In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of Christians understanding their authority over demons. He expresses concern that many Christians are afraid of the devil and encourages them to overcome this fear. The speaker shares a personal experience in Java, Indonesia, where he encountered a girl possessed by a demon. Initially unsure of what to do, he realizes that it is his responsibility to cast out the demon and save souls. The sermon highlights the need for Christians to be knowledgeable about spiritual warfare and to confidently exercise their authority over demonic forces.

Welcome to From the Pulpit and Classic Sermons. Each week we bring you a different message from some of history's greatest speakers in the Christian faith, and powerful sermons for modern preachers, too. This week we have Lester Sumrall with his message, Demonology and Deliverance, Parts 3 and 4, Christian Authority, and How I Learned Exorcism. Lord Jesus, it's a great joy to see you and to minister you words of eternal life by the power of the living God. We are involved in a group of studies that are truly exciting. We are involved in a victory series, showing you how the church of the Lord Jesus Christ has victory over its greatest enemy, who happens to be the devil and Satan. We are teaching you out of a large teaching syllabus called Demons and Deliverance, Principalities and Powers. And these are available to everyone that desires them. This is Volume 1. Volume 2 deals with the cults and how you can destroy them with God's power. We are dealing directly with the problem of who is the devil, how can he hurt human beings, and how we can overcome him by the power of the Lord. Now it is true that Satan is a dignitary. In the little epistle of Jude, it says that Satan quarreled with Michael, the archangel of God, over the body of Moses, and that Michael dare not bring railing accusation against him, but said, The Lord rebuke thee. And so if an archangel dare not bring railing accusations against him, he is still a dignitary. And we must come to understand this in order to know how we can deal with the powers of the devil. I have discovered that you can only deal with the devil in truth. That if you say, You go back to hell where you came from. Well, honey, he hasn't been incarcerated yet. He is the prince and the power of the air. And when you say that, you immediately cancel out any effect that you might have, because you're dealing in ignorance, you see. And he doesn't have to move in ignorance. And also, we have discovered through many years of studying this subject that when you speak disrespectfully, Oh, yeah, you see, you're the devil with two horns and a forked tail, and off the red devil I can. Well, no, he isn't. He is an angel of light. He is a deceiver. He doesn't come like that. And so when you, even when you mock him, he doesn't have to obey you. He doesn't have to move for you. You must come under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, under the mighty power of God, and say, The Lord rebuke thee. By the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ I resist thee. And when you come in God's way, God's manner, it works. It works. It really works. It gloriously works. You are not to be defeated. The great men of the world have known this. The great missionary Judson, he knew it. And what a mighty person he was. Hudson Taylor, they said that they nicknamed him in China the devil caster-outer. You know, Martin Luther became so angry at sin and Satan that he took his inkwell and threw it in his own office. At him, you see. And Billy Graham said recently that, I was writing this sermon against the devil and everything went lost. The typewriter wouldn't work. And he said, Finally, I just resisted the devil. And so it is not, you know, a matter of, this thing was one time a long time ago. This is the battle for today. But the happy thing about it is, you're a winner and not a loser. And how glad we are for that. We are at lesson 14 in our teaching of this lesson here. In your syllabus, it will be called lesson 9, because in some of the lessons, it took us two sessions in order to cover it adequately. But we are, we have, this is our 14th lesson. And the title of it is, The Christian's Authority Over Demons. I particularly want this to get right down deep inside of you. I don't know who caused it and who's to blame for it. But millions of Americans are afraid of the devil. I mean, Christian Americans are afraid of the devil. And you talk about him and they tremble. I made a film about a girl in the Philippines that disappeared. And there were people that were fine Christians that wouldn't even go and see it. And I said, that's, I mean, they told me they wouldn't go see it. I said, that's strange. You won't even join the victor parade. The battle's already won, completed, finished. And here's just showing you what God did. And you're afraid of the victor parade. I said, you're mighty brave. Even afraid of a victor parade. After enemy is defeated, you're still afraid. I tell you, the devil's a mean devil. And he's a lying devil. If you don't learn that pretty early, he'll gain victories that he should never gain in your life. You are a conqueror. You have the victory. Get on with the job. Let's get it done. In Genesis chapter 1, verses 26 and 27, you discover that humanity, through Adam, was created to have dominion. That you were not created to be a servant. To be a slave. To be under anyone else. You are the apex of all the magnificent creation of God. It says, and God said, let us make man in our image. Isn't that amazing? Yeah, he had made the mountains, and he had made the angels, and he had made the stars, and he had made the sea. And oh, the creation was so tremendous. And now he says, let's do something after our own selves. Isn't that wonderful? In our own image. And then he didn't want you to miss it, so he says, after our likeness. Now, there's a lot of theology in there. An image is a thing of like size, you know. An image is something like something else. And so, an image and likeness meant the features were the same