Check out the description of this demonic oppression: “And wherever it seizes him, it throws him down; he foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth, and becomes rigid.…And often he has thrown him both into the fire and into the water to destroy him” (Mark 9:18,22).

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