August 13, 2024 • 58 mins
Can Christians be affected by demons? Pastor Chris Misciagna, a Free Methodist minister, joins The Blind Exorcist to challenge the belief that believers are immune to demonic oppression. As a pioneer in deliverance ministry within his denomination, Pastor Chris is bringing exorcism back into the church—where it belongs.
📌 What you’ll discover in this episode:
✅ Why Christians can still experience demonic oppression
✅ How exorcisms are performed at conversion in other cultures
✅ The importance of theological oversight in deliverance ministry
✅ What the Wesleyan quadrilateral teaches about spiritual warfare
✅ How to integrate exorcism into discipleship and pastoral care
✅ Why megachurches often overlook spiritual warfare—and what to do about it
Spiritual warfare is real, and today’s church must be equipped to handle it with biblical truth, wisdom, and structure. Pastor Chris’s insights offer a road map for restoring true deliverance ministry in modern Christianity.
🔗 Learn more:
Pastor Chris’s Church Website: https://www.newlifecny.org/
Pastor Chris’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@newlifecny4327
Disclaimer: Links to guest websites or social media are for reference only and do not imply endorsement. The views expressed by guests do not necessarily reflect those of the host or The Blind Exorcist podcast.
💪 Book Your Deliverance Appointment – Join the community of Christians who have kicked out their demons and taken their freedom back!
🛡️ Not sure if you need deliverance? Schedule a free 20-minute consultation.
📰 Get Inspiring Christian Teachings on deliverance – Sign up for my newsletter at www.justind.com. Scroll to the bottom of the home page to join!
📱 Connect With Me – Have questions or thoughts? Tap "Send me a text message" above. 🎙️ I’ll answer selected questions on the podcast!
📝 One-Way Anonymous Communication – This is a one-way text messaging system. I won’t be able to respond, but I’ll read your message.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to episode 25 of the Blind Exorcist podcast.
I'm thrilled to have you joinme.
I'm Justin D, your host.
Don't forget to subscribe andshare this episode with your
family, friends and on socialmedia.
Your support helps spread themessage of freedom far and wide.
(00:20):
Consider partnering with me bytapping support the show in the
show notes.
Your contributions go directlytowards producing the podcast
and bringing you amazinginterviews on exorcism.
Thank you for your support.
I greatly appreciate it.
In today's episode I have afascinating discussion with
(00:44):
Pastor Chris Mishagana, a FreeMethodist pastor who is
pioneering the integration ofexorcism into the ecclesiastical
directives of his denomination.
He is one of the few pastorswho recognize the importance of
deliverance ministry for hismembers and the entire Free
(01:07):
Methodist community.
He is spearheading an effort tomake exorcism training a
standard church decree for allpastors within the denomination,
emphasizing the crucial role ofdiscipleship in this process.
This conversation challengesthe belief that Christians
(01:27):
cannot have demons.
Chris firmly believes that notonly can Christians be afflicted
by demons and require exorcism,but he also sees this
understanding as essential foraddressing deep-rooted struggles
that Christians often findinsurmountable.
He highlights that addressingthe sinful nature and counseling
(01:52):
alone are not enough.
Pastors must be trained toperform exorcisms to truly help
their congregation members.
I invite you to share thisepisode with your local pastor
and church leadership tochallenge their thinking.
Join me now, as Pastor Chrisand I delve into this critical
(02:14):
topic.
Let's listen in, chris.
Welcome to the Blind Exorcist.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Hey, justin, great to be here, pleasure to be with
you today.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
It's a sincere pleasure to have you here with
me today, chris, and for myaudience, chris is, as I
mentioned in the intro, a freeMethodist minister and I am so
excited to jump into thisbecause it's what I've been
telling you guys listening for awhile now.
Pastors, reverends, ministers,are starting to come into the
(02:53):
realization that they have beenlied to in seminary in all of
their theological studies thatsomehow Christians in America or
Western culture could neverhave demons.
It's impossible.
And yet Christians in China,Singapore, japan, india,
(03:20):
pakistan, south America, noteven a question.
Literally as soon as theybecome a Christian, the majority
of these people immediately gothrough an exorcism and they are
100% comfortable with itbecause they know that
generationally there has beenoccultic practices in their
(03:44):
countries.
I just spoke with a friend inSingapore recently and she
attends a church there wherethey believe in deliverance.
So she said, every Sunday atthe altar she's hearing her
minister say and the elders inthe church come out.
(04:06):
And so Singapore has anancestry of worship of false
deities, as do many othercountries.
It baffles me, it actuallyfrustrates me, that I have to
spend an entire ministryconvincing Christians in America
(04:29):
and Western cultures thatChristians can have demons.
It's insane.
But I really think this does goback to the theological
training coming out of theseseminaries.
I heard a minister say recentlythat he was taught in his
seminary that Christians cannothave demons.
(04:52):
But maybe people on the otherside of the border, like in
Mexico or South America, theymight have demons, but
Christians here in America wedon't have demons, and so they
taught him why that they couldnot have demons.
But Christians here in Americawe don't have demons, and so
they taught him why that theycould not have demons.
Meanwhile, we see it all thetime Christian ministers of very
(05:15):
large churches anddenominations fall, oftentimes
to sexual sin because of demons,oftentimes to sexual sin
because of demons.
If ministers would believe thatChristians could have demons,
you would not see this happentoo often.
That's my personal opinion,because they would go through
exorcism and get these issuesdealt with, but they minimize
(05:39):
everything to the sinful natureand psychology.
That's it.
And when that doesn't work,what do you do?
The people in those churchescome to us exorcists because
they know it's not their sinfulnature, it's not psychology,
it's not helping.
It is important to be incounseling and therapy,
(06:03):
absolutely.
But a key ingredient's missingExorcism, deliverance, demons.
Chris has came to thisunderstanding, to this
realization.
As a free Methodist minister,he became aware that not only
can Christians have demons, buthe wanted to learn about it.
(06:23):
This is awesome people.
This is where it's at.
Trust me, christians can havedemons.
Chris, let me come over to younow and I'd like to ask you how
did you initially become awareof that?
Christians could have demons?
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Christians could have demons.
Justin, I appreciate thequestion and I think the
question is quite comprehensivein its scope.
I think the big problem we'rerunning into as a church in
America is defining actuallywhat a Christian is.
When you're looking at a churchthat's in decline or in a
siloing into kind of themegachurch movement, what the
(07:07):
church refers to as a Christianwouldn't have passed mustard in
the early church.
Our you know approach towardscatechesis or taking someone
who's a non-Christian to aChristian, is very lean.
So when we use the term aChristian being demonized, the
biggest problem I think we haveis defining actually what a
Christian is, and because ofthat it depends what church you
(07:27):
go to, which segment ofProtestantism you go to.
You're going to get manydifferent definitions for that.
The large answer is yes.
We're seeing all kinds ofdemonic activity inside people
who claim to be Christians,whether full Christian or
quasi-Christian, however youwant to put it.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Wow, you bring up an interesting point here about the
megachurches.
There's not a whole lot of roomin that corporate culture, like
Christianity in America andaround the world has been for
lack of a better word broughtinto a corporate culture.
They do market research in thesurrounding areas to see what
(08:09):
would these people like to hearand they bring that data back to
the church leadership of who'sgoing to build this large mega
church.
This is what the people want tohear around you and guaranteed
preaching about hell's not inthere.
Preaching about turning fromsin not in there.
What's in there?
God loves you.
You can do whatever you want.
(08:31):
God loves you.
Come to church and, chris, youbring out a valid point.
Our early church founders wouldshudder at what we call
Christianity.
Today we have lost the coreconcept of dying to self,
understanding that we are sinful, broken people in desperate
(08:55):
need of salvation, and theconcept of resisting sin Gone.
It's all about God loves you.
Whatever you want from God, youcan have Very Americanized
right.
You need money.
Pray to God, you'll get it.
You want to have the best house?
(09:15):
You can have the best house.
Try telling that to the ApostlePaul who was beheaded in Rome.
We've lost a lot of the conceptof going through trials to
develop our faith.
We lost a concept of endurance.
Endurance is something that youhave to develop by going
through things, so a lot ofthese core concepts don't fit
(09:38):
into that corporate Americanculture where everybody's
smiling, everybody's happy,everybody's singing songs about
how they're special and how Godloves them.
Yes, this is true, but I thinkyou're getting my point here.
We've lost our way.
That's my personal opinion and,chris, I think you'd feel the
(10:00):
same.
Let me come over to you and getyour take on some of this here.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Yeah, I think it's as I was raised Roman Catholic,
became a Christian, a ProtestantChristian in a Pentecostal
church, and now I've beenserving as a pastor in the
pre-Methodist church for 26years and was in an independent
church prior for about six years.
Yeah, what with in the churchis a huge push towards growth,
which isn't a bad thing.
But often when we embrace thatas the primary driver of what we
(10:28):
do as pastors, we begin todistance ourselves from the
parish model and we becomedistant from our people.
And, as in the early 80s when Iattended them in Spring Valley,
new York, not far from where Igrew up, I remember in a church
with 3,500 members I didn't knowanybody.
If something happened to me Iwould be like who's going to
tell the church?
(10:49):
I was just one of severalthousand people that walked
through the door and that's notnecessarily a bad thing.
But the connectional modelwhere people were actually
living life together, it wasn'thappening in that body.
And I know there are a lot oflarge churches that do well with
small groups and growth groupsand things like that, and I
don't want to knock everybody,but I think there is a problem
(11:10):
when the churches become verylarge and the pastor becomes
very distant to the people.
I think it directly affects thespiritual formation of the
believers and the biggest thingI think we lose is the ideal of
oversight, accountability andtherefore discipleship.
And one of the things that wesaw is the ideal of oversight,
accountability and thereforediscipleship.
And one of the things that wesaw in the Free Methodist Church
was, if we're going to take acomprehensive approach to the
(11:33):
idea of demon possession ordemonization inside a believer,
we need to start at the verybasics of the idea of how we
approach discipleship.
Are we truly disciplingbelievers into Christian
spiritual formation andChristlike living?
