Signs, Wonder, and Deliverance - CONTEND Conference Session 2

Thank you brother, I'm happy to say that so far at the conference I have detected no nopes from any of the other brothers who have spoken, which is a good thing. So it's my task in this session to speak about signs and wonders which characterize supposedly the charismatic movement and deliverance, deliverance ministry as it is seen today.

And a couple of key questions that we want to answer are first, can Christians have demons? We want to answer that and also we want to answer why was there so much demonic activity in the time of Jesus when we read the gospel accounts, why was there so much demonic activity in that time?

Should we expect to see the same kind of demonic activity today and should we be casting out demons? Is exorcism normative for the life of the church today? Should I be casting out demons when I go to Starbucks or when I pump gas?

Should this be normative in my life? Am I called to do that? So let's begin by answering this question, what are signs and wonders? What are signs and wonders? We often consider these generally under the term miracles, though that term is not common in our English translations of the scriptures.

Tom Pennington notes that the Old Testament authors used Hebrew words translated signs, wonders, and power. The Hebrew word for signs means pledges or attestations of the divine presence. The first occurrence of sign is in Exodus when God commissions Moses as his servant to deliver the nation of Israel from Egypt and gives him the ability to perform signs.

Exodus 4 .17, you shall take in your hand this staff with which you shall perform the signs. The Hebrew word for wonder means a special display of God's power that causes one to wonder. It strikes awe in the person who witnesses it.

God referred to the plagues he brought on Egypt as wonders that would be multiplied in the land of Egypt in Exodus 11 .9. The Old Testament writers also used a Hebrew word translated power when they spoke of miracles.

This word can refer both to human and divine power, but when used of miracles it refers to the power of God in the acts of deliverance and judgment. Nehemiah 1 .10, they are your servants and your people whom you redeemed by your great power and by your strong hand.

Now in the New Testament we see the very same thing. John 20 .30 and 31, he writes this, therefore many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples which are not written in this book.

But these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and that believing you may have life in his name. We said that signs were the attestation of the divine presence.

Peter declares in Acts 2 verse 22, men of Israel, this is on the day of Pentecost, he stands up to preach and he says listen to these words. Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through him in your midst just as you yourselves know.

You saw them, he says that. The signs were the attestation that Jesus was who he really said he was. He was attested to you by signs. Peter also says in Acts 2 .43, he mentions wonders. Everyone kept feeling a sense of awe and many wonders and signs were taking place through the apostles.

Again, Tom Pennington writes, when Paul stated that miracles were part of the apostles credentials, he used the word signs and wonders and added miracles in 2 Corinthians 2 .12. He says, the signs of a true apostle were performed among you with all perseverance by signs and wonders and miracles.

The Greek word for miracles means a deed of power. So we see the same thing in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. Signs and wonders and displays of power. So these signs and wonders and deeds of power are performed by God through men.

What is their purpose? Well, their purpose is almost self-explanatory in their label. A sign serves as a sign. A wonder induces wonder. A deed of power impresses the viewer. They are given for the purpose of authenticating the messenger of truth, the man of God.

That is their purpose. When Moses inquires of the Lord in Exodus 4, he says in verse 1, what if they will not believe me or listen to what I say? The Lord responds. He performs a sign through Moses, causing his staff to turn into a serpent and back again and says to Moses that they may believe.

That the Lord, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob has appeared to you. You will perform these signs that they may believe. There are other purposes for God's miracles, such as the compassion he has upon his people.

But we are focusing now on their authenticating purpose. They authenticate the man through whom God is speaking and whom God has sent. Another example of the authenticating purpose of miracles, there are many of them in the Old Testament.

But I really like one in 1 Kings chapter 13. Verses 2 through 6, it says this, you're free to just listen. He cried against the altar. Well, the man of God, he goes to Bethel and crashes Jeroboam's idolatrous festival.

He's making a false god at Bethel and the man of God crashes the party. And he goes there into the midst and it says he cried against the altar by the word of the Lord and said, O altar, altar, thus says the Lord.

Behold, a son shall be born to the house of David, Josiah by name. And on you he shall sacrifice the priests of the high places who burn incense on you and human bones shall be burned on you. Then he gave a sign the same day, saying, this is the sign which the Lord has spoken.

Behold, the altar shall be split apart and the ashes which are on it shall be poured out. Now, when the king heard the saying of the man of God, which he cried against the altar in Bethel, Jeroboam stretched out his hand from the altar, saying, seize him.

