I have seen many deliverance ministries and have been involved in working with God to free people from the demonic. Several things I am sure of in this.
- It is very easy to say anyone who disagrees with you has a demon. It is also hard to prove you wrong particularly if you are a pastor and are accusing a church member who is pointing out errant leaders.
- If the person does not have a demon, it is very easy to show they do not have a demon after the deliverance.
- Anyone who talks about Demonic Deliverance like a wild-west gunslinger that cuts notches in his gun on every victory is probably not as powerful as they say.
- Anyone who sees a demon every time they come into a room may be bringing the demon.
I will be frank, I usually am. It gets me in trouble at times and it will with some here. I have some experience in the area of demonic deliverance. More than that I know the Word of God on it and I have had a lot of time to observe and take note. There are two extreme views on demons in the church. In one view there are no such things as demonic spirits.
I reject that because Jesus rejected it. He talked about demons and unclean spirits more than a few times and cast out more than a few of them. If he talked about them they exist because He is not a liar. If He cast them out, and He said He did, they could inhabit a person. Simple? On the other extreme are those who see everyone as having many demons, I call them the "demons under every rock" crowd.
Between these two views there are many others. Most of those who I would look to for guidance and are having success in liberating people in this matter are near the center. They believe demons exist, they believe they oppress people but they don't see everyone having thousands of them.
They don't get hung up on a lot of the details and methods. I don't hear them telling the gory stories about exorcising them. One thing the ones I look to all know. If demons are of the devil then they are below Jesus and we have authority over them. Jesus gave us that power.
There are two pictures in scripture that I think help us put some perspective on this.
Mark 5:9-13
9 And he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name is Legion: for we are many.
10 And he besought him much that he would not send them away out of the country.
11 Now there was there nigh unto the mountains a great herd of swine feeding.
12 And all the devils besought him, saying, Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them.
13 And forthwith Jesus gave them leave. And the unclean spirits went out, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea, (they were about two thousand;) and were choked in the sea.
(KJV)
Mark 16:9
9 Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils.
(KJV)
These are the two places that a number of demons was mentioned. Note that Mary Magdalene had seven unclean spirits. It doesn't say if they were accompanied by nine spirits of fear and five of something else so we don't really know how many demons she had and it doesn't matter. And equating the seven to the "perfect number" of seven when dealing with demons is heresy.
The Gadarene had some very large number. If you take one demon per hog then there were 2000. But do we know it takes one, one tenth or ten demons to posses a hog so that they kill themselves? Or is it possible for demons to “group possess” so that ten could possess 2000 hogs? I don't know. I don't need to know to cast them out. I don't care. I don't have to have it all together to teach to get honorariums. I do know the demon said they were many, but then, could they have been lying? Demons lie.
There are those who argue whether a Christian can be demon possessed or not and whether they can be demon oppressed or not. I see the situation as somewhere in the middle on the first item. I believe there are some people who are possessed but I am sure the number is far below what the "demon busters" will tell you. Remember that if you are into doing exorcisms and you don't have plenty of demons to cast out of a lot of people you don't have a big ministry income base. I believe there are some famous men who were demon possessed. I'll get flack for this but Bill Clinton is one of them. Without demonic influence this guy has nothing to offer but he becomes president by manipulation. The rest is history.
