The devil is in the details. You’ve heard the old saying. It’s not in the Bible. It was a proverb attributed in the 20th Century by Ludwig Mies vander Rohe, a German/American Architect. It meant that something which seems simple may not be. The phrase is actually derived earlier in the 1800s in Germany and was originally stated as, “The good God is in the details,” “Der liebe Gott steckt im Detail.” It refers to anything which has hair-splitting attention to precision and complexity. I apply it to demonic possession.
First Kings 6:38 speaks of the building of Solomon’s temple and says, “The house was finished in all its detail and according to its plans.” Today, the body of a Christian is to be the dwelling place of God, a sacred temple set apart. First Corinthians 6:19 says so: “Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.” The passage in First Kings I just mentioned describes the minute attention paid to precision in building Solomon’s Temple. In like manner, our lives are a detailed spiritual architecture of either good or evil.
As an exorcist, I know that, generally speaking, casting out evil spirits isn’t the simple, shout-it-out process some portray it to be. There are many details in exorcism such as:
- Investigating generational evils, starting with what the victim of the devil knows about the serious sins of family members.
- Evaluating the effects that various traumas have had on the demon’s host to determine what doors were opened by such things as sexual abuse.
- Listing all the witchcraft practices of divination, New Age, spiritualism, the occult, and experimentation with pagan religions.
- Identifying the emotional strongholds of an individual, often caused by a dysfunctional family, such as rejection, abandonment, word curses, and spiritual neglect.
During a successful exorcism we are constantly looking for legal rights that demons use to possess the person. That can sometimes take a while, many minutes, even hours and days to uncover all the ways Satan gained entry. Sometimes the most important issue concerning spiritual bondage isn’t what seems obvious, but what the Bible calls ensnaring sins as it says in Hebrews 12:1: “Lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily ensnares us and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us” (NKJV). If you want deliverance from Satan’s grasp, by all means make note of the big sins in your life that you need to confess and turn away from. But be on guard. The Song of Solomon (2:15) warns that sometimes, “The little foxes spoil the vines.” What’s really holding you in Satan’s grasp may not be the more obvious bondages in your life. Remember, the devil sometimes really is in the details.
