IN THE LIGHT OF ALL THAT I HAVE SHARED ABOVE so far in this section of the chapter, we can surely say that absolutely everything which the ‘deliverance ministries’ stand for — above all, claiming to cast demons out of disciples of Christ indwelt by the Holy Spirit — is undermining of the cleansing Gospel of Christ and the subsequent sanctification of believers. The very existence of such ‘ministries’ is a slap in the face of the Gospel and its outworkings. A genuinely transformed person who has truly been regenerated could never come up with such faithless nonsense, for they know whom they have believed and what that belief has radically worked in them. Like all false gospels, they are saying that the Gospel itself isn’t enough. You need the Gospel plus something else if you want to get free from Satan and the power of darkness. According to them, you must first come to Christ, then go for a lengthy course of ‘deliverance therapy’ with them to get rid of all the nasty demonic things which Christ and the indwelling Holy Spirit were apparently, in their view, powerless to deal with.

As a pertinent anecdote, I remember when I was in my first days of being a Christian, I was seeking baptism and, amongst other churches, I visited the minister at the well-known St. Michael le Belfrey church in York in the UK. The year was 1985. (This had been David Watson’s church — although he was no longer the minister there when I went, having already died in 1984 of the illness which Vineyard Ministries founder John Wimber claimed, through an alleged ‘word of knowledge’, that God was going to heal). When he (a Charismatic) heard that I had previously been involved in the New Age scene, he said I would need some extra words adding to the normal baptismal service “just to flush out any residual demons” (those were his exact words). I confidently quoted Colossians 1:13 to him and swiftly brought our meeting to a close! Even in those early days of slender faith, when all I had was my dog-eared old Bible, I knew enough to know that these people are rubbishing the efficacy of the Gospel to deliver the new believer from satanic bondage.

That same minister, Graham Cray, went on to become a theologian and a Bishop in the Church of England! In 1990, along with many other well-known church leaders, he signed an endorsement of the now disgraced ‘Kansas City Prophets’ (https://www.prophecytoday.uk/study/teaching-articles/item/1069-blessing-the-church-xxvii.html ). At a theological conference in Gloucestershire in February 1998, he gave a lecture claiming that “the Toronto Blessing experience is a gift of God to his church and that within and without the charismatic churches this move of the Spirit has shown up our need for a theological mind to shape our reception of this gift”. How on earth could a theologian and Bishop imagine, after four years of its nonsense bringing churches into disrepute, that the “Toronto Blessing” experience was a gift from God? Words fail me. Furthermore, in 2024, this same Bishop was investigated (and reprimanded) for failing to take abuse allegations seriously in his role as the Chair of the charismatic ‘Soul Survivor Ministries’, when its ‘frontman’, Mike Pilavachi, was accused of abusing young men (See https://anglican.ink/2024/10/08/will-we-ever-learn-the-lessons-the-mike-pilavachi-review/ ). Clearly, the vicar (and later Bishop) who thought I needed some residual demons flushing out of me in the mid-1980s, even though I had already repented and given my life to Christ, was unwilling even to act on serious sin in an organisation over which he had authority some decades later. The chickens always come home to roost.

Significantly, Victims Become Free from their Alleged Demons as Soon as they Escape from “Deliverance Ministries”

Quite apart from the damning biblical implications of these ‘deliverance ministries’, there is something else which is a convincing guide as to the falsity of their therapy. People who escape from the clutches of ‘deliverance ministries’ are generally in the middle of a lengthy process involving weeks or even months of alleged exorcism of numerous demonic entities. (I know this from experience because many have later come to me for counsel). At the time that they abandon these ministries and seek counsel elsewhere, these people are allegedly still riddled with multiple demons which need further ‘deliverance ministry’ for them to be expelled. However, after abandoning the ‘deliverance ministries’ mid-term and finding compassionate and biblical counsel, they eventually recover their sanity and never again exhibit any symptoms of demonisation or demon possession. What does this tell you?

One woman I know who had been badly entangled in the ‘deliverance ministries’ scene in the mid-1990s was at the time unmarried and still training at college. She had been desperately abused and was in a shocking state, having been told — after having already had months of ‘deliverance’ therapy — that she was still infested with many demons. However, after some sane counsel and friendship, she came out of all that and left it behind. Lo and behold, it wasn’t long before she was working as a schoolteacher and was happily married as a thriving Christian homemaker and ardent church participant. What happened to all the demons which she had been told allegedly still inhabited her and from which she needed further ‘deliverance’? That was a complete fantasy and lie. The truth is that they were simply manufactured in the therapy sessions of the so-called ‘deliverance ministry’ she received through powerful suggestion-techniques. It is so easy to do this using psychological manipulation once you have the ‘tools’ and know how to use them.

The result of these ‘deliverance ministries’ and the whole Charismatic scene in general has been to create a mass of professing ‘Christians’ who have no awareness of the difference between the subjective experience of their supposed ‘deliverance’ sessions and objective truth. On a number of occasions I have been confronted by people who tried to convince me that they had a demon cast out of them because they were coughing and retching or having other similar manifestations when they received the ‘ministry’. I have seen exactly the same presentation in people who are undergoing manipulative therapy such as Arthur Janov’s ‘Primal Scream therapy’.

