How Does Satan Oppress People?

How does the devil oppress Christians?

This just do not sound right! How on earth does he succeed doing this?

When Jesus Christ still walked this earth this very thing kept Him very busy. He went through Judea and healed the sick right through His earthly ministry. He delivered people who were oppressed by satan. Yes I admit that those people were not Christians; they were Jews. But yet, even after the redemption work of Christ on the cross, this is still a problem for most Christians today. In the Bible we see that people were oppressed by satan although we clearly see that Christ redeemed us from that oppression:

Luke 4:18 (NKJV)

The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, Because He has anointed Me To preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives And recovery of sight to the blind, To set at liberty those who are oppressed;

Matthew 4:24 (ESV)

So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, those oppressed by demons, epileptics, and paralytics, and he healed them.

Now how does the devil go oppressing people even after Christ paid the price for them and after He delivered them from sin and diseases? No, the devil does not have the power to go out and oppress people all over by inflicting them with all sorts of diseases. It does appear that way but it is just not the truth. He however does oppress people and this is why I am writing this post today. Christians need to know how he does that in order to understand how to resist being oppressed by him.

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Firstly we do need to understand the following about hell, diseases and the punishment of God:

  • God created hell to punish satan, demons and unrighteous people if they die without Christ. Those who reject Christ cannot escape hell.

  • God created sickness and diseases to punish people who sin. We however know that God the Father do not punish anyone anymore because of the redemption work of Christ. This includes the saved and the unsaved. Even the unsaved live in a time of grace. Anyone who dies without Jesus Christ however brings the curse of the law unto himself the moment he dies without Christ. At that moment he descends into hell where he must now carry his own punishment. Because he rejected the blood of Christ God the Father now punishes him for that. The point I want to make here however is that God the father created sickness just as He created hell. Both came into existence because of a decision made by the Father. Both belong to Him.  

  • Only a God can punish. Only a ruler of a kingdom can make laws and force his subjects to live according to those laws. In order for such a ruler to make laws, to enforce those laws and to punish his subjects if they do not conform to those laws, he needs to be a lawful ruler. His ruler-ship needs to be legitimate. These are some of the reasons why satan cannot punish people. He is not a lawful ruler or a God who can make laws, who can enforce laws and who can punish people who do not conform to those laws. Satan cannot throw you in hell and he cannot put sicknesses and diseases upon you even if he wanted to. Firstly he is not God the Father and secondly a child of God cannot be punished anymore by anyone at all. Not even God the Father can punish you because of the redemptive work of Christ. A child of God can legally not be punished and sicknesses and diseases are nothing but punishment. That is what it was created for. It serves and cannot serve any other purpose.

  • Right through the Bible it is clearly stated that God punishes people with sickness. He also throws people in hell and He uses His angels to throw those people in hell. Does that make Him a bad God? Does that make Him an unjust God? No, that makes Him a fair God. This world is filled with bad, unholy people who murder and oppress women, children and good people! God always protects the weak. These people need to be punished. They need to pay for their atrocities! That is only fair and that must be done! God cannot allow people to do what they want and just get away with it! All righteous people do understand this.

  • Don’t you believe that this wonderful and loving God of us is able to carry out such violent and harsh acts? This does not make Him cruel you know. It makes Him just. Read the Scriptures below and see how God used to punish people and how He did it:

    Isaiah 45:6-7

    That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the LORD, and there is none else. 

    7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things

    The evil that God refers to in verse 7 is the “punishment” of God. That includes hell and it includes diseases, famine and all sorts of other ways of punishment in order to bring people to justice. Just read the following Scriptures as proof for this statement:

    Deuteronomy 28:21-25

    21 The LORD shall make the pestilence cleave unto thee, until he have consumed thee from off the land, whither thou goest to possess it.

    22 The LORD shall smite thee with a consumption, and with a fever, and with an inflammation, and with an extreme burning, and with the sword, and with blasting, and with mildew; and they shall pursue thee until thou perish. 

    23 And thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee shall be iron. 

    24 The LORD shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust: from heaven shall it come down upon thee, until thou be destroyed. 

    25 The LORD shall cause thee to be smitten before thine enemies: thou shalt go out one way against them, and flee seven ways before them: and shalt be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth.