And we had to look at our verybasic material and realize that,
(11:53):
because we've embraced some ofthe church growth models that we
see in America out of necessityto live, we need to grow our
church to keep it going and keepthe lights on and things like
that We've drifted away fromsome of our free Methodist
heritage, some of our theology,and have adapted that idea of an
evangelical self-help ideawhere the gospel is there to
(12:18):
make a good person better andGod is just part of a resume or
repertoire of our life, versusthe very axis mundi or the very
center of our life.
And so we are beginning in theidea of helping people get to
deliverance by beginning todevelop discipleship tools.
And are these people trulyChristian?
(12:40):
Do they believe the tenets ofour faith?
Do they understand Trinitariandoctrine?
So these are things that we hadto go right back to and start
to build up this fabric that,when people become part of our
societies or churches, that weare discipling them into a true
(13:02):
relationship with Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
This is absolutely mission critical.
How many times has a clientcome to me and other exorcists
in our network and we have anintake form?
We do an analysis up front,looking for entry points of
demons.
It's called a spiritual profileand on there people will mark
that they are Christians and for10 plus years or 20 plus years,
(13:30):
30 plus years.
And when I sit across from themand I asked them, if you died
right now, why would God let youinto heaven?
They always answer somethingalong the lines of this that's a
really good question.
And then most of them now theseare Christians who have been
raised in the American church.
(13:50):
Most of them say somethingalong the lines of this I'm a
good person, I help people, I dothe best I can in life, I stay
out of things like drugs anddrinking and things like that.
So they've missed it.
And why have they missed it?
We enter God lets us intoheaven because we have turned
(14:15):
from a sinful lifestyle.
We've confessed him as Lordover our life and it is only
through the blood of JesusChrist covering our lives that
we are able to go to heaven.
The Bible even teaches us thatgood works do not get us into
heaven.
How can somebody be a Christianfor 30-plus years?
(14:38):
And when they're asked, whywould God let you into heaven if
you died right now?
And they say things like that,why is that lack of discipleship
, lost in a congregation ofthousands of people not
discipled?
We've even talked about this asleaders in our exorcism network
(15:01):
.
Should we start disciplingpeople that come to us?
And the end of that discussionwas we got to stay in our lane.
We're exorcists, so the pastorsneed to be discipling them.
So we try to encourage them tofind a church that has a
discipleship program where theycan actually learn the core
(15:24):
foundational concepts of ourChristianity, and part of that
is exorcism, demon possession.
It's all through the Bible.
A third of Christ's ministrywas exorcism.
Oh, amazing conversation here,chris.
(15:45):
This is so essential People.
It's so sad to me.
They go to church, they hearsermons of self-improvement and
they love Jesus Christ withtheir whole heart, but they're
not even connected tounderstanding what the Trinity
is.
What does it mean to be sinful?
(16:05):
What does baptism mean?
There's so much that they'velost because of fun times
singing songs all aboutthemselves, that God loves you,
you're special, and yada, yada,and on it goes, and I echo
Chris's statement about.
We're not bashing megachurches.
There's a lot of them that dothis right.
(16:27):
They do have discipleshipprograms in place.
They have small groups thatwork good.
It's a well-oiled machinethat's running well, but a lot
of them don't.
I guess that's my point insaying all this.
Now, chris, coming back to you,you became interested as a
minister in studying demonpossession.
(16:49):
I know that you met one of ourexorcists in Rome.
Believe it or not, we have hadtwo of our exorcists go to Rome
to go through the Catholictraining on exorcism.
They wanted to understand whatare they doing differently than
what Protestants are doing, andthere are a lot of key
(17:11):
differences.
But I know you met one of ourexorcists there, chris.
What was it that made youdecide to go to Rome?
What made you decide to reallydo that deep dive into this as a
minister so you can begin togather information, be it from
the Roman Catholic Church, whichhas been doing this for
(17:34):
hundreds of years?
What made you decide to reallydo the deep dive and get into
this man and start gaining anunderstanding onto how to help
people in your congregation?
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Yeah, it was about a year and a half ago.
We had a baptismal service atour church and usually when you
have a baptismal service we'refortunate we had I don't know
half a dozen 10 candidates andthey invite their family members
.
So you usually get people atchurch who sometimes only come
to church when there's an event.
And one of the folks while wehad cake afterwards
(18:08):
congratulating all the baptismalcandidates, someone said during
your ritual there, you askedthem to forsake the devil and
all of his works.
What's that mean?
And I'm a seminarian, I couldanswer that question to the best
of my training.
But I remember going back to ourbaptismal rite as a Free
(18:29):
Methodist and there was not alot of supporting material for
that, and I started to say thislooks like to me I'm performing
a minor exorcism in that whichit is.
And so I began to look into ourmaterial, which, in the Free
Methodist Church, is a book ofdiscipline, and it's this
incredible work that we havethat helps us with our polity,
how we function as a church,helps us with historical things
(18:51):
and also doctrine and ritual.
When I began to investigatethat, there was not a lot of
supporting material defining theterms that I was actually using
.
So I began to investigate that.
And once you get outside of thenormal purview of pastoral care
and theology, you usually endup in the Catholic camp.
So I began to read StevenRossetti's books, chad
(19:15):
Ritberger's books and, of course, bumping into them in podcasts
and things like that.
That that encouraged me, when Istarted hearing their
statistical analysis about theupswing that they've seen over
the last 30 years in exorcism,to realize that this is coming
to a church soon that I pastor.
So I thought I better get outahead of this.
(19:37):
And of course, once you startinvestigating this, god begins
to send opportunities your wayto help people get delivered.
And reading the Catholicmaterial, I was just impressed
by their mature, professionaland, most of all, comprehensive
approach in the way that theyapproach the whole topic of
(19:57):
exorcism the way I saw it insome non-denominational churches
.
They just don't talk about it.
They're what you would callsuperstitious.
Everything has got a scientificor medical explanation.
Or when I was in thePentecostal church it was
superstitious.
There was a demon behind everydoor and everything had a
demonic problem issue with it.
(20:18):
The Catholics tend to do it in amuch more comprehensive way.
The last thing they do to aperson is perform an exorcism.
They vet the person, they getthe person in touch, they
immediately assign them anintercessor and then they begin
to put around that person ascaffolding of discipleship, of
church membership.
And 1% of people who come to aCatholic diocese looking for an
(20:42):
exorcism actually have anexorcism.
Most of the demonic issues getpushed out or dealt with through
the process of discipleship, ofcatechesis, getting them
involved in Christian teaching.
Only 1% of those people whoknock on the door actually need
to be delivered.
That kind of comprehensiveapproach I've never seen done
(21:03):
before in a Protestant circleand that's what drew me to
looking at their whole procedureand their training.
Now again, as a free Methodist,we have huge doctrinal
differences between the RomanCatholic Church.
I don't want to pretend they'renot there.
What I find myself doing isgoing through the best I can you
(21:25):
know, getting advice from someof my former professors or some
of our seminary professors andsaying, listen, can you help me
vet the Roman Catholicismdoctrine out of our Free
Methodist doctrine so that wecan present materials and an
on-ramping for our pastors tomore comprehensively approach
the whole idea of demonizationor exorcism or deliverance?
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Yeah, that's great.
And have you ever had anopportunity yet to go through Dr
Larson's International Schoolof Exorcism?
Speaker 2 (21:55):
yet I don't know if you've been through that yet
meet one of your exorcistsduring the program and again,
from what I hear, it's verycomprehensive.
I'm looking forward to gettingmy hands on some of that
(22:15):
material in the near future.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Yeah, it's very comprehensive.
It's probably the mostcomprehensive logical
methodology that you'll find inProtestant exorcism.
I would say it's in a senseclinical.
That's why I like it so much.
I was a social work major fortwo and a half years.
Then I changed to computerprogramming so I have that kind
of clinical mindset and DrLarson really is very clinical
(22:46):
when he does the actual exorcismpractice.
It's got methodology to it buthe definitely will move outside
of that.
So it's not a hundred percentstructured process.
There's room to move aroundbased on how the Holy Spirit
leads you.
So it's wonderful, because alot of deliverances that I've
been around growing up in theindependent churches have been
(23:10):
like wild cowboys.
You know.
Nobody's trained, everybody hasa word from God.
And, quite interesting, itlacks professionalism, it lacks
the use of analysis andintellect, and that's what Dr
Larson pulls and brings to thetable.
(23:32):
It's a beautiful approach and Iknow Catholic exorcists use
very similar analysis and logicwhen working with people, and so
it's an important ingredient.
So have you witnessed yet, as aminister, anybody in your local
congregation that you eitherbelieved had demons or actually
(23:53):
came to you requesting help overdemons?
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Yeah, I think.
Yes, Fairly recently, I dopastoral care.
That's part of my job.
A demonic feature to every event, whether it's a full-blown
demonization, possession or atype of situation that just
needs deliverance.
(24:17):
There's usually I've heard aphrase that Satan is a, or the
devil is a musician without aninstrument and looking for an
instrument to use, and just anyhuman being.
If we were to sing on key infront of a guitar or piano,
whatever string we're singing towould reverberate what the key
(24:38):
we're in.
I think that's what Satan doeswith people in our lives.
If there's an opening for himto come in, he uses what's there
.
Whether it's a certain leniencythat we have towards a
besetting sin or some kind ofmisdemeanor or disobedience, he
will use that avenue to get intosomeone's life, whether that is
(24:59):
on a more permanence or just ashort term.
That's really important for thepastor to be able to discern
and help that person gainvictory over that, and that is a
very complex approach and Ithink we need to go through it
now.
As a Wesleyan, we use theWesleyan quadrilateral, which
deals with the idea of reason,history, experience and
(25:23):
scripture.
That's one of the things thatdrew me to.
The Wesleyan tradition iscoming from a Pentecostal
background where, like you weresaying, most people who are
doing work in the demonic wereshooting from the hip.
We come, at every aspect of ourfaith, from that Wesleyan
quadrilateral, so reason isalways a part of that.
Also, I think one of the bigthings which I liked and I saw
(25:46):
in the Roman Catholic Church andI'm trying to figure out how to
do it in a Protestant way is,in the Roman Catholic Church,
exorcism is a sacramental whichenables that person to become
part of the sacraments.