In one example of a professing Christian’s alleged demon possession, I said to the woman concerned, “Are you a genuine Christian?” She replied, “Yes”. I said, “Then you cannot be indwelt by a demon. You have the Holy Spirit indwelling you. There is simply no room”. She replied, “Well I must have had a demon or I would not have coughed and retched”. I said, “You are putting your own subjective experience above the objective truth of the Bible. You have already been delivered from the power of darkness by Christ. So there is no need for any of that manipulated coughing and retching. That is just the power of suggestion”. Then she replied, “I know what I experienced and it was real”. This is the state of so many alleged ‘Christian’ minds today: Illogical, petulant, resistant to biblical authority, unteachable, reliant on subjective experience for her imagined spiritual development, and stuffed full of hubris.

This now begs a further major question: How are all these people made to believe that they have umpteen imaginary demons, so much so that they will even scream and ‘spit them out’ in the therapy sessions? This is what we will explore in the next section.

‘Altered States of Consciousness’ Are the Key

The key to all this is that one can make someone believe anything if one can get them into an ‘altered state of consciousness’. This is the key to it all. It is the key to the entire development of the crazy Charismatic scene on all its many wacky levels. If you can get someone into an ‘altered state of consciousness’ then they can be controlled. If you can open someone up emotionally and get them to cry or laugh profusely, then you can get them under your control. If you can get someone to beat a cushion up for hours, then you can get them under your control. If you can get someone to go crazy enough to cough out and retch bile and anger, then you can get them under your control. In fact, you can get them to believe absolutely anything.

This method of “control through the release of aggression” was not lost on Big Brother in George Orwell’s masterpiece novel “1984”. The “Two Minutes Hate” sessions each day are really very similar to the cathartic release of aggression therapy used by the ‘deliverance’ ministries. If you can get people to beat some cushions up and scream and cry then you’ve got them by the short and curlies! This ‘key to control’ is practised by many other cults apart from professing ‘Christian’ ‘deliverance ministries’ — whether it is Arthur Janov’s Primal Scream therapy, Wilhelm Reich’s Vegeto-Therapy, Alexander Lowen’s Bioenergetics, Bhagwan Rajneesh’s orange people sessions, Erhard Seminar Training (EST), the ‘Toronto Blessing’, etc., etc. This is basic psychological manipulation, somewhat akin to the strategies used to brainwash people, or to break people to get them to talk in interrogation sessions carried out by intelligence operatives.

On the 22nd of September of 1924, there was a remarkable accident in the laboratories of Ivan Petrovich Pavlov in Leningrad.  The laboratory of the dogs that he used in his conditioning experiments was flooded. His dogs had to float to the top of their low cells to avoid drowning. It was a traumatic occurrence. The dogs were obviously panicking and they had to be submerged in order to save them from the cages. But a remarkable thing happened which fits into what I am writing about here. In all the saved dogs, the reflexes which had been conditioned into them had completely disappeared after their trauma as if they had never been there. The traumatic experience to which they had been subjected created a clean slate. So it is with the victims of these terrible ‘deliverance ministries’. They are traumatised and their defences broken down so that there is a clean slate for fresh conditioning to be implanted so that they become an advocate of these ‘ministries’ and believe what they are told about being possessed by a whole raft of demons.

Essentially, the ‘deliverance ministries’ do the same kind of work as intelligence operatives in brainwashing and interrogation. You merely have to break people down through terrifying them (e.g., waterboarding, beatings, torture, etc.), abolish their inhibitions, emotionally disrobe them, undermine their individuality, and you will soon have them doing whatever you want them to do and believing whatever you want them to believe. If you can shock someone severely, their defences will be broken; they will feel adrift and insecure. Then you can easily gain control over them. All governments know this simple truth; which is why they manufacture psyops, disasters, atrocities (false flag operations) and pandemics in order to control the fearful, submissive populations.

As an example of this breaking down of people by a cult in order to achieve manipulation of them, the Erhard Seminar Training (EST) sessions would drive those who attended into an ‘altered state of consciousness’ by haranguing them and denying them in every way, refusing them exit and depriving them physically, after which there comes a point when:

“…trainees slowly lose all sense of resistance and become more pliable and are easily manipulated. They are then informed that they are free to ‘create their own space’. That is, the candidates become introspective and give free vent to their inner emotions and feelings. At this point in the training, mass hysteria erupts. Crying, laughing, screaming — all take place at once. The trainees are then ready to accept the fact that they are perfect as they are. If a person realizes this, then descriptively speaking he ‘gets it’” (G.A. Mather & L.A. Nicholls, Dictionary of the Cults, Sects, Religions and the Occult, Zondervan, 1993, p.104).

Although the way this pans out varies according the requirements of whatever cult it occurs in, the essential element is always the same: Break people down so that they enter an ‘altered state of consciousness’ so they then begin to have emotional/physical manifestations. Then they have ‘got it’ — whatever that ‘it’ is in whatever group in which it occurs: “The anointing”, “samadhi”, “the blessing”, the “energy”, “the Mesmeric Crisis”, the “vibe”, etc. They are then under the control of the cult. It is a hypnotic control — sometimes blatantly so, sometimes much more subtly.

If this psychologically manipulated process was widely understood in Christian circles so that Christians actually became wise instead of becoming part of the ubiquitous stupidity that is displayed, there never would have been a ‘Toronto Blessing’ or any other phoney revival or any ‘deliverance ministry’. For all that is happening in Pentecostal/ Charismatic churches when people start falling down or acting like they have demons, or laughing/crying hysterically, coughing, retching, spitting, etc. is a rehash of what Mesmer produced in his patients in the late 1700s, as we have seen in earlier chapters. When people are in a suggestible state, then they are primed to do anything the manipulator of the meeting desires.

