Know Your Enemy: Demonic Hierarchy & Spirit Types

What's going on, family, and welcome to video number two, Know Your Enemy, Demonic Hierarchy and Spirit Types. So welcome back to the Children's Bread Deliverance course. Pay attention. In our last session, we laid the biblical foundation. We established that deliverance is the children's bread. It's for us. And that is the core mission of Jesus. And that the Greek word, Sozo, Rhyome, and Elythro, reveal a God who saves, rescues, and liberates completely. I want you to say that out of your mouth completely. Now, we move into the territory that many teachers avoid. We are going to talk about the enemy. Not to glorify him, not to give him attention, especially the attention he does not deserve, but because you cannot defeat what you do not understand. So we need to know our enemy. The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 2, verse 11, Lest Satan should take advantage of us, for we are not ignorant of his devices. The word devices in the Greek is the word noma, which means thought schemes and mental strategies. So Satan's primary weapon is not raw power. It is deception. He is a master strategist. And if you are ignorant of how he operates, he will take advantage of you. And the word advantage is the Greek word, πλανήκωτο. It's to defraud, to make more than one share. The devil is a thief and ignorance is the door he walks through.

Now, the most comprehensive passage on demonic hierarchy in the entire Bible is Ephesians 6. 12. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Ephesians 6. 12. Paul gives us four ranks. These are not synonyms. These are distinct levels of demonic authority and understanding them changes how you pray, how you war, and how you minister deliverance. The first rank is principalities and the Greek word for principalities is αρχή. And this means, meaning first in rank, chief rulers. These are territorial spirits assigned over nations, regions, and cities. Daniel chapter 10 gives us the clearest example. Daniel prayed and fasted for 21 days and the angel who sat, who was sent to him said in verse 13, But the prince of the kingdom of Persia, this is the angel speaking to Daniel, But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me 21 days and behold, Michael, one of the chief princes came to help me for I had been left alone there with the kings of Persia. Daniel 10. 13. A demonic prince over the nation of Persia had enough authority to delay an angelic messenger for three weeks that tells you something about the level of power operating at the principality level. These are not the demons you encounter in typical deliverance sessions. These are the spirits that shape the spiritual atmosphere over territories. The second rank is powers and it's the Greek word εξουσία, meaning delegated authority.

These spirits operate under principalities and enforce demonic agendas in specific domains. So it's like government, media, education, religion. These, they are the administrators of darkness. The third rank, number three, is the rulers of darkness of this age and the Greek word is κοσμόκρατορ. This is a compound word meaning cosmos, which means world order and κράτος, which means strength or dominion. So this third rank of demons are the world rulers of darkness. They influence culture, trends, and societal norms. When you see an entire generation shifting toward a particular sin or ideologies, like overnight, you're watching κοσμόκρατος at work. The fourth rank is spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. And this is the word in the Greek for νουμάτικα πονηρία. In the Greek, πονηρία comes from πονηρος, which is the same word used for the wicked one in Matthew 13. These are the, these are spirits of intense evil that operate in the heavenly or spiritual realm. And some scholars believe that these are the spirits most directly involved in corrupting worship, doctrine, and the spiritual lives of believers. Now, here is what matters for you, particularly in deliverance, in a deliverance session, you're not typically dealing with principalities or κοσμόκρατος, you are dealing with the individual spirits. And when the Bible calls, or what the Bible calls unclean spirits or evil spirits that have attached to a person, but those individual spirits enter or answer, I'm sorry, answer to the. ranks. That is why sometimes in deliverance, you will encounter a spirit that is unusually resistant. It may be because it is empowered by a higher ranking entity. Let me walk you through the most common spirit types you encounter in ministry. The spirit of fear is one of them.

This is one of the most prevalent spirits in the earth. 2 Timothy chapter 1 verse 7 says, For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind. 2 Timothy 1.7 Paul calls fear a spirit. Not just an emotion, not just a feeling, a literal demon. That means there are people who have been diagnosed with anxiety disorders, panic disorders, and phobias who are actually hosting a spirit of fear. This does not mean every anxious person is demonized though. But it does mean that fear can have a spiritual root and when it does, no amount of therapy will fully resolve it. You have to address the spirit. The spirit of infirmity in Luke 13.11. Look at this. And behold, there was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity for 18 years and was bent over and could in no way raise herself up. Luke 13.11. This woman had a physical condition caused by a demon. 18 years of suffering. The doctor would have treated the systems, but Jesus addressed the source. There are people in hospitals, on medications, living with chronic conditions, and their root is spiritual. Not all sickness is demonic, but some sickness is. And the church needs to have discernment to know the difference. The python spirit, also called the spirit of divination. Acts 16.16. Now it happened, as we went to prayer, that a certain slave girl, possessed with a spirit of divination, met us, who brought her master's much profit by fortune-telling. The word divination here in the Greek is python. It's in the Greek, pneuma pythonia, a python spirit. And just like a physical python, this spirit does not bite. It squeezes. It constricts. It wraps around your prayer life, your finances, your ministry, and slowly suffocates the life out of it. People under a python spirit often feel spiritually exhausted, unable to pray, or financially strangled. The spirit also operates heavily in false prophecy and fortune-telling. The spirit of Jezebel. This is not a female spirit. Jezebel is an operational spirit that works through control, manipulation, seduction, and silencing of prophetic voices. In Revelation 2.20, Jesus rebukes the church and Thyatira for tolerating the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach and seduce My servants. The Jezebel spirit seeks positions of influence in order to corrupt worship and doctrine from within. The deaf and dumb spirit, another spirit, Mark 9.25. When Jesus saw that the people came running together, He rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, deaf and dumb spirit, I command you to come out of him and enter in him no more. Mark 9.25. The spirit causes spiritual deafness, an inability to hear the voice of God, and spiritual muteness, an inability to speak in prayer and worship or in a declaration. Some believers who feel they can

never hear God, who struggle in worship, who feel blocked when they try to pray, they may be dealing with this spirit. Now, here's a crucial principle. Demons travel in clusters. They do not come alone. Jesus taught this in Luke 11.24-26, where a cast-out spirit returns with seven other more wicked spirits than itself in the account of this demoniac in Mark 5. When Jesus asked the demon its name, it responded to this, or it responded saying this, My name is Legion, for we are many. Mark 5.9. So a legion and the Roman army, right? Back in those days, a legion and the Roman army was about 6,000 soldiers. So whether that number is literal or figurative, the point is clear. The man was hosting a massive demonic structure within his temple, and within that structure, there are what deliverance ministers call strongmen, chief spirits that govern over the others, and Jesus referenced this in Matthew 12.29, or how can one enter a strongman's house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strongman, and then he will plunder his house, Matthew 12.29. So in deliverance, you do not just chase symptoms, you identify the strongman, the ruling spirit, and when the spirit is bound and cast out, everything under it begins to collapse. If someone is dealing with rejection, lust, addiction, depression, those may be all under one strongman, a spirit of rejection. Cast out the strongman, and the lesser spirits lose their authority. Know your enemy, not to fear him, but to dismantle him. In our next video, we're going to address one of the most debated questions in the church. Can a Christian be possessed by a demon? And the answer might surprise you. See you in the next video. Thank you.