So it functions under thechurch, it's a function of the
church.
(26:06):
They're not functioning undertheir own power, they're
functioning under the auspicesand under the guidance of the
church.
I think that's very importantand I didn't see that in my
previous experiences as I workinside my denomination.
What I'm looking to do is helppastors, when they're in this
ministry or in this kind ofpastoral care, to work under the
(26:28):
auspices of theirsuperintendent and their bishop.
Demons are legalists and theyknow when you're flying solo and
that's not a place that youwant to be, you might turn into
one of the seven sons of Sceva.
If that's the situation, Ithink it's really important that
we attach ourselves to ourauthority and we work inside of
(26:49):
that, for accountability, forthe idea of oversight and
protection.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
All excellent points and I agree with you.
I think it's mission criticalthat there is policy for lack of
a better word, proceduresdocumented in place for pastors
to use and go by from the topdown.
Spiritual submission, spiritualauthority, is extremely
(27:18):
important when it comes todealing with demons.
Again, in the Western culturethey don't have any of this.
There is no deliveranceministry in churches.
There is no deliveranceministry in churches.
There is no code of ethics forlack of a better word.
There is no training.
So it's very sad because thereare so many Christians that come
(27:39):
to us under Dr Larson'sministries that have demons and
they can't get help in thechurch, so that's why they come
here, and it doesn't need to bethat way.
I'm so excited, chris, thatyou're taking this under your
wings, so to speak, and gettingthis in place.
So you're going to be creatinga for lack of a better word
(28:02):
policy so that pastors can haveguidance on how to do this.
What does that process looklike for you?
Getting this kind of again mywording policy procedure in
place for pastors that are goingto be caring for people?
Speaker 2 (28:23):
Yeah, and what it basically does.
It goes back to what weinitially began to speak about.
If you go even inside our owndenomination and we have markers
put out and Ordo Salutis' Orderof Salvation put out through
what it means to be a Christian,we have the doctrine of entire
sanctification, which is uniqueto a Wesleyan holiness tradition
(28:45):
.
But in the pulpit, in theparish or the pastoral ministry,
what a pastor even inside ofour denomination would consider
a Christian is usually verydifferent.
We're doing our best to growour church, make it more
(29:05):
effective in our community, andwe have directives on that.
So what happens?
The first thing that we'retrying to build is an entrance
ramp where and I'll just say itreal plainly most pastors would
consider someone who faithfullyattends their church, who
attends a small group and is afaithful contributor to their
church, a Christian.
(29:26):
Now, there's a lot of thingsthat are not said in that and
there are a lot of things thatare left out.
There's not a mention ofdoctrine, there's not a mention
of understanding creed.
So what we're doing is we'recreating a tool which would work
and help getting people who aremaybe in that situation, to
(29:50):
give pastors tools to help them,bring them on board to see if,
whether or not, they're trulyChristian or not.
So that's the first thing thatwe're creating is a tool where
pastors can use for discipleship.
They could use it on themselves.
It would be like a dailydevotional where they can be
introduced to the creeds of thechurch.
(30:11):
They could be introduced to alot of the doctrines of the
Christian church.
I had a couple come to me.
They attended my church on andoff for about a year.
They asked me to do theirwedding and when I brought them
through the premarital, I saidto them I don't think you want
me to do your wedding.
And they said why?
And I said because you'reBuddhist.
And they said how can you saythat?
(30:34):
And I said because you justtold me what you believe and
you've quoted Buddha more thanyou quoted Jesus.
And they're like yeah, we likeJesus too.
And I'm like yeah, but when Ido a wedding, you're making a
vow before God.
And this is I'm representing achurch when I'm doing this.
And I said you might want torethink this.
(30:57):
And they were very insulted.
But and they were, you know, ofcourse it was.
How can you dare say that to me?
And I'm like well, if a pastorcan't tell you that you're a
Christian I don't know whoreally can but you're not,
because you don't believeChristian doctrine.
You don't believe in the virginbirth, you don't believe in the
resurrection, you don't believein Trinitarian doctrine.
Those are huge problems, and Ihonestly think our faith has
(31:20):
become so individualistic inAmerica, it's become so void of
doctrine that we need to go backinto the basis, and most people
are getting their doctrine fromOprah and Disney.
That's where they're beingenculturated from and that's
where they're getting theircatechesis from, and they think
it's all good, it's notChristianity.
(31:41):
So the first thing that we'redoing is creating a tool to help
pastors vet people into theidea are you a Christian or are
you not?
And it is a daily devotionalthat runs along with our book of
discipline, but it's also aform of catechesis, and where
it's got an educationalcomponent where people will
understand yes, this isorthodoxy.
(32:04):
And then it enculturates themagainst heterodoxy, which that's
just the world we live in today, and so it gives them the
positive, but it also inoculatesthem against the negative that
they've already heard and beensaturated in.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
That's great, and I would imagine part of this
you're going to be starting toalso begin to document is the
exorcism and deliverance anddemonization and that and I'm
going to come back to that in aminute, but I just want to echo
what you're saying because I'min full agreement with it.
I've not mentioned this beforeon the podcast, but the minister
(32:41):
who really had a large impactin my life in my early 20s and
through my 30s he was an ex-CIAagent.
How cool is that?
Very intelligent man and thefirst thing that he did this was
a non-denominational church.
And so you have people comingfrom all over the place, all
(33:02):
kinds of different Christiandoctrine, everything.
The first thing he did was hestarted a catechism course and
of course, all the Christians inthe church were we're not
Catholic, we're not in.
Catechism just means basicallyinstruction, and he brought I
believe it was seven courses tothe church and every course
(33:25):
lasted a year, and so he tookeverybody back to the core,
foundational Christian doctrinein the first course so that
people could go through, likeyou're saying, chris, and
understand what is true,authentic Christianity.
And from there the secondcourse was built on the
(33:46):
foundation all the way upthrough six, seven, eight
courses, whatever the total ofthem were, and these were big
books.
These were not small, thinbooks.
They were instructed by pastors, by associate pastors, to train
people coming into thisnon-denominational church of.
(34:07):
This is what we believe andfortunately for me, part of that
was deliverance, but they hadno real formalized training in
it, so it wasn't very effective.
It's what I often calldeliverance light on this, where
they're just telling demons tocome out and they're not really
(34:27):
interrogating them like Christdid, they're not really breaking
legal rights, doingrenouncements, none of that kind
of stuff.
But at least it was somethingand so that's inspiring and I
hope you guys listening if thereare ministers or pastors
listening that you're gettingsome of this.
This is really good.
(34:47):
I think it's important,especially culturally where
we're at in Western culture,that we have some type of
curricula to have people gothrough so that they can learn
what it truly means to be aChristian.
Chris, eventually you're goingto get into outlining this in a
(35:10):
sense of how to deal withexorcism, demonization, and
right now you're in the researchphase and gathering information
and eventually you're going tobe flushing that out and get it
into your church curricula wherepeople can learn about this
also pastors, and today I wasspeaking with a pastor who
(35:34):
believes in deliverance.
He's been trained under DrLarson's methodology and he said
it's a very interesting dilemmabecause people come to his
church that believe indeliverance, but he only wants
that to be a function of thechurch, not the main emphasis of
the church, which is a verybalanced approach.
(35:54):
He wants to teach the wholecounsel of God's Word and part
of that is deliverance.
But he said, when he begins toteach on the core doctrine of
Christianity, all the people thedeliverance stop coming.
They leave because they wantthe hype, they want to see the
(36:15):
heads spinning, they want to seethe demons manifesting.
That's it.
It's like they want to pop abag of popcorn and watch this,
and so he's really strugglingwith this because he wants to be
able to introduce this to hischurch but also have people
understand that this is just apart of Christianity.
(36:37):
This is a part of ministry,just like worship, just like
baptism, just preaching thegospel, just like witnessing.
This is just part.
Saying this is just part.
People want the sensation of allof this paranormal stuff and
they really don't want the Wordof God.
It's what this pastor said tome.
(37:00):
He said Paul mentioned this inthe Bible that in the end they
will have itching ears.
They just want to see theparanormal, the supernatural,
and then, if it's not happening,boom out the door and go on.
We have to get back to coreChristian foundational teaching
(37:21):
that our founders put in place.
Man, oh, I get excited justthinking about this, so it's
just really good.
Excited just thinking aboutthis, so it's just really good.
Chris, can you share, as aminister, to other ministers,
pastors who are listening, somewords of advice, some
encouragement around this on howto begin to bring this into the
(37:44):
church in a logical way, aboutdemonization, about possession,
about deliverance, because thereare people listening now that
aren't where you're at.
In other words, you're at leaststarting to get this in place.
Can you share a little bit ofadvice with pastors or ministers
on how might they start gettingthis in place, to begin to
(38:06):
introduce this to theirleadership and congregation?
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Oh yeah, definitely.
One of the things that drew meto this ministry was I was
listening to a podcast with ChadRipperker.
He's a Catholic exorcist out ofMissouri and he said what drew
him to the ministry and histestimony it's what God used to
grab at me.
He said exorcism is not what wesee in the movies, it's hard
(38:32):
work, and he was raised as agrinder, a hard worker, and
exorcism is a lot lesssupernatural than it is just
hard work.
And that's what reached out tome because I was raised in that
kind of upbringing.
Before I was a pastor, I workedconstruction, so hard work was
part of my DNA and even some ofthe work in the demonic I've
(38:56):
done it is just arduous hardwork.
Yes, there are somesupernatural things that do take
place and there are somemanifestations that if I had
hair it would stand on end.
But it's really hard work and Iwould encourage pastors.
But it's really hard work and Iwould encourage pastors.
The gospel in Scripture is knownas the power of God and if our
sermons most sermons that I comeacross whether it's I catch
(39:20):
them on the Internet or I visitanother church on a Sunday if
I'm not preaching, they're atbest for just talk about the
forgiveness of Jesus.
Most of them become how-tosermons how to become humble,
how to become self-disciplined,how to become this and they
leave the gospel out,no-transcript.
(39:41):
And it's where we get ourforgiveness from.