The use of emotionally charged repetitive music and the oral babbling which masquerades as ‘tongues’ are two mighty tools for getting people into an ‘altered state of consciousness’ and have been used to great effect in many churches in recent times. That is what modern ‘worship’ is mostly all about: Me, me, me, getting zonked out on effeminate, repetitive choruses, eyes closed/arms waving, hypnotic trance music, gibberish ‘tongues’, the leader’s mesmerizing voice over the sound system, etc. Once they have entered the required state, they are in a condition of extreme suggestibility.

When people succumb to an ‘altered state of consciousness’, they can be made to believe anything — and I mean anything. This is how all the manipulators operate, whether it is in an alleged ‘Christian’ environment, a hypnotist’s entertainment show, or in a black site of the CIA (which is why the CIA loved to experiment with LSD in its mind-control experiments).

If they can get you into the required ‘altered state of consciousness’, they can convince you that you have received an ‘Anointing’ from the Spirit of God; they can make you believe that you have a pile of demons which need to be removed (and you can even act all that out for them, complete with stunning Hollywood sound-effects of retching, coughing, spitting, etc.); they can brainwash you with the notion that you were satanically abused by your parents as children; they can convince you that you have a spirit within you of your dead twin; they can induce you to imagine that you have inherited your ancestors’ sins and demonic attachments; they can influence the entire course of your therapy to go exactly as they have planned it to go; and they can do all that while making you believe to the uttermost that it is all absolutely real. Are you beginning to make sense as to what this is really all about?

Here are a couple of examples from an Ellel Grange victim (given to me personally) demonstrating the kind of guided imagery used by these therapy groups masquerading as ‘deliverance’ in order to brainwash people into believing what the counsellors want them to believe:

“One picture which I can remember from the early days of ministry at Ellel was that they said I had been a twin (that was what they felt) and that my mother had aborted it herself. They then got me to name it. For months I was in a state of grief. They said I had been carrying part of my ‘twin’ brother’s spirit in me. You can only imagine the panic and grief that such an idea can cause you. I don’t believe for a moment that I ever was a twin.
When I had had my ears pierced in Brighton they said that I had received the spirits of thousands of babies that had been thrown over cliffs in the Norse period as they thought I was related to them. They had seen these people doing it because I was blonde and my ancestors had come from Northern Europe many hundreds of years ago. They asked me to take off my earrings so the screams of the trapped souls could come out. I was devastated with the screams they all made. You really do get into all of this when you are there because you are taken on journeys with pictures you see of your ancestors doing things. This is really horrible. Then you have to forgive them and get set free from the demons.
To think that you had the spirits of people, your ancestors plus your own brothers, was enough to make you go insane. I didn’t though, by the grace of God”.

This is absolutely typical of these ‘deliverance’ therapy groups. First they get you into an ‘altered state of consciousness’, which is not difficult to achieve as the people attending these ‘deliverance’ sessions are already halfway there when they arrive on the doorstep (i.e. they’ve read other accounts and they know what is expected of them). They soon learn that having screaming, spitting, retching, coughing, convulsive ‘manifestations’ is vital to the process, so they then have them. I have seen all this many times before in the secular therapy sessions in which I was involved when I was into all that stuff when I was a New Ager in the 1970s.

In Bill Swartley’s “Structural Integration” therapy groups, through the use of guided imagery and powerful suggestion, I saw many people taken back to alleged early life experiences or even experiences supposedly from previous incarnations! They would relive these experiences as if they were actually happening there and then. I saw people ‘reliving’ throwing their babies down a well in medieval times, ‘reliving’ being rejected or abused by their parents or others when they were babies, ‘reliving’ commanding their troops to massacre cities full of people in ancient Rome, ‘reliving’ a bad birth experience stuck in the birth canal, or ‘reliving’ being murdered horribly in an assassination — all of them complete with blood-curdling screams, bodies flailing around on the floor, foaming at the mouth, spitting, retching, struggling, laughing, coughing, crying, etc. It is all very convincing.

Incidentally, as an informative aside, Bill Swartley had previously partnered with Dr. Frank Lake, whose book “Clinical Theology” (published by Darton, Longman, Todd) has been hugely influential on the Inner Healing/Regression Therapy movement in the churches — especially the Anglican Churches. When I was a young Christian visiting St. Michael le Belfrey church in York in 1986, this book was on the church bookstall. Lake had earlier worked using LSD therapy with Stanislav Grof during the 1950s. Grof developed a type of therapy which was like LSD but without the drug, called Holotropic Therapy. This involved the use of hyperventilation (rapid breathing technique), which was “enhanced by the use of evocative music or sound technology developed by various cultures specifically for the purpose of changing consciousness” (Gary Doore, ed., Shaman’s Path: Healing, Personal Growth & Empowerment, Shambhala, 1988, p.163). So the LSD consciousness-altering therapy practised by Frank Lake and Stanislav Grof was channelled into another therapy which also altered consciousness by using techniques such as repetitive music. Lake also developed his experience into the deceptively-named “Clinical Theology” which has now found its way into many churches.

The use of repetitive soppy music is also what is being used in Charismatic circles to induce an ‘altered state of consciousness’. Much of so-called “worship ministry” today is nothing more than the administration of a hypnotic drug to lull the mind into a suggestive state. Just like Muzak in a lift (elevator) or ‘Cosmic’ music with swooshing waves in a New Age bookshop. As said above but worthy of repetition, so many churches now (just like the folks who are into Eastern Mysticism and the New Agers) think that getting ‘blissed-out’ or ‘zapped’ into a state of oblivion is the way to develop spiritually. Hence the huge proliferation of ‘Worship Ministry’ and ‘Worship Leaders’ in the last few decades. A true disciple of Christ does not need a ‘worship leader’. He or she knows what it is to worship and also knows that worship involves the mind, too (Matthew 22:37), rather than being blissed out in some manipulated mindless haze.