But his hand, which he stretched out against him, dried up so that he could not draw it back to himself. The altar also was split apart and the ashes were poured out from the altar, according to the sign which the man of God had given by the word of the Lord.

The king said to the man of God, please entreat the Lord your God to pray for me that I may that my hand may be restored to me. So the man of God entreated the Lord and the king's hand was restored and it became as it was before.

And so we see very plainly here the word is accompanied by a sign to authenticate the man of God. That he is speaking the word of God, that he is sent on behalf of God. Now, let's consider Jesus and the apostles for a moment.

People tell me all the time that because Jesus did something, we should be doing the things that Jesus did. And to an extent, that is certainly true. We are to emulate the character of Jesus. We have been predestined to be conformed to the image of the sun.

That does not mean that we should be imitating all of the signs and wonders and miraculous deeds that Jesus performed. But they say that because Jesus did something, we should be doing it, too. And I, as someone who doesn't say that, you, as someone who probably doesn't say that, must be afflicted or perhaps inhabited by a religious spirit.

Sometimes I think people really need to be reminded that they are not Jesus. That they are not the apostle Paul. And hopefully that will make sense as we move through this talk. So let's take a look at what Jesus did.

And a great place to go is the gospel of John, who structures the first half of his gospel with seven signs that Jesus performed. And you remember that we read John 20, 30 and 31 earlier. He says he's performed many other signs which are not contained in this book.

But these have been written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. I have recorded these. To what purpose? So that you may believe. Jesus pours water into wine in John chapter 2. Jesus heals the noble man's son in John chapter 4.

Jesus heals the man at the pool in John 11. Jesus feeds 5000 people in John 5 or John 6. Jesus walked on water in John 6. Jesus heals a man born blind in John 9. Jesus raises Lazarus from the grave in John 11.

And the synoptics of course include many other healings and the casting out of demons. Now what many who are caught up in the charismatic movement and deliverance theology today, they focus on healings and the casting out of demons.

This is their focus, this is their emphasis, this is their ministry. But it begs the question, why don't they have any teachings or seminars or conferences about walking on water? Or about multiplying food?

I mean, there are a lot of hungry people in the world today. As a missionary in West Africa, I've seen them. They're hungry. I've scraped the bottom of the bowl for rice with the street kids in West Africa.

There are hungry people in the world today. If believers are expected to do the miraculous things that Jesus did, why is nobody multiplying food and feeding the hungry? Well, because believers are not expected to imitate the miraculous power of Jesus' ministry.

Jesus is doing these things that are, to borrow a phrase from Mosman, unique to his messianic office. And what is their purpose? To authenticate him and his gospel. He multiplies food, says, I am the bread of life.

That's the purpose of the miracle. To attest to who he is. I am the bread that came down from heaven. And what's common among these signs recorded in John is the belief of his disciples and the witnesses that follow the signs.

John is telling you what their purpose is. He is telling you why he is recording these for you. After he fed the 5 ,000 in John 6, John 6, 14 says, therefore, when the people saw the sign which he had performed, they said, this is truly the prophet who is coming to the world.

Why is it that among those trapped in the charismatic movement, our imitation of Jesus is limited to healing and casting out demons? Why is nobody turning water into wine? The answer is the same. Believers are not expected to imitate the miraculous power of Jesus' ministry as if it belongs to them.

Jesus is doing these things that are unique to his messianic office, authenticating the God-man, his message and his mission. And so that you may believe in him. Some charlatans, however, are bold enough to try to appear as though they are imitating Jesus' power.

And we get stuff like this. That man just turned water into wine, apparently. It's obviously a trick. And recently after I was converted, I remember watching a video of a guy claiming that he has raised over 500 people from the dead.

But like multiplying food and turning water into wine, this, raising from the dead, is not emphasized either in the charismatic movement. And perhaps you remember the debacle at Bethel in Redding, California, several years ago.

One of the leaders on the worship team, her daughter died suddenly in the night. She was two years old. Her name is Olive. And somehow everyone became convinced that God was going to raise this child from the dead if they prayed hard enough.

And so they rallied for what must have been at least a week's time praying, singing. The hashtag, Talitha Kumi, was making the rounds on social media from Mark 5, meaning Little Girl Arise. Bethel gave a statement during this time saying, We believe in a Jesus who died and conclusively defeated every grave, holding the keys to resurrection power.

