Ministering Deliverance

Another stronghold or inroad is ancestral. We call this a familiar spirit. Exodus 20:5 puts it this way, "You shall not worship them or serve them for I the Lord your God am a jealous God visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me." This is something that God gets, the enemy who does play by fair rules understands that this is an inroad, an avenue that he can travel down. There's judgment that may come from generation to generation, but the devil says, "This is a road that I can go down too," so he will inflict something from generation to generation. My spirit of rage was an ancestral sin. I was born with this; all my life I had this. It came from my mother's side; my grandfather, Joe Howard, had a spirit of rage. It was so consuming, so dominating, his son, Joe Howard Jr., also had it. He had three sons and two daughters, only one of them had the spirit of rage. It was the one that had the family name. Joe Howard and he had it. My uncle Joe was so consumed with rage, that the family even had a plan to deal with his rage. My grandpa would be out in the field, my mother, who was the oldest, would take the little children and hide them, my Aunt Mary would go out into the field and get my grandpa. He would come in to try to settle him down. In the latter times it would get so severe that he could not settle him down. The only way to settle him was for grandpa to take his fist and to physically knock him out.

They committed uncle Joe to a hospital. He asked the Lord to deliver him. The Lord came and delivered him divinely of the spirit of rage. He told my grandparents, "God has delivered me of the spirit of rage, so you can come get me." And they said, "No way, the way our history is with you." They changed their minds only when my two aunts who prayed sent them a letter without any knowledge of what Joe had said. The letter said, "Go pick up Joe, God has told us that He has delivered him of this rage." So they went and picked him up.

My mom didn't have the spirit of rage; how come I got it? Well, my name is Rodney Howard Hogue. My grandfather's name was Joe Howard, his son was Joe Howard Jr. So who got the family name? I also got the family demon. That was one birthright I didn't care to have. This thing was no respecter, it came down the generational line. When I named my children, I made sure they had no name that was connected with the Howard family. They travel down from generation to generation. We're going to break off some of the generational things that have come down from generation to generation. A lot of times the things that we have is the fertile ground that has come to that generation. We are prone to it, we can give in to it. I don't think I was born with that demon as much as I just gave in to it. I don't know. But this thing was strong within me; there wasn't anything in my life we could point to why this thing was there.

I remember ministering to a man one time who had a spirit of rage in the early 1980s. At that time I did a lot more talking to demons than I do now. Nobody was there to teach me what to do, so far as getting information and speaking to demons. I commanded the demons to tell me whey they came in; they gave me a year and a situation so specific. I said, "You are lying to me because this person isn't that old. This was like 10 years before this person was born. I brought this to the judgment seat of Christ, and said, "You are lying to me, you can't do this, you must tell me the truth." But I was still getting this thing. The Spirit of the Lord spoke to me and said, "It came in through the father." So I asked it if it came in through the father, and it said, "Yes." When we pulled up that ground, that spirit left. When we got rid of that, then the ground was given up and then we were able to minister deliverance to this man. We had two or three things that came in that occasion. This is why you find children being demonized -- it comes in through an ancestral spirit.

Empowered objects are another inroad. People can have an item in their possession and not be aware of it. Just because you have an article in your house, do not automatically assume that you have demons in your house. But those are inroads that we need to understand.

Empowered objects are items that are used in cultic or that are cultic in practice. Demons can attach to them. They can be things like articles of jewelry, statues, masks, etc. When I travel to foreign countries I do not bring anything home that would represent some foreign god or deity. I don't have any Buddhas in my house. Some people argue that the item was given to them by someone who was very close to them who died, and that it is all they have to remember the person by. I would say that they need to get rid of the stuff and find another way to remember them.