It's also where we get ourrighteousness from.
It's where we get ourjustification and sanctification
from.
It is the entirety of what weshould be talking about.
And the problem is we thinkit's just the ABCs and then we
go on talking about stuff abouthow many angels can dance on the
head of a pin or how many brasstacks there are in the
(40:02):
tabernacle, and we use thegospel as either an add-on to
the end of our sermon.
It should be the entirety ofwhat we're talking about,
because revival in the Church ofAmerica it's only ever happened
when we rediscover the gospel.
That's why you don't seerevivals in Mormonism, jehovah's
Witnesses.
You only see it when the churchrediscovers the full intent of
(40:27):
the gospel.
And we are not there as anation.
And if people are not enjoyingwhat you're saying and they want
to see people's heads spin andpeople spit pea soup out, I
think the pastor needs to do alot of self-reflection and say
am I really preaching the gospelor am I just talking about
forgiveness?
(40:47):
The gospel is so much more thaneven that and until we
rediscover that, I think, likeyou're saying, people are going
to go to itching, have itchingears, and I know what it's like
to minister for a number ofyears, teaching evangelical
self-help sermons and how-tosermons.
It wasn't up until about 10 or15 years ago where I
(41:10):
rediscovered the full power ofthe gospel, and it's not
something I add on to my sermon,it is the very centrality of my
sermon.
And people are being set free,not through just outward
morality or outward forms ofself-discipline.
They're being transformed byGod, changing their idols in
(41:30):
their hearts and the love intheir hearts from these other
things back to Jesus Christ.
And until we as pastors get that, the church is still going to
be bumping and sputtering along,doing all these manipulative
things to try to get people inthe door.
But we just need to seek theLord to rediscover the full
intent of the gospel and I thinkwhat would happen in that is
(41:53):
this idea of demon possessionand demonization.
We would go into that poweredby the gospel and be able to
execute that much more likewe've seen in times past where
the church had vitality andpower.
Exorcism in the Roman CatholicChurch hundreds of years ago
used to take days because thechurch has been so depleted of
(42:15):
its power.
It takes now years because thechurch doesn't have its power
that it used to have, and Ibelieve the same thing has
happened in the Protestantchurch.
Just look what's going on out inthe Protestant church.
Just look what's going on outin Dallas right now.
We're seeing these monstrousministries just crumbling
because of crime, sin inside thepulpit, and it is
(42:38):
heart-wrenching.
As a pastor and I'm not sayingI'm perfect and I'm totally
above all this I'm not sayingthat at all.
I say it with humility in myheart but we need to step back
and go.
Wait a minute.
These are massive ministriesthat are just crumbling because
of unreported sin and the powerof Christ how can it be present
(43:00):
in these kind of situations?
What are people going to hear?
What are they practicing or notpracticing?
Those are questions that weneed to, as pastors, seriously
ask ourselves, and I think theonly answer to that in my prayer
is that we rediscover thegospel and the churches begin to
preach the full entirety of thegospel.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
This is good.
This is good.
There's a couple things I justwant to touch on, and first of
all, the amount of effort ittakes in exorcism and then,
second, I wanted to talk aboutthe pastors who are falling that
have large churches.
The amount of effort that goesinto exorcism under Dr Larson's
(43:42):
ministry is very intense.
Our sessions normally lastbetween two to three hours each
session, sometimes multipletimes a week.
Most clients on average arefour to six months to work with
them.
We do a lot of inner healing inaddition to exercising and
(44:03):
expelling demons through theauthority of Christ.
This is a lot of time grindingand we do this because we love
Jesus Christ.
It's part of the function.
It's part of the gospel thatChris is talking about.
Jesus cast out demons.
He said go out in my name andcast out demons and deal with it
(44:24):
Hours.
I have been in exorcism sessionsthat have lasted seven hours
and I don't say that arrogantly.
That's how involved it can be.
How is that possible?
People have been through severetrauma.
Some people we work with aresatanic ritual abuse victims.
(44:44):
A lot of the people we workwith are disassociative, also
called multiple personalitydisorder, very complex
conditions.
We just don't have somebodycome down to the altar full of
emotionalism and scream, comeout and everyone claps and the
music fires up and everyonedances all around.
(45:05):
We're free.
We're free Hours of time spentwith every client through the
compassion of Jesus Christ.
There's nothing more rewardingthan when I sit across from a
client who's lost everything inlife.
They're completely suicidal.
In every session, jesus Christbrings healing, restoration,
(45:30):
discipleship and after four tosix months, at the end the
person is restored through themercy and compassion of Jesus
Christ.
When I first started this ofJesus Christ, when I first
started this, the Lord made itvery clear to me it's not the
quantity, it's the quality.
(45:50):
Yeah, it's not the quantity,justin, it's the quality.
When you sit down with someonein a three-hour session,
processing, using analysis andbeing led by the Holy Spirit,
it's hard work.
And to Chris's point, he's gotthat grit.
(46:11):
He was in construction.
I've got that grit.
I was raised right outside ofYoungstown Ohio.
I was raised in Youngstown Ohio.
It was a steel mill industryhard grinding, blue collar
workers man, that's the cultureI was raised in.
Pick yourself up by thebootstraps and get moving, boy.
(46:33):
And that has been extremelybeneficial in ministry.
I encourage anybody listeningwho is currently doing
deliverance or considering doingdeliverance.
Take the International Schoolof Exorcism so you can gain
(46:54):
understanding and be trained bysomeone who's credible.
I've said it many times DrLarson, I believe.
He's over 80 years old now.
He's been doing exorcisms, Ithink, for 50 years, 50,000 plus
exorcisms in over 100 countries.
He knows what he's doingthrough empirical evidence,
(47:17):
through his experience.
It's beautiful Now about thechurch's falling, churches
falling.
If what Chris is doingintroducing demonization,
deliverance, exorcism to hiscongregation, to his leadership,
to his church denomination ifthat was the case in Western
(47:38):
churches, these pastors wouldnot fall because they could come
for help and go through anexorcism.
Pastors don't need to fall tosexual temptation or money or
any of that.
If they believed Christianscould have demons, they could
get those expelled and healed upthrough the compassion of Jesus
(48:01):
Christ and never have toexperience that.
But because they don't believeChristians can have demons, they
only approach it the sinfulnature or counseling.
That's it Leaving out a majoringredient there, a huge
ingredient.
I hope you guys have found thisepisode informative.
(48:23):
I hope it challenges you as aChristian.
Make sure you are saved, getdiscipled.
Christianity is aboutdiscipline, understanding the
core principles of our faith andsticking to it.
It doesn't matter what'shappening culturally.
(48:44):
When you're a Christian, youdon't change your doctrine.
When you understand the Word ofGod, when you have been
discipled, you are firm in yourfaith, firm in your beliefs.
There is no room for compromise.
That's why, a lot of times,people, when different cultural
changes come through andthere'll be more than what's
(49:05):
going on right now they justfall right into it because they
are not founded in the coredoctrine of Christianity.
They don't understand theirBible.
They've not been discipled.
I guess.
A question for you, listeninghow often do you read your Bible
?
Have you ever studied the corefoundational principles of
(49:25):
Christianity?
If not, I encourage you to.
It's right at your fingertips.
You can use ChatGPT to do allkinds of research.
You can use Google.
It's not hard at all Used to be.
We'd have to buy all kinds ofbooks and concordances and all
that stuff, and not the case now.
You can study all of this andget your head around it.
(49:48):
I share your passion, chris,about discipleship and
throughout sessions when I workwith clients, I do disciple them
because they don't know, and atthe end of sessions oftentimes
I am sending them information onthings to study related to core
foundational doctrine that arecompletely vacant in their life
(50:10):
because they've only been taughtGod loves you and forgives you.
So I hope you have found thischallenging, informative.
Again, I encourage you to sharethis out to your pastor, to
share this out to your minister,your reverend, your bishop, so
that they can hear this and bechallenged in their thinking.
(50:31):
Chris, I'm going to come backto you.
At the end of every episode, Ialways ask my guests to share
some encouragement with theaudience and normally I ask my
guests to share to the audience.
But today I'm going to dosomething a little bit different
.
I'm going to ask, chris, if youwould encourage pastors,
(50:52):
ministers and reverends andbishops to be open to exorcism,
to begin to research thislogically and look through the
literature.
Historically, this isdocumented even past the
crucifixion of Christ.
Chris, if you can just take aminute and share some
(51:12):
encouragement with pastors whoare hearing this that are really
wrestling with this.
Some pastors really want totake this plunge and do this,
but they're afraid of theestablishment.
Other pastors are listening,and reverends and ministers, but
they're afraid of theestablishment.
Other pastors are listening andreverends and ministers
listening because they'recurious.
They may not be close to takingthat plunge, but can you take a
(51:34):
minute and just share someencouragement with these pastors
and ministers and reverends andbishops and leadership that
might be listening to this?
How should they approach thetopic of their members having
demons and exorcism?
Speaker 2 (52:07):
why there's such an upswing in exorcism and why has
the demonic gone from being overto being just out there now?
It used to be.
The devil's best secret was hedoesn't exist.
Now it's flamboyantly out thereand his response was maybe it's
death pangs, Maybe they knowthe time's short and we're
seeing this upsurge.
So if you're superstitious andyou don't believe in the
(52:28):
supernatural, or you don'tbelieve maybe a Christian can be
demonized or have a demonicproblem, I want to encourage you
.
This is coming to a church nearyou.
It's just statistically, it'sjust going to happen.
If you tend to be notsuperstitious, but superstitious
, this is not about you.
(52:48):
This is about the function ofthe gospel and the church.
There isn't a demon behindevery door, but there is an
intelligent evil that's seekingto devour Christians and
Christian leaders, and I wouldencourage you to work in concert
with your authority, whateverkind of church setting you're in
(53:09):
.
If it's a community church,your board, if you're in a
domination, with your leadership, your bishop and I would highly
encourage you to take acomprehensive approach, whether
it's using and getting involvedin Dr Larson's ministry.
I've had a privilege ofobserving some of their work.
It's very extensive and I wouldencourage you to work in
concert.
