A Rise In Demand For Exorcisms As The American Church Falls For Demonic Spirits

Christ casting out demons

Two interesting articles recently came across my desk that should be of great interest to all Christians but probably will only be noted by those involved in Deliverance Ministry.

The first, an op-ed from End Time Headlines, [1] decries the widespread failure of Christian Churches to adequately discern the spirits, in particular the evil ones.

Over the last two centuries, science has convinced us that the physical world is the totality of existence.

In our piece titled The Reality of Non-Physical Reality [2] we reported that science disregards anything that it cannot measure, or otherwise quantify, define, or even experiment with. Because it defies their human limited science, it therefore must not exist. But as Christians we know, by faith, that God created spiritual entities we characterize as angels.

We also know that a number of these entities rebelled, were cast out of Heaven and fell to Earth. While the war in Heaven was resolved by these evil spirits being cast out, the war continues on Earth, to this day, all around us. They may have lost the battle in their rebellion against God in Heaven, but they have not gave up the fight as they try to subvert God’s other creation, humanity itself.

These spirits seek to separate humans from God by seducing mankind with tantalizing morsels, things they know that humans in their sinful state will find desirable. Wealth, power, and sexual gratification are the most prominent of these temptations, but are also just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

By failing to adequately exercise the gift or discernment or to even teach it to modern day disciples of Christ, these churches begin to fall for demonic spirits, as reported in the second article I would like to bring your attention to today.

Writing for Charisma Magazine, [3] James Lasher reports on an interview in which Mike Signorelli, senior pastor of V1 Church in New York City, lists four surprising facts about deliverance from evil spirits in today’s society:

• Deliverance, often used interchangeably with exorcism, is the act of Jesus expelling unclean spirits from individuals, extending the ministry of Jesus through His followers. “He said to them, ‘Go into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved. But he who does not believe will be condemned. These signs will accompany those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues,'” (Mark 16:15-17).
• Not all individuals who claim to be Christians have truly internalized the transformative power of the gospel, leaving them susceptible to struggles with the demonic realm. Deliverance is necessary for those who have not fully embraced and repented of their sins.
• The process of deliverance involves cultivating a life permeated by the Holy Spirit, hosting His presence in a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. This agitates evil and exposes its presence, leading to freedom and healing. “You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do men light a candle and put it under a basket, but on a candlestick. And it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven,” (Matt. 5:14-16)
• Genuine repentance and closing doors to sin are essential to avoid the need for deliverance, as demonstrated by the contrasting examples of David and Saul in the Bible. “Therefore submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you,” (James 4:7)

Lasher writes:

Despite skepticism surrounding possession in the modern era, both faith leaders and practitioners have witnessed a surge in individuals seeking deliverance and spiritual healing.

Signorelli pointed out the overwhelming number of requests for exorcism within the Catholic Church, leading to a reported “system failure” within Catholicism due to the inability to meet the demand. He attributed this rise to the proliferation of occult practices and the mainstream acceptance of New Age spirituality, which he believes exposes people to spiritual dangers and potential evil.

 

In our opinion, the trend in the Roman Catholic Church that began with Pope John Paul ii calling for an Exorcist in every diocese, a trend that continued through Pope Benedict 16, is now on the wane as we see reports that some progressive Bishops are either not assigning a Priest to be the diocesan exorcist or some have eliminated the ministry of exorcism entirely from their diocese.

This renewed hostility towards the ministry of Exorcism, combined with an increasingly progressive trend towards practices that would have been unthinkable in the Roman church a generation ago, combined with the failure of the Protestant churches to adequate discern evil spirits, is a trend leading to an increase in people being tormented by these evil spirits.

Discernment of Spirits

The Op-ed at End Time Headlines, makes the following observation:

The one thing most of us fail to do is to discern when we’re dealing with demonic spirits. However, it’s important to sharpen our ability to discern evil spirits and their workings.
For this, having the gift of discerning of spirits is especially valuable, but don’t ever doubt that we all have to develop this discernment, especially when working in deliverance ministry. In this spiritual war, the discerning of spirits is the tip of the sword.
One of the issues we see with discerning spirits is that many people leave the faith because they follow after other spirits instead of the Holy Spirit.

We see people saying that they left Christianity because they felt Christians were hateful and intolerant.

What made them think that, could it be that they were convinced by a rebellious spirit that Christians were wrong to not affirm the dangerous, frequently deadly, delusions of the LGBT+ movement?

Jesus told us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, but he also implied the necessity for discernment when he warned that false prophets would come as wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Simply put, Christians who resist this spirit of affirming others in their sins, are not hateful, but in reality are loving, as they seek to turn the naive innocents—who have bought into the lies of the deceiver hook line and sinker—away from destructive choices.

Discernment begins with the instantaneous inner reaction of evaluating the origin of anomalous ideas that pop into your mind or even in the evaluation of editorial and opinion that is a thin facade for critical theory, or deconstructionist ideology designed to influence those without discernment training leading them on a path towards destruction.

