Month: February 2020

A week-ago Sunday, I was present at the church our family attends when I’m home. It’s a great church. Great worship. Great teaching. Great outreach. The opening welcome was a video presentation of all the ministries they offer to special groups. Singles, seniors, college, youth, the grieving, the addicted, marriage enrichment, to name a few. All the bases were covered except one – those spiritually bound and oppressed. This is a great church. A great pastor. Dedicated people. But they don’t offer deliverance.  

Based on my experience of more than 1,000 personal, face-to-face encounters each year with individuals confessing Christ, there is a tragic, untold tale regarding this blessed church. At least half of those worshiping with me likely spend the other six days of the week suffering some degree of private, unspoken torment. They are bound by demons, in most cases through no fault of their own. Generational curses were passed on to them with a legacy of spiritual hindrance. It is for them that I declare again, as I did at the beginning of this year, THIS IS THE DECADE OF DELIVERANCE. 

Some say we’re living in the Laodicean church age of spiritual apathy. God condemns such indifference in Revelation 3:16 by declaring, “I will spit you out of my mouth!” I think we may be closer to the Thyatira church of Revelation 2:19-20 of whom Christ says, “I know your deeds, your love and faith, your service and perseverance . . .. Nevertheless, I have this against you . . . you tolerate that woman Jezebel!” Thyatira was a great and good church. Like so many successful churches today, it isn’t what they do that is upsetting. It’s what they don’t do! They don’t do deliverance. 

My book “Jezebel” (Click here to order.) reveals how this demon operates in the church. Jezebel isn’t always present by what she does, such as bringing worldliness, immorality, and false spirituality into the church. Jezebel’s goal in many good churches is to prevent congregants from receiving the fullness of life in Christ by keeping them demonized in some measure. Many commendable churches make sure there is never any mention of demons and deliverance – except for the false assurance that Christians can’t have demons. I say to the hurting people in the pew, “This is your time to be free. The power of Jesus is available to cancel your curses, defeat your demons, and offer you a life of freedom you’ve never experienced.” If you are afflicted and tormented, what your church may not offer, we do. Contact us today to arrange for your very own Personal Encounter with me or one of our ministry teams worldwide. Where so many churches are silent, we boldly herald, “This is your decade of deliverance!”

Most of my time is spent doing one-on-one Personal Spiritual Encounters, on the road during seminars and at our ministry center in Phoenix, Arizona. Every year, I minister face-to-face to nearly 1,000 hurting individuals. That gives me unique insight into what spiritually holds people in spiritual slavery. The most common causes of human bondage I witness day after day are drugs, lust, and false religion. 

DRUGS: It’s not just teens on weed. Aging hippies, middle-aged matrons, successful businessmen and women. Doctors, lawyers, even Christian leaders. The opioid crisis has invaded the church. Cannabis, with it’s devastating mental damage (especially psychosis), is epidemic. In 2017, the last year of available government statistics, more than 70,000 died from drug overdoses. But the biggest toll is the millions who have lost the ability think clearly enough to hold a job or parent a family. Most of them are demonized and in need of an exorcism. 

LUST: The porn industry rakes in $100 billion a year!! Did you see the Superbowl halftime show? Shakira salaciously wagging her tongue and her bottom? Jennifer Lopez seductively pole-dancing? Such simulated sex by body-to-body rubbing used to be reserved for “gentlemen’s clubs,” not an all-American event. The debauchery made Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” of 2004, where Justin Timberlake exposed her breast on national TV, seem almost quaint. That was a flashing moment. Super Bowl LIV halftime was an erotic spectacle for a quarter of an hour. Any wonder, that half the people who come to me for ministry are bound by demons of Lust and Jezebel? 

FALSE RELIGION: The New Age is a no longer the curiosity of fringe kooks. Actress Gwyneth Paltrow has launched a new Netflix series called “Goop” showcasing all kinds of New Age spiritualism. The advertising poster for the show features her standing in front of a huge, styled woman’s vagina! The show promotes the benefits of energy healing and psychedelic drugs. According to one press release, women will be encouraged to masturbate, including one woman who achieves an orgasm on-camera and describes it as an exorcism!!!! More than half of all my encounters involve casting out demons which invaded through such forms of New Age spiritualism. 

For those bound by drugs, lust, and false religion, there is hope. There is no sin too great to be forgiven. No emotional wound too deep to be healed. No demon so strong that it can’t be dislodged by Christ’s power. If you’re a victim of this unholy trinity of evil, or other spiritual rebellion that is destroying your life, Jesus can and will set you free today. Call us for help. Call on Him to be delivered from drugs, lust, and false religion.