The wolves pick off the lonesheep and I would encourage you
(53:33):
to begin to work with otherpeople who are in this ministry.
If you haven't run into it, youwill.
It is going to become part ofpastoral care and one of my
seminary professors said aspastors, we need to run into the
burning buildings in people'slives.
We need to be a death watchwhen people go from this world
into the hereafter.
We need to talk to families whohave lost somebody and we need
(53:56):
to walk into people's lives whenthey are dealing and they're
being overrun by the demonic.
It's part of pastoral care.
We'd like to make it neat andtidy, but no, we're called by
our Lord to roll up our sleevesand to do the hard work of
pastoral care.
And dealing with exorcism,dealing with deliverance, is
(54:17):
part of that.
Calling it's messy, it'suncertain.
At times it's even scary, but Iwould encourage you that when
we do this, like I've alwayssensed, I've sensed the presence
of Christ and I've sensed thepower of God working through me
in these situations.
I just want to encourage you inthat.
Welcome to episode 25 of the Blind Exorcist podcast.
I'm thrilled to have you joinme.
I'm Justin D, your host.
Don't forget to subscribe andshare this episode with your
family, friends and on socialmedia.
Your support helps spread themessage of freedom far and wide.
(00:20):
Consider partnering with me bytapping support the show in the
show notes.
Your contributions go directlytowards producing the podcast
and bringing you amazinginterviews on exorcism.
Thank you for your support.
I greatly appreciate it.
In today's episode I have afascinating discussion with
(00:44):
Pastor Chris Mishagana, a FreeMethodist pastor who is
pioneering the integration ofexorcism into the ecclesiastical
directives of his denomination.
He is one of the few pastorswho recognize the importance of
deliverance ministry for hismembers and the entire Free
(01:07):
Methodist community.
He is spearheading an effort tomake exorcism training a
standard church decree for allpastors within the denomination,
emphasizing the crucial role ofdiscipleship in this process.
This conversation challengesthe belief that Christians
(01:27):
cannot have demons.
Chris firmly believes that notonly can Christians be afflicted
by demons and require exorcism,but he also sees this
understanding as essential foraddressing deep-rooted struggles
that Christians often findinsurmountable.
He highlights that addressingthe sinful nature and counseling
(01:52):
alone are not enough.
Pastors must be trained toperform exorcisms to truly help
their congregation members.
I invite you to share thisepisode with your local pastor
and church leadership tochallenge their thinking.
Join me now, as Pastor Chrisand I delve into this critical
(02:14):
topic.
Let's listen in, chris.
Welcome to the Blind Exorcist.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Hey, justin, great to be here, pleasure to be with
you today.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
It's a sincere pleasure to have you here with
me today, chris, and for myaudience, chris is, as I
mentioned in the intro, a freeMethodist minister and I am so
excited to jump into thisbecause it's what I've been
telling you guys listening for awhile now.
Pastors, reverends, ministers,are starting to come into the
(02:53):
realization that they have beenlied to in seminary in all of
their theological studies thatsomehow Christians in America or
Western culture could neverhave demons.
It's impossible.
And yet Christians in China,Singapore, japan, india,
(03:20):
pakistan, south America, noteven a question.
Literally as soon as theybecome a Christian, the majority
of these people immediately gothrough an exorcism and they are
100% comfortable with itbecause they know that
generationally there has beenoccultic practices in their
(03:44):
countries.
I just spoke with a friend inSingapore recently and she
attends a church there wherethey believe in deliverance.
So she said, every Sunday atthe altar she's hearing her
minister say and the elders inthe church come out.
(04:06):
And so Singapore has anancestry of worship of false
deities, as do many othercountries.
It baffles me, it actuallyfrustrates me, that I have to
spend an entire ministryconvincing Christians in America
(04:29):
and Western cultures thatChristians can have demons.
It's insane.
But I really think this does goback to the theological
training coming out of theseseminaries.
I heard a minister say recentlythat he was taught in his
seminary that Christians cannothave demons.
(04:52):
But maybe people on the otherside of the border, like in
Mexico or South America, theymight have demons, but
Christians here in America wedon't have demons, and so they
taught him why that they couldnot have demons.
But Christians here in Americawe don't have demons, and so
they taught him why that theycould not have demons.
Meanwhile, we see it all thetime Christian ministers of very
(05:15):
large churches anddenominations fall, oftentimes
to sexual sin because of demons,oftentimes to sexual sin
because of demons.
If ministers would believe thatChristians could have demons,
you would not see this happentoo often.
That's my personal opinion,because they would go through
exorcism and get these issuesdealt with, but they minimize
(05:39):
everything to the sinful natureand psychology.
That's it.
And when that doesn't work,what do you do?
The people in those churchescome to us exorcists because
they know it's not their sinfulnature, it's not psychology,
it's not helping.
It is important to be incounseling and therapy,
(06:03):
absolutely.
But a key ingredient's missingExorcism, deliverance, demons.
Chris has came to thisunderstanding, to this
realization.
As a free Methodist minister,he became aware that not only
can Christians have demons, buthe wanted to learn about it.
(06:23):
This is awesome people.
This is where it's at.
Trust me, christians can havedemons.
Chris, let me come over to younow and I'd like to ask you how
did you initially become awareof that?
Christians could have demons?
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Christians could have demons.
Justin, I appreciate thequestion and I think the
question is quite comprehensivein its scope.
I think the big problem we'rerunning into as a church in
America is defining actuallywhat a Christian is.
When you're looking at a churchthat's in decline or in a
siloing into kind of themegachurch movement, what the
(07:07):
church refers to as a Christianwouldn't have passed mustard in
the early church.
Our you know approach towardscatechesis or taking someone
who's a non-Christian to aChristian, is very lean.
So when we use the term aChristian being demonized, the
biggest problem I think we haveis defining actually what a
Christian is, and because ofthat it depends what church you
(07:27):
go to, which segment ofProtestantism you go to.
You're going to get manydifferent definitions for that.
The large answer is yes.
We're seeing all kinds ofdemonic activity inside people
who claim to be Christians,whether full Christian or
quasi-Christian, however youwant to put it.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Wow, you bring up an interesting point here about the
megachurches.
There's not a whole lot of roomin that corporate culture, like
Christianity in America andaround the world has been for
lack of a better word broughtinto a corporate culture.
They do market research in thesurrounding areas to see what
(08:09):
would these people like to hearand they bring that data back to
the church leadership of who'sgoing to build this large mega
church.
This is what the people want tohear around you and guaranteed
preaching about hell's not inthere.
Preaching about turning fromsin not in there.
What's in there?
God loves you.
You can do whatever you want.
(08:31):
God loves you.
Come to church and, chris, youbring out a valid point.
Our early church founders wouldshudder at what we call
Christianity.
Today we have lost the coreconcept of dying to self,
understanding that we are sinful, broken people in desperate
(08:55):
need of salvation, and theconcept of resisting sin Gone.
It's all about God loves you.
Whatever you want from God, youcan have Very Americanized
right.
You need money.
Pray to God, you'll get it.
You want to have the best house?
(09:15):
You can have the best house.
Try telling that to the ApostlePaul who was beheaded in Rome.
We've lost a lot of the conceptof going through trials to
develop our faith.
We lost a concept of endurance.
Endurance is something that youhave to develop by going
through things, so a lot ofthese core concepts don't fit
(09:38):
into that corporate Americanculture where everybody's
smiling, everybody's happy,everybody's singing songs about
how they're special and how Godloves them.
Yes, this is true, but I thinkyou're getting my point here.
We've lost our way.
That's my personal opinion and,chris, I think you'd feel the
(10:00):
same.
Let me come over to you and getyour take on some of this here.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Yeah, I think it's as I was raised Roman Catholic,
became a Christian, a ProtestantChristian in a Pentecostal
church, and now I've beenserving as a pastor in the
pre-Methodist church for 26years and was in an independent
church prior for about six years.
Yeah, what with in the churchis a huge push towards growth,
which isn't a bad thing.
But often when we embrace thatas the primary driver of what we
(10:28):
do as pastors, we begin todistance ourselves from the
parish model and we becomedistant from our people.
And, as in the early 80s when Iattended them in Spring Valley,
new York, not far from where Igrew up, I remember in a church
with 3,500 members I didn't knowanybody.
If something happened to me Iwould be like who's going to
tell the church?
(10:49):
I was just one of severalthousand people that walked
through the door and that's notnecessarily a bad thing.
But the connectional modelwhere people were actually
living life together, it wasn'thappening in that body.
And I know there are a lot oflarge churches that do well with
small groups and growth groupsand things like that, and I
don't want to knock everybody,but I think there is a problem
(11:10):
when the churches become verylarge and the pastor becomes
very distant to the people.
I think it directly affects thespiritual formation of the
believers and the biggest thingI think we lose is the ideal of
oversight, accountability andtherefore discipleship.
And one of the things that wesaw is the ideal of oversight,
accountability and thereforediscipleship.
And one of the things that wesaw in the Free Methodist Church
was, if we're going to take acomprehensive approach to the
(11:33):
idea of demon possession ordemonization inside a believer,
we need to start at the verybasics of the idea of how we
approach discipleship.
Are we truly disciplingbelievers into Christian
spiritual formation andChristlike living?
And we had to look at our verybasic material and realize that,
(11:53):
because we've embraced some ofthe church growth models that we
see in America out of necessityto live, we need to grow our
church to keep it going and keepthe lights on and things like
that We've drifted away fromsome of our free Methodist
heritage, some of our theology,and have adapted that idea of an
evangelical self-help ideawhere the gospel is there to
(12:18):
make a good person better andGod is just part of a resume or
repertoire of our life, versusthe very axis mundi or the very
center of our life.
And so we are beginning in theidea of helping people get to
deliverance by beginning todevelop discipleship tools.
And are these people trulyChristian?
(12:40):
Do they believe the tenets ofour faith?
Do they understand Trinitariandoctrine?
So these are things that we hadto go right back to and start
to build up this fabric that,when people become part of our
societies or churches, that weare discipling them into a true
(13:02):
relationship with Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
This is absolutely mission critical.
How many times has a clientcome to me and other exorcists
in our network and we have anintake form?
