There is much to be said about the importance of names, not only the name of Jesus Christ (which is certainly the most important name in all the earth) but personal names, the names of towns, cities and countries—even the names of unclean spirits.

In our early days of receiving and learning about deliverance, almost everything was experiential. When we encountered a new kind of hindrance during ministry, the Holy Spirit would show us what to pray or do. The confirmation in the Word of God came later. Some of the guidance was surprising and some challenged our belief; nonetheless, as we complied with the spiritual leadership, the breakthroughs came. These kinds of experiences in ministry are still occurring as we earnestly contend to receive and achieve everything God has provided for us to go on to perfection in the overcoming life.

During our initial days of receiving the wonderful liberty and healing of the Lord through deliverance, my wife, Linda, liked to tell everyone that she only yawned when some spirit left her (actually, there was a certain amount of pride about this, since we had been seeing some violent manifestations in people when the demons were leaving them).

We were living in Richardson, Texas, I was working as an area sales representative for a custom van company, and we were ministering more and more frequently as people came to us after hearing about the miracles of deliverance and healing that were happening in our living room and with our little house group.

It was a nice, sunny spring day in 1979 when I left home to make some sales calls, but as I made my way out of our neighborhood and toward the freeway, I was strongly impressed to return home. When I arrived and walked into our house, Linda said she had been praying that I would come back and pray for her because she was suffering with an excruciating headache. After she sat down in a chair in our living room, I put my hands on her head to pray for her healing, but she began to flail her hands at me to push me away saying, “No, no, no! Don’t touch me!”

I made another attempt to touch her head, and I encountered even more violent resistance. Because of my previous experiences in the deliverance ministry, I knew that something demonic had been stirred up in my wife, and the Holy Spirit wanted her to move toward another step of freedom and healing. I strongly suspected she needed more ministry about her early years of heavy abuse from her father. So I did not back away but began to aggressively rebuke the unclean spirits as they manifested through her actions and her voice.

I won’t go into detail here about everything, but this ended up into an all-day battle of ministry. There were times of respite. Some help came. The Holy Spirit impressed a dear brother-in-the-Lord, Dewey Baker, to leave his corporate office in Dallas and come to our house in the middle of the afternoon, not knowing what was going on. He said that the Lord had told him to just go to our house. Having also been used in the ministry of deliverance, he readily joined with me in this time of ministry with Linda.

Finally, after a few hours of spiritual warfare, she began to experience some relief, and it seemed the battle was over. It was late afternoon and all of us were drained from the work of ministry. Our friend, Dewey, left and a degree of peace settled into our home.

As we were making our way to go to bed for the night, Linda began to complain that her headache had returned—in force. By the time we lay down in the bed, she was groaning with pain greater than earlier in the day. I prayed, rebuked and pleaded with the Lord for her relief, but seemingly, to no avail. I was feeling desperation and a degree of fear since I had exhausted everything I knew at that time about how to pray and war against this obvious demonic attack on my wife.

Who could I call to pray with us? I knew no one else in the deliverance ministry at this time that I could call. I had met both Win Worley and Frank Hammond a few months before, and they had both laid hands on me for this ministry, but it was midnight and I did not know how to contact them.

While Linda and I were praying fervently in the Spirit, she began to cry out, “It’s my name! It’s my name!”

“What do you mean, it’s your name?” I said.

“It’s about my middle name. I have always hated it (her middle name is Lou). I was named after my grandmother and her mother and they were mean women. I did not like my granny.”

It was then that the Holy Spirit revealed to her that “Lou” was a form of the name “Lucifer.” She had been given this name to pass-down characteristics of her grandmothers. As the name was passed down, it carried more than the nature of the namesakes, it also was a channel for psychic heredity and/or witchcraft to be passed generation to generation. Her headache came from this ancestral spirit wanting to continue to control her mind and thinking. It did not want to let go, but especially now wanted to remain in her to affect our ministry.

I immediately began to pray against this thing and the curse that came because of the ancestral sins of her ancestors—especially the sin of witchcraft. At the Name of Jesus and the confession of the power of His blood, this unclean spirit and his helpers left with a scream and some groanings. Linda fell back on her pillow, released and in peace. The headache was gone and sleep soon came.

We were amazed at what we had discovered and experienced. Our names can and do affect our lives. They can open doors for our success or failure. They can control our destiny.

Where is that in the Bible?

That’s what this book (that I am presently writing) is all about.

If you want to know more, watch the video or listen to the audio on our website: THE IMPORTANCE OF NAMES.

Stephen Ebenezer Bell