We need it for our little Olive who stopped breathing yesterday and has been pronounced dead by doctors. We are asking for bold unified prayers from the global church to stand with us in belief that he will raise this little girl back to life.

Her time is not done, and it is our time to believe boldly and with confidence wield what King Jesus paid for. It's time for her to come to life. They also say Bethel Church believes in the stories of healing and physical resurrection found in the Bible, like in Matthew 10, 8.

Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons, freely you received, freely give. Now this tragic story highlights the catastrophic damage of poor hermeneutics and false teachings, particularly the belief that we are called to imitate everything that Jesus and the apostles did.

And the scene at Bethel became so hysterical in those days that they stopped praying and started demanding that God raise this little girl from the dead. They started taking authority and demanding her to come back to life because that is where their hermeneutic leads.

And it is quite tragic. Of course, she did not rise from the dead. No one living today can command someone to rise from the dead, but some do pretend. Watch this clip. It's not very good acting. The only believers who were expected to perform signs and wonders and miracles in the same way that Jesus did were the apostles of Jesus and those very closely associated with him upon whom they would lay their hands.

And they didn't even do all the things that Jesus did, but they performed many signs and wonders as Jesus told them they would. And the purpose of these signs and wonders, like when Peter commanded the lame man at the beautiful gate to rise up and walk, or when Paul raised Eutychus from the dead, was likewise the same purpose as the signs that Jesus performed to authenticate and authorize these men as apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ and the message they proclaimed in their preaching and in their writing.

So, we've pointed out that false teachers and those trapped in false movements do not tend to focus on certain signs of Jesus, but primarily on healing and so-called deliverance. We must inevitably notice that an important distinction lies between healing and deliverance and, say, walking on water or multiplying food.

It's really hard to fake walking on water. And probably near impossible to convince someone that they are walking on water. And if you were to pass around a never-ending basket of bread in a room of 10 ,000 people, that is something demonstrable.

That is something measurable. That is something very difficult to counterfeit. But through false teaching, it is not so difficult to pretend healing and deliverance and even to convince people that they are being healed and delivered.

You might hear testimonies all the time about someone's back pain or knee pain or wrist pain being healed in a service. Well, God can heal anyone today of whatever He wants to. We don't deny that fact.

But these charlatans command back pain to go and lengthen legs. And the miracles that we see from them today simply are not on par with what we see in the apostolic age. The miracles that are reported today are not the same with what we see recorded in the New Testament.

Instead, we see things like this and leg lengthening.

And everybody watch this now. Say this in the name of Jesus. In the name of Jesus, let it grow. Let it grow. Right now.

In Jesus' name.

Do you feel anything? What are we going to do? Now it's longer. Oh, it is longer. Right. It's longer, right? Say in the name of Jesus.

In the name of Jesus.

Even out. Even out.

Oh, it moved. Yeah.

Get up.

Now, if we were to see an actual healing, something that an apostle would do, an actual leg lengthened, a healing like we see recorded in Scripture, of which there can be no doubt, certainly a leg would need to be, you know, we're not talking about a tilted pelvis here.

We're talking about maybe two, maybe even three inches shorter than the other. What happens when one of these healers encounters such a person? This is Daniel Adams.

Beautiful day.

Got my Bible.

I'm ready to go. Oh, your leg?

You want Jesus to heal it?

Yeah.

What's wrong with it?

It's about three inches shorter.

Oh, you have a shorter leg? Can you sit right here for me real quick?

Come here.

We're going to see the leg grow out.

Let's see. No, no, no. It's okay.

It's not like the doctor where it's painful, okay?

This is a great physician.

His name is Jesus. Let me see that. Let me look at your legs.

You want to see something?

Father, I thank you for this girl's leg. I command this leg right now. Grow out.

All the way.

Bones be recreated. Joints be recreated.

Now. Now. All the way.

All the way. I think we may have gained like an inch.

They're faking it. They're deceiving people. And any inch that appeared to have been gained was simply a manipulation of the angles of the legs, which is how they do this trick. Adams was caught right there.

Someone on his team didn't filter correctly the people who were able to come to him. My friends, the ability to perform signs and wonders and miracles was given to the apostles. We ought to rejoice in that and glean from that appropriately when we study the word.

They were given for the purpose of authenticating and authorizing their ministry and message in the name of Jesus. And that purpose has been fulfilled. Does God still heal people? Yes. According to his good pleasure.

He had a young man. Their church diagnosed with a pretty serious form of cancer. And today he is cancer free. Praise God. But no one is walking around with the gift of healing or the ability to perform signs and wonders.

