By Charles Carrin
In the first part of this article series, I explained how the battering-ram the Roman Army brought against the walls of Jerusalem was a prototype of the spiritual weapons we have been provided for Christian battle. I continue on that theme in this article with some particular application.
Make no mistake about it, we are at war! At this time in our nation, several states are preparing for discussions with proponents of “Sharia Law.” As I write, Christian churches in Iraq and other Islamic nations are being bombed and their congregations murdered. Not all of this is reported by America’s media; a black-out order exists. Efforts are being made to convince the American public that Islam is a peace-loving and kind religion. History, however, emphatically denies that. In spite of the propaganda put forth by its proponents and participants, Islam is judged by its own history.
An example of this history occurred in Indonesia several years ago when three Christian high-school girls were beheaded by Islamic militants as a Ramadan “trophy” for Allah. The girls’ bloody heads were dumped in plastic bags in their village with a handwritten note threatening more such murders. The note read: “Wanted: 100 more Christian heads, teenaged or adult, male or female; blood shall be answered with blood, soul with soul, head with head.” The girls’ bodies, dressed in school uniform, were left by the roadside near the execution site.
Hear me carefully: Brutality and murder has been the identifying mark of Islam since its inception and the same plans are in store for the U.S. Get ready!
Like it or not, the day is rushing like a dam-burst toward us when all sincere believers will be forced into every aspect of spiritual war! Our own safety and the well-being of our families will depend on it. In spite of the blood-thirsty opposition we face the Christian war is empowered through the Holy Spirit. We dare not forget that! Our artillery includes living in God’s authority, spiritually trampling on serpents and scorpions, and exorcism—the casting out of demons. Christians who are now saying, “I don’t believe it,” will be soon be saying, “Tell me how it is done!”
Paul explained that this battle is not physical or earthly. He said:
For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled. (2 Cor. 10:3-6)
Unless Jesus catches the church away soon, chaos is coming, and we will have opportunity to battle the spiritual giants. The Holy Spirit is presently emphasizing these facts to the church: We are in the confluence of end-time prophecies and are racing toward all-out spiritual war. Be warned! If you are not being taught principles of spiritual warfare by your present church you better find one that is teaching and get in it.
The streets of our nation, as well as other parts of the world, are crammed with demonized people—and Satan is recruiting more by the hour. They are a virtual army within our borders and are waiting for the signal from their Commander, the Prince of Darkness, to explode in violence. Millions are flooding illegally over our borders and the government refuses to stop them. Some are morally good; many others are not.
Few of the demonized have any realization of the evil potential within themselves. The church is the only one who will have either the explanation or the power to deal with the crisis even in a minimal way. Policemen, jails and psychiatric lock-up wards will not be able to cope.
Hopefully, the church will be caught away before that massive eruption occurs. The first skirmishes of the battle are already appearing, however, and we are still here. Satan is eagerly rallying his troops while much of the church slumbers on its velvet pews.
Conflict with Satan is going to intensify incredibly. We see this in the world-wide resurgence of Satan worship and witchcraft. London, formerly the home of some of the greatest evangelical Christians, today has more witches and occultists than pastors. And the figures are growing. Numbers of historic English churches have been converted into Mosques. The stone church building where William Carey preached in the late 1700’s and from which he left as the first Baptist missionary to India has been demolished and a Hindu Temple built on the site. India has come to England. In a way unthinkable to Carey and other believers in his day, thousands of Englishmen are being converted to Islam and various Eastern religions.
Paul’s warning of “seducing spirits” (2 Tim. 3:13) attacking the church in the last days is being fulfilled before our eyes. We are at war!
Deliverance ministry is an aspect of that spiritual war in which unclean spirits are cast out and the victims are set free. Though long neglected, this ministry is now growing rapidly among Christians of all denominations and is gaining much-needed recognition. Until recently, most of the church ignored the reality of unclean spirits. In opposition to the church’s attitude, thirty-percent of Jesus recorded ministry was spent in direct conflict with demons. Jesus never heaped scorn on the persons who were afflicted by them; rather, He simply cast out the offender and returned the person to normal living.
I was introduced to “deliverance ministry” in 1977. That wonderful year it happened to me when I was rescued from a spirit of depression and suicide. Not only was I set free but I was dramatically filled with the power Jesus promised! “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8).