In the book, “In Search of the Ultimate High: Spiritual Experience through Psychoactives” by Nicholas Saunders, Anja Saunders, Michelle Pauli (published by Rider), it is claimed that “many of the early therapeutic LSD trips were taken by Anglican clergy, under the supervision of Dr Frank Lake, an Anglican clergyman who founded a school called Clinical Theology” (See this link: https://archive.org/details/insearchofultima0000saun/page/90/mode/2up , and read page 90, para 5). I share all this to show that the use of cathartic therapy and ‘altered states of consciousness’ in churches is nothing new. Thus, the ground was paved for all this ‘deliverance’ therapy years ago. Whereas Frank Lake would encourage reliving early life traumas in his therapy groups (complete with psycho-physical manifestations), the ‘deliverance therapists’ encourage the bogus release of generational demons in their deliverance sessions (complete with similar psycho-physical manifestations). Although the ‘deliverance’ people would strongly deny it, both they and Frank Lake have been tapping into the same murky area of human consciousness. The demons experienced in the ‘deliverance’ sessions are just a ‘Christianised’ version of the traumas manipulatively generated in the above cathartic therapy groups.

What is happening in the ‘deliverance’ therapies in the Christian scene is no different to all that I witnessed in all the therapy sessions I attended in the 1970s. The ‘deliverance’ people have simply renamed it all to involve demons, using the name of Christ to ‘Christianise’ what is effectively catharsis therapy. The fundamental element is that one can convince anyone of anything and get them to act out anything if one can first get them into an ‘altered state of consciousness’. This is why I say that the physical/emotional manifestations induced in people by the so-called “Toronto Blessing” in churches are no different to the physical/emotional manifestations induced in those who attend the therapy sessions of the ‘deliverance’ ministries. It is all based on catharsis induced in an ‘altered state of consciousness’.

Therefore all the professing ‘Christians’ in the Charismatic scene, many of whom have likely never been properly born again/born ‘from above’ who undergo ‘deliverance ministry’ and think that they have been ‘delivered’ are simply going through what is effectively catharsis therapy (just like EST or Primal Scream or the trappings of Mesmer’s practices) which brings some measure of emotional release masquerading as a Christian experience. But unless they have truly come to Christ, then they have not really been released from demonic interference at all because they are still under the power of the evil one, like every other unregenerate soul (1 John 5:19). I am not saying that they have demons like the ‘deliverance’ people say. I am simply saying that they do not trust in having the Holy Spirit of God indwelling them but they only trust their ‘deliverance’ minister. Therefore they must still be under the power of the evil one. This is applied logic. There is only one experience which brings real deliverance from satanic control and that is the power of the Gospel, by which one crosses over from death to life, which they will have “abundantly” (John 5:24; 10:10).Spending years having demons cast out of you after coming to Christ does not sound like the kind of super-abundant life to which Jesus was surely referring!

‘Deliverance ministry’ is yet another ‘Gospel-plus’ scenario. As far as they are concerned, the power of the Gospel, being delivered from the power of darkness, and being made into a new creation has something lacking and is simply not enough. That is the major flaw in their demonology. That is why they call the Pentecostal/Charismatic experience “Full Gospel”, as if the real Gospel of Christ which has been proclaimed for two thousand years was inadequate and has had to await all that time for their defective theology in order for its fullness to take place. What a revealing indictment of their theology that is, and a complete demonstration of their hubris!

Today’s phoney ‘deliverance ministry’ involves a humanistic rather than a spiritual approach. It is based on the manipulative hypnotic suggestions of secular psychotherapy. The real deliverance ministers are those who proclaim the two-thousand-year-old Gospel of Jesus Christ, for the Gospel is God’s only means by which one can be wholly delivered from the forces of darkness.

Incidentally, the “spirit of the aborted/dead twin” routine, as mentioned in the lady’s testimony above, is one that I have come across in counselling many victims of this type of ministry. This is all part of a standard pattern which has been carried out over the years. The implanting of these ‘pictures’ in the minds of those who go for this ‘deliverance’ therapy is an essential part of the ministry, and has been used by them from the beginning. It is actually a powerful brainwashing process known in neo-Gnostic circles as “guided meditation” and lies at the heart of all these ‘deliverance ministries’.

These Alleged Discerners of Demons Cannot Even Discern Apostasy when it Hits them in the Face!

I believe that the real demons inhabit the realms of the ‘deliverance’ ministries. The satanic realm must be having a field-day with these people. They are so busy bolting the front-door against their imaginary demons that they fail to see the real demons coming through their back-door in droves! A great many of the people drawn into training in Ellel Ministries’ courses come from an Anglican church background. It is more than ironic that all these people who claim to be able to spot umpteen demons in the lives of Christians which have allegedly come down from earlier generations or from contact with others, are totally unable to discern the fact that their own denomination is a major contributor to the satanically-inspired apostasy of today and is a prime harbinger of the religion of the ‘New World Order’! This is very revealing. Furthermore, in spite of laying claim to be able to discern thousands of demons and the spirits of animals in Christians, these ‘deliverance’ merchants are unable to discern major deceptions in the church today. Here is an extract from the publicity for Ellel Ministries’ “School of Reclaiming the Ground and Spiritual Warfare”:

“The teaching content of this school is of vital importance to the Body of Christ. Ever since the early days of the work we have been learning the importance of cleansing land and buildings. There has been great fruit of this ministry as whole spiritual environments have been transformed through specific prayer, intercession and spiritual warfare. In recent years this aspect of spiritual warfare has received new attention and significance through the Transformations videos and an increasing number of people have been asking for more in-depth teaching on the subject.”