It’s been two weeks since basketball superstar Kobe Bryant, his daughter, and seven others died in a California helicopter crash. The Superbowl paid homage with a moment of silence. His former team, the Los Angeles Lakers, immortalized him by giving every attendee a replica of his jersey at the next home game after the tragedy. Bryant has almost universally been praised for greatness on and off the court. But a few journalists with long memories, have brought up the issue of his Eagle County, Colorado rape charges back in 2003. That occurred near the community where Laura and I were living at the time. Bryant was there to receive treatment from a noted orthopedic clinic, which also operated on my knee. 

In conversations taped by the police, Bryant admitted his actions, which included forcing perverted sex and leaving his victim with lacerations and bruises. The official reading of the police report, which is in the public domain, describes lewd and extremely perverted actions by Bryant. The matter was finally dropped when the young victim decided not to testify. Her later civil suit was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum of money and a public apology, issued by Bryant. He said the act was consensual. Kobe went on to become a megastar with little public censure. He eventually amassed a fortune of nearly one billion dollars, something that certainly would be questionable in today’s “Me Too” environment.  

I come neither to exalt or condemn Kobe Bryant. Who knows if he really turned his life around? He is generally praised as a loving father and husband who through philanthropy and mentoring helped many. The question that remains unanswered is this: Should the total of his life be judged by the best or the worst of his actions? Would any of us want our lives to be summed up by the most foolish or sinful thing we’ve done? Rape is an especially egregious act, and one must wonder how his victim feels today, seeing Bryant lauded with few detractors. But consider the apostle Peter; what if he’d been judged all his life by his actions when the cock crowed at his denial of Christ?  

There is no indication that Kobe Bryant, who was raised Catholic, was a religious man. He did attend 7:00 a.m. mass the morning of the crash. And what of his victim? How was her life scarred? What of the people all of us have hurt walking through life? It all comes down to grace, God’s grace. That’s the lesson of Ephesians 2:8-9, that we are all saved by the mercy of God. And it’s what He has done for us that we couldn’t do for ourselves. Millions of dollars won’t buy off God on judgment day, and neither will statements carefully crafted by expensive lawyers. You, me, and Kobe Bryant will all face the Eternal Referee’s call on the court of life. And what will matter is whether our actions on earth, however trivial or horrendous, are under the blood that Jesus shed at the cross.

It has come to this. Many larger congregations already have armed security guards standing at the entry of their places of worship. But some have taken things further. Recent fatal shootings inside church buildings are now cause for alarm, prompting guidelines regarding what can be taken inside the sanctuary. Metal detectors aren’t at the entries yet, but at least one megachurch has compiled a list of verboten contraband. The prohibited items include backpacks, fanny packs, briefcases, luggage, shopping bags, laptop bags, and boxes of any size. Subject to security check, attendees may be allowed to bring inside purses, bible covers, diaper bags (with baby present), and medical devices. 

This got me thinking about other things which are prohibited in successful, market-driven millennial megachurches. So far as I know, no congregation has posted the following list at the sanctuary entry; nevertheless, such things are not allowed. It’s a mystery why these crucial matters, so important to the well-being of all believers, are avoided and neglected. The off-limits list looks like this:

• NO DELIVERANCE GROUPS AVAILABLE: With all the specialized meeting groups (seniors, singles, college, kids, the addicted etc.), why isn’t there a deliverance and exorcism group that meets regularly? Don’t ask or you’ll be escorted away as quickly as if you were carrying an AR-15.
• NO DEMONIC MANIFESTATIONS ALLOWED: This includes screaming, twitching, growling, rolling on the floor, or displaying Adam Schiff eyes. Keep those demons down if they’re aroused by the worship music, or you’ll be escorted to an ambulance providing a one-way ride to the psych ward.
• NO CURSE BREAKING PERMITTED: Contacting the pastoral staff to get an appointment for curse breaking prayers is unnecessary. They believe such ideas are nonsense, that your conversion to Christ settled such issues and renunciations of ancestral evil isn’t spiritually required. Don’t refer them to our book “Curse Breaking” unless you’re prepared for a theological tongue-lashing.
• NO DISCUSSION OF CHRISTIANS HAVING DEMONS: Suggesting that a forum be available to air both sides of the “can a Christian have a demon “controversy isn’t welcome. They think the mere mention of such a concept is biblically unacceptable.

 The mystery of millennial megachurches is that, with all their attention to edgy issues, they willfully neglect the core values upon which the early church was established, including miracles such as exorcism. But perhaps it’s not such a mystery after all. Though millennial Christians like to think of themselves as more open minded than their predecessors, they are not. They retain the same time-worn prejudices against anything outside conventional theological thinking. But I remind those who could censor deliverance from their ecclesiastical spaces. If your parishioners click on YouTube and go to the “Bob Larson Exorcism Channel” they’ll see real spiritual warfare in action. And there’s no mystery to the demonstration of God’s power defeating the devil and glorifying the name of Jesus!