Lately, I’ve been feeling led to write a multi-part series on deliverance (casting out demons).  Some believers are very familiar with the theology and practical application of deliverance.  However, the majority of believers in America grew up in church environments where deliverance was never talked about, spiritual warfare only got an honorable mention, and demons were considered essentially fictional in our technological age.  Others may have grown up in churches that believed in deliverance, but they never were trained to minister deliverance or even given a biblical basis for this biblical theme. Still others question whether it is something that is even relevant in the contemporary church or whether Christians could ever be subject to demonic control.  Considering all the differing views and experiences in the American church, I want to present a clear and biblical case for deliverance. I think the topic is not only relevant but essential to the church being all it can be in this season of spiritual warfare.  So…I want to address some questions and some practical considerations for this subject in a multi-part blog over the next few weeks.

As many of you know, I became a follower of Jesus in my college years.  I came into the kingdom through the influence of cessationist churches. What that means is the church I was part of and was discipled by did not believe the Holy Spirit still works in the same way he did in the first century.  They believe that the Holy Spirit still takes up residence in every believe and works to bear his fruit – love, joy, peace, etc. –  but, he no longer imparts supernatural, spiritual gifts to his people – healing, prophecy, tongues, miracles, spiritual discernment, etc. 

Their view is that God no longer intervenes in his people’s lives in supernatural ways but works only through the natural order of things.  In these churches, believers pray for God to influence the surgeon to do his best in some way, but would not pray for direct healing in a person’s body.  They would pray for chemo to be effective, but would never command cancer to leave a person’s body. They believe all the miracles in scripture did happen, but God no longer operates in those ways.  In their view, New Testament miracles were allowed in the first century as evidence that Jesus was the Son of God and that his apostles wrote the New Testament under the inspiration of the Spirit.  Once enough miracles were recorded, those should be sufficient for belief and continuing miracles are not required.  This view, of course does not explain all the miracles in the Old Testament or why believers other than the apostles and those who wrote the New Testament, such as Stephen and Philip, also performed great signs and wonders. It would also not explain why supernatural gifts were given to ordinary members of the church as Paul discussed in 1 Corinthians 12-14. None of these were the Son of God nor did they write any part of the New Testament.

As an adjunct to the cessationist view, they tend to downplay the supernatural all together.  They really don’t talk about demons as a reality in the 21^st century.  If someone reported an angelic visitation, they would be highly skeptical. They believe that God only speaks to his people through the written word and no longer speaks to them directly, so that rules out prophecy and words of knowledge, and so forth.  Those are the things I was taught when I first became a Christian.  God might heal someone directly in response to prayer on very rare occasions, but no one possessed the gift of healing. Miraculous healings were given no credibility.  Prophecy was seen as a deception by the enemy and tongues were simply emotionalism unleashed. Deliverance was simply theater.  These are churches full of great people who love the Lord, but their theological lens keeps them from accessing the power of the Holy Spirit in many circumstances where it is needed.

For most of my ministry years, I was the staff member to whom most people came for counseling. My God-given temperament was wired for counseling and I had a degree in sociology which leaned in that direction.  I went to as many workshops on counseling as possible and did graduate work in that field, but still felt inadequate.  Even Christian counseling conferences taught secular approaches to counseling.  They might add a prayer or some scripture reading to their approach, but they never dipped into the spiritual realm and its influence on us.  I brought my best counseling skills to the table but saw very little dramatic life change in my church.  People did their best to live a moral life and manage their addictions, compulsions, depression, anger, shame, etc. and most made some progress…at least for a while. But many defaulted back to their previous state after a few months or as soon as they found themselves in a crisis or under stress,

I assumed the relapses were because of my inadequate counseling, which I’m sure contributed.  But there was something else that was lacking.  When I read through the New Testament, it seemed that dramatic life change was the expectation not the exception.  Afterall, we are new creations in Christ and are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Rom. 12:2). Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, “Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6:9-12).

Paul speaks of an expectation of change, of putting those lifestyles behind them relatively soon after coming to Jesus, rather than struggling for years to get free from their conditions.  There is no indication that their transformation required professional counseling, the newest drug therapies, or years of twelve-step programs.  I’m not saying those things can’t be helpful. They can. But they tend to help us manage issues rather than getting complete victory over those issues. 

I finally realized what we were lacking was power.  What we were lacking was the ability to deal with not only addictions on a physiological and emotional level, but with spiritual bondage that kept God’s people stuck in the same struggles for years.  According to the gospels, the thing that kept people stuck in torment and bondage, was demonic affliction.