These “Transformations” videos have been one of the biggest scams in the Christian scene and are indicative of the way in which people can be convinced to believe in anything if they are open to it. These videos have been put together NOT by some objective investigative reporter or researcher who is merely reporting verifiable facts, but by people who have developed a philosophy which they want the world to believe at all costs. When people want to believe something desperately enough, they will believe anything.

In the case of the “Transformations” videos, it is the belief that people have to conduct rituals in order to “cleanse the land of demons” before evangelism can be successfully carried out. This is known as ‘Spiritual Mapping’ or ‘Strategic Level Spiritual Warfare’, (SLSW), which was devised by C. Peter Wagner, George Otis and other Charismatic leaders in the late 1980s/early 1990s, and popularised by the so-called “New Apostolic Reformation” (NAR) (Readers can find much interesting information about this hustle in my free-to-download book, “Discerning the Signs of the Times”, at this link: https://diakrisis-project.com/2022/09/14/new-book-discerning-the-signs-of-the-times/ ). Once again, these people are making the Gospel of Christ dependent on rituals that humans have to perform before it can have any efficacy — yet more evidence that they are essentially saying that the Gospel of Christ is spiritually insufficient without human intervention. Without mincing my words, that is an atheistic belief.

I Would Far Rather Be Doing Something Else

What more can we say? I do not take any delight in writing about what I am covering in this section of the chapter. To be perfectly frank, when dealing with all this madness (and it is madness), I often wish that I never needed to have anything to do with it again. I would far rather write an edifying article or preach a sermon on the deep things of God. But it profoundly disturbs me that so many have been so damaged by these ministries, and in the name of Christ, too. Therefore, I have to say something. I do not take any delight at all in becoming the object of reproach and derision by the people one is forced to expose, who then get busy with their curses and their evil accusations about anyone who criticizes them being demonised.

I confess to feeling like Jeremiah when he spoke of how he felt as if he never wanted to prophesy again because of the enmity which it brought upon him, but also how he couldn’t help himself because “His message becomes a fire burning in my heart, shut up in my bones, and I become weary of holding it in, and I cannot prevail” (Jeremiah 20:9). This is how I feel, too. There is nothing more I would like than to be able to enjoy peace and beauty continually — immersing myself in the gorgeous aesthetics of life, love, and the wonders of nature. Believe me, where I live, that would be very easy to do. But “we live in interesting times”, and I cannot suppress the need to protect and help the oppressed and afflicted at this extraordinary moment of history.

An Insane Smokescreen of Deflection

The grand irony is that as soon as someone makes critical remarks about “deliverance ministries”, or the wacky Charismatic churches promoting the “Toronto Blessing”, they can only conceive of the critic as working for Satan and being embittered and judgemental. Short of a miracle, they will not acknowledge that their very foundations are dangerous and wrong and they play down the reality of victim-abuse. They say that mistakes were made in the past but all is okay now. But really they have simply got much better at Public Relations and the use of slick web design.

In those circles, how one deals with one’s critics is to assume that those critics are demonised themselves and then begin to “pray them down”, or “bind their controlling spirits”, or even put them under a curse, and all the other pagan nonsense in which they indulge. In my own case, they say that my former fringe involvement with the occult and the New Age has left me controlled by a number of demons which have not yet been dealt with. As if the Holy Spirit indwelling me is not powerful enough to stop them sharing house with Him! These people are so clueless from a biblical standpoint, relying only on the ‘evidence’ of the subjective experience which they generate in their sessions, as we must surely have discovered while going through the above material. People have even written to me to tell me that they have been praying for my demons to be bound! What profound ignorance — and even arrogance! It is all an insane smokescreen of deflection away from their own evil. They just will not face up to it and the damage they are causing in the body of Christ.

There is no doubt in my mind that we are dealing with the equivalent of a cult here, with all the participants — counsellors and victims — thoroughly brainwashed and primed to attack all those who expose the cult. It is very dark indeed, and it is all part of a pattern of manipulation in these times which can be observed on many fronts — whether ecclesiastical, educational, governmental or religious. One simply knows that one is dealing with the forces of darkness, something unclean, contaminated, corrupted and defiled.

Fortunately, the abuse which the victims of the ‘deliverance’ cults receive is abhorrent enough to drive some of them — dazed and confused — out of those cults and into the sympathetic arms of healthy ministries which can really help them. Sadly, I have yet to personally encounter a ‘deliverance’ counsellor who has found his or her way out of the demonic maze into which they have strayed. It seems impossible for them to admit that they are living a lie. As Isaiah said concerning the mindset of the idolater: “He feeds on ashes. His deluded heart has led him astray, and he cannot deliver himself or say, ‘Is not this thing in my right hand a lie?’” (Isaiah 44:20). They are completely deluded, living in a fantasy world of demons, looking in all the wrong places for demonic activity, relying on flimsy images which their own minds have conjured up, while blaming psychological issues and sinful behaviour on legions of imaginary demons. They are deeply sick in heart and cannot see it. Having rejected the Scriptures which expose their deception and having twisted others in order to support it, they bathe in their positions of power and rely solely on the illusory manifestations of their victims for the validation of their ersatz demonology.

