What is a poltergeist and how to get rid of it, Pt 2 of 2, Episode 4
Welcome Back to the 2nd of two episodes on Poltergeists. In the first episode we discussed:
Top show points to remember:
· The word poltergeist literally means knocking spirit. It comes from German verb “poltern” which means to knock and “geist” which means “spirit”. Its objective is to cause fear, harass, and hinder the lives of the inhabitants of the property.
· Common manifestations are objects moving. Most of the time you don’t see them move, but you may hear them move. Also, the sound of chains, footsteps, there may be shadows present, glass shattering, lights on and off, doors and cabinets open and shut, cold spots
· Our scriptural references for open spiritual doors are: Exodus 20:3-5, Deut 4:15-19, Acts 17:22, Acts 19:17-20
· A poltergeist is a demon that has a legal right to inhabit a property and as long as the condition exists that allowed the demon to enter, it maintains the legal right to stay.
· Poltergeists are initially brought in through sin, idolatrous or occult related practices. It may or may not be our own sin sometimes it is related to previous inhabitants, family members, someone living with you and may have nothing to do with you.
So now let's pick up where we left off and list out some things found in our lives or homes that create the legal right. From there we will examine how to break that legal right including how to clean out hospital rooms or hotels where you may be located temporarily. I will also be sharing some more personal experiences from a house we lived that had an unwelcome inhabitant.
Items in our lives that give demons the legal right are things where we have mixed our relationship with God with the knowing or unknowing worship of or paying homage to demons:
Involvement with astrological signs or horoscopes, palm reading, tarot cards, the use of crystals, games such Ouija boards, hypnotism, charms. Anytime we seek a source other than God for wisdom, knowledge, guidance or power we are giving demons a legal right. So anything involving the occult is a spiritual door.
This past year I was involved in a business group where we were all working on goals and other topics to grow our businesses. We were tasked with discussing our information with the group and then providing feedback to each other to help shape our plans forward. We were sorted by business category and I was placed in a group that had 2 occult businesses and 1 New Age business. I was a little surprised that I was placed in this group because the company who organized these was owned by a Christian. Many of the staff were Christian. There was no way I could provide feedback to any of these people to give them helpful information to assist them in growing their businesses. Nor could I allow them to speak anything into mine. Thankfully I was able to exit the group and I was placed in a coaching category. Had I participated, I would have opened doors into my life, my business, my house, my office. While that is a pretty black and white example, we should be mindful of situations where we may be asked to participate in events or activities that involve the occult, and some will be more subtle. The lesson here is do not rely on others to respect a boundary, it is our responsibility to protect ourselves.
Another area that opens spiritual doors for demons is superstition and the belief that someone or something will bring you good luck or bad luck. Common examples of this are black cats, Friday the 13th, rabbits' feet, or wearing the same jersey because your team keeps winning. There are all sorts of crazy things people do for superstitious reasons and they are really all ridiculous. The only thing these superstitions serve to do is pay homage to demons.
Now we need to address the issue of idols. This is not an easy topic to discuss because no one wants to admit they have an idol in their life. An idol is something that becomes more important than God or replaces Him in some way. In our modern world, we are surrounded by idols. It can be as simple as calling someone our idol, or saying we idolize someone. Those words are real and believers need to be careful of our word choice. It's one thing to say" I deeply respect and admire Winston Churchill. I use him because I do have a lot of respect for him and I have met some of his descendants that live here in my town. It is entirely different to say, Winston Churchill is my idol. Those words carry impact and meaning, and by declaring someone as an idol we have just come into agreement with the enemy, replacing God's place in our life with someone else. We are accountable for our words.
Other idols we rarely consider are the time we spend on television, social media, at work or playing sports. Activities that take our time and give us reasons to no longer have time for our relationship with the Lord.
Now, onto the topic that by far generates the most push back in dealing with opening of spiritual doors: Items in our home. Some of these items have little traps associated with them so we will not necessarily see what is attached to them, and therefore we are agreeing to allow in our home.
Let's list off a few:
· There are plenty of games that our kids want to play that have demonic characters, involve crimes or even mimic occult practice.
· Souvenirs from foreign countries. We travel quite a bit and as an example, going to Greece, a lot of the souvenirs there are the Greek Gods, or the evil eye. It was difficult to buy gifts for people that didn't include things that are dishonoring to the Lord. Not only do I not want to participate in purchasing these types of items, but I also certainly don't want to be responsible for giving a gift that is elevating an object of idol worship no matter how long ago it was used for worship.
· Anything relating to the Freemasons or other secret societies. These secret societies that require oaths fall under the demonic. We will get into this in other topics as well. Literature or the freemason ring are generally the culprits here aside from the oath.
· American Indian jewelry sometimes has rituals performed over the pieces before they are sold
· Antiques, you don't know their history, how they were used
· Vintage items, again, you don't know their history
I know this list seems long and intense, like how will you ever find all of these among your possessions, but bear with me and we will get to how to address all of this. It's important to be familiar with these objects going forward.