and the size and all were the same in our image and in our likeness. So, if you want to see how big God is, look at a man, and you will see. And then God says further here, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, the cattle over all the earth, and every creature that creepeth upon the earth. Let them have dominion. So, God created man in his own image. In the image of God, created he him. Male and female, created he them. You see, God was so afraid that you may not quite understand it, that he said it twice. He said it twice in these two verses, that God created man and woman in his own image. And then he says, in the image of God, so you know what he was talking about. And he said, in our image and after our likeness. And he said, they have dominion over everything that creepeth, everything that moves. A man has dominion over it. Now, we ought to say dominion. Glory be to God, dominion. God created man to be a king and a woman to be a queen. You were not created to be slaves. And when you're a slave to nicotine, when you're a slave to alcohol, when you're a slave to drugs, when you're a slave to sex, when you're a slave to any of these things, you are not what God created you to be. He created you to be a master and not a slave. Yeah. And these enslaving things do not come from God. They come from the other source. So man, after God had made him to have such strength and dominion and power, we discover in the word of the Lord that he lost this dominion. Not only do you discover that in Genesis, you discover it in Psalm. One of the greatest Psalms is Psalm 8. You ought to read Psalm 8, especially verses 5 to 8. And in Hebrews 2, verses 6 and 8, man yielded his position. Man yielded his power. Man yielded his authority. Man yielded his dominion to Satan. He gave it to him. God had nothing to do with it. God gave him dominion over everything that moves. Satan took it away from him. And he says, I have the dominion. I am the king of this world now. I am the rule of this world now. And you look through the Bible and see where he makes claims for those things. It's because he stole it off of Adam, who did not cling to the word. Better say the word. He didn't cling to the word. God had spoken the word. Don't do it. And he did it. And when he did not cling to the word, he became a fallen creature. Now, the Christians' authority over demons means this. That the Lord Jesus Christ has redeemed man from the bondage of sin. In John 8 and 32 to 36, you discover whom the Son sets free is free indeed, you see. And so God and Christ have redeemed humanity from this bondage of evil and from this slavery that they degenerated into because they had lost their dominion that they had in their creation time. Christ redeems man from this bondage and sets him free. And then he speaks to his church. Christians are related to the church. He speaks to his glorious church. In the last words he ever spoke in the great commission of our Lord Jesus Christ, the last words he ever spoke, he said, go into all the world. Talking to small people like us. Go into all the world. Preach the gospel to every creature. Imagine that. Imagine that. They that believe and are baptized shall be saved. When are you saved? When you believe. You're not saved later. So many people that claim to be Christians, they don't even know whether they're saved or not. When you believe, you're saved. They that believe are saved. And they that believe not, what does it say? They're damned. They are damned. And then he said, they that have faith shall cast out devils. You have authority. You have power. You have that pristine authority that went back to the garden of God, to the garden of Eden when God gave man his primal authority, that you are the king of the earth, that you are the leader of the creation, and that you are the boss down here. Get on with the job. And he lost that position through rebellion, through transgression, through listening to the wrong voice and listening to the devil and not to God. But Jesus reinstates man and gives the royal command, the royal command. And this was the last command he ever gave on the face of this earth. Immediately he was taken up into heaven when he had given this command. And so it still stands right now that the Christian has authority over demons because Jesus said so. In the next book of the Bible, in Acts chapter 1 and verse 8, the Lord Jesus speaks to his disciples and says, you shall receive power after the Holy Ghost has come upon you. And you shall be witnesses unto me, both. You better put a circle there. Both in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and unto the uttermost parts of the earth. Ah, that means man was to get back the whole world again. The Christians were to get the whole world back, that the whole world belonged to you. You got it? He didn't say stay in Jerusalem until everybody there is a believer. He said both. We don't stay in one city until everybody believes or you'll die there. There are people that are determined to go to hell. They don't want to see it any other way. And so you just give them the good news and if they refuse it, then they're responsible. They're totally responsible for it. And so he said to his disciples, now listen, ye are my witnesses when I give you my power. And so he gave them back the dominion that they lost in the garden of Eden and said, now go to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of this earth. And he told them what would happen. When they preached the gospel, some would be saved, some would refuse it, and they would be lost. And they would cast out devils and they would heal the sick. Oh, thank God. He gave strength and glory to his triumphant church. In the gospel of Matthew chapter 16, he said, and the gates of hell cannot prevail against you. Hey, that's getting back there, isn't it? Getting back to the authority that was lost, getting back to the freedom that they once had before they became encumbered with the lies and the deceits of Satan. Can you see our picture today? So many people are so in bondage and even church people, some of them are in