Month: August 2018

I’m irritated by the word games people play to describe what the devil does. All this artful language to avoid admitting that Christians can have demons is disingenuous and untruthful.  Some are so scared to say the word “possession” when referring to believers that they obfuscate the obvious by saying, “Well, a Christian can’t be possessed, but they can be oppressed . . . harassed . . . obsessed . . . influenced . . . tormented. Pick any word but “possessed.” True, the more accurate translation of the King James Version word “possessed” is closer to the term “demonized” (daimonizomai—to be possessed by a demon). But it’s not linguistic accuracy that concerns critics of deliverance. It’s the fear of admitting that a demon may actually be inside a born-again believer, and take over their minds, vocal cords, and bodies, to speak, express will, and even commit violent acts.  

I’ve said it before, I say it again. I’ve done 40,000 plus documented exorcisms over four decades. Almost all such deliverances were done on confessing Christians. This group includes pastors, priests, nuns, worship leaders, seminary professors, and some in the Catholic, evangelical, and charismatic communities who are publicly well-known. Along with other prayer partners who were present, I’ve witnessed these individuals cursing, spouting vile blasphemies, and even bodily assaulting me. One wanted to kill me. Don’t tell me that Christians can’t have demons. I have the cracked ribs, broken facial cartilage, and bloody wounds to prove it. I’ve been knocked down, strangled, slugged, and threatened with bodily harm—all actions from people that friends and family members testify were committed Christians.   

I’m especially upset by what I heard a pastor say in a recent sermon. In an otherwise brilliant message, this well-known preacher, whose church I attended in-person, incognito, warned the congregation about the power of demons and the devil — for unbelievers. As to the question of a Christian being demon possessed, he opined that a believer couldn’t be controlled by a demon, and thus not possessed. Here was his way out of the obvious, and I quote him directly: “A believer can’t lose their salvation and thus they can’t have a demon, but they can fake their salvation and have a demon.”  

Word games. So, by this logic, if someone has demonstrated a consistent Christian witness, but for some reason displays demonic behavior to the point of an actual manifestation, we can know for certain is that they were never really saved. Word games. The games need to stop. The truth must be faced. How Christians are demonized is thoroughly described in our International School of Exorcism (to enroll CLICK HERE.) The explanation of Christians being demonized is irrefutable, to anyone not blinded by theological prejudice. Too many Christians suffer the enslavement of evil spirits. They deserve to be free. They can be free. And by the grace of God, this ministry will spread the message that they will be free.

An encouraging word: FALSE PROPHETS LOOK REAL

John 13:26 is the account of the Last Supper and Christ identifying Judas as his betrayer. We’ve all heard this story many times but miss the point. Judas fooled all the other disciples because he did what they did. Judas healed people in the name of Jesus. He even cast out demons. Had he not performed miracles in Christ’s authority, his deception would have been obvious. This is the danger of false prophets. As with Judas, they look like the real thing. I constantly warn people to be careful about who they go to for deliverance. Know the person and know their doctrine, or you might get more demons while trying to rid yourself of the ones you already have. 

“On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.” The words of hymnist Edward Mote in 1834 don’t seem to carry much weight today. Neither do the lyrics of contemporary artist Jeremy Camp, “Give me Jesus, You can have all this world, Just give me Jesus.” Today’s gospel seems to be a “Jesus Plus” salvation. Jesus plus yoga; Jesus plus Quigong; Jesus plus Tai Chi; Jesus plus reiki; Jesus plus enneagrams (to read my blog “Beware the Enneagram” July 16, 2018, CLICK HERE.)  

