Month: November 2022

There are at least three common mistakes made by deliverance ministers that need addressed. I’m not trying to be critical but helpful. I made a lot of errors in judgment due to ignorance when I started casting out demons. In those days, there were few books on deliverance and no public examples to model after. I was flying without radar and no landing field. But I learned from my errors and adjusted my approach year after year. That’s not saying that I now have the perfect method or all the answers after 50 years of ministry. But today’s deliverance advocates have the internet to disseminate information and share their thoughts and styles of spiritual warfare. They should be doing better, and for the most part they are. But there are still at least three mistakes that are made over and over.

1. INNER HEALING IS DELIVERANCE: No. It’s part of the process, but it doesn’t end there. Personally, I place high value on a supplicant’s emotional healing. Often it is the key to casting out demons. But it isn’t the end all, be all. It’s a piece of the puzzle of freedom from demonic bondage, but it can’t be a substitute for expelling demons. Unfortunately, some who value deliverance begin and end with inner healing and think that completes the process. It may be so sometimes, but in my experience it’s usually not conclusive. As I say in the teaching of Bob Larson University, “Demons don’t go until they are made to go.”
2. BREAKING GENERATIONAL CURSES MAKES DEMONS LEAVE: This can be true in a small number of what I call “minor possessions.” But the big demons aren’t leaving just because prayers of canceling bloodline evils are uttered. Curse breaking is usually crucial to deliverance, but it isn’t of itself deliverance. It leads to full deliverance. It breaks the legal rights demons have claimed because of ancestral evil. But like I just stated with reference to inner healing, just breaking curses doesn’t make the demons go. They must be forced out, because the generational curses have been revoked. The reasons some demons got there has been removed. But evil spirits still must be sent to the pit of Hell!
3. PROPHETIC WORDS ARE THE GUIDE TO DELIVERANCE: Words that those ministering deliverance may feel are prophetically from God shouldn’t guide the process. I believe that deliverance and exorcism must be a fact-based, methodical procedure. That’s what we teach in Bob Larson university. The emphasis in casting out demons should be on objectivity, not subjectivity. Facts are incontrovertible. Spiritual impressions may be helpful, but they may also be misguided by human inspiration. If someone is getting the names of demons and determining their legal rights ONLY by “prophetic words,” that is potentially misleading. Words of knowledge and wisdom (1 Cor. 12:8) are sometimes crucial. I often operate in that spiritual realm as a source of help to get past demonic roadblocks and a stalled deliverance process. We encourage our chartered Do What Jesus Did deliverances teams to follow this practice. If a member of the prayer group feels they have a word from God, don’t interrupt. Write it down and hand it privately to the lead minister who can then determine if and when to resource that information. We’ve found this to be a smoother more biblical model of healing and deliverance.

There is much more to be said, and further illumination is needed with each of these points. But being consistent with prayer procedures will lead to greater success in overcoming the enemy. Those in deliverance must remember, that it is not human effort which ultimately brings freedom. It is the authority of Christ and His work on the cross which prevails. Deliverance is crucial to the Body of Christ, and all who are involved in this much-need ministry need to be wise about how we approach the process. Many tormented people need to know there is hope and freedom in Christ. God give us the grace to do it wisely and effectively. And if you feel tormented by the devil, please contact us immediately so that I, or an Associate Minister, can confront the evil spirits blocking your spiritual destiny.

Are psychic gifts dangerous? YES! But not according to a university lecturer in England. Dr. Richard Sugg, author or 13 books, recently told Durham University students that they should welcome ghosts, poltergeists, and so-called lucid dreams. According to Sugg, these paranormal phenomena mean the recipient of such things is gifted with psychic abilities that should be tapped. Not surprisingly, Sugg has also written about cannibals, vampires, ghosts, and fairies. The writer lists 6 ways to know if you’re psychic:

1. Being spooked in a building.
2. Experiencing a poltergeist.
3. Seeing a ghost.
4. Having an out of body experience (an OBE).
5. Having a premonition.
6. Sensing something miles away.