We do an analysis up front,looking for entry points of
demons.
It's called a spiritual profileand on there people will mark
that they are Christians and for10 plus years or 20 plus years,
(13:30):
30 plus years.
And when I sit across from themand I asked them, if you died
right now, why would God let youinto heaven?
They always answer somethingalong the lines of this that's a
really good question.
And then most of them now theseare Christians who have been
raised in the American church.
(13:50):
Most of them say somethingalong the lines of this I'm a
good person, I help people, I dothe best I can in life, I stay
out of things like drugs anddrinking and things like that.
So they've missed it.
And why have they missed it?
We enter God lets us intoheaven because we have turned
(14:15):
from a sinful lifestyle.
We've confessed him as Lordover our life and it is only
through the blood of JesusChrist covering our lives that
we are able to go to heaven.
The Bible even teaches us thatgood works do not get us into
heaven.
How can somebody be a Christianfor 30-plus years?
(14:38):
And when they're asked, whywould God let you into heaven if
you died right now?
And they say things like that,why is that lack of discipleship
, lost in a congregation ofthousands of people not
discipled?
We've even talked about this asleaders in our exorcism network
(15:01):
.
Should we start disciplingpeople that come to us?
And the end of that discussionwas we got to stay in our lane.
We're exorcists, so the pastorsneed to be discipling them.
So we try to encourage them tofind a church that has a
discipleship program where theycan actually learn the core
(15:24):
foundational concepts of ourChristianity, and part of that
is exorcism, demon possession.
It's all through the Bible.
A third of Christ's ministrywas exorcism.
Oh, amazing conversation here,chris.
(15:45):
This is so essential People.
It's so sad to me.
They go to church, they hearsermons of self-improvement and
they love Jesus Christ withtheir whole heart, but they're
not even connected tounderstanding what the Trinity
is.
What does it mean to be sinful?
(16:05):
What does baptism mean?
There's so much that they'velost because of fun times
singing songs all aboutthemselves, that God loves you,
you're special, and yada, yada,and on it goes, and I echo
Chris's statement about.
We're not bashing megachurches.
There's a lot of them that dothis right.
(16:27):
They do have discipleshipprograms in place.
They have small groups thatwork good.
It's a well-oiled machinethat's running well, but a lot
of them don't.
I guess that's my point insaying all this.
Now, chris, coming back to you,you became interested as a
minister in studying demonpossession.
(16:49):
I know that you met one of ourexorcists in Rome.
Believe it or not, we have hadtwo of our exorcists go to Rome
to go through the Catholictraining on exorcism.
They wanted to understand whatare they doing differently than
what Protestants are doing, andthere are a lot of key
(17:11):
differences.
But I know you met one of ourexorcists there, chris.
What was it that made youdecide to go to Rome?
What made you decide to reallydo that deep dive into this as a
minister so you can begin togather information, be it from
the Roman Catholic Church, whichhas been doing this for
(17:34):
hundreds of years?
What made you decide to reallydo the deep dive and get into
this man and start gaining anunderstanding onto how to help
people in your congregation?
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Yeah, it was about a year and a half ago.
We had a baptismal service atour church and usually when you
have a baptismal service we'refortunate we had I don't know
half a dozen 10 candidates andthey invite their family members
.
So you usually get people atchurch who sometimes only come
to church when there's an event.
And one of the folks while wehad cake afterwards
(18:08):
congratulating all the baptismalcandidates, someone said during
your ritual there, you askedthem to forsake the devil and
all of his works.
What's that mean?
And I'm a seminarian, I couldanswer that question to the best
of my training.
But I remember going back to ourbaptismal rite as a Free
(18:29):
Methodist and there was not alot of supporting material for
that, and I started to say thislooks like to me I'm performing
a minor exorcism in that whichit is.
And so I began to look into ourmaterial, which, in the Free
Methodist Church, is a book ofdiscipline, and it's this
incredible work that we havethat helps us with our polity,
how we function as a church,helps us with historical things
(18:51):
and also doctrine and ritual.
When I began to investigatethat, there was not a lot of
supporting material defining theterms that I was actually using
.
So I began to investigate that.
And once you get outside of thenormal purview of pastoral care
and theology, you usually endup in the Catholic camp.
So I began to read StevenRossetti's books, chad
(19:15):
Ritberger's books and, of course, bumping into them in podcasts
and things like that.
That that encouraged me, when Istarted hearing their
statistical analysis about theupswing that they've seen over
the last 30 years in exorcism,to realize that this is coming
to a church soon that I pastor.
So I thought I better get outahead of this.
(19:37):
And of course, once you startinvestigating this, god begins
to send opportunities your wayto help people get delivered.
And reading the Catholicmaterial, I was just impressed
by their mature, professionaland, most of all, comprehensive
approach in the way that theyapproach the whole topic of
(19:57):
exorcism the way I saw it insome non-denominational churches
.
They just don't talk about it.
They're what you would callsuperstitious.
Everything has got a scientificor medical explanation.
Or when I was in thePentecostal church it was
superstitious.
There was a demon behind everydoor and everything had a
demonic problem issue with it.
(20:18):
The Catholics tend to do it in amuch more comprehensive way.
The last thing they do to aperson is perform an exorcism.
They vet the person, they getthe person in touch, they
immediately assign them anintercessor and then they begin
to put around that person ascaffolding of discipleship, of
church membership.
And 1% of people who come to aCatholic diocese looking for an
(20:42):
exorcism actually have anexorcism.
Most of the demonic issues getpushed out or dealt with through
the process of discipleship, ofcatechesis, getting them
involved in Christian teaching.
Only 1% of those people whoknock on the door actually need
to be delivered.
That kind of comprehensiveapproach I've never seen done
(21:03):
before in a Protestant circleand that's what drew me to
looking at their whole procedureand their training.
Now again, as a free Methodist,we have huge doctrinal
differences between the RomanCatholic Church.
I don't want to pretend they'renot there.
What I find myself doing isgoing through the best I can you
(21:25):
know, getting advice from someof my former professors or some
of our seminary professors andsaying, listen, can you help me
vet the Roman Catholicismdoctrine out of our Free
Methodist doctrine so that wecan present materials and an
on-ramping for our pastors tomore comprehensively approach
the whole idea of demonizationor exorcism or deliverance?
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Yeah, that's great.
And have you ever had anopportunity yet to go through Dr
Larson's International Schoolof Exorcism?
Speaker 2 (21:55):
yet I don't know if you've been through that yet
meet one of your exorcistsduring the program and again,
from what I hear, it's verycomprehensive.
I'm looking forward to gettingmy hands on some of that
(22:15):
material in the near future.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Yeah, it's very comprehensive.
It's probably the mostcomprehensive logical
methodology that you'll find inProtestant exorcism.
I would say it's in a senseclinical.
That's why I like it so much.
I was a social work major fortwo and a half years.
Then I changed to computerprogramming so I have that kind
of clinical mindset and DrLarson really is very clinical
(22:46):
when he does the actual exorcismpractice.
It's got methodology to it buthe definitely will move outside
of that.
So it's not a hundred percentstructured process.
There's room to move aroundbased on how the Holy Spirit
leads you.
So it's wonderful, because alot of deliverances that I've
been around growing up in theindependent churches have been
(23:10):
like wild cowboys.
You know.
Nobody's trained, everybody hasa word from God.
And, quite interesting, itlacks professionalism, it lacks
the use of analysis andintellect, and that's what Dr
Larson pulls and brings to thetable.
(23:32):
It's a beautiful approach and Iknow Catholic exorcists use
very similar analysis and logicwhen working with people, and so
it's an important ingredient.
So have you witnessed yet, as aminister, anybody in your local
congregation that you eitherbelieved had demons or actually
(23:53):
came to you requesting help overdemons?
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Yeah, I think.
Yes, Fairly recently, I dopastoral care.
That's part of my job.
A demonic feature to every event, whether it's a full-blown
demonization, possession or atype of situation that just
needs deliverance.
(24:17):
There's usually I've heard aphrase that Satan is a, or the
devil is a musician without aninstrument and looking for an
instrument to use, and just anyhuman being.
If we were to sing on key infront of a guitar or piano,
whatever string we're singing towould reverberate what the key
(24:38):
we're in.
I think that's what Satan doeswith people in our lives.
If there's an opening for himto come in, he uses what's there
.
Whether it's a certain leniencythat we have towards a
besetting sin or some kind ofmisdemeanor or disobedience, he
will use that avenue to get intosomeone's life, whether that is
(24:59):
on a more permanence or just ashort term.
That's really important for thepastor to be able to discern
and help that person gainvictory over that, and that is a
very complex approach and Ithink we need to go through it
now.
As a Wesleyan, we use theWesleyan quadrilateral, which
deals with the idea of reason,history, experience and
(25:23):
scripture.
That's one of the things thatdrew me to.
The Wesleyan tradition iscoming from a Pentecostal
background where, like you weresaying, most people who are
doing work in the demonic wereshooting from the hip.
We come, at every aspect of ourfaith, from that Wesleyan
quadrilateral, so reason isalways a part of that.
Also, I think one of the bigthings which I liked and I saw
(25:46):
in the Roman Catholic Church andI'm trying to figure out how to
do it in a Protestant way is,in the Roman Catholic Church,
exorcism is a sacramental whichenables that person to become
part of the sacraments.
So it functions under thechurch, it's a function of the
church.
(26:06):
They're not functioning undertheir own power, they're
functioning under the auspicesand under the guidance of the
church.
I think that's very importantand I didn't see that in my
previous experiences as I workinside my denomination.
What I'm looking to do is helppastors, when they're in this
ministry or in this kind ofpastoral care, to work under the
(26:28):
auspices of theirsuperintendent and their bishop.
Demons are legalists and theyknow when you're flying solo and
that's not a place that youwant to be, you might turn into
one of the seven sons of Sceva.
If that's the situation, Ithink it's really important that
we attach ourselves to ourauthority and we work inside of
(26:49):
that, for accountability, forthe idea of oversight and
protection.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
All excellent points and I agree with you.
I think it's mission criticalthat there is policy for lack of
a better word, proceduresdocumented in place for pastors
to use and go by from the topdown.