Where it becomes really touchy for people is when they have items given to them as gifts or have some sentimental value. I know of someone who was a collector of artifacts from all over the world. In his collection were witch masks from Africa used in ceremonies. Allowing these in his house opened a spiritual door and he began to feel a change in everything in his house. Irritability, loss of sleep, brain fog, not as effective at work, his children were affected and began to have behavioral issues. He had no idea of the significance of what he brought into his house, but once he was made aware, he struggled to get rid of it. The collection was more important. Months later, once he understood what some of the artifacts represented he cleared it out of his house. The issues were resolved once his house was cleaned out.
In Acts 19 we see a similar situation occur in Ephesus. Ephesus, like many areas in Asia Minor and Greece was known for their idol worship, in Ephesus it was the goddess Artemis. Paul preached all over the area about the Kingdom of God and about the Holy Spirit. There was an incident in verse 13 where some believers were trying to cast out demons but were ineffective and the demons came out and beat these men. It scared so many people they became believers and repented from practicing sorcery. After openly confessing they then burned their books of divination. We will touch on this again when we address witchcraft, but I wanted to share that this issue has been affecting mankind for centuries, it's not new.
Now let's talk about situations where the poltergeist is there, and you have done nothing to allow it or invite it. You don't have any idols; you haven't opened any spiritual doors but yet there is a poltergeist in your space. There could be several reasons for that. Think back to the story I told you in the previous episode about the quanset hut. The poltergeists I experienced were attached to that quanset hut, it didn't matter where it was relocated, that was their domain for whatever reason and where it went, so did they. The only thing I could do was control it in the authority Jesus gave me when I was present.
Several years ago, we decided to sell our house and live in base housing for a while. My husband is in the military, so it was an option available to us. We moved into a house we thought was great. It had a HUGE lot, the largest that I saw of any of the houses on base. We had our choice of 4 available house. I was actually surprised it was not snatched up. I have 4 kids so a big yard, front and back is a huge bonus. Right after we moved in, my husband deployed to the Middle East, so I was working, taking care of kids, kids I just moved and who had to change schools so there was a lot of change happening for us. My two younger boys were the first to notice something, they were about 4/5th and 6/7th grade at the time. They didn't mention it to me right away, but they were experiencing odd things going on in the house. My youngest loved to stay up late and in the summer, I let him stay up and watch TV after I went to bed. Not my wisest move. Anyhow, one of the nights he was watching TV in the living room and heard a noise in the kitchen. He walked into the kitchen and all the pots and pans from the cabinets were on the middle of the kitchen floor. We had many things happen in that house, which I will share over our time together. I definitely could have handled that situation better. Anyhow, we found out that in the year preceding us moving in, 4 other families had moved in and out of the house due to some peculiarities. It had a reputation of being haunted but when we moved in nobody said a word to us. We were there maybe 2ish years before we decided it was time to buy a house again and move out. There was an escalation in activities from that poltergeist, but it was evicted while we were there. We don't know why it was there, but there are three possibilities I can name to give you a starting point if you have this issue. The first is similar to the quanset hut story. Something occurred in the home or was invited into the home at some point in that house history. When this happens, as long as the conditions still exist that allowed it to enter, it can legally remain in the property. So a prior tenant or prior owner can be the culprit. Also, if you have someone renting from you, or a family member living with you that is involved in something, the door is open, and you won't even know it.
The second possibility is that it may not be the actual house structure, but something related to the land where the house is located. In both of my examples, it is easy to think that at some point that land would have been American Indian land, we still have tribes in the area, but anything happening between when it was Indian land in the 1700's and what I did know was a mystery. The military base has been there a very long time. I hope it is clear I am not singling out American Indians. I have American Indian in me on both sides of my family, but the truth is many tribes have occult practices.
The third possibility that allows a poltergeist to remain is easily forgotten. If you have had a guest visit or a family member live with you and they have moved out, passed away, whatever the case is, but they have left behind some objects. It could be a magazine, or items that have some tie to what they were involved in, that allows the poltergeist to stay put. When there are reports of a cold spot, a lot of times that cold spot is the location where the person spent their time.
The point to take away from those situations is there is a reason for all of these events. A poltergeist doesn't wander the neighborhood and look for the nicest house or make their own decision on where they will take up residence. There are spiritual laws and just like we can't just show up and move into a place because we want to without a legal right to dwell in that home, neither can a demon.
What about hotels, hospitals, other public places. For those situations where it is a revolving door of different people inhabiting and you may only be there temporarily, there is a resolution. For the time period that the space is yours you have authority so you will follow part of the simple process I am going to give you.
Now that we know what a poltergeist is, a general idea of what they do and what allows them access, let’s over simple steps to clear out the house. These are steps, by the way, you can use to clean out your house in general, not just for a poltergeist. I also do it in my office outside my home. If you are in a hotel or hospital, you can do steps 3 and 4 for the time period you are inhabiting those spaces.