In Isaiah 61, the prophet foretold that Messiah would come to preach good news to the poor, heal broken hearts, and set captives free. When Jesus began his public ministry, he preached good news to the poor, healed broken hearts, and set captives free.  The freedom part came through deliverance which, according to the gospels, was considered a form of healing. In essence, Jesus and his followers preached the good news of the kingdom and then demonstrated it though the power of the Spirit.  That was the New Testament approach to evangelism…not just for Jesus but also for the twelve, the seventy he sent out, and all the other believers empowered by the Spirit.

When God drew me into the ministry of emotional healing and deliverance, I began to see people set free from the things that had kept them in bondage for years.  They were set free in hours or weeks, not decades.  Although I anticipated they would default back to their old conditions after a few weeks or months, they did not. People who had been subject to fear, depression, suicidal thoughts, pornography, shame, even homosexuality for years, were set free and transformed. 

Without the power of the Spirit and the ministry of deliverance, these men and women would still be in bondage to those things that had robbed them of joy and fruitfulness for decades.  Is every issue caused by demonic affliction?  Of course not.  But much more is than we realize.  Paul emphatically stated that our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly or spiritual realms ((Eph. 6:12).  He also declared that we cannot wage war as the world wages war but we must fight with divine weapons (2 Cor. 10:4).  Those divine weapons are embodied by the supernatural gifts of the Spirit.

In the gospel of John, Jesus clearly stated, “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father” (Jn. 14:11-12). What had he been doing?  He had been preaching, healing, and casting out demons.  His statement carries an expectation that those who have faith In Jesus will continue his ministry as he had been doing it. It did not seem to give that expectation and shelf-life of a few decades but spoke to those who have faith until he returns.

To fail to do so, is to depart from the New Testament pattern of ministry for the church.  It weakens our ability to evangelize and often leaves our own people in bondage.  I have visited with several people who had gotten involved in witches covens.  They had left the covens because the coven was “going too far.”  I asked them what had prompted them to get involved in witchcraft.  They said their lives had been in turmoil and they had gone to the church for help, but the church could not help them because it had no power.  Witchcraft offered power so they gave themselves to that.  Paul said the kingdom is not a matter of talk, but of power (1 Cor. 4:20).  We owe the world power to overcome the enemy. Deliverance is a primary manifestation of God’s power and his kingdom on this earth.  It is essential to the life of the church.

More next week….

In my last blog, I stated the primary reasons that Cessationists believe that God no longer performs “miracles” in his church, especially through the gifts of the Spirit.  I want to begin to respond to those reasons in this blog.

First of all, let me address the idea that God no longer works miracles.  A Cessationist believes that God answers prayers but works within the natural order of things rather than doing what is impossible according to natural law. For instance, when a person prays for the perfect job and gets that job, that is not a “miracle,” because God worked within ordinary laws of nature and society to facilitate the answer to that prayer.  However, Jesus walking on water is a miracle because it defies the laws of nature.  Cessationsist don’t believe that God operates in that way anymore and so accept the “ordinary” spiritual gifts of mercy, faith, encouragement, leadership, service, administration etc. but reject the “miraculous” gifts of prophecy, miracles, healings, tongues and so forth because they operate outside the natural order of things.

However, I would assert that if you pray, you believe in miracles. I believe that a miracle occurs anytime God intervenes in the natural order of things.  If you pray at all, asking for protection, provision, favor, etc., you are asking God to intervene in the ways things would pan out if left to themselves.  Otherwise, why would you pray?  You probably don’t pray for the sun to rise in the east in the morning because you anticipate that it will rise in the east without your prayers. You don’t pray for the lights to come on in your house each time to touch a switch because, in the natural order of things, the lights always come on.  So if you pray, you have begun to sense that if left to themselves, the natural order of things is going to bring harm or disappointment to you or your loved ones.

Many of God’s greatest miracles worked within the realm of natural law.  Great catches of fish on Galilee employed only boats, men, nets, and fish which all function in the natural realm.  The timing and location of the fish marked the catch as a miracle.  If you don’t believe in miracles, you would mark it only as a coincidence or a unique, spontaneous convergence of natural forces that prompted the outcome.  A stone hitting an exceptionally large Philistine warrior in the one square inch that would kill him employed only a young man, an ordinary slingshot, and a common stone from a creek bed.  All of that operated within the realm of natural law.  Did God miraculously guide the stone or was it simply dumb luck? God fed his people in the wilderness with quail.  The miracle was that so many quail arrived at the camp at the same time. Was it a miracle or a migratory phenomenon of some sort?  The Bible would call it a miracle.  So…even when we ask God to work within the natural order of things to manipulate time, circumstances, decisions, job availability, favor, a doctor’s performance, etc. we are asking for a miracle. God still performs miracles on behalf of his people on a daily basis but only faith knows the difference between an intervention by God and a curious coincidence.  I believe the scriptures call any intervention by God a miracle.