Acts 2 .43. Everyone kept feeling a sense of awe and many signs and wonders were taking hands. Through who? The apostles. Acts 5 .12. At the hands of the apostles many signs were taking place among the people and they were all with one accord in Solomon's portico.

Acts 14 .3. Therefore they spent a long time there speaking boldly with reliance upon the Lord who is testifying, listen, who is testifying to the word of his grace granting that signs and wonders be done by their hands.

The hands of the apostles. Acts 15 .12. All the people kept silent and they were listening to Barnabas and Paul as they were relating what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles.

Acts 19 .11. God was performing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, the apostle. Now, I've spent some time on this point because understanding the purpose of signs and wonders to the unique messianic office of Jesus and the office unique to the apostles of Christ is necessary for us to have a proper view of deliverance ministry and the casting out of demons.

I just read Acts 19 .11. Let me read it again and add verse 12 to it this time. God was performing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul so that handkerchiefs or aprons were even carried from his body to the sick and the diseases left them and the evil spirits went out.

The extraordinary miracles therefore include both healing and exorcisms. Exorcisms or deliverance as it is called today is not seen in a separate category from the signs and wonders performed by Jesus and the apostles that have ceased in the first century.

Jim Osmond writes,. If we learn anything about exorcisms from the book of Acts, it is this. Everyone who had power over demons also had the power to heal the sick and raise the dead. Ironically, he says, many Christians who would never think of claiming the power to heal the sick and raise the dead nevertheless believe they have power over Satan and his demons.

Nor does it seem, he says, from the record of Acts that exorcisms were commonplace. In the entire span covered in the book of Acts, nearly 30 years, Luke only mentions exorcisms four times and only records the details of one.

It was hardly central to the spread of the gospel or the ministry of the church at large. I think that last sentence is significant. It was significant. It was hardly central to the spread of the gospel or the ministry of the church at large.

The so-called deliverance ministers today absolutely teach that deliverance is central not only to the spread of the gospel, but to the sanctification of the Christian. And if you ever hear them say it's a secondary issue, and they will say it, they are lying and speaking out of both sides of their mouth.

They absolutely teach this. Oddly enough, Christians are the vast majority of the people getting delivered by these demon slayers. Apostle Alexander Pagani teaches that you can perform self-deliverance and even that deliverance ministers need deliverance and even that prophets of God need deliverance every now and then.

Listen to him explain this in a clip in an interview with a prophet, Jeremiah Johnson.

Say you can prophets have demons?

A Christian can have a demon, but you and I both have emails and reach out some various individuals seeking for deliverance, which I think is a good start for prophets that recognize that they need for deliverance.

I think that one of the signs, we don't talk about this as much, to recognize a false prophet is their lack of not needing deliverance or not wanting or desiring deliverance. God gave them over to strong delusion and when a prophet is in a strong delusion, they are a false prophet but don't realize that they're false because the gift is still true and that's because nothing on the internal, they haven't taken their car for a tune-up, a check-up or a car wash in a very long time.

Even prophets need deliverance like your car needs an oil change, which reminds me, I got to change my oil when I get back to Kentucky. And he says a sign of a false prophet is that he doesn't think he needs deliverance.

Where's that in scripture? And if a prophet of God needs deliverance from demons inhabiting them, then the average Christian certainly does. As I mentioned last night, I gave myself the very unfortunate task of reading Alexander Pagani's book entitled, The Secrets to Deliverance, subtitled, Defeat the Toughest Cases of Demonic Bondage.

And I read this book because I watched the documentary come out in Jesus' name, which was really all about Greg Locke and secondarily about deliverance in true Greg Locke form. In this documentary, Greg names this book as that which he and his wife encountered and began reading and began being challenged by.

And it was through the teaching contained in this book that he embraced deliverance and kicked off the movement that God is supposedly doing at his church. He describes this book as the very foundation for the movement, the current deliverance ministry that is bringing thousands and thousands of people to his church week in and week out.

And because Greg Locke gets so much national attention, the other deliverance ministers like Isaiah Saldivar and Vlad Zevchuk and Alexander Pagani who decided to endorse and attach themselves to Greg Locke have started getting much more attention as well.

And what I've observed from listening to these guys is that they all fundamentally agree with what is written in this book. They teach the same things that are contained in this book. Greg Locke described this book in the documentary as quote, amazing, powerful, simple, and biblical.