bondage to fear, some are in bondage to unbelief, some in bondage to dreadful sicknesses, in bondage. And the Lord Jesus is speaking to His church and saying, it's now time for you to be free. Christ has a message of authority over demons and disease or anything else. His glorious church has been given this, and He urges you to accept it and to walk in it and to enjoy it in Jesus' name. And in 1 Peter chapter 4 and verse 10, it says, as you have received the gift, so give it. You know, I don't understand why you can be so wonderfully saved and you don't ever tell your neighbor about it. You're saved from hell, and you don't tell your neighbor about it. I don't understand it. How you can work with a person in the office, and they don't know you're saved. How you can work with a person in the shop, and they don't know you're saved. I met a revolutionary down in Venezuela, South America a few years ago. And he had been up to New York City. He had to run for his life out of Venezuela because of revolution. And one day, sad and dejected and broke, he dropped into a New York gospel preaching station that was for the down and outers, a rescue mission. And there, before feeding him, they gave him the word of God. And they gave him a Bible. And he began to read it. And he gave his heart to Jesus. When he came back to Venezuela, he discovered that for a number of years, he had lived next door to a missionary. Now, he told me this in front of the missionary. And then he looked up at him and said, why didn't you evangelize me? That's the way he said it. Why didn't you evangelize me? Why would I have to go all the way to New York and go through all the suffering that I went through, and you didn't evangelize me? He says, you lived next door to me, and you never told me about the experience that I found in New York City in a rescue mission. He says, why didn't you evangelize me? Friends, the Christian has authority, has authority, has authority to speak the word of God and to cause men to submit to the word of God. If you don't use it, then you'll have to one day give an account to God. Every generation, including us today, have a divine command to give and to give and to give and to give, not to keep and to keep and to keep. No, no. But to give and to give. First Peter 4 and 10, and God is expecting you and God is expecting me that we shall return the gift, tell everybody about it, and let them know the power of God as we have done it. Now, the Christian authority will be challenged. I mean, we still have a devil. And in this moment that we live now, which is the most dramatic moment since the Lord Jesus went back to heaven, this is the most exciting time the world has ever known up until this moment. And you want to know something? You may think everything's bad. Did you know God is doing more right now than I've ever known even doing in my lifetime? God is saving more people right now. Did you know that in South Korea they have one church with 250,000 members? Did you know that in South Africa they have just built the largest tent in the history of the world seating 34,000 human beings? Did you know that right now there's revival in certain areas of the world where tens of thousands are receiving Christ as their Savior? You better look up. You better get out of the ditch where you can look up a little higher and discover God is real. God is doing things. God is moving. This is the day of God's blessing. But the church will be challenged. The devil wishes to challenge the church. If he can find your weak spot, he'll move in on your weakness. But you must remain in the strength. In 1 Timothy chapter 4 and verse 1, it says the Spirit, if you will notice, it is with a capital S, which means the Holy Spirit, that he speaks expressly, expressly, you know, with emphasis, with strength, with power, you know. He speaks expressly. What about in the latter times? Now, if there's ever going to be any there right now, in the latter times, he says some shall depart. Some shall depart from what? The faith. Now, the faith is all wrapped up in the Bible. Believe in the Word of God is your faith. Faith cometh by hearing, hearing by the Word of the Lord. And so this is an attack upon God's eternal truth, upon God's Word. That was a problem in the Garden of Eden. Eve did not believe God's Word. Adam did not believe, oh, God won't do that. That's what Satan told him. You won't surely die. When you don't believe God's Word, you're in for trouble. The world is in for trouble when it won't believe the Word of God. And you better understand it. You better understand it. He said, they shall depart from the faith. What is that? Believing God, trusting God, loving God, serving God. They shall depart from it. They're not going to just be backsliders. No. We're going to be challenged. You say by what? By the cults? They shall be, they should depart from the faith, giving heed, listening to, believing in, accepting. What? Seducing spirits and doctrines of devils. Now, I don't want you to get afraid and run off somewhere. The battle of the future is not over doctrines. Not over doctrines. The battle of the future is doctrines of devils in relationship to the Word of God. Is the Bible true or not true? We're going to have to stop fighting one another and start fighting the devil. We're going to have to get our aim right and aim at the right one. He said that in these last days, there would be the authority of the Christian challenged. I want to tell you right now, there are just millions of Christians that won't even answer the devil back. They won't even fight back. They won't do anything. Something can happen to one of their members in their church and they'll send him off to the insane asylum. Send him into the devil's pit rather than setting him free by God's mighty power. I was speaking in Wisconsin at a men's meeting. When I was through, a Lutheran pastor walked right straight down the middle aisle crying. He said, I put two of my members in the insane asylum and said, from what you've said this morning, I'm going to go get them out. I prayed over him. I said, just let me know about