Now, there are definitely acts of God throughout scripture that defy natural law…the healing of leprosy by a touch, blind eyes spontaneously gaining sight, withered hands growing out in a moment, walking on water, the Red Sea parting, a dead man being raised after four days in the tomb, etc. But those miracles are no harder for God than directing quail, fish, or a stone.  If he does miracles, he does miracles…yesterday, today, and tomorrow.  If he intervenes for his people so that the natural order of things is disrupted or reordered, then a miracle has occurred.

Now, the first argument by Cessationists is that they have never seen an authentic miracle such as we see in the gospels.  Therefore, in their view, miracles no longer occur.  These same believers have never seen an angel or Jesus face-to-face, but would not deny their reality.  So, is it not possible that authentic miracles still occur even if we haven’t seen one personally?  Secondly, I would venture that God has performed miracles in their sight but they filtered them through their unbelief and pronounced them as frauds or natural coincidences. Remember, I served in Cessationsist churches for over 20 years. I remember men and women on several occasions telling our staff and elders of amazing healings.  Tumors disappeared with proof on x-rays and children that had been declared to have severe birth defects by every scientific standard were born whole and healthy. We simply wrote those off as faulty equipment or a poor diagnosis rather than seeing the miraculous hand of God.  Even when we couldn’t deny what we saw, we never announced the healing to the church knowing that there was simply some unknown natural explanation for what had happened.

Part of the reason, these churches have not seen miracles is that they only pray for the ordinary and get what they pray for. I remember when a good Christian doctor asked me to pray that he would do his best work. I told him I believed he would do his best work even if I didn’t pray, but I would pray that God would enable him to do even more than he was capable of on his own.  Even when you see miracles outside the realm of natural law, it takes faith to acknowledge them or, at least, the source. The Pharisees saw much, but discounted the miracles as fraud or as the work of Satan. I suspect that some Cessationists have done the same.

The second argument made on behalf of Cessationism is that Jesus only performed miracles to demonstrate that he was the Messiah, the Son of God.  It is true that the miracles of Jesus testified that he was the Son of God, but he performed many miracles simply out of compassion rather than a need to demonstrate who he was (Mt.9:35-36, 15:32, 20:34; Mark 1:41, etc.). The writers of the gospels seem to go out of their way on numerous occasions to mention that the motive of Jesus for healing individuals or the crowd was compassion rather than publicity.  You would think that same unchanging compassion would still prompt him to relieve the suffering of his people – even through miracles.

In addition, he told many that he healed not to tell anyone about their healing.  Those commands are contrary to the purpose of miracles if we restrict their purpose to evidence that he was the Son of God. If that were the only purpose for miracles, surely he would have told those people to go and tell everyone they could find.   After he returned to the Father, the miracles done by his followers were done in the name of Jesus, which means “by his authority.” Those miracles, performed after his ascension, still demonstrated that Jesus was who he said he was. Present day miracles do the same.

The third argument is that God empowered the apostles to do miracles simply to confirm that they were men approved of God in order to establish their authority in the church and so that their writings would be seen as writings inspired by the Holy Spirit.  Certainly that was part of it, but why give spiritual gifts of healings, prophecy, miracles, tongues, deliverance, discerning of spirits, words of knowledge, etc. to the ordinary members of the church and to those who did not write any of the New Testament such as Philip and Stephen?

In addition, Luke wrote his gospel and the Book of Acts.  Yet, he was not an apostle nor do we have any record of him performing any miracles to demonstrate the inspired authenticity of his writings.  Therefore, miracles were not given only for the purpose of marking Jesus or the apostles as men approved of God because “to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given…” (1 Cor.12:7).

I want to reiterate that believers who attend Cessationsist churches along with their leaders are good people who love Jesus. They were taught or indoctrinated in this theology from birth or as new Christians.  I was in such awe of the men who taught me that I simply accepted their teachings, believing that the parts that didn’t make sense to me then would make sense later as I learned more Bible.  I’m sure they learned this theology in the same way.  The problem is not with the people but with the theology that robs the church of power and leaves people in the grip of Satan.

We will finish our discussion of Cessationism in my next blog.