Derek Prince - They Shall Expel Demons: What You Need to Know about Demons—Your Invisible Enemies

1998 by Derek Prince

Published by Chosen Books
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
chosenbooks.com

Chosen Books is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
www.bakerpublishinggroup.com/p>

Ebook edition created 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any meansfor example, electronic, photocopy, recordingwithout the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

ISBN 978-1-58558-185-6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture is from the New King James Version. Copyright 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture marked NASB is taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE, copyright The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission.

Scripture marked NIV is from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

Scripture marked Weymouth is from The New Testament in Modern Speech: An Idiomatic Translation into Everyday English from the Text of the Resultant Greek Testament , Third Edition, by Richard Francis Weymouth (London: James Clarke & Co., 1910).

Scripture marked KJV is from the King James Version of the Bible.

Names of persons in this book have been changed to protect privacy.

All royalties for this book have been assigned to Derek Prince Ministries.

The internet addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers in this book are accurate at the time of publication. They are provided as a resource. Baker Publishing Group does not endorse them or vouch for their content or permanence.

And He went through all Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and expelling the demons.

Mark 1:39, emphasis added

And signs shall attend those who believe, even such as those. By making use of My name they shall expel demons.

Mark 16:17, emphasis added

( The New Testament in Modern Speech
by Richard Francis Weymouth)

PART

F UNDAMENTALS

N early two thousand years ago Jesus came to the help of suffering humanity, working miracles by healing the sick and casting out demons. Throughout the three and a half years of His earthly ministry, this never changed.

In the intervening centuries Christian men and women have been called from time to time with miraculous ministries to the sick and afflicted. Yet, as far as I know, there are few, if any, records of people with a ministry of casting out demons comparable to that of Jesus. As a result, most victims of demonic oppression have been left to suffer without any offer of practical help from the Church.

The time has come, I believe, to clear away the rubble of religious tradition that has obscured the clear revelation of the New Testament, and to reestablish the Churchs ministry on the bedrock of Jesus and the gospels.

How Did Jesus Do It?

W hen a member of my congregation let out a blood-curdling shriek and collapsed just in front of my pulpit, I had to make a split-second decision. I called on some others to help me and, in the name of Jesus, we succeeded in driving out the demon (or evil spirit). That experience in 1963 propelled me into intensive study of the ministry of Jesus. I wanted to be certain my actions were in line with His.

Mark begins his record of the public ministry of Jesus, I discovered, with an incident in which a demon challenged Him as He was teaching in a synagogue in Galilee. This encounter spread His fame immediately throughout the whole of Galilee (see Mark 1:2128).

From that point on, we see Jesus dealing with demons wherever He encountered them during the three and a half years of His public ministry. Near the end of that time, He sent a message to Herod that He would continue to cast out demons and perform cures until His earthly task was completed (see Luke 13:32).

But the ministry was not to end then! When Jesus commissioned His followers, He transmitted His authority to them. In fact, He never sent anyone out to preach the Gospel without specifically instructing and equipping that person to take action against demons in the same way that He Himself did. I can find no basis anywhere in the New Testament for an evangelistic ministry that does not include the expelling of demons. This is as true today as it was in the time of Jesus.

I soon came to realize that Satan has developed a special opposition to this ministry. He is, by choice, a creature of darkness. He prefers to keep the true nature of his activities concealed. If he can keep humanity unaware of his tacticsor even of his very existencehe can use the twin tools of ignorance and fear to open the way for his destructive purposes. Unfortunately, ignorance and fear are not confined to non-Christians. They are often at work inside the Church. All too often Christians have treated demons with superstitious dread, as if they are in the same category as ghosts or dragons. Corrie ten Boom commented that the fear of demons is from the demons themselves.

For this reason I chose the verb expel (Weymouth) for the title of this book, to describe the action of dealing with demons. Expel is a familiar, everyday word that has no special religious overtones. It brings the whole ministry down to the level of everyday life.

Jesus Himself was extremely practical in His dealings with demons. At the same time, He emphasized the unique significance of this ministry of expelling demons when He said, But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you (Matthew 12:28).

Casting out demons demonstrated two important spiritual truths. First, it revealed the existence of two opposing spiritual kingdoms: the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan. Second, it demonstrated the victory of Gods Kingdom over Satans. Obviously Satan would prefer to keep these two truths hidden!

When Jesus cast out demons, He went beyond the precedents of the Old Testament. From the time of Moses onward, Gods prophets had performed many miracles that foreshadowed the ministry of Jesus. They had healed the sick, raised the dead, made miraculous provision for multitudes and demonstrated Gods power to control the forces of nature. But there is no record that any of them had ever cast out a demon. This was reserved for Jesus. It was a unique demonstration that the Kingdom of God had come upon the people of His day.

This makes it all the more remarkable that this ministry has been largely ignored by the contemporary Church in many parts of the world. Evangelism, especially in the West, has frequently been practiced as if demons did not exist. Let me say, as graciously as possible, that evangelism that does not include the casting out of demons is not New Testament evangelism. I will take this a step further and apply it to the ministry of praying for the sick. It is unscriptural to pray for the sick if one is not prepared also to cast out demons. Jesus did not separate one from the other.

On the other side, there are those today who carry this practice of casting out demons to unscriptural extremes. They give the impression that any kind of problemphysical, emotional or spiritualshould be treated as demonic. But this approach is unbalanced and unscriptural. Sometimes, too, deliverance is carried out in a way that gives more prominence to the minister or to the one receiving deliverance than to the Lord Jesus.