The denial of deliverance is at the core of this dilemma. People in the pew are suffering. Many are under attack from pornography, drug addiction, and alcoholism. Marriages are falling apart. Sexual dysphoria is rampant. And the answer of too many preachers is, you’ll be all right if you just, “Confess this,” or “Prophesy that,” or “Attend this Conference.” But these answers don’t work if you have demons. Positively confess all you want, but if you have demons they aren’t leaving. Follow the prophecies of the latest and greatest seer to come along, but if you’re living under a curse, nothing really going to change much. Do Holy Yoga, but downward-dog won’t make Jezebel go. Balance your energies, but Leviathan isn’t leaving. Match all nine characteristic of your occult, astrology-based enneagram numbers and you’ll still live in torment. You can do any of these latest evangelical fads and your life will still spiral downward UNLESS YOU GET AN EXORCISM.  

Christians need to stop assuaging their demons, appeasing their evil spirits, and placating their curses. Real demons don’t leave unless there is real deliverance. I’m not talking about politically correct soaking prayers or demonic expulsions without manifestations. Frankly, I don’t know which is worse, those who don’t believe in deliverance or those who say they do and practice a wimpy, watered-down version that offends no one and accomplishes nothing.  

Away with all the gimmicks and syncretism of adopting the devil’s devices, like yoga, in a pseudo-sanctified setting. We don’t need any more of this Jesus Junk. Just give me Jesus, Jesus is enough! 

An encouraging word: GOD IS JUST

“Does God pervert justice?” So said Bildad the Shuhite (one of “Job’s comforters”) with a rhetorical flourish (Job 8:3). Of course not. God is just, but when His justice is not enacted forcefully and quickly, evil flourishes. Today it seems that the balance of justice all too often tips in favor of criminal rights, rather than public good. But all who do evil will someday answer to the Supreme Magistrate, the Lord himself. Be sure that you act justly, because the Lord judges righteousness by the measure of his Son, Jesus Christ. And only His grace will stay the hand of condemnation for what we all deserve for our unrighteousness.  

Bob Larson has trained healing and deliverance teams all over the world to set the captives free and Do What Jesus Did® (Luke 4:18). You can partner with Bob and support this vision to demonstrate God’s power in action by calling 303-980-1511 or clicking here to donate online.

George Whitefield was an English, Anglican cleric and pioneer of Methodism and, what we know today as, evangelicalism. Short, portly, and cross-eyed he became the most famous clergyman of the 18th century, and sparked the American revival known as the First Great Awakening. I was reminded of his legacy last week while ministering in Washington, D. C. and visiting the Museum of the Bible. Whitefield felt called of God to sail to America and traveled the colonies on horseback, calling America to repentance. In seven fruitful years of ministry he preached more than 18,000 sermons to 10 million people, mostly standing in the open air.  

Benjamin Franklin, who befriend Whitefield, once estimated an audience of 30,000 people, standing outdoors, smitten with a sense of sin and repentance. In the Museum, I saw a replica of the folding pulpit platform that he’d stand on to be heard above the crowd. Without the benefit of a microphone he could be heard 500 feet away, imploring sinners to turn from their wickedness. But not all received him well. A woman assaulted him with a pistol. Dead cats were thrown at him. A man nearly killed him with a brass-headed cane. One listener climbed a tree to urinate on Whitefield.  

Worse yet, other clergymen almost unanimously rejected him, mainly because he railed against their hypocrisy and anaemia. Colonial pastors forbade him to speak in their churches. Critics called him a “sorcerer” and a “self-seeking creature” and condemned him for believing in “instant conversions.” Ten pamphlets were printed condemning him. A prominent newspaper called him “blasphemous.” The printer in England who had first printed his book, eventually called him “a devil, the beast, the Antichrist.” He responded that his enemies where like “Pharaoh and the Egyptians in the Bible.” 

Whitefield was my kind of guy. I believe that if the churches of his time had not silenced the ministry of deliverance, he would have been out in those open fields casting out demons. I don’t have his folding pulpit, but I do have YouTube, and the internet allows me, like Whitefield, to stand above the masses and cry out with the message of freedom from sin and Satan. The students of our International School of Exorcism are part of his legacy. Together let us demonstrate the courage of Whitefield’s legacy, shouting to all within earshot, that Jesus saves and sets the captives free! 