it, please. A couple of weeks later, got a telephone call. He said, Brother Sumrall, they're both out and they're both home. Says, I went up there, cast the devil out of them and brought them home. And says, they're both all right. If there's a battle, what are you going to do? Are you going to be like that Lutheran pastor and say, hey, hey, hey, I'm on God's side and I'm a winner. I'm not a loser. And then you're going to win the battle. But if you're going to take the negative side and the side of unbelief and the side of fear, then you will be destroyed. He says, the Spirit speaketh that in the land of times some shall depart from the faith. They will give heed to seducing spirits, lying spirits. And doctrines of devil, saying God isn't right, God isn't true. Morals are no good, you know. And say that the whole thing of God is not true. I want to assure you one thing, that those things aren't from hell and that you must believe the truth in order to be set free. So the Christian authority is that we resist. You say, now how do we resist? We discover in 1 Peter chapter 5, verses 8 and 9, where God speaks to us, the Holy Spirit speaks to us and says, now be sober. And as I've told you before, this is not speaking of alcoholic beverage. No, it is not. It is speaking of a stupid, giddy world. We are living in the world of amusement. And you know what the word means from the Greek, don't you? The A means no or not. Muse means to think. And amusement means not to think, you see. And that's the world that we live in today. Be sober, be vigilant. Your adversary, we have an adversary. It's not your neighbor, it's not your wife, it's not your husband. The Bible says it is the devil. That he will go about as a roaring lion. It means he'll come screaming and yelling and overpowering and, you know, acting as if he's big, seeking whom he may devour. It says, resist steadfast in the faith. Now, you can't resist any other way. Resist steadfast in the faith, knowing the same affliction are accompanied in your brethren or in the world. That we've always had the same battle. From Daniel, the same battle. From Joseph, the same battle. Peter and John, the same battle. And so we must do that. James says it in a very strong way. He says, submit yourselves, therefore. This is in James 4 and 7. Submit yourselves to God and resist the devil, and he will flee from you. How we are glad that we know that and how we can do it. And we must do it in Jesus' name and by his power. I want to tell you something that you must know. And that is that sinners cannot exercise demon spirits. Now, they absolutely cannot. You read in God's Word in Acts chapter 19, beginning in verse 11. And you'll discover there that there were certain men who were seven sons of a Jew named Sceva. And was one of the chief priests. And they came to exercise a spirit and say, come out of him. And the spirit said, now we know Jesus and we know you, and we know Paul, but we don't know you. And those evil spirits jumped upon those men, beat them almost to death. They fled out of the house naked, the Bible says, and wounded by demon spirits. Now, you have to be a born-again person. You have to know what God is doing in order to be part of it. So I urge you to realize that if we're sinners, that we cannot exercise evil spirits from anybody. That we have to have a direct and strong relationship with God in order that we can set multitudes free. So we are studying in this lesson in relation to the church of Jesus Christ, dominant and powerful, with authority and with strength and with victory until the Lord Jesus returns back again. Be part of that victorious and triumphant church in Jesus' name. And one of the pertinent truths for this moment, for this time in history, the time has now come for this truth to be fully exposed and brought into pure focus that we can see clearly that our battle is not with flesh and blood. It is with principalities and powers of darkness that we might overcome them. We do hope that you receive your syllabus, your teaching syllabus, Demons and Deliverance, principalities and powers. And you can write for a catalog, or you can telephone and see all the information you need about it. You can receive this audio tape of this lesson and of all the lessons in this series. You can receive them. And you can receive this in videocassette for your video player and play it on your own TV set. And so these are made available because God, at this moment, needs a million teachers of the Word. Yeah, we are in the greatest victory march the world has ever known right now. Get in it. But you have to go into it intelligent. You have to understand the Word of God. You have to understand the battle that we're in today and how to defeat our enemies. Lord, bless my neighbor right now. And let the Spirit of the Lord rest upon my friend. We believe you now to break every force and every power that Satan has put over the people and set them free by the mighty power of the living God. I believe you to set them free. I believe you to bless them. In Jesus' name, whatever your need is, may the Lord Jesus set you free by His mighty power. Right now, be free by His power. Christ loves you, and He wishes right now to give you strength over all the powers that be. He created you for dominion, and so receive it and accept it and walk in His power and His strength and His victory. We believe God for it, in Jesus' name. Look forward to the other studies in this series, that we might study together the great truths of God and that you might be one of the deliverers. Thank you. David said that he was glad when I said unto him, let us go into the house of the Lord. I'm glad to say it's time to teach now. It's a joy to come to you and to speak of the eternal verities, truths that are immortal, truths that will never die. In this special series of lessons, and I'm so glad to have you, bless you. In this special series of lessons, we are dealing with what we call demons and deliverance. The ministry of principalities and powers. This is a very large group of cassettes, audio cassettes that are possible to get, that