Sid Roth

RODNEY: It should be, a person has a demon. It is the word, like the subject, the verb, echo, and then it, really, the dema. So a person has a demon.

SID: So it could be a Christian has a sickness.

RODNEY: Yeah. In fact, it’s used like that, Christian has a sickness. John the Baptist had a camelhair coat. You know Mary had a child. I mean it’s like a person has this or a person has an offense. It’s not that a demon has a person. The other time that it’s used, it’s a verb. It’s a very general verb, [foreign language], so it could talk about the guy at the Gadarene or it could talk about, listen, I just have a spirit that’s harassing me. So the word oppressed probably better describes about a person having a demon. Because a Christian cannot be owned by a demon, but they can be oppressed by one.

SID: Well, it’s a fine line. Some say a Christian could not have a demon in their spirit, but they for sure could have one in their flesh, just as you could be sick in your flesh. Is that a sin? No, it’s a sin if you could get rid of it and not get rid of it, and you just keep it the rest of your life. But, okay, tell me about, real briefly, your first deliverance.

RODNEY: My deliverance happened by seven months earlier. And by this time I’d moved to Washington State and I’m pastoring a church. My wife set up an appointment for me to minister to one of our young ladies that she thought had a demon. By this time, my wife and I were talking about this. She invites her over and I asked my wife, “Why did you do this? I never done this before. I don’t really know what I’m doing.” But she said, “You are her pastor, so you should be the one,” So she pulled a pastor card out on me, and I had to do it.

RODNEY: So she came over and I got a little bit of phone instruction, but I really didn’t know. So I didn’t know how to start this thing. So I mean, I’ve never seen one. So I thought, well I’ll just read scripture. Maybe I can stir them up. So I read scripture, but that didn’t work. So then I said, “Well let’s pray.” So we all bowed our head and closed our eyes and prayed, which by the way, do not close your eyes when you’re ministering in this area.

SID: Why?

RODNEY: Well, because you want to see what’s going on.

SID: Okay.

RODNEY: You want to observe this stuff, so you don’t want to close your eyes to a demon, but nobody told me the rule, so I didn’t know. So I got our eyes closed and I’m praying. As soon as we finished praying, I’m looking up, my wife’s looking up, and she couldn’t open her eyes. I go, “What do you mean you can’t open your eyes?” She goes, “I can’t open my eyes.”

RODNEY: I looked at my wife and I said, “What did you get us into?” But I said, “In the name of Jesus, I command those eyes to open,” and boom, they opened. And I go, whoa it worked. And then she couldn’t hear me. She was deaf. And then I said the same thing, “In the name of Jesus-“

SID: Was she naturally deaf?

RODNEY: No, all of a sudden…she sees my lips moving, but she can’t hear a thing. So then I said, “I command those ears to open,” and boom, they opened up. And for the next several hours, several hours, that was the worst experience of my life. And I don’t know if they left because we drove them out or we wore them out, but they ended up leaving. But by the end of the night, I looked at that face and I saw a face of freedom and I said, “Lord, I don’t like the mess, but I love the face.” I’ll do it for that.