An encouraging word: BE TRUE TO YOUR WORD

Scripture tells us that God blesses a man who speaks the truth and honors his word, even when it is hard to do so (Psalm 15:4 “keeps his oath even when it hurts” NIV). We’ve all been disappointed by Christians who promised things and didn’t come through or said one thing and did another. We have high expectations of our brethren in Christ, and rightfully so. We expect them to be different from the “world” and so does God. Think of what you’ve said to your fellow Believers and make sure that you’ve followed through. It’s a great way to keep friends and a certain way to keep God’s favor. 

Sunday morning at church should be a time of inspiration and motivation. Two weeks ago, on a rare weekend home with the family, it was a time of frustration for me. My hopes were high when the pastor announced he’d be speaking on Ephesians chapter six, “The Armor of God.” The church is evangelical, a market-driven, slogan-heavy, offend-no-one kind of place. Even so, how could they compromise Paul’s teaching about the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes of the gospel, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the spirit, the Word of God. I was suckered in even further, when the pastor declared, “Spiritual warfare is real. We’re in a war with the devil, and we need to be prepared to fight.” 

I wondered if this church had undergone an epiphany of revelation about demons and the devil. Then, the pastor laid down the ground rules: “In all my years of ministry [30 or so] I’ve never encountered a demon, but I have been confronted by demonic systems of belief.” He assured his listeners that no Christian could be possessed by demons. I expected that. He added some Calvinistic flavor, by pointing out the “concurrency” between “personal choice” and “election.” (Students of our School of Exorcism will recognize this biblical slight-of-hand; if you are elected by God to be saved and have no choice in the matter, it stands to reason that God would not “elect” someone with demons, so if you are a Christian, you can’t have demons.) 

So, if he’d never run into a demon, why teach spiritual warfare and the armor of God? The pastor explained that our fight isn’t against Satan and his demons but against a “satanic system of belief.” He moved from the concrete of real demons and a real devil to the philosophical abstract of a system of satanic belief. Very clever. No need to resist, rebuke, or cast out demons. According to this pastor, a Christian only needs to “by faith put on the armor of God” and all resistance of evil will go away. I give this pastor credit for such a clever means of denying the existential reality of the demonic and summarily dismissing deliverance.

There are so many fallacies here I can’t begin to list them all: 1) the example of Jesus who cast out demons, 2) the witness of exorcism in the apostolic age, 3) the testimony of early church fathers regarding confronting real demons, and 4) the present-day witness of deliverance ministries. Our ministry is now approaching 1,000 graduates of our International School of Exorcism. These mighty men and women of God face, almost daily, a reality this pastor denied in a message preached to a congregation of thousands!

In summary, this pastor’s thesis was that spiritual warfare is a battle only in the mind, a victory against an ephemeral essence of immorality, not a struggle against real, evil entities intent on the destruction of believers. What I learned in church that Sunday is that there’s more than one way to deny the demonic. You don’t have to be an atheist to dismiss the devil. You can espouse a politically correct theology that relegates all the devil does to a conceptual notion, a theoretical concept of evil that wafts in the wind, posing no real threat — if you’ve been elected to be saved. But I remind this pastor that James 2:19 tells us that the demons do believe in deliverance and they tremble at the thought.

An encouraging word: Don’t Be a Liar

Who is a liar? That question can be asked of many these days, from Hollywood to Congress. Politicians on both sides constantly stretch the truth to fit their agendas. We now know that many of the most powerful people in Hollywood were living a lie, pretending to be upstanding while privately accosting, even raping, women (and men)! The ultimate test of lying is defined in 1 John 2:22: “Who is a liar, but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ.” People may lie about many things, but the most egregious falsehood is refusing to acknowledge the deity of Jesus. You can get through life telling little white lies, but you can’t get to heaven by refusing to confess that Christ is God.

11 Bob Larson has trained healing and deliverance teams all over the world to set the captives free and Do What Jesus Did® (Luke 4:18). You can partner with Bob and support this vision to demonstrate God’s power in action by calling 303-980-1511 or clicking here to donate online.