I've Been Sitting on this Exorcism Video For Years, But It's Time to Show You the Devil

Yes, I'm a cessationist. But that doesn't mean the devil isn't alive, well, and active in our culture. And evangelicals don't discuss this enough.

No one wants to be associated with a certain camp of fringe charismatics who see gremlins in every motor, leprechauns under every bush, trolls under every bridge, and demons in every mother-in-law. But for fear of being weird, evangelicals have largely abandoned discussion of our second greatest foe on Earth (our sin is the first). The eschaton has arrived, however, and we will for not much longer be able to ignore the supernatural acts of Satan that permeate our culture.

Satan is mentioned a peculiar 66 times in the New Testament, and 27 times in the Old Testament. He is present at very significant places at the most pivotal junctures in God’s redemptive story.

Satan was present at the first insurrection in Heaven, and God cast him down with his fellow fallen angels (Isaiah 14:12-14). Satan was present at the fall of man, in his temptation of Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:1-7). He was present in Heaven to accuse Joshua, the High Priest (Zechariah 3:1-4). Satan possessed Judas, when he betrayed Christ (Luke 22:3).

The Apostolic writers do not dance around the devil or ignore the topic of Satan, as do America’s evangelical preachers. They had no such fear of being lumped in with the crazies, or looked down upon as superstitious by the snooty class of religious connoisseurs. In fact, the language used by the New Testament writers express a certain clarity combined with frantic certainty that Satan presents a very real threat to believers and the world around them.

We were warned by the Apostolic and Prophetic pillars of the church that those who perpetually do evil are controlled by demons (1 John 3:8). In fact, this same verse tells us that the work of Jesus is to undo the work of Satan. How many of us look at evangelism as anti-Satan work? But, that’s what it is. 2 Corinthians 13:3 tells us that Satan tempts us to be led astray from purity and sincerity in our walk with Christ. Even the sin of Ananias and Saphira was blamed, by Peter, upon Satan (Acts 5:3). Jesus warns us in John 10:10 that Satan has come to steal from you, kill you, and destroy you. James 4:7 tells us to actively resist the devil, which implies that the devil is actively attempting to tempt or thwart us. Peter warns us in his first epistle (1 Peter 5:8-9) that Satan is actively prowling around, seeking a Christian to pick off and destroy. The battle kit issued us in Ephesians 6:11-16, serves the purpose of standing against the devil.

Why, then, is Satan barely mentioned in evangelical churches, as though he were - without us just coming out and saying it - a myth. We seem to put him into the same category as Leviathan, a pseudo-mythical Jewish monster squirreled away in the collective Semitic conscience, hardly pertinent to Christians in the 21st Century.

Some of the resistance for us might be not wanting to appear like hyper-charismatics, carnival barkers, and religious hustlers who treat exorcism like a side show. Or perhaps, we don’t want to be associated with the Roman Catholic practice of exorcism - which lacks all the power of Jesus’ name - and is therefore a long, drawn-out process of annoying demons until they reluctantly leave like a homeowner splitting the neighborhood due to an obnoxious home owners association. Or it could be the rise of Cessationism, the (rather Biblical) doctrine that teaches the “miracles, signs, and wonders” demonstrated in the Bible were Apostolic Sign Gifts that served the purpose of testifying to the authority of the Apostles and, therefore, such gifts have ceased with the Apostolate.

While Cessationism, as explained above, is an accurate interpretation of the Bible, there is a type and kind of Cessationism that rules out miracles altogether, dismisses divine healing, or works wonders directly through the will of God and not through the conduit of an especially gifted man. This type of Cessationism, which rules out almost all supernaturality in our age, is increasingly dangerous for Christians in a time that Satan and his demons seem particularly active in the affairs of men.

Justin Peters, my former friend, is one of those hyper-Cessationists who does not believe in exorcism. Of course, nowhere is exorcism listed in the New Testament as a sign gift given only to the Apostles or to whom the Apostles laid hands. It’s worth noting that Peters does believe in demonic possession; he just doesn’t believe the name of Jesus has power over demons to expel them from the flesh of men. Which is kinda the worst of both worlds, if you think about it.