If you have anything that can be used by darkness, representative of darkness, throw it out, especially if you have received it as a gift. A woman had inherited some jewelry from an aunt involved in witchcraft. For example, she got the kitchen table from her aunt, and the kitchen table moved. It bounced. She decided she didn't want it anymore. She threw it away. This same woman had some jewelry her aunt had given her. These were very valuable pieces -- gold and great value to this jewelry. She had received some of this jewelry as gifts and the rest of it as inheritance. Her aunt, the one who practiced witchcraft, had been very dear to her. She wanted to keep the jewelry, but there were demons attached to it from the witchcraft, so she asked me what to do. The Lord had her bring it up in the conversation, and my response was, "If the Lord brought it up, then He wants you to get rid of it." So she called her husband, told him where it was, and I went over to pick it up. I brought it to her, gave it to her, and she gave it to me. And I received it, which was a dumb thing for me to do because then I had the harassment because I still had these articles of jewelry with me. I had some very physical things going on. It was weird stuff, things were flying and stuff like that. I got rid of them, the Lord told me, "You received these and you shouldn't have." So I got them and said, "I reject these!" Then I drove across the bridge, throwing them into Lake Washington because I did not want anyone else to get these empowered objects.

Anything that is given, people may not know what they have, the Holy Spirit will begin to guide you to those things. He will show you what to get rid of. I do get rid of the obvious, and then I also get rid of whatever else the Holy Spirit leads me to get rid of.

And keep in mind that even though some of the people involved in those kinds of things may think they are actually giving a blessing of some sort, still the enemy does not play by fair rules and puts a curse because they received something that did not come from God. So, those things like that -- there are certain things like that, that I just don't hang onto. We need to be real discerning with that. Some things, no doubt, are neutral. Others are empowered.

Of course, you do have to be a bit careful about getting rid of other people's things. If you are in a household where you don't have authority to get rid of it, you can't just throw an empowered object away because you don't have the authority to do so. In that type of situation I would recognize that this thing is in the house. I believe there is a grace of God to cover and protect. God will understand that you are not hanging onto another's property out of rebellion. If you have the authority to get rid of it, do so. But if you don't have that authority, don't get rid of it. Just go and pray and cover it and ask God to protect it. The same holds when you are visiting someone's house and they have something that makes you uncomfortable. I pray a brief covering prayer while I am there. I don't just go throw other people's things away.

The next stronghold we will look at is involuntary exposure to evil. That would be like exposing children to pornography or exposing children to sexual acts or even movies that may create fear. Let me share an example. There was a woman named Sharon who had a 4- year-old son. And the father worked on a submarine and would be away at sea for long periods of time and then home for a while. One time he was home, he watched the movie "Poltergeist" with his 4-year-old son. He shouldn't have been watching a show like that with a young child, but for some reason that thought did not cross his mind. He had had a relationship with God and just kind of poo-pooed that kind of stuff. He thought that it was not a big deal and his little son watched it with him.

He went back to sea as submariners do. While he was gone, the son just would not sleep by himself. He was in such great fear that he always had to sleep with his mother. She said this became very annoying. So, one night before she went to bed, he was crying and said, "I want to come sleep with you." She said, "No, you've got to sleep here tonight." Finally, she began to think this might be something of darkness, it might be the devil doing this. The Lord brought an incident to her memory. She remembered all the times that she was driving down the road and she was singing and worshiping the Lord. Her little 4-year-old boy would reach over and put his hand over her mouth and say, "Don't sing about Jesus. Don't sing about Jesus." She began to realize that something spiritual was going on and that was probably related to the fear her son was experiencing.

So she just began to rebuke the fear and all of a sudden the boy looked around and said, "Mommy, I can't see." Now, the light was on. There's nothing as fierce in the world as an angry mamma whose baby has been touched. That protective thing that kind of rises up and she decides the danger is not going to touch her baby anymore. So, she just went after this thing. She said, "You let go of my baby in the name of Jesus. I rebuke you. I send you to hell." The wrath of God and the fury of mommy rose up in this woman.

After a little bit, he said, "I can see you, Mommy." And a smile came on his face. He was able from then on to sleep through the night in his own bed. He didn't have the fear and he never went back and slept in her bed. The only thing she can point it to (and she felt like the Lord told her this) is that she remembers coming in the house one day and saw her little 4-year-old watching "Poltergeist" with the dad. So that was one of those involuntary things. It was involuntary exposure to some evil.