covers this whole massive subject. And it's volume one, so be sure to ask for it by volume one. We have the video cassette and a half inch, and any make of machine that you might have, that you can see it in your own home. Possibly above all, we have the teaching syllabus that you can follow me page by page. Today's lesson is on page 63, and we are dealing with a very intimate lesson, how I learned exorcism, how I learned to cast out devils. And it wasn't easy, and I didn't ask for it, and I didn't look for it. It was something that was thrust upon me. God solemnly warns all of mankind, you and me. First Corinthians 10 and 20 says, but I say that the things which nations sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils and not to God. I would not that you should have fellowship with devils. God refuses to permit His worshipers to have any fellowship of any kind whatsoever with the devil or with his angels or any of his works. And you must stand right in there. You must believe it, and you must accept it. I would not that you have fellowship with devils. There is a pertinent truth in 2 Timothy chapter 2 and verse 26, and they, that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will. Now this possibly refers to heathen nations, that he may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil. Through the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ, we recover people, cities, nations, from the snare of the devil. As you know, a snare is a trap. It's a contraption that you set for a rabbit, or a squirrel, in order to catch them. The animal thinks it is finding good food to eat, and so going into the trap, or the snare, it's caught. And so it is a deception. This is the manner in which the devil deceives the whole world, the heathen nations, and even some people in Christian lands. It's a snare. They think it's one thing, and they get themselves involved in another. The devil fools people into believing that they will have pleasure in serving him and doing his things, but they do not get the pleasure. They are deceived. He fools them into believing that if they follow him, that everything will be all right. And then when nothing is right, and they have heaps of problems, just like most heathen nations do, then they don't know what to do. The scripture says that he takes them captive at his own will. Would you like to read that again? In 2 Timothy 2 and 26, it says, it says, But I say that the things which the nations sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God. And I would not that ye have fellowship with devils. Then he says in 2 Timothy 2 and 26, And that ye may recover themselves from the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will. That is mighty strong. Been taken captive by him at his own will. Can you imagine that? That he does as he pleases. That that statement indicates that the devil willfully and deliberately sets snares in order that he might capture human persons, in order that he might enslave them. Now, though I was reared in a Christian environment, and in a Christian, in an evangelical church, and grew up from a baby in that church, I can never remember in my total youth of ever hearing a whole entire sermon relative to what I'm going to teach you right today on demon power. He was mentioned. He was mentioned. He was normally called Slewfoot, you know, or something like that. And that everybody laughed. And then they would say, Now you devil, you go back to hell where you came from. And he hasn't been there yet. That is his final destination. He is today the prince and the power of the air. And so I never got in on this at all. I just grew up. We heard beautiful gospel, wonderful gospel, but we knew nothing about the battle. I look back now and see churches split. I look back now and see some of our members that went to insane asylums. I look back and I say, Whoa, think of the ignorance that I grew up in and didn't know I was ignorant, you know. I thought I was fully informed. I thought that I was getting a tremendous education from the whole of the Bible. But then I found out there's an area of the Word that I actually knew nothing about and neither did my peers because they taught me nothing. I never read a book that was done by a pastor right in our congregation. And I never heard a sermon on how you can defend yourself from the devil, how you can curse the devil, how you can cast him out, how you have priorities over him that he will flee when you say go and you resist him. I did not know about this. When I went into the ministry, we have stories in the Bible of Jesus casting out the devil. I followed the pastors that I'd heard and I spiritualized. I said, now, in this great realm of sin, you know, leprosy is a type of sin in general and palsy is a type of the helplessness of sin. You just shake and you shake. And demon possession, it's a type of the fury of sin. Oh, fury of sin, it's a bad. And that's all I, that's what I preached, you know. It was a type. Demon possession is no type of anything. It's the real thing. It's being possessed of a real personality called the devil and with some of his demons that work with him and for him. Well, I got along all right. I preached for three years here in the United States and then I began my missionary work. Now, I got along all right in New Zealand, Australia, you know. But then I got to Indonesia. Now, I didn't ask for anything. I just wanted to keep it this pleasing, happy little way. Get up and give a nice little talk on the prodigal son, Daniel and the lions, then give an invitation, get people saved and go home happy. That's all I expected. In a meeting there in Indonesia, it was a large building, similar to this building here. Had a large altar, just about like the one here. And on the front seat was a girl. In the beginning of the service, she got off the seat and it was a wide place, just very similar to this one here. And she began to gyrate like a serpent and go from one side over to the other side. I mean a long way, 50 or 60 feet, you know. And did you know nobody noticed it? The song leaders sung and looking up, you