Informed Christians should know that all such occurrences have demonic origins as forms of the occult.  Deuteronomy 18:9-14 lists several similar events and says they are all spiritually abominable. The biblical list includes human sacrifice, divination, fortune telling, sorcery, interpreting omens, witchcraft, spell casting, and being a psychic medium who consults the dead. The six items Sugg lists are covered by these biblical prohibitions.

Let me break down the professor’s list according to scripture:

1. BEING SPOOKED: This means you likely have a generational curse of witchcraft. The demons in you or the curses attached to you are reacting to the presence of demons around you.
2. EXPERIENCING A POLTERGEIST: The term poltergeist is a German word meaning a supposedly friendly or mischievous spirit. But these demons only appear harmless, like moving things or making sounds, to further lure you into the occult. Then you’ll be susceptible to more dangerous demons.
3. SEEING GHOSTS: This really means that your spiritual eyes are open to evil through an inherited tendency to witchcraft. Or it could mean that you have created spiritual portals by meditation, yoga, Ouija boards, seances, energy healing, astrology, tarot cards and such.
4. HAVING AN OBE: This is a certain indication you have demons. These evil spirits want you to separate soul and body so that when you’re out of the body demons can freely enter your soul.
5. PREMONITIONS: These are demonic, psychic intrusions offering you spiritual bait to go deeper into witchcraft because it seems so harmless. And it often appears helpful, like warning someone of an impending danger.
6. SENSING THINGS/A 6TH SENSE: If you feel that something is happening or about to happen this lure encourages looking into alleged psychic “gifts” to further develop them. This seems good but always ends up evil.

Professor Sugg, whom I mentioned earlier, may think he’s encouraging people to explore unknown abilities. He’s really luring people deeper into the darkness of witchcraft and idolatry. I deal daily with people who explored the six things I just mentioned. Most of them are now demon possessed and tormented day and night. Psychic abilities of any kind are pathetic substitutes for the true supernatural gifts spoken of in 1 Corinthians chapter twelve. Gifts of the supernatural that are not biblically based can lead to demonic bondage and eternity in hell. God’s gifts bring wisdom and comfort. Psychic gifts are dangerous and eternally deadly.

Until recently, getting a demon via the occult took some doing. Effort and investigation were necessary. Take President Abraham Lincoln for example. He served during the first major surge of spiritualism in America. Think things are bad now with online Ouija boards, yoga in churches, and online tarot card readings? A newly published book entitled, “In the Houses of Their Dead” chronicles the dramatic rise of interest in, what the Bible calls necromancy, seances and speaking with the dearly departed. During the mid-19^th century, when Lincoln was first elected President in 1860, there were an estimated 1.6 million spiritualists in a country of only 31 million people. That same ratio would leave us with about 20 million spiritualists compared to today’s population.

Spiritualism in the 1800s had taken such a hold on the nation that it was rumored Lincoln had visited a New Orleans witchdoctor for advice. When his first child died at age three, it was alleged that in 1830, Lincoln and his wife Mary consulted three witches to speak with the child. Two years later when a second son died, President Lincoln admitted to communicating with the child in his dreams. Mary dived deeply into the occult by attending many seances, some in the White House.

Today, followers of New Age spiritualism need go no further than their computing devices or cell phones. In addition to the assorted Ouija advocates and tarot enthusiasts, anyone online can quickly discover how to make a voodoo doll, cast a spell, or vicariously indulge in satanic rituals. If you wish, it’s possible to get an online Bachelors, Masters, or Ph. D. degree in “Mythology and Occultism.” Or you can strive for certification in Gnosticism, Esotericism, or Mysticism. There are live psychic chats with “immediate answers to life’s toughest questions.” Various so-called “mystery schools” offer tutoring in witchcraft and all things pagan and Druid. There is an online School of Witchcraft and a virtual Witchcraft Academy. A plethora of spell casters offer services for love spells and revenge curses. All this on iOS and Android.