Let Us Not Give in to Them for a Moment!

As my late friend, Tal Brooke, said to me many years ago (1997), “To get by in the world today, the Christian needs the hide of a rhinoceros and the skillset of a world class spy”. The hide of the rhinoceros refers metaphorically to the necessary self-protection that one needs from the many lunatics who inhabit the visible church today — either those who oppress faithful pastors and teachers to destroy their ministry, or those who propagate so much wacky teaching about the alleged work of the Holy Spirit and demons or demonisation. Coupled with that, the skillset of a world class spy (spiritually understood) is needed to keep one step ahead of the deviousness and cunning manipulations of these impostors in the churches who will stop at nothing to spread lies and innuendo about anyone who exposes them and their ministries.

You may well now ask, “How should we respond to all this?” My answer is to say that we should respond in just the same way as the apostle Paul responded to the “false brethren” who came into the Galatian church in order to remove their liberty in Christ and bring them into bondage. Paul said: “We did not give in to them for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you” (Galatians 2:5). Let us also not give in to them for a moment, so that the dramatic truth of the release from bondage which comes through obedience to the Gospel will continue with us, unfettered and free to perform its miraculous work of the healing of the soul and the restoration of hearts and minds.

So let us cast aside the vast majority of books on so-called ‘deliverance’ which litter the shelves of most Christian bookshops today. So many of them are downright dangerous, irresponsible and based on both fundamental misunderstandings of the Scriptures and a rejection of the Bible as the fount of Divine revelation today. Instead, let us turn to the Spirit-inspired writings of the apostles of Jesus Christ for our instructions on how to overcome Satan and handle the deceits of the demonic realm. Concerning any possible demonic interference in the life of the disciple of Christ, there are four places where we are given express light in this area, and a clear pattern of behaviour to follow. It is significant that they come from the pens of the three most prominent Apostles in the early church — Peter, John and Paul. To conclude this part of the chapter, let us now examine these precious teachings.

The Teaching of the Apostle Peter on Spiritual Warfare

The only direct reference to Satan in Peter’s writings occurs in his first letter, when he reminds believers of the necessity of vigilance and a humble heart:

“Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you. Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Resist him, steadfast in the faith” (1 Peter 5:6-9).

The teaching of the Apostle here is this: even though the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour, all that is necessary to combat this is to resist him, remaining steadfast in the faith. This approach is very similar to that recommended by the Jerusalem church leader, James, who, after reminding us that “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble”, concludes: “Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you” (James 4:6-7). The thinking behind these two texts is so similar that it was surely axiomatic in terms of the teaching of the early church on the subject of spiritual warfare. An undergirding element of this exhortation is the need for sobriety. No need for hysteria, superstition or ecclesiastical ritual when considering these matters.

Notice also how resistance to the devil is intimately tied up with ‘steadfastness in the faith’, which involves assurance and the foundations of solid Bible teaching — qualities which are sadly lacking in so many churches today. But above all, the greatest panacea for demonic oppression is to “draw near to God and He will draw near to you” (James 4:8). Submission in prayer to God is the central key to overcoming Satan. When a child was possessed by a particularly malign spirit (Mark 9:14-29), Jesus emphasised the profound importance of prayer and the personal spiritual life of the disciples as the key to the boy’s deliverance, rather than adherence to any ritual form of exorcism. Indeed, the very reason that the disciples had not been able to exercise their God-given gift for casting out demons was because they had neglected their spiritual exercises and simply assumed a magical reliance on exorcistic commands.

The one who exercises humility, faith and a prayerful mind-set — who resists Satan in this Divinely-appointed way — will discover that the devil will always turn tail and run. Guaranteed.

The Teaching of the Apostle John on Spiritual Warfare

Although John said a great deal about Satan and his overthrow by the Lord Jesus Christ (e.g., 1 John 3:8), in terms of the personal spiritual warfare of the believer, his greatest statement by far occurs in the Book of Revelation: “They overcame [the devil] by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death” (Revelation 12:11). It is a wonderful statement of deliverance from Satan in three parts. It is so ironic that this very verse has been seized on by ritualistic Christians in their vain attempts at ‘deliverance’ from Satan. But there is no reference here to the superstitious, ritual “pleading of Christ’s blood” to the demonic powers in order to frighten them off, as many are teaching today. Engaging with demons in this way is pure Shamanism. One self-styled exorcist, giving an account of an alleged ritual exorcism, writes: “Prayerfully, I then sealed off the area of her soul, i.e., mind, heart, will, conscience and memory with the Blood of the Lamb… The Blood as the holy deterrent to evil is the Divinely imposed and impressed means of prohibition” (See, for example, Arthur Neil, Aid us in Our Strife (Heath Christian Trust, 1985), p.340). Another “Bible teacher” writes about this same phenomenon, claiming that “he who scoffs at this teaching is in a pathetic plight… up the creek, without a paddle” (Bible News Review, No. 191, February 1987). He sums up his teaching like this:

“As the priests offered up daily blood sacrifices on behalf of the Israelites, so today in New Testament times, we by faith offer the Blood of Jesus Christ to God, as our plea on behalf of ourselves, our children and our loved ones. This ritual only comes to LIFE when we individually put it personally to the test” (Ibid.). [emphasis in original]

According to this writer, anyone (including Christians) not indulging in the shamanist ritual of “Pleading the Blood”:

“leaves himself without protection (a covering), without healing (except conventional medicine), and with no defence against demonic attack upon his person or property — thus exposing himself and his loved ones to just any devilish onslaught in this dangerous, demon-infested world” (Ibid.). [parentheses in original]

However, in spite of this menacing threat, the truth is that the believer’s ability to stand before Satan does not rest in anything which he or she can perform, but rather on what the Lamb did on the cross for him or her some two thousand years ago. That is what “overcoming Satan by the blood of the Lamb” really means — nothing to do with incantations of any kind. When you are a beneficiary of Christ’s atonement, you are naturally “delivered…from the power of darkness and transferred…into the kingdom of the Son of [God’s] love” (Colossians 1:13).