Spiritual submission, spiritualauthority, is extremely
(27:18):
important when it comes todealing with demons.
Again, in the Western culturethey don't have any of this.
There is no deliveranceministry in churches.
There is no deliveranceministry in churches.
There is no code of ethics forlack of a better word.
There is no training.
So it's very sad because thereare so many Christians that come
(27:39):
to us under Dr Larson'sministries that have demons and
they can't get help in thechurch, so that's why they come
here, and it doesn't need to bethat way.
I'm so excited, chris, thatyou're taking this under your
wings, so to speak, and gettingthis in place.
So you're going to be creatinga for lack of a better word
(28:02):
policy so that pastors can haveguidance on how to do this.
What does that process looklike for you?
Getting this kind of again mywording policy procedure in
place for pastors that are goingto be caring for people?
Speaker 2 (28:23):
Yeah, and what it basically does.
It goes back to what weinitially began to speak about.
If you go even inside our owndenomination and we have markers
put out and Ordo Salutis' Orderof Salvation put out through
what it means to be a Christian,we have the doctrine of entire
sanctification, which is uniqueto a Wesleyan holiness tradition
(28:45):
.
But in the pulpit, in theparish or the pastoral ministry,
what a pastor even inside ofour denomination would consider
a Christian is usually verydifferent.
We're doing our best to growour church, make it more
(29:05):
effective in our community, andwe have directives on that.
So what happens?
The first thing that we'retrying to build is an entrance
ramp where and I'll just say itreal plainly most pastors would
consider someone who faithfullyattends their church, who
attends a small group and is afaithful contributor to their
church, a Christian.
(29:26):
Now, there's a lot of thingsthat are not said in that and
there are a lot of things thatare left out.
There's not a mention ofdoctrine, there's not a mention
of understanding creed.
So what we're doing is we'recreating a tool which would work
and help getting people who aremaybe in that situation, to
(29:50):
give pastors tools to help them,bring them on board to see if,
whether or not, they're trulyChristian or not.
So that's the first thing thatwe're creating is a tool where
pastors can use for discipleship.
They could use it on themselves.
It would be like a dailydevotional where they can be
introduced to the creeds of thechurch.
(30:11):
They could be introduced to alot of the doctrines of the
Christian church.
I had a couple come to me.
They attended my church on andoff for about a year.
They asked me to do theirwedding and when I brought them
through the premarital, I saidto them I don't think you want
me to do your wedding.
And they said why?
And I said because you'reBuddhist.
And they said how can you saythat?
(30:34):
And I said because you justtold me what you believe and
you've quoted Buddha more thanyou quoted Jesus.
And they're like yeah, we likeJesus too.
And I'm like yeah, but when Ido a wedding, you're making a
vow before God.
And this is I'm representing achurch when I'm doing this.
And I said you might want torethink this.
(30:57):
And they were very insulted.
But and they were, you know, ofcourse it was.
How can you dare say that to me?
And I'm like well, if a pastorcan't tell you that you're a
Christian I don't know whoreally can but you're not,
because you don't believeChristian doctrine.
You don't believe in the virginbirth, you don't believe in the
resurrection, you don't believein Trinitarian doctrine.
Those are huge problems, and Ihonestly think our faith has
(31:20):
become so individualistic inAmerica, it's become so void of
doctrine that we need to go backinto the basis, and most people
are getting their doctrine fromOprah and Disney.
That's where they're beingenculturated from and that's
where they're getting theircatechesis from, and they think
it's all good, it's notChristianity.
(31:41):
So the first thing that we'redoing is creating a tool to help
pastors vet people into theidea are you a Christian or are
you not?
And it is a daily devotionalthat runs along with our book of
discipline, but it's also aform of catechesis, and where
it's got an educationalcomponent where people will
understand yes, this isorthodoxy.
(32:04):
And then it enculturates themagainst heterodoxy, which that's
just the world we live in today, and so it gives them the
positive, but it also inoculatesthem against the negative that
they've already heard and beensaturated in.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
That's great, and I would imagine part of this
you're going to be starting toalso begin to document is the
exorcism and deliverance anddemonization and that and I'm
going to come back to that in aminute, but I just want to echo
what you're saying because I'min full agreement with it.
I've not mentioned this beforeon the podcast, but the minister
(32:41):
who really had a large impactin my life in my early 20s and
through my 30s he was an ex-CIAagent.
How cool is that?
Very intelligent man and thefirst thing that he did this was
a non-denominational church.
And so you have people comingfrom all over the place, all
(33:02):
kinds of different Christiandoctrine, everything.
The first thing he did was hestarted a catechism course and
of course, all the Christians inthe church were we're not
Catholic, we're not in.
Catechism just means basicallyinstruction, and he brought I
believe it was seven courses tothe church and every course
(33:25):
lasted a year, and so he tookeverybody back to the core,
foundational Christian doctrinein the first course so that
people could go through, likeyou're saying, chris, and
understand what is true,authentic Christianity.
And from there the secondcourse was built on the
(33:46):
foundation all the way upthrough six, seven, eight
courses, whatever the total ofthem were, and these were big
books.
These were not small, thinbooks.
They were instructed by pastors, by associate pastors, to train
people coming into thisnon-denominational church of.
(34:07):
This is what we believe andfortunately for me, part of that
was deliverance, but they hadno real formalized training in
it, so it wasn't very effective.
It's what I often calldeliverance light on this, where
they're just telling demons tocome out and they're not really
(34:27):
interrogating them like Christdid, they're not really breaking
legal rights, doingrenouncements, none of that kind
of stuff.
But at least it was somethingand so that's inspiring and I
hope you guys listening if thereare ministers or pastors
listening that you're gettingsome of this.
This is really good.
(34:47):
I think it's important,especially culturally where
we're at in Western culture,that we have some type of
curricula to have people gothrough so that they can learn
what it truly means to be aChristian.
Chris, eventually you're goingto get into outlining this in a
(35:10):
sense of how to deal withexorcism, demonization, and
right now you're in the researchphase and gathering information
and eventually you're going tobe flushing that out and get it
into your church curricula wherepeople can learn about this
also pastors, and today I wasspeaking with a pastor who
(35:34):
believes in deliverance.
He's been trained under DrLarson's methodology and he said
it's a very interesting dilemmabecause people come to his
church that believe indeliverance, but he only wants
that to be a function of thechurch, not the main emphasis of
the church, which is a verybalanced approach.
(35:54):
He wants to teach the wholecounsel of God's Word and part
of that is deliverance.
But he said, when he begins toteach on the core doctrine of
Christianity, all the people thedeliverance stop coming.
They leave because they wantthe hype, they want to see the
(36:15):
heads spinning, they want to seethe demons manifesting.
That's it.
It's like they want to pop abag of popcorn and watch this,
and so he's really strugglingwith this because he wants to be
able to introduce this to hischurch but also have people
understand that this is just apart of Christianity.
(36:37):
This is a part of ministry,just like worship, just like
baptism, just preaching thegospel, just like witnessing.
This is just part.
Saying this is just part.
People want the sensation of allof this paranormal stuff and
they really don't want the Wordof God.
It's what this pastor said tome.
(37:00):
He said Paul mentioned this inthe Bible that in the end they
will have itching ears.
They just want to see theparanormal, the supernatural,
and then, if it's not happening,boom out the door and go on.
We have to get back to coreChristian foundational teaching
(37:21):
that our founders put in place.
Man, oh, I get excited justthinking about this, so it's
just really good.
Excited just thinking aboutthis, so it's just really good.
Chris, can you share, as aminister, to other ministers,
pastors who are listening, somewords of advice, some
encouragement around this on howto begin to bring this into the
(37:44):
church in a logical way, aboutdemonization, about possession,
about deliverance, because thereare people listening now that
aren't where you're at.
In other words, you're at leaststarting to get this in place.
Can you share a little bit ofadvice with pastors or ministers
on how might they start gettingthis in place, to begin to
(38:06):
introduce this to theirleadership and congregation?
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Oh yeah, definitely.
One of the things that drew meto this ministry was I was
listening to a podcast with ChadRipperker.
He's a Catholic exorcist out ofMissouri and he said what drew
him to the ministry and histestimony it's what God used to
grab at me.
He said exorcism is not what wesee in the movies, it's hard
(38:32):
work, and he was raised as agrinder, a hard worker, and
exorcism is a lot lesssupernatural than it is just
hard work.
And that's what reached out tome because I was raised in that
kind of upbringing.
Before I was a pastor, I workedconstruction, so hard work was
part of my DNA and even some ofthe work in the demonic I've
(38:56):
done it is just arduous hardwork.
Yes, there are somesupernatural things that do take
place and there are somemanifestations that if I had
hair it would stand on end.
But it's really hard work and Iwould encourage pastors.
But it's really hard work and Iwould encourage pastors.
The gospel in Scripture is knownas the power of God and if our
sermons most sermons that I comeacross whether it's I catch
(39:20):
them on the Internet or I visitanother church on a Sunday if
I'm not preaching, they're atbest for just talk about the
forgiveness of Jesus.
Most of them become how-tosermons how to become humble,
how to become self-disciplined,how to become this and they
leave the gospel out,no-transcript.
(39:41):
And it's where we get ourforgiveness from.
It's also where we get ourrighteousness from.
It's where we get ourjustification and sanctification
from.
It is the entirety of what weshould be talking about.
And the problem is we thinkit's just the ABCs and then we
go on talking about stuff abouthow many angels can dance on the
head of a pin or how many brasstacks there are in the
(40:02):
tabernacle, and we use thegospel as either an add-on to
the end of our sermon.
It should be the entirety ofwhat we're talking about,
because revival in the Church ofAmerica it's only ever happened
when we rediscover the gospel.
That's why you don't seerevivals in Mormonism, jehovah's
Witnesses.
You only see it when the churchrediscovers the full intent of
(40:27):
the gospel.
And we are not there as anation.
And if people are not enjoyingwhat you're saying and they want
to see people's heads spin andpeople spit pea soup out, I
think the pastor needs to do alot of self-reflection and say
am I really preaching the gospelor am I just talking about
forgiveness?