There are just 4 steps:
1) Destroy everything that gives any right to the devil. Now let me explain this so we are all on the same page. If you have some carving of something demonic, yes that you would destroy. What we don't want to do is donate it or give it away to create a problem for someone else. If you have literature contrary to or involving a false religion, example a Mormon Bible, destroy it. Freemasonry or secret society paraphernalia destroy it. If you aren't sure about something, ask the Holy Spirit and do whatever the Holy Spirit tells you to do. What we aren't' trying to do is go through our house on a witch hunt, being obsessive about destroying everything. When we do that, we are taking the focus away from God. We need to be balanced. Obsessive behavior is not balanced. Seeking the Holy Spirit and as we go through our houses. We talked about this in depth so you will recognize and think about things in your home that could be problematic in general. You may not have a poltergeist, but we still need to be cognizant of this now.
2) Okay, step number two and three are combined but I want to talk about them separately to make sure we hit all the points. So step two is to walk through your house and anoint it with oil on the walls and doorways. I will do this also when I move into a new house, believe me I did this when we bought our house after moving off base. It's not a bad idea to do this periodically. Although when we do this, we are creating protection so it will actually serve to keep new demonic from entering, there are times when something will enter that is attached to a family member. So a periodic cleansing could be warranted. We will discuss this more when we discuss demonization, but it's worth mentioning here. When I begin, I like to put on worship music on to create an atmosphere welcoming to the Holy Spirit and unwelcoming to the demons. I will generally pray while I am doing it. I like to focus on windows and doors, the openings to the home. I have a woman I mentor, and it was necessary at one point for her to anoint her house. I was giving her instruction on this and we talked about oils, (which there are specific anointing oils out there you can buy with different scents or whatever that come in cute little bottles, but really you can just use regular olive oil. If you don't have olive oil, don't worry about it, the Lord knows your heart, whatever oil you have is sufficient. We don't want to be legalistic on what oil we use. God is a God of grace and he can still work if all we have is vegetable oil.) Anyway, so I was instructing her on what to do and I'll tell you the one thing I forgot to tell her was how much oil to use. In her fervor, her lovely fervor, she apparently used quite a bit. Now her husband is not a believer, so he didn't know she anointed the house. Months later when they were replacing their sliding glass door, he commented rhetorically about oil dripping everywhere. Then about a year later he was looking out a window while talking on the phone. At one point she heard him he heard him tell the person he was talking to that apparently oil exploded all over his house. I'm sorry but when she told me I had to laugh. He knows as a believer she does things he doesn't understand, and he gives her the freedom she needs to do it. I think it's wonderful and, in this case, hilarious that he accepts it and doesn't make her feel bad. So anyway, we just need a light dab, we don't need it dripping down our walls. Some people will anoint in the shape of a cross, that is fine to do as long as we aren't putting our faith in the oiled cross and treating it like it is our protection. Our protection and authority is in the Name of Jesus. Anything else becomes an idol.
3) As you are walking through you house you command every demonic spirit to leave in the name of Jesus. We are executing our eviction notice. You may not know the name of what is there, and we certainly don't ask it, we just tell it to leave in the Name of Jesus. Renounce any known or unknown involvement with any idols or anything that allowed the demons to enter and remain. I tend to go through each room, garage, my yard, you could even walk the perimeter of your property if you have a larger property.
4) Finally, you want to dedicate the place, and everyone associated with it to the Lord and invite the Holy Spirit to reside there permanently.
The scriptural references for anointing can be found in Matthew 6:17, Mark 14:3-9, Mark 6:13, James 5:14
Ok, we are ready for our recap.
Top show points for episode 2 are:
· Idols in our home are an open doorway. We need to eliminate these items from our homes, even if they are gifts, souvenirs or a prized collection.
· Items in our lives that give demons the legal right are things where we have mixed our relationship with God with the knowing or unknowing worship of or paying homage to demons: astrological signs or horoscopes, palm reading, tarot cards, the use of crystals. Anytime we seek a source other than God for wisdom, knowledge, guidance or power we are giving demons a legal right.
· Our scriptural references are: Acts 19:17-20
· We discussed 3 possibilities for a poltergeist having a legal right. An invitation from someone in the home at some point in time, the land the home is built upon belongs to a demonic entity and a prior guest or family member leaving an object of occult or other demonic paraphernalia.
· There are 4 simple steps to clean out our house from poltergeists but you can also do it just to clean out your house in general and invite the Holy Spirit to reside with you there.
· The scriptural references for anointing can be found in Matthew 6:17, Mark 14:3-9, Mark 6:13, James 5:14
We encourage you:
· To have an active Bible reading plan, it will be helpful in gaining wisdom and understanding and it is required for the gift of spiritual discernment
· Watch the video on our YouTube channel, Life Journey with Dawn Simmons for additional background on Ephesus.
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