know. And when they prayed, they looked up. But no, and I couldn't get my eyes off this little girl. Green foam was coming out of her mouth, clear out here to look like six or eight inches, covering her all through this part of her body. Her eyes dancing, serpent eyes, terrible. I just, you know, cringed sitting on the platform. Inside I said, now, the pastor will take care of this in a hurry. I'm waiting for one of the ushers to walk down and pick her up. Did you know this went on for 50 or 55 minutes and nobody did anything? And she just went from one side to the other, just like a snake. And then she'd turn over the other way. She kept her head toward the platform, grinning at the people, mocking the people on the platform. And here she came back. Now Java, Indonesia, is a place where there is, of a truth, a lot of demon power. But now this was my first time, my first time. Now, brother, the first time can be the hard time, you know. And I said, oh God, save souls. And the Lord spoke back to me and said, I can't save souls until you move this down here. I said, oh Lord, move that girl. The Lord said, no, that's your job. Oh, I said, no, no. Oh Lord, move that girl. The Lord said, no, that's your job. Whew. I didn't know what to do. I'm glad they had a long song service and a long prayer time and a long Bible reading and so forth because I was sitting back there battling. Here was, say, 1,500 people present and here was a little girl under the power of the devil. The pastor did nothing. The ushers did nothing. And here she was going up and down with green mist coming out of her mouth. And nobody watching her, even the people she passed by, didn't even look down. So I guess she had done it before. But they didn't take her out. And this was a beautiful church. I mean, this wasn't a poor place. This was a magnificent place of worship. Well, I didn't know what to do. So I got up from my chair away in the back and I start toward the platform, toward the pulpit. And my interpreter was right there by me. I'd never been in this place before. It was my first night. And I'd been in the country over a week. And I, for my insides, I didn't think it out with my head. For my insides, I said, get up from there. It's so astounding, my interpreter, he didn't say a word. He just closed up, never said a word. And that little thing there blinked an eye, reached and took her arm, wiped that green mess off her face, stood up, backed up, and sat down in the seat. And like a mummy, not like a human, but like a mummy, glared at me, glared at me for the next 50 or 60 minutes as I preached. And you could feel a stillness all over that place. Nobody had ever rebuked like that. Of course, most of the people didn't understand English, but that devil did. That girl didn't speak one word of English, but that devil knew that I meant get up from there. And it wasn't premeditated, and I didn't know I could do it. I just knew that to save that meeting, and I wanted to see a few hundred people saved, that I had to get that thing off the floor. So when I got through preaching, my interpreter went ahead and interpreted for me. I got to the end of my sermon. Rather than giving my altar call, I leaned over and I said, come out of her. You'd think it was an earthquake that shook the building. The power of God hit that girl. She was sitting there like a mummy, you know, and not an eye moving, not a muscle moving for all that time that I spoke as if she was hypnotized. And when I said, come out of her, suddenly she became normal, her eyes, her face, her body. And she looked around, and she was smiling, and she spoke to the one next to her. And I said to the interpreter, I said, what did she say? And the interpreter said, what did she say? And he says, she said, where am I? She didn't even know where she was. She was so under the power of the devil, she didn't know she was in church. But I want to tell you one thing. I did not have to give an altar call. The glory of God came down on that place. The spirit of the Lord hit that place, and hundreds from all over came rushing to that altar and gave their hearts to Jesus. Now, I didn't know what it was. So I went home. I was traveling with a man named Howard Carter from London, England. He's a theologian and the president of a Bible college. And I explained it to him, and I said, hey, you may not want to travel with me anymore. I tell you. And I told him what happened. I said, it's pretty bloody. And I said, to tell you the truth, the pastor didn't speak to me after church. It might have been one of his kids or his friend's kids. I don't know. But I said, I'll tell you one thing. People got saved. So he sat there. He was a thinking type. And he sat there and wiped his face a little while holding his hand like this. And he said, it sounds all right to me. Well, I said, well, thank you. He says, it may never happen again, or it may happen some more. But he said, it's all right with me. He says, I don't see anything wrong with it. Maybe it'll happen when I'm around sometime. He was a teacher, not an evangelist. And at that night, he was teaching in another place. The need was so great until we were not in the same meetings very often. And so I said, well, that's an oriental disease that I'm glad I'm taking care of, that there won't ever be anymore, and I won't ever see it anymore. But I began to look into the Bible and to read the incidents where Jesus cast out devils. And I said, ah, ah, maybe something like this is in the Bible. I didn't know. I didn't know the Bible was full of it all the way through it. I didn't realize that. And so about the next week, we were in another city. We only spent a night or two in each city because we were only three months in Indonesia, and we had to cover a lot of territory. And we were in another city. And again, he was in one church, and I was in another, at least in auditoriums, in order to take care of the ministry that was before us. And I had an interpreter again. And we got to this church late, and it was a big place, packed full of people. Even the aisle had folding chairs down the aisle and people