It’s likely that Mary Todd Lincoln picked up some demons with her sojourns into spiritualism. President Lincoln may have done the same. And here’s something interesting. John Wilkes Booth who assassinated Lincoln was a close friend and drinking buddy of Charles Colchester, a famous spiritualist during Lincoln’s presidency. In fact, Colchester performed a séance for Mrs. Lincoln and was said to have brought forth her departed child Willie. Lincoln himself asked Colchester to perform for Joseph Henry, then secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Did that connection embolden, even give a spiritual legal right, to the demons that must have possessed Booth?

Seances, talking to the dead, and all forms of divination can be lumped into one biblical category: witchcraft. The Bible condemns all such investigations nearly two dozen times, whether for online profit or in the nation’s White House. The clearest statement is First Samuel 15:23: For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Every individual, rich or poor, politically connected, or ordinary citizen, sinner or saint, who summons supernatural help with online or offline witchcraft risks losing their soul. Perhaps even their life. King Saul died for consulting the witch of Endor, the spiritualist of her time. So, perhaps did President Abraham Lincoln who risked his life by seeking to talk to the dead.

The question seems straightforward. “What is an exorcist?” But the answer isn’t so simple. First, last week the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Krill, declared that President Vladimir Putin is the “chief exorcist” of the Church. Putin’s original invasion of Ukraine was called a “denazification” campaign, an effort to bomb and destroy the country in the name of ridding Ukraine of Nazism. That’s a lie. As many of you know, I have made more than a dozen mission trips to Ukraine and spoken in more than 50 Ukrainian cities. Like any country, there are small hate groups, but by-and-large the Ukrainians are God-fearing people. In fact, there are more evangelical Christians in Ukraine than any European nation.

Now, Russian tanks, Iranian-made drones, and conscripted troops are being sent from Russia for the “desatanization” of Ukraine. The claim is that Satan worshippers are running Ukraine. The assistant secretary of the security council of the Russian Federation says that hundreds of satanic sects are overrunning Ukraine and that it is Russia’s sacred responsibility to bomb the population to destroy these so-called “hyper-sects.” The satanic groups are supposedly forcing Ukrainian citizens to abandon the true Orthodox faith. Putin himself says that Western opposition to his brutal invasion of Ukraine is “outright Satanism.” Hence, the call for him to be the exorcist battling the devil. In response, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which split from the Russian Orthodox in 2018, now says that Putin is filled with the spirit of the Antichrist and compares him to Hitler.

So, what is a true exorcist? When, two decades ago, I began to refer to myself as an exorcist, many evangelicals were outraged. I was accused of being “too Catholic.” The term “exorcist” isn’t a Catholic word. As a noun it relates to the Latin exorcista and the Greek exorkistes, “an exorcist.” It simply means one who casts out demons, which is what Jesus did. A major evangelical website (belief.net) blatantly, and with extreme theological prejudice, declares, “Though some people [in Bible times] were given the power to rid the world of evil spirits, this wasn’t something that was meant to last through modern times. It was also never something that every Christian should feel like they had to do or learn how to do.” That is both an ignorant and a dangerous thing to say. It’s devoid of the empirical reality of present-day ministry. It’s a slap in face of non-western Christians who regularly cast out demons, and it is filled with anti-Catholic prejudice.

Millions of Americans involved in witchcraft, the occult, and the New Age are possessed by demons. Many are supernaturally tormented. Are we supposed to assume that by confessing Christ they will automatically be delivered from their demons? No one in deliverance ministry believes that myopic view. Check out the more than 1,000 videos on our YouTube site. Are they all disingenuous?

If some of my fellow Christians can’t agree on the importance of fulfilling the commands of Christ to cast out demons (Matthew 10:1, Mark 16:17, Luke 10:19, e.g.), perhaps we can at least agree one thing. Vladimir Putin isn’t an exorcist.