    These verses are just a few among a lot of Scripture saying the same thing. It was a warning from God to Israel. He warned them but they did not listen. God then kept His word and HE brought all the evil described in this Scripture over the nation of Israel. He did not use the devil to do it for Him. No, He did it Himself. He is God and He does this when necessary.

    God uses angels to throw the devil, demons and even people in hell. Do you know what type of torment and afflictions people have to go through in hell? God is certainly capable of punishing people and He uses the good guys to punish the bad guys. When a man committed a crime the police arrest him and they, along with prison wardens, throw him in jail. It is the good guys who are enforcing the law. It is the good guys who bring people to justice. The government does not utilize criminals to bring other people to justice. God does not use satan to punish people.

    God even punished His own Son in our place there on the cross. He did not call satan to come and punish Jesus. No, He did it Himself. It is recorded in Isaiah 53:

    Isaiah 53:4,6,10

    4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

    6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

    10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.

    Now we know that God punished Jesus so that we may walk free. For this reason God does NOT punish anymore. After He punished Jesus Christ for the sins of all men, there is no more punishment except for those who die without Jesus Christ. The day a person dies without Jesus Christ, on that day God’s grace runs out on that person. Isaiah clearly predicted that there will be a period of grace in the dispensation of the Messiah:

    Isaiah 65:20

    There shall be no more thence an infant of days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days: for the child shall die an hundred years old; but the sinner being an hundred years old shall be accursed.

    Please take note that the curse of the law is nothing else than punishment. When someone, according to Deuteronomy 27:11-26, declared a curse onto someone it meant that the law was broken and that the person who trespassed the law must now be punished. In the dispensation of Christ that cannot happen because all sins have been paid for by Christ when he took all punishment on Him. A person has to die without Christ before the curse can come over Him. The curse kicks into action when a person dies if he rejected the blood of Christ. Such a person must then pay for his own sins. This is a clear indication that God does not punish anyone anymore. So how can people believe the lie that the devil makes them sick. No, nobody confiscated or hijacked hell or God’s methods of punishment or God’s legal right to punish from Him. The devil cannot throw you in hell and he cannot put diseases onto you. He is not God!

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What caused the confusion in terms of punishment and diseases?

It is clear from certain Scriptures in the Bible and from personal testimonies that there definitely is a connection between diseases and satanic oppression. Jesus referred to sick people as being oppressed by satan. One testimony that I heard was in the life of Kenneth Hagin. He testified that he once prayed for a lady with lung cancer for four evenings in a row. She just did not get healed in the healing services. The next evening, the fifth service that he held, she was in the healing-line again and Kenneth decided to pray for her again. The moment he started praying for her he suddenly saw in the spirit realm. He could see a small demon hanging onto this lady’s lungs. Kenneth immediately knew that the cancer was caused by this little demon. He immediately cast it out and the lady was immediately and miraculously healed.

Now Scriptures referring to sick people being oppressed by satan and testimonies like the one above may bring us under the impression that satan can go around to randomly inflict people with diseases. This is however not true. Satan hasn’t got that power. If he had he would have gone rampant on all mankind. He hates us so much that he would have killed us like flies.

Exactly how does the devil oppress Christians?

In order to answer this question we need to make it clear why people and even why Christians still get sick today. There are two very important reasons for this. Firstly sickness is a natural and a direct result of sin. That means any person using drugs, smoking or getting involved in any sin will eventually bring diseases into their bodies directly because of that particular sin. Smoking can cause lung cancer and so can drugs also cause a number of diseases. Even spiritual sin like unforgiveness can cause sicknesses like cancer. It is not God the Father punishing people. It is people naturally causes sicknesses to germinate and to grow inside their bodies because of sin.

Secondly Christians get sick because of unbelief. They just do not believe that God can protect them against danger, sicknesses and any other acts and occurrences that can and may cause injury or damage to their bodies. Because of unbelief many Christians are exposed to this kind of thing. This is where satanic oppression gets to such people.

Satan’s primary goal is to get Christians involved in sin. His secondary objective is to cause people to doubt in God’s word of protection. This is how satanic oppression starts.