sitting in them. And we had to walk kind of sideways down the aisle. You know, there were so many people, you couldn't walk straight because they had these extra chairs in the aisle. I got about a third of the way down. My interpreter was in front, and a woman grabbed me by my coat like a vice. I went to shake free, but she wouldn't turn loose. She just looked up at me and grinned, and she wouldn't turn loose. And my interpreter walked right off and left me, went clear to the platform all by himself. I looked back and said, come on, well, how could I come? Couldn't go anywhere. You know, they were holding my coat. And I leaned over to see what the woman wanted, and she spoke to me in English. She said, you have a black angel in you, and I have a white angel in me. Hee, hee, hee, hee, hee, hee, hee. Now, I didn't know exactly what to do. I could have slapped her side of the head. But, you know, being a guest and a visitor, that wouldn't be too nice. I could have rebuked her and said, turn me loose. And I could have, like Joseph, given her my coat and walked on up there without a coat. But when I leaned over and I saw the devil in her, I just dropped my briefcase that had my Bible in it. I put my hands on both sides of her head, and I said, you lying spirit who says that I have a black spirit in me and that this woman has an evil spirit, a white spirit in her. You're a liar. I said, come out of her. And you know, instantly, God set her free. You can tell when people are free. Their eyes clear up. Their face clears up. Their tensions go. Their wildness leaves their body, you know. The church stopped singing. You know, they were singing. When they heard this American roaring away, come out of her, they stopped to see what the American was doing that was supposed to be a guest that night. Just a one-night service. And I spoke to her, and I said, when did you get like this? She said, 15 years ago, I went to a witch doctor. And I've had this. It says it's never done what it did tonight before. This was new. But says it's doing something or other all the time. And I'm so weary of it. And so she says, I'm free. And I know I'm free. And I am free. And she was wonderfully set free from that night. Well, when we got back to the room where we were staying, I told Mr. Howard Carter from London, England. I said, sir, another one happened, and it's worse than the first one. I told him how before I got into the platform, when I was only a third of the way down the aisle, I was accosted by this woman. And how I cast that thing out of her, and she was set free. He said, well, what happened? He said, well, they gave me the pulpit early. I preached, and many, many, many people came and found Jesus as their Savior. Well, he said, now, when people are finding Jesus, it touches me very, very. And it says it shows me there's something right going on. He says, I haven't seen anybody act like this, but sometimes it'll happen when I'm around, and I'll test the spirits. But he says, it sounds all right to me. I didn't know what it was. I was a young man learning how. Isn't it something that a young man has to learn by experience? There's nobody to teach him. Aren't you glad you have a teacher that can tell you these things, and take the Word of God, and open these things up to you, so that you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free? Ah, if I were to tell you all the instances, just in this one area, in the island of Java, it would take two or three lessons to go through them, because there are many of them. And God did, we never failed. God set them free every time. And it rejoiced our hearts to see the power of God liberate people and set them free, and make them to be happy in the Lord Jesus Christ. So it was a joy to learn in this way. And now God says, not only to learn, He tells me to share. And my job is to share with you these things of the Lord. And maybe I should tell you a few more of them there, but some of the things that I learned from this was that as we ministered through this island of Java, I discovered that through the numerous encounters we had with the devil, that the things we learned were also most interesting and exciting. But the greatest thing that I learned was that there was a conflict, that if I went into a heathen place to bring out a lot of souls, I had a conflict with the devil, and I better know it. I better find it out, or I couldn't win all these souls to the Lord Jesus. So I learned personally that there was a conflict. And then something within me said that Christ was stronger and greater than any of these forces, and that I had complete power to set those people free. I hadn't been taught this. This had to come out of my own spirit, that it was not a person that I met who caused the battle. It was a spirit that caused the battle. It was something within that person that caused them to want to fight me and to come against me. It wasn't me personally. It wasn't because I was an American. It wasn't because I was a white person. It was because the devil immediately thrust himself against me, and so he opened up the battle. Maybe I shouldn't have waited for him to open the battle. I should have opened the battle on him. I discovered that there was no reason for me to fear. Now see, early discoveries are interesting. Nobody taught me this. I learned it this way, that I could not lose a battle, that it was not possible to lose a battle. I found that though they would scream and tear themselves, and they could not hardly touch me, and they could not harm me. I never did get harmed. I never got beaten or hit. I've had them to double up their fist or something other than I just say, in Jesus' name, stop, and took control of it, and that I was perfectly safe in exercising evil spirits out of other people. I found that in most cases that the demons wanted to run away when they discovered my presence was there, and they did not want to confront me, and so it was not that they were belligerent and wanted to fight me. They did not. They wanted to run away from me. So as I sought to confirm this new activity with the Word of God, then