God’s Spirit clearly says that in the last days many people will turn from their faith. They will be fooled by evil spirits and by teachings that come from demons. (1 Timothy 4:1 CEV)

In his letter to Timothy, the Apostle Paul seeks to inform Timothy—and by extension, us—that spiritual warfare is at hand. These last days that Paul spoke of, began at the day of Pentecost. and continue through time, to this very day.

In our key verse, where Paul refers to those who “shall depart from the faith,” he is not talking about ungodly individuals who stick their middle finger in God’s face, spit on the Bible, and hate church.

He is talking about believers who will depart from the church, from the truth of the Bible, from the preaching, from prayer, from fasting, and from deliverance and miracles. And the reason they will depart is shocking.

They will give heed to seducing spirits. This, of course, is not a reference to the Holy Spirit that’s spoken of in the first part of the verse. These are evil spirits, and these dark seducing spirits will eventually woo them into accepting “doctrines of devils.”

Doctrines of devils are false religions and other false teachings that dismiss the Bible: idol worship, the worship of man, the worship of objects, the worship of statues, the worship of beads, the worship of charms and amulets and crystals and horoscopes, etc.; and they will eventually defend every sort of perversion that goes against the Word of God.

Church people will literally side with demons and occultism and witchcraft. If you haven’t seen that come full circle in our time, then you’ve not been paying attention. In short, Paul says there will be demonic activity in the church during the last days that will destroy the church.

The influence of demonic activity in the life of the American church is an absolute fact, and through all my efforts to battle against it, I’ve discovered you cannot appeal to the conscience of a demon.

It works to destroy the conscience of its host and has no conscience of its own. A demonic spirit is void of that emotional connection to God, so it causes people to live numb and dry and lukewarm and barren, and in this context we begin to understand that a demon is nothing more than a person without a body who has taken hold of a human body. [1]

We frequently see videos of so called worship services at some churches. Videos showing entertainment and not worship, some even featuring interpretive modern dance that more closely resembles a Pagan rite that worship of God.

The idiom that suggests that making a joyful noise unto the Lord is acceptable, when equated with an anything goes in worship service, fails to discern what is worship of God and what is worship of the self. This failure of discernment contributes to an exodus of the church. Not just an exodus of the faithful seeking authentic worship venues, but many who are cultural Christians, reason, why go to church to see entertainment you can stream at home, entertainment that has little or nothing to do with God and righteousness.

In the Charisma News piece, Pastor Signorelli said; “Not all individuals who claim to be Christians have truly internalized the transformative power of the gospel, leaving them susceptible to struggles with the demonic realm.” This includes cultural Christians, those who grew up in a Christian family but did not experience a transformation and only accepted Christ in name only, and it includes those that came to Christ, but who did not receive proper discipleship (protestant Christian education or Catholic Catechesis).

Some denominations refute the concept of “back-sliding” or the state of a Christian reverting to sinful acts, they insist that the back-sliding Christian was never a Christian to begin with. Looking at this phenomena in this light gives a certain degree of credibility to their assertions. If one has not truly internalized the transformative power of the gospel and do not have the ability to properly discern the spirits, how can they resist the temptations of the devil?

The Apostle John begins the fourth chapter of his first epistle with a call for discernment, a call for believers to “test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1).

John expects that this “testing of the spirits” be equally applied to both himself and his opponents, those false prophets whom he is warning us about. The question, then, arises: how do we know who to believe? By what criteria are we to test the spirits to see if someone’s teaching is from God?

If the concept or ideaology agrees entirely with the teachings of Christ, and not just a proof text attempting to justify a theological position without taking the entirety of the context into question, then the idea meets the first criteria established in 1 John 4:3; “…3 and every spirit that confesseth not Jesus is not of God: and this is the spirit of the antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it cometh; and now it is in the world already.” If the “spirit” advocates something that the word of God condemns then the spirit is not from God.

Until our churches turn back to teaching the word of God, an act that develops the ability to discern spirits in the laity, we will see a continued rise in the demand for exorcisms. People who turn from the path Christ delineated, unconsciously give the evil spirits legal right to harass and oppress them or their innocent loved ones.

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[1] The American church is falling for demonic spirits https://endtimeheadlines.org/2023/09/the-american-church-is-falling-for-demonic-spirits/

[2] St Michael’s Journal: The Journal of Exorcisms

• Text based blog: https://stmichaelsjournal.wordpress.com/2023/09/23/the-reality-of-non-physical-reality/
• Audio Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3ZkcQt1FKhQqB1mBRqoF2e
• Video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V71aPHyIESQ&t=19s
• Video on Rumble: https://rumble.com/v3k8jk4-the-reality-of-non-physical-reality.html

[3] 5 Surprising Facts About the Rise in Exorcism Requests, James Lasher, Chrisma Magazine August 5, 2023. https://www.charismanews.com/culture/92732-5-surprising-facts-about-the-rise-in-exorcism-requests