You notice it’s seeking someone to get into. When it can’t find someone to get into, it plans to return. You notice an evil spirit has personality. It’s a spirit being, with a mind to think, and an ability to make decisions. It has the ability to speak and communicate. So it’s an invisible spirit being, with an ability to think, to plan, to speak. It’s like you’re dealing with a hostile spirit being. Notice what he says: I will return to my house, out of which I’ve come. The spirit can remember the person they came out of; and the demon is a legalist – notice what he says – ‘my house’. He claims the person, to have a right to enter them - so evil spirits look for a legal right to establish entry to a person. We’ll come back to that and develop that shortly.
So, the demon looks at this man, and said: “This is my house.” Now, the Bible tells us that: our body is the temple of the Spirit. We are redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ, we belong to Him. So your body is the house you live in; and you invite the Holy Spirit to come in. So your house becomes a temple of the Holy Spirit. Evil spirits look at people and say: ‘that’s my house.’ In other words, they claim legal grounds to enter.
Notice what it says: “When he comes, he finds it swept and put in order”. So, an evil spirit can locate the person they came out of. You can imagine from the realm of the spirit, that they can identify people. If I cast a demon out of him, and the demon moves a long way, it remembers who it came out of, and can relocate him again.
You say, ‘well, why can’t we just cast him into hell?’ There’s absolutely no scripture that indicates we are able to do that. In fact, there are many demons that are bound in hell, and they will be released in the last days. The Bible also tells us, that at the end time, Jesus will confine the demons into hell. Until then, they are Earth-bound spirits that look for people to gain access and destroy.
Notice the next thing: the demon can assess your spiritual condition. He finds it empty, swept, put in order. The word ‘empty’ means on holiday, loitering, not productive. The word ‘ordered’ means literally, to look good on the outside. Here’s a disturbing thing to realise: when we look at people, we only see the house they live in. It’s like a veil that covers the person. The Bible tells us that he is a spirit being, with a soul, living in this house.
So, the spirit sees us differently. When we look at a person, we just see the outside; when a demon looks at the person, he sees the inner man. When we look at a person, the body seems solid; when a demon looks at a person, this is just water vapour, and he sees the real person inside - and your spiritual condition is visible! From the spirit-world point of view, the real man is visible; and the evil spirit can assess the person’s condition.
I was doing deliverance one time, and I had a man come with me. It was quite a difficult deliverance, and the demon manifested strongly, and began to threaten me. I stood up against it, and then it did an unusual thing. The man turned or backed away from me, and he turned and looked at the man who’d come with me; and I saw him look, and then he laughed; and then he began to talk about the things happening in this man’s life. He uncovered what he could see! The man got very embarrassed, went very red in the face; and I said: “You’re not able to do this ministry. You haven’t established your authority properly.”
It was quite a shock for me to realise that the demon could recognise the person’s condition. If we’re going to maintain deliverance, and move the person into freedom, we must ensure that the root issues are dealt with, and the demon has no grounds to re-enter.