Believers do not need to “plead the Blood of Christ” to Satan (or anyone else) as if we were occultists waving crosses at Dracula or a clove of garlic at vampires. We can just rest in the finished work of Christ through His gracious atonement. All these weird actions come from people who seem to have no understanding whatsoever about the security of the believer and the assurance which he or she enjoys.

It is also common in these circles which claim to practice exorcism on disciples of Christ to use the name of Jesus as a kind of talisman — as if the name itself held some hidden power. But casting out demons “in His name” had nothing to do with the literal incantation of the name of Jesus at supposed demons, as if the name itself has some kind of woo-woo in it! The biblical phrase “in the name of” simply refers to the act of doing something by the authority of another. To think that the actual verbal phrase, “in the name of Jesus”, has a magical power in the face of demons is pure superstition, and constitutes the use of the ancient occult art of ‘name-magic’ — a practice which was specifically outlawed in the Third Commandment: “You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God”, yet which pagan practice is being performed by countless Charismatics today through their many phoney ‘ministries’. As Gerhardus Vos rightly showed:

“It is not sufficient to think of swearing and blasphemy in the present-day common sense of these terms. The word is one of the chief powers of pagan superstition, and the most potent form of word-magic is name-magic. It was believed that through the pronouncing of the name of some supernatural entity this can be compelled to do the bidding of the magic-user” (Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology: Old & New Testaments, Wipf & Stock, 2003, pp.137-138).

Likewise, in his biography of Moses, Jonathan Kirsch writes:

“Even the Third Commandment — ‘Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain’ (Exod. 20:7) — can be understood as a specific injunction against the kind of ‘name-magic’ that is common to all primitive religion. ‘Anyone who knows a divine name can make use of the divine power present in the name to effect blessings and curses, adjurations and bewitchings and all kinds of magical undertakings,’ explains Martin Noth. ‘The Divine name was revealed for the praise of God and for calling upon him, but it must be protected from possible misuse’. The Bible is harsh on those who defy these prohibitions” (Jonathan Kirsch, Moses: A Life, Random House Ballantine, 1998, p.236).

The actual name of Jesus is not something to throw around as if it has magical properties. “In the name of Jesus” is not a slogan for ritualistic purposes but is simply a confirmation of the authority of Christ. Similarly, the use of the phrase, “by the word of their testimony”, in connection with the overcoming of Satan, is not a reference to any mystical “power of the spoken word”, as many Charismatics are teaching today. This text simply refers to faithfulness to the Truth which is in Christ and the fearless preaching of it in the world (see Revelation 6:9; 11:7; 12:17). It was for just such faithfulness and preaching that John was exiled on the Isle of Patmos in the first place — “for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ” (Revelation 1:9). Preaching the Gospel provides deliverance for the Lord’s people and confirms the mighty fact that the devil has already been overthrown.

A third element of deliverance in this verse is that “they did not love their lives to the death”. Is it not astonishing how so many believers have actually got their feet so comfortably under the table in this world? Do they not realise that because Satan is the power behind the world-system (1 John 5:19), therefore any kind of friendship with the world represents enmity toward God (James 4:4)? John here teaches us that a prime factor in overcoming Satan is to have a ‘loose’ hold on this world. Even more, we are expected to ‘hate’ our lives in the world to such an extent that we are willing to sacrifice them for the sake of the Gospel (see Luke 14:26; John 12:25). It is to such self-sacrifice that John is referring in Revelation 12:11 as he was in his first letter when he said “we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren” just as the Lord Jesus “laid down His life for us” (1 John 3:16; cf. John 15:12-13). Self-denial and self-sacrifice for God through Christ is guaranteed to make demons run a mile!

The Teaching of the Apostle Paul on Spiritual Warfare

Although Paul alluded to spiritual warfare in his other letters, it is in his letter to the Ephesians that we discover a complete manual on spiritual warfare — on how to cope with living in a totally dark society where the powers of darkness are revered and even worshipped as gods and goddesses. The teaching here must be fundamental to our understanding of this subject, as this entire letter concerns the cosmic relationship between the Ekklesia and the powers of darkness. It is all about the battle between the powers — satanic power and the real power of God. All this would be especially relevant to those living in Ephesus, which was the centre of the cult of the goddess Diana and a major focal point for occultism and magic in the first century AD (cf. Acts 19). It is equally as relevant in our own day, as we have learned throughout this present book.

In the first chapter of his Letter to the Ephesians, we learn how believers have been chosen for salvation and holiness by the Lord and Creator of the universe even before it was ever created (Ephesians 1:1-12). Then we learn how the recipients of this salvation have been sealed with the Holy Spirit until the return of the Lord Jesus (Ephesians 1:13-14). He also tells us of “the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power” and how He has been seated at God’s right hand in the heavenlies, “far above all principality and power and might and dominion” (Ephesians 1:19-21).