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Every sickness and every disease starts at the “border posts” of the kingdom of God. It starts at the “border posts” of your circumstances. It starts at the “border posts” of your life which is your own little kingdom that God wants you to have dominion over. Let me explain:

Jesus Christ conquered over the devil on the cross. As a sinless human being He paid the price on the cross for the redemption of our souls. With this victory Jesus took the reign of the earth back from satan. He totally disarmed him and He gave us dominion over our own personal circumstances, the earth and over satan and his demons. We read about this in the book of Colossians:

Colossians 2:15

And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it.

Jesus won the battle for us. He openly triumphed over satan and He disarmed him. The devil really has no power over us. He is a defeated foe. For this reason we are not involved in a war with him. The instruction from God is to submit ourselves to God and to resist the devil. Resisting is a somewhat passive resistance like manning a border post. The sole purpose of a border post is to keep illegal people out. Yes, God did equip us with strong and potent armor in order to protect ourselves. We need to be ready for evil forces by clothing ourselves with the full armor of God.

Although we are not involved in a warfare we do need to protect our borders and we do need to be strong. Like any nation we deploy our soldiers on our border posts, ready and clothed in full armor.

At this border post our enemy arrives with lies and deception. He does not arrive at the border post with firearms, canons or bazookas. He is not even clothed in spiritual warfare armor because the Lord Jesus Christ completely disarmed him on that wonderful day. He however does have a very strong weapon! His tongue! At the border post he seeks only one thing and that is entry. He wants an open door. He wants a place in our lives. In order to achieve this he starts to negotiate with us. He starts to reason with us. He tries all his dirty little tricks in order to persuade us to open the gate for him. He even tries to creep past us without us noticing. He entices us to open the door for him by allowing sin in our lives. He attempts to get us so far as to confess negative things over our lives. He lies and he deceives hoping that we will fall for those lies. Exactly what he did with Eve. And again, Adam and Eve were not involved in a spiritual warfare with satan. Even today the devil use the same tactics as he did with Adam and Eve. He questions the word and the promises of God in order to make us doubt in God. There at the border post is where it all starts.

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As a result we sometimes start harboring ungodly and toxic thoughts. The more we give in to his lies, temptations and deceptions, the more we act and the more we say what he wants us to do and wants us to say.

This leads to sin and sin brings death. We start smoking and drinking. We start despising other people and we start to be unforgiving towards other people. Sin is the cause of sickness. Smoking causes all sorts of lung diseases. Hate and bitterness (unforgiveness) causes cancer and other diseases. This is how we open the door for the devil. This is how satan slowly but surely starts oppressing a child of God. We allow him to influence us and that causes us to become sick. We sometimes allow demons to cause affliction in our bodies by giving them permission to do so. We give in to his ways, his will and the pressure that he puts on us. He cannot make you sick unless you open the door for him by getting involved in all these ungodly practices, disobedience and fear. The devil does not oppress innocent Christians by putting all kinds of disease onto them. In fact, the devil can do absolutely nothing to an innocent Christian. It is the “not so innocent Christian” who picks up problems.

People, we can never blame God because He does not tempt us and He does not punish us. We can never blame the devil because he just hasn’t got any power over us. We can only blame ourselves because we got involved in bad thinking and sin because of the lies, temptations and deception that we listened to and adhered to. We accepted the lies of the enemy there at the border post and we allowed him to enter into our lives. We are absolutely NEVER a victim of circumstances outside our control. That is a lie from hell! We are always to blame for anything and everything that goes wrong in our lives. God gave us Divine protection, Divine healing, Divine provision and Divine maintenance. If we serve God the way we should we are totally protected.

The problem is that we are not obedient to God and His word. We do not believe his word and we do not make his word part of our lives. We do not meditate on His word so that the Holy Spirit can use the word to build up our most holy faith. Stop blaming the devil and stop blaming God. Accept your responsibility to reign as a king in the kingdom of God and over your personal circumstances according to His will and His word. Do not give the devil any place in your life and do not open any door for him. Submit yourself to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you. If you do this, he cannot do anything to you at all.

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What a wonderful truth this is? We can always be victorious in all circumstances in life. Praise God for the work he has done! With His blood he saved us! With His power He raised us! Praise God for the work He has done!

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