I sent this video to Justin years ago, to convince him out of minimizing the power of Jesus’ name over demons. Of course, it was to no avail, and he responded with a brief, predictable line about submitting our experiences to the Word of God.

The video (below) has been truncated for this post. In total, it was 9 minutes long. This gentleman knocked on our church door about 10PM on Saturday night. His girlfriend brought him, telling us she believed him possessed. She was a nominal Christian, someone inactive in her faith, but recognized the signs. I brought him to my office, called up two people as witnesses (in case things got out of hand), and in the course of those 9 minutes cast out his demons. He was brought to saving faith in Christ, and a few weeks later, was baptized in the name of the thrice-holy God. And he’s remained in the faith since.

This was not my first rodeo with the demonic. The first demons I cast out were nearly 20 years ago, from a woman who was not subsequently saved and they returned with more viciousness (Matthew 12:43-45). Since that time, I had conducted roughly one exorcism every year or two through the course of my now-ended public ministry.

But my first witnessing of an exorcism took place at the Simmons Baptist Camp near Houston, Missouri. A pastor’s nephew, who was visiting, was so demonically possessed that a number of grown men could not restrain him to his bunk until an old hill preacher cast them out. Church camps are usually a great place to see demonic activity, because the demons are relatively trapped, with nowhere to run. They then rise to the surface and act out. Most dedicated camp ministers can tell you this.

But I also learned from that time forward (I was 13 at the time) that demonic possession and exorcisms are just not talked about by most pastors, despite most pastors having first-hand involvement in such matters. Again, probably for fear of what people might think, they keep their demonic occurrences close to the chest.

Many open air evangelists could speak freely of their encounters with the demonic, in fact most open air evangelists I know have many stories, but again, do not readily publicize them.

My point is not for show-and-tell via Substack, but to build upon the concept of Christian Supernaturalism in coming days. We live in spectacular times. The dawn of the eschaton is upon us. The end is quickly approaching. You will see, and the world will witness, a fevered, Satanic orgy of historic proportions in coming days. Christians must be aware of our adversary, and plan to both resist and attack him accordingly.

Using the free portion of the Insight to Incite substack, I’ll explain the various schemes Satan is now using to direct human affairs, how demons are controlling media and entertainment, and how the devil is quite literally orchestrating a wide swath of professed evangelicalism to do his devilish deeds.

And finally, let me tell you why this is among the first topics I’m writing about after being in a state of self-repair for two and a half years.

When I was in rehab for addiction to prescription Xanax, those put in charge of my restoration were telling me I’d never recover because - and I quote - “once an addict, always an addict.” I was convinced that God would save me from the lawsuit filed against me by a trans-activist and brought by Planned Parenthood’s attorneys - and although God did provide a way for me to escape it - I nonetheless felt abandoned by God. My relationship with my family was rocky, to put it mildly. And I was a very, very long way away from home. One of my best friends, Chris Rosebrough, called to promise he’d help me “walk through it” but within days had betrayed the contents of that phone call, as well as our friendship, and drug me through the mud on his podcast. I felt utterly and totally abandoned.

Had it been possible to lose my faith, I would have. If faith weren’t a gift of God, with the Holy Spirit as its guarantor, I would have abandoned Jesus. You see, I could not feel Christ. I had walked with him, at that point, 36 years. To not feel him as ever-present, was spiritually terrifying. I was in the far country, and I could not see my shepherd.

However, there in rehab, I could feel the devil. During that time, he had become the friend that sticketh closer than a brother, a near and present curse in my time of trouble. God was cloudy to me, still under a months-long haze of a prescription drug. But Satan was coming in with High Definition. I could smell his sulfurous breath over my shoulder as I slept.

But, praise be to God, the devil is God’s devil. Logically I knew that if Satan exists, and of that I was sure, then it meant that God must also surely exist. There could be, in theory, a God without a devil. But there cannot be a devil without a God.

As Christians, we must recognize that for countless millions of our neighbors, their first interaction with the supernatural is not with God, but with Satan. They are familiar with him and acquainted with his work. We must recognize this is as reality, and we must begin to emphasize an evangelism methodology that uses Satan’s realness as Exhibit A for why people must run to the safety and salvation found in Christ.

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