In the second chapter, Paul reminds believers what they have been saved from, contrasting the power of Jesus Christ with “the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2). In the third chapter, he reveals a great mystery, “that the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs, of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ through the Gospel” (Ephesians 3:6). This is the realisation of Jesus’ promise that He would “plunder” Satan’s goods — delivering human souls out of the nations over which that wicked one had held sway for so many millennia (Matthew 12:29). Then, after showing that God’s eternal purpose in Christ Jesus was that the “multi-faceted wisdom of God might be made known by the church to the principalities and powers in the heavenlies” (Ephesians 3:10-11), he speaks of “the power that works in us” which comes through being filled with all the fullness of God and having Christ dwelling in our hearts through faith (Ephesians 3:16-21). Already, even at the end of the third chapter of the Letter to the Ephesians, we can see that the disciples of Christ have sufficient internal protection against the forces of darkness so that they have no need of any pretended exorcisms or weird ministry from people with a defective view of the Gospel.

Then, in the fourth chapter, he begins a careful exposition of the practical application which arises naturally out of the teaching which has been given in the previous three chapters showing that there is a “power” (Greek, dunamis, from which our word “dynamite” is derived) in the believer which far surpasses any authority or power to which Satan may aspire.

Here we discover that in this fourth chapter of Ephesians there is a twofold strategy in spiritual warfare with Satan — the one involving our works, the other involving our weaponry. The first involves the necessity for believers to “have a walk worthy of the calling” with which they are called and that they should “no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk” (Ephesians 4:1, 17ff). The second involves being “able to stand against the wiles of the devil” through being equipped with the “whole armour of God” (Ephesians 6:11).

When Paul says: “Do not give a foothold to the devil” (Ephesians 4:27), the footholds he envisages are the various sins and sinful situations into which we can so easily fall, such as lying (Ephesians 4:25,15a), sinful anger and contentious behaviour (Ephesians 4:3-6,26,31), corrupt communications (Ephesians 4:29; 5:4), a lack of kindness, compassion and forgiveness (Ephesians 4:32), the merest hint of sexual immorality, uncleanness or covetousness (Ephesians 5:3,5), drunkenness (Ephesians 5:18), the wrong choice of associates (Ephesians 5:6ff), failure to discern false doctrine (Ephesians 4:14), a lack of humility and submission (Ephesians 4:2; 5:21), and the fostering of sectarianism or divisiveness (Ephesians 4:3-6). These are some of the things which can give a foothold to Satan in the life of the disciple of Christ. The disciple can never be possessed by Satan but s/he can certainly give him some legroom by which s/he can be afflicted. This does not warrant the use of ‘deliverance ministry’ for disciples of Christ, but it may involve the need for some wise spiritual counsel from elders. That should be all that is necessary. For what would really be needed is a change in behaviour to bring about the desired result. Disciples of Christ who understand how to conduct themselves and how to mortify any sinful behaviour have no need of superfluous ministries run by people who have no understanding whatsoever of the Christian Gospel and of the Christian’s sanctification.

The greatest weapon in our spiritual warfare against Satan is to “put off, concerning your former conduct, the old self which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts” (Ephesians 4:22), and to “put on the new man which was created according to God, in righteousness and true holiness” (Ephesians 4:24). After all, the very reason that Christ “bore our sins in His own body on the tree” was in order “that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness” (1 Peter 2:24). The Christian who takes his need to root out sin seriously and live an upright and righteous life will receive the most cast-iron protection against all the onslaughts of the devil because he does not provide any footholds for him. As the Apostle John puts it: “We know that whoever is born of God does not sin; but he who has been born of God guards himself, and the wicked one does not touch him” (1 John 5:18). Note those last seven words: The wicked one (Satan) does not touch him. If a disciple of Christ behaves righteously, any stray demons will have no right whatsoever to harass you. What protects the disciple of Christ exclusively from demonic hassle is personal, ongoing, progressive sanctification rather than any ritual exorcism through a bogus ‘deliverance ministry’.

However, working alongside this incessant mortification of sin (Colossians 3:5; Romans 8:13; cf. Ephesians 4:22-24), and zeal for an upright life, there is also a need to ensure that one is making full use of the spiritual armoury provided by the Lord to every disciple of His (Ephesians 6:11-18). This putting-on of Divine armoury is not to be taken literally, as a number of superstitious Christians do today with a ritual exercise in which, upon rising in the morning, one visualises oneself being kitted out with a real suit of armour, and then divesting oneself of it at night when one goes to bed. [I have actually come across a small booklet, put out by a teacher and counsellor in the Church of England, which advocates this visualisation exercise for protection against the demonic]. This is yet another nonsensical and useless superstitious ritual in the Christian scene. Instead, Paul reminds us that each piece of the armoury mentioned in Ephesians 6:13ff. symbolises a ‘grace-gift’ from God which is given to every believer and of which we are to make full use. So this armoury symbolizes powerful defences which we already have available, and by which we can vanquish any onslaught by Satan. Paul lists seven items in this “armour of God”, which I shall examine briefly as I bring this chapter to a close.

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[Extracted from the upcoming Second Edition of “The Serpent & the Cross” (Hopefully available as a 1,046-page paperback in early October). Please indicate if you would be interested in puchasing this book (at cost price of course. No profits or prophets round here!)]

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© Copyright, Alan Morrison, 2025
[The copyright on my works is merely to protect them from any wanton plagiarism which could result in undesirable changes (as has actually happened!). Readers are free to reproduce my work, so long as it is in the same format and with the exact same content and its origin is acknowledged]

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