This is by far the worst book I've ever written. I believe Alexander Pagani is a sincere man who is incredibly deceived. And I realized upon reading this book that I was giving him way too much benefit of the doubt and way more credit than he deserves when I began to see how he twists the scriptures to support his theology.

So before we dive into some of the things taught in this book, here is an example of Pagani's deliverance mystery today.

You're so hungry. See, the devil, see, see? The devil is using your love for God against you. You're so hungry for God that you're open, you're so open to the Holy Spirit that sometimes without wanting to hinder the Holy Spirit, you've opened yourself up to a deceiving spirit in Jesus' mighty name.

But God says all tormenting spirit goes now. Tormenting religious spirit goes now.

Out now. Out now. Out now.

Leave in Jesus' mighty name.

According to Pagani, this woman was so open to God and the Holy Spirit that she became inhabited by demons.

Whoops.

And what you will see when you listen to these people and when you read them is that basically everything in life has the potential to open you up to the inhabitation of demons and evil spirits and to demonic oppression, even apparently seeking the Lord.

This book is, as I said last night, riddled with unbridled Gnosticism. And I was noping out in the first sentence on the first page in the acknowledgements before the book even started. Did I read this for you last night?

I think I did. Yeah, so he says, he says in the acknowledgements to the Holy Spirit, thank you for granting me wisdom and insight into the mysteries of the kingdom and entrusting me with the secrets to deliverance to continue your work of setting captives free.

Pagani believes himself to be a chosen apostle of God to whom secrets have been entrusted about deliverance and mysteries of the kingdom. We discussed yesterday that he received the inspiration for his book in a dream as we were speaking from Jude.

And throughout the book, he will refer to his teaching as this revelation, claiming that God has shown him, quote, new paradigms and protocols for deliverance. So the book that influenced this whole movement is founded not upon a faithful dealing with the text of Scripture, as we will see, but upon trust me, bro, I'm an apostle and I had a dream.

Now, let me give you an example of how these men handle the word of God. Going to read. This is from page 12. When a when an unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest and finding none, it says, I will return to my house from which I came.

And that's Luke 11, 24. The demon said, this is Pagani. The demon said it would, quote, return to my house from which I came. The demon was looking to go back to the house where it had been legally living.

But earlier the verse said when the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, this verse is telling us that the person is the house. That is why whenever I see house in Scripture, I consider how the verse applies to a person.

In Exodus 25, the tabernacle referred to the place where God himself would dwell. But in the New Testament, Peter would use the same word to refer to his body. Yea, I think it meet as long as I am in this tabernacle to stir you up by putting you in remembrance, knowing that shortly I must put off this tabernacle even as the Lord Jesus Christ hath shewed me.

Second Peter 1, 13. So tabernacle can also refer to the human body. This is how Pagani deals with the Scripture. This is his hermeneutic. Page 17. But when Jesus said this temple, he meant his own body.

John 2, 21. When Jesus referred to the temple, he was talking about a body, not a building. This has opened up a new realm of fresh revelation and unexplored Scriptures to me as every time I read the word temple in the Bible, I not only think of a physical building that was used as a place of worship, but I also consider how the passage might relate to the human body.

I love this passage about Jesus cleansing the temple in John 2 because it is a foreshadowing of deliverance. Just as Jesus walked in and cleared the money changes from the temple, he can step in and cleanse your temple.

So what he is doing is he is taking a word like house or temple and says, well, here it referred to a human body. Therefore, everywhere else in Scripture, whenever he sees the word temple, he can substitute for it the word body.

He can put the word body there and get a spiritual meaning out of the text to support his theology of deliverance. And he does this with virtually every text he uses in the book. Listen to what he says about Matthew 13, 31 through 32.

The text says this. Jesus presented another parable to them saying, the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field. And this is smaller than all other seeds, but when it is fully grown, it is larger than the garden plants and becomes a tree so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches.

We're familiar with that parable, I'm sure. And the parable is very clearly about Gentiles coming to the Messiah and finding refuge in him and thereby sharing in the blessings of the new covenant. This is what Pagani writes on page 26 of his book.

I believe the trees represent the kingdom of God spreading in the earth and the believer who allows the kingdom to manifest in his or her life. But while many believe the birds attracted to this tree are only those seeking refuge and sustenance in the message of the kingdom, I believe the birds can also represent the evil influences that seek to prevent the kingdom of God from spreading in and through us just as they did in the parable of the sower.