(40:47):
The gospel is so much more thaneven that and until we
rediscover that, I think, likeyou're saying, people are going
to go to itching, have itchingears, and I know what it's like
to minister for a number ofyears, teaching evangelical
self-help sermons and how-tosermons.
It wasn't up until about 10 or15 years ago where I
(41:10):
rediscovered the full power ofthe gospel, and it's not
something I add on to my sermon,it is the very centrality of my
sermon.
And people are being set free,not through just outward
morality or outward forms ofself-discipline.
They're being transformed byGod, changing their idols in
(41:30):
their hearts and the love intheir hearts from these other
things back to Jesus Christ.
And until we as pastors get that, the church is still going to
be bumping and sputtering along,doing all these manipulative
things to try to get people inthe door.
But we just need to seek theLord to rediscover the full
intent of the gospel and I thinkwhat would happen in that is
(41:53):
this idea of demon possessionand demonization.
We would go into that poweredby the gospel and be able to
execute that much more likewe've seen in times past where
the church had vitality andpower.
Exorcism in the Roman CatholicChurch hundreds of years ago
used to take days because thechurch has been so depleted of
(42:15):
its power.
It takes now years because thechurch doesn't have its power
that it used to have, and Ibelieve the same thing has
happened in the Protestantchurch.
Just look what's going on out inthe Protestant church.
Just look what's going on outin Dallas right now.
We're seeing these monstrousministries just crumbling
because of crime, sin inside thepulpit, and it is
(42:38):
heart-wrenching.
As a pastor and I'm not sayingI'm perfect and I'm totally
above all this I'm not sayingthat at all.
I say it with humility in myheart but we need to step back
and go.
Wait a minute.
These are massive ministriesthat are just crumbling because
of unreported sin and the powerof Christ how can it be present
(43:00):
in these kind of situations?
What are people going to hear?
What are they practicing or notpracticing?
Those are questions that weneed to, as pastors, seriously
ask ourselves, and I think theonly answer to that in my prayer
is that we rediscover thegospel and the churches begin to
preach the full entirety of thegospel.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
This is good.
This is good.
There's a couple things I justwant to touch on, and first of
all, the amount of effort ittakes in exorcism and then,
second, I wanted to talk aboutthe pastors who are falling that
have large churches.
The amount of effort that goesinto exorcism under Dr Larson's
(43:42):
ministry is very intense.
Our sessions normally lastbetween two to three hours each
session, sometimes multipletimes a week.
Most clients on average arefour to six months to work with
them.
We do a lot of inner healing inaddition to exercising and
(44:03):
expelling demons through theauthority of Christ.
This is a lot of time grindingand we do this because we love
Jesus Christ.
It's part of the function.
It's part of the gospel thatChris is talking about.
Jesus cast out demons.
He said go out in my name andcast out demons and deal with it
(44:24):
Hours.
I have been in exorcism sessionsthat have lasted seven hours
and I don't say that arrogantly.
That's how involved it can be.
How is that possible?
People have been through severetrauma.
Some people we work with aresatanic ritual abuse victims.
(44:44):
A lot of the people we workwith are disassociative, also
called multiple personalitydisorder, very complex
conditions.
We just don't have somebodycome down to the altar full of
emotionalism and scream, comeout and everyone claps and the
music fires up and everyonedances all around.
(45:05):
We're free.
We're free Hours of time spentwith every client through the
compassion of Jesus Christ.
There's nothing more rewardingthan when I sit across from a
client who's lost everything inlife.
They're completely suicidal.
In every session, jesus Christbrings healing, restoration,
(45:30):
discipleship and after four tosix months, at the end the
person is restored through themercy and compassion of Jesus
Christ.
When I first started this ofJesus Christ, when I first
started this, the Lord made itvery clear to me it's not the
quantity, it's the quality.
(45:50):
Yeah, it's not the quantity,justin, it's the quality.
When you sit down with someonein a three-hour session,
processing, using analysis andbeing led by the Holy Spirit,
it's hard work.
And to Chris's point, he's gotthat grit.
(46:11):
He was in construction.
I've got that grit.
I was raised right outside ofYoungstown Ohio.
I was raised in Youngstown Ohio.
It was a steel mill industryhard grinding, blue collar
workers man, that's the cultureI was raised in.
Pick yourself up by thebootstraps and get moving, boy.
(46:33):
And that has been extremelybeneficial in ministry.
I encourage anybody listeningwho is currently doing
deliverance or considering doingdeliverance.
Take the International Schoolof Exorcism so you can gain
(46:54):
understanding and be trained bysomeone who's credible.
I've said it many times DrLarson, I believe.
He's over 80 years old now.
He's been doing exorcisms, Ithink, for 50 years, 50,000 plus
exorcisms in over 100 countries.
He knows what he's doingthrough empirical evidence,
(47:17):
through his experience.
It's beautiful Now about thechurch's falling, churches
falling.
If what Chris is doingintroducing demonization,
deliverance, exorcism to hiscongregation, to his leadership,
to his church denomination ifthat was the case in Western
(47:38):
churches, these pastors wouldnot fall because they could come
for help and go through anexorcism.
Pastors don't need to fall tosexual temptation or money or
any of that.
If they believed Christianscould have demons, they could
get those expelled and healed upthrough the compassion of Jesus
(48:01):
Christ and never have toexperience that.
But because they don't believeChristians can have demons, they
only approach it the sinfulnature or counseling.
That's it Leaving out a majoringredient there, a huge
ingredient.
I hope you guys have found thisepisode informative.
(48:23):
I hope it challenges you as aChristian.
Make sure you are saved, getdiscipled.
Christianity is aboutdiscipline, understanding the
core principles of our faith andsticking to it.
It doesn't matter what'shappening culturally.
(48:44):
When you're a Christian, youdon't change your doctrine.
When you understand the Word ofGod, when you have been
discipled, you are firm in yourfaith, firm in your beliefs.
There is no room for compromise.
That's why, a lot of times,people, when different cultural
changes come through andthere'll be more than what's
(49:05):
going on right now they justfall right into it because they
are not founded in the coredoctrine of Christianity.
They don't understand theirBible.
They've not been discipled.
I guess.
A question for you, listeninghow often do you read your Bible
?
Have you ever studied the corefoundational principles of
(49:25):
Christianity?
If not, I encourage you to.
It's right at your fingertips.
You can use ChatGPT to do allkinds of research.
You can use Google.
It's not hard at all Used to be.
We'd have to buy all kinds ofbooks and concordances and all
that stuff, and not the case now.
You can study all of this andget your head around it.
(49:48):
I share your passion, chris,about discipleship and
throughout sessions when I workwith clients, I do disciple them
because they don't know, and atthe end of sessions oftentimes
I am sending them information onthings to study related to core
foundational doctrine that arecompletely vacant in their life
(50:10):
because they've only been taughtGod loves you and forgives you.
So I hope you have found thischallenging, informative.
Again, I encourage you to sharethis out to your pastor, to
share this out to your minister,your reverend, your bishop, so
that they can hear this and bechallenged in their thinking.
(50:31):
Chris, I'm going to come backto you.
At the end of every episode, Ialways ask my guests to share
some encouragement with theaudience and normally I ask my
guests to share to the audience.
But today I'm going to dosomething a little bit different
.
I'm going to ask, chris, if youwould encourage pastors,
(50:52):
ministers and reverends andbishops to be open to exorcism,
to begin to research thislogically and look through the
literature.
Historically, this isdocumented even past the
crucifixion of Christ.
Chris, if you can just take aminute and share some
(51:12):
encouragement with pastors whoare hearing this that are really
wrestling with this.
Some pastors really want totake this plunge and do this,
but they're afraid of theestablishment.
Other pastors are listening,and reverends and ministers, but
they're afraid of theestablishment.
Other pastors are listening andreverends and ministers
listening because they'recurious.
They may not be close to takingthat plunge, but can you take a
(51:34):
minute and just share someencouragement with these pastors
and ministers and reverends andbishops and leadership that
might be listening to this?
How should they approach thetopic of their members having
demons and exorcism?
Speaker 2 (52:07):
why there's such an upswing in exorcism and why has
the demonic gone from being overto being just out there now?
It used to be.
The devil's best secret was hedoesn't exist.
Now it's flamboyantly out thereand his response was maybe it's
death pangs, Maybe they knowthe time's short and we're
seeing this upsurge.
So if you're superstitious andyou don't believe in the
(52:28):
supernatural, or you don'tbelieve maybe a Christian can be
demonized or have a demonicproblem, I want to encourage you
.
This is coming to a church nearyou.
It's just statistically, it'sjust going to happen.
If you tend to be notsuperstitious, but superstitious
, this is not about you.
(52:48):
This is about the function ofthe gospel and the church.
There isn't a demon behindevery door, but there is an
intelligent evil that's seekingto devour Christians and
Christian leaders, and I wouldencourage you to work in concert
with your authority, whateverkind of church setting you're in
(53:09):
.
If it's a community church,your board, if you're in a
domination, with your leadership, your bishop and I would highly
encourage you to take acomprehensive approach, whether
it's using and getting involvedin Dr Larson's ministry.
I've had a privilege ofobserving some of their work.
It's very extensive and I wouldencourage you to work in
concert.
The wolves pick off the lonesheep and I would encourage you
(53:33):
to begin to work with otherpeople who are in this ministry.
If you haven't run into it, youwill.
It is going to become part ofpastoral care and one of my
seminary professors said aspastors, we need to run into the
burning buildings in people'slives.
We need to be a death watchwhen people go from this world
into the hereafter.
We need to talk to families whohave lost somebody and we need
(53:56):
to walk into people's lives whenthey are dealing and they're
being overrun by the demonic.
It's part of pastoral care.
We'd like to make it neat andtidy, but no, we're called by
our Lord to roll up our sleevesand to do the hard work of
pastoral care.
And dealing with exorcism,dealing with deliverance, is
(54:17):
part of that.
Calling it's messy, it'suncertain.
At times it's even scary, but Iwould encourage you that when
we do this, like I've alwayssensed, I've sensed the presence
of Christ and I've sensed thepower of God working through me
in these situations.
I just want to encourage you inthat.
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