one of the first things that came to me was the great commission that Jesus gave, and this became the Gibraltar of my faith then in Mark chapter 16, verses 15 through 17. This became a Gibraltar of my faith. It became the anchor. I said, say here, hey, look here. This is what God can do, and I know, and I know that He can do it. You see, we went on through the Orient, and we discovered many things. In China, we had these conditions where we had to cast out spirits out of people that would tear them, and they couldn't sit anywhere and couldn't go anywhere. In Japan, we had the same thing happen, and brother, I was 20 and 21 years old. I said, this is an organ disease, and I'd be glad to get out of it. So when we crossed Siberia and Russia into Poland and into Europe, I said, I'm glad to get away from that nagging thing that almost every meeting I have, somebody snails up, and I have to cast the devil out of them. I'd be glad to get away from it. We hadn't been in Poland a week, I don't believe. The most could have been 10 days. Before, we were speaking in a large church, and I don't know whether Reverend Carter was there or not. It seems to me that he wasn't in that meeting because we had so many separate meetings, just two men traveling together, and the needs were so great, we could have used 40 men in some of them rather than just two. But in the meeting that I had, I think it was in the great city of Lodz in Poland, that the meeting opened, and I was sitting on the platform, and a woman in the front seat began to say, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah. And I said, boy, that's terrible. That's cutting, destroying, you know. And I said, ah, you got to get rid of that. Did you know, for the whole preliminaries, 30, 40, 50, 60 minutes, however long the thing was, she sat there, and about every minute said, Hallelujah, Hallelujah. And her face didn't even look right. Did you know the pastor did nothing? That's what amazes me in religious leaders. The ushers did nothing. The deacons did nothing. She sat there and disturbed that meeting for almost an hour before I got up to speak with a little Hallelujah, Hallelujah. Now, all I did is pray for souls. I am a soul winner. I said, oh, God, save souls. The Lord says, I can't, because of that annoyance in the front seat, getting all the attention. I said, oh, Lord, help that woman. God says, I can't help her. He says, you won't? Let me help her. I said, Lord, you do something. The Lord said, you're going to have to do it. Oh, oh, oh. Are you sure? When I got up to speak, I didn't know what I was going to do. I never pre-thought these things out. I walked up to that pulpit, and rather than just saying good evening, it's a great joy to be here. Glad to see you. Glad to be in your city. I just said, you shut up! And a strong, loud voice. You say, did she shut up? No. She began to bark like a dog. She barked like a dog. A beautiful woman. And then here came the ushers, you know? Goodness gracious. I said, go back and sit down. And told my interpreter to start talking. And so I leaned over and I said, you come out of her! And I never did get close to the woman. She was healed by God's power. That barking stopped. The hallelujah stopped. And she was completely free, healed by God's mighty power. The Spirit of the Lord came upon that mighty audience, and hundreds of people found Jesus that night. Now, that's my education. My education, you see. But I got startled. I said, say, they got this in Europe, hadn't they? It's not only in China, Indonesia, and Japan. In Europe! Did you know in England we had many cases of people that were possessed to be set free? But in my foolishness, I said, I want to get back to America. You Europeans, you got it, and you Asians, you have it, but I'm going back to America where we don't have it. And you know, when I got back to America, within the first two weeks that I was here, I had a tremendous confrontation that I'm going to tell you about in our next lesson. We will continue part two in how I learned to cast out evil spirits. I had to learn it. Nobody taught me. Nobody helped me. I had no books on the subject. And God helped me to learn, to teach you how you can exercise evil. God can help you to do it. God bless my neighbors and friends and give them strength and power to resist the devil and to cast him out upon the authority of the Word of God and the power of the blood that was shed on Calvary. I believe you for it, and I thank you for it. Amen. Please remember that you can order an audio tape, and we'd be glad to hear from you what God has done for you in miracles. You can order a video tape, half inch, for your own little video set, for your player in your own home. And by all means, you should order the teaching syllabus and start using it to help others. And the teaching syllabus is called Demons and Deliverance, Principalities and Powers. We want you to by all means order and get it and let's start a move of God this country has never known. God told me that he needs one million teachers. He wants you to be a teacher, to teach others, to show others the way, to talk the way and preach the way, live the way. And so get yourself armed with truth and go out to set many free in Jesus' name. We want to say thank you for being with us, both in the class and you that are with us by means of television and satellite. And we say God love you and God bless you. And we want all of you to know that Christ is the answer to every problem, that Christ is the one that can help you and bless you right now, that he at this moment can do great things for you. Believe him, trust him, put your faith in him. You'll find that it always works. Thank you so much for being with us. Until next time, keep believing in God, keep trusting in Jesus and you'll find that Christ is the answer. You've been listening to the From the Pulpit and Classic Sermon series. This week you heard Lester Sumrall with his message, Demonology and Deliverance, parts three and four. Tune in next week to hear Jonathan Cahn talk about Days of the Golden Calf on From the Pulpit and Classic Sermons.