The stronger you grow as a believer in the kingdom, the more birds, parentheses demons, will attempt to make their nests among your branches, the various areas of your life. This is why we must continually allow the Holy Spirit to convict us and purge us of evil influences in our lives until the Lord calls us home.

So can a genuine believer have a demon operating in an unsurrendered area of his life? The answer is 100 percent yes. Well, that's a laughable interpretation of that text. It is a deliberate twisting of that text to make it to mean something else entirely in order to support his theology.

This man is totally unqualified to teach the scriptures, and yet this book is so amazing and powerful and biblical, according to Greg Locke and others. Alexander Pagani twists scriptures for his own purposes.

And hear this, my friends. He claims that the Holy Spirit revealed all this to him. That that interpretation is the revelation of God to him. The Holy Spirit will never contradict the word that he authored.

Now, what he says here on page 27 is a good segue for our next point of discussion. He says that Christians can have demons inhabiting them. At the same time, Pagani is adamant that he does not believe that Christians can be demon-possessed.

Listen to his explanation here.

Over and over. How many more videos do I have to put out saying a Christian cannot be demon-possessed?

And then in his next video, says he does believe Christians can have demons.

Which means if I want to believe that a Christian, you know, can have a demon, you know, um, I'm persuaded by that. And let me be persuaded in my own mind.

And in this next clip, he makes it clear that by have a demon, he means that a Christian can be inhabited by the Holy Spirit and demons.

Nominationalism says, you know, like how can the Holy Spirit live in the same house with the demon, you know? And well, then I began to, you know, living in New York, that that that made total sense to me because you could live in a house with roaches.

What?

So what's happening? These deliverance ministers are creating a category not found in Scripture where a person can have the Holy Spirit, their spirit redeemed, their spirit born again, but can also have demons not in their spirit, but in their souls and bodies.

And for whatever reason, the demon inhabiting parts of your soul or body is not possession, but simply a form of oppression. Listen to this by Vlad Zevchuk.

Those of you who think deliverance is not for Christians.

You're twisting to teach that Christians are inhabited by demons. The exodus is not about Christians inhabiting demons. And you can't even work out your salvation. He says, until you cast the demon out, until you get delivered.

You see how they do, in fact, make it a central issue. When I put the question out there on social media, asking if people think that Christians can have demons, the overwhelming majority responded with something like this.

Christians can be oppressed, but not possessed. And what's kind of funny about that is that's exactly what these guys teach. Except in the way in which they teach it, they teach it with this third category in mind, that demonic inhabitation is not possession, but oppression.

Now, there's an interesting moment in the Come Out in Jesus Name documentary where Greg Locke says he's actually tired of the discussion between oppression and possession and of making that distinction because the fact is, he says, either way, there are people who are demonized and they need freedom.

And on that, I would agree with him. We should drop the distinction between oppression and possession. The Bible doesn't make the oppression-possession distinction as most people articulate it today.

However, the Bible also doesn't teach that Christians can be oppressed, as in inhabited by demons. Scripture does not teach that third category. The New Testament terms for deliverance or to have a demon are never used to describe a case involving anything less than to be inwardly controlled by an indwelling demon.

Matthew 9, 32, as they were going out, a mute, demon-possessed man was brought to him. That's the word that would be usually translated demon-possessed. Luke 8, 27 uses a different word usually translated to have a demon is what it conveys.

It says, when he came out and onto the land, he was met by a man from the city who was possessed with demons who had not put on any clothing for a long time and was not living in a house but in the tombs.

Thomas Ice and Robert Dean in their book, Overrun by Demons, The Church's New Preoccupation with the Demonic, writes, quote, these terms never describe Satan's activities of accusation, temptation, deception, or persecution.

They describe only one, only the extreme case of being inwardly controlled by a demon. By demon-possessed, we mean indwelt and controlled by a demon. They do not describe what many would call today making the oppression-possession distinction oppression.

That Satan is oppressing me through temptation and affliction. The Bible does not use the word demonized to apply to that concept but only to full-on possession by an evil spirit. So, Greg Locke and these other guys say Christians are demonized but deny that they are possessed, inhabited but not possessed by an evil spirit.

This simply cannot be backed up by how the words are used in Scripture. Here is Isaiah Saldivar attempting to defend this position.

I look at Scripture and do not see precedence for how a Christian could dwell with the Holy Spirit could also have a demon living inside of them. That's hard for me. Like, I'm not there. I would say, number one, I don't see anywhere in the Bible where Jesus cast a demon off of anybody.