That day God sovereignly forced me to accept Bible truths I had rejected and ignored all my adult life. In spite of being in the ministry for nearly thirty years, I knew absolutely nothing about casting out the devil. In thousands of sermons I had never devoted one messages to the topic. Nor had I realized my own problem could be so easily resolved.
Does that seem incredible to me now? Yes. Am I regretting it? Absolutely! My church members suffered needlessly because of my ignorance. In reality, I betrayed them. Unfortunately, there are thousands of other ministers who could give an identical testimony as mine. To whatever degree we reject the truth, we reject the power. To whatever degree we reject the power, we reject success. Failure in ministry is always on our end of the blame, not on God’s.
I believed the Bible—to the degree my denomination allowed—and was conscientious about preaching the “full counsel” of God. Somehow, when I came to this subject of spiritual warfare it blurred off the page. Behavioral problems in my congregation that did not respond to office counseling were hurried away to psychiatrists and other secular therapists. That treatment gave marginal help to those who could afford it, but nothing to many others whose neurotic ways kept the church in turmoil. Believe me, I encountered many of those! Unfortunately, it never occurred to me that those individuals could be delivered from their negative behavior by simply obeying Scripture.
My discovering the power of the Holy Spirit took me to remote parts of the world. I saw lives rescued, homes saved, and ministries empowered. Thousands of ordinary people returned to successful living. Would I go back to my former ministry of failure and defeat? Never! In the category of which I now speak, however, I refer only to the ministry of deliverance. The people involved in these deliverances were vexed by such things as drug addiction, homosexuality, prostitution, alcoholism, suicide, pornography, perversion, night-mares, child-beating, witchcraft, cruelty, Satanism, disease, pain, fear, and the whole catalogue of the devil’s work.
One pastor who came to us also brought his gun. We did not know it, but as he later explained, “If this ministry had failed, I was not going home alive.” Thankfully, the power of God’s battering-ram broke through and he went back to his family and church aflame with new liberty and love for God.
On another occasion, a woman held a gun in her lap while we ministered to her over the phone. The crisis involved the suicide of her only daughter. Not only was the mother set free and filled with the Holy Spirit, but she was able to minister to other members of the family who had been devastated by the girl’s death.
Another woman who had been an alcoholic for eighteen years was set free in a matter of minutes. Unfortunately, her church could accept her addiction, but not her deliverance. Alcoholism did not challenge their theology; deliverance did. In time, she had to leave the congregation and find a new one that could rejoice in the Holy Spirit’s beautiful work in her life.
A young man who was a repentant believer sat in my office, and wept about his temptation to homosexuality. He was not committing the sin but was daily battling the desire. Consequently, his life was one of total frustration and failure. Had he ever repented? Yes; many times. Was he living in victory? No. Tragically, his church told him that it was impossible for a demon to be the problem, and he did not need deliverance. Their claim was that Christians are immune to such demonic work. My reply to that error is that a demon can go anywhere sin and disease can go. If a Christian is immune to a demon, he is also immune to evil and infirmity. Such a believer does not exist. Our mortal has not yet put on immortality.
After anointing the young man with oil in Jesus’ Name (cf., Mk. 6:13), the unclean spirit in him began to bellow like an angry bull. Then, as if a gun-blast had hit him, he fell back into the chair, raised both arms into the air and began weeping loudly. He was delivered and his weeping turned to praise! The spirit was gone!
Today I look back over more than 60 years in the ministry and grieve over the wasted hours I spent in my early church life. I tried to counsel people for months on end, when what they really need was a fifteen minute ministry of casting out a demon. On several occasions I ministered to people who were totally out of their minds and had to be forcibly pinned to the floor while paramedics, policemen, firemen, and medical doctors, looked on. In each case the victims were set free and became normal again. On one occasion the policemen returned to their station and filed the report that they had “witnessed a successful exorcism.” It made believers out of them! Unfortunately, the National Enquirer, the Observer, and other tabloids published the story and it went across the nation in their ghost-story fashion. The real tragedy, however, is that secular papers will capitalize on such Christian stories, while church publications maintain a deathly silence. They are terrified by any believer claiming to do the works of Jesus, when they are not. Years later, one of the firemen who witnessed the deliverance that evening reappeared in my office and said, “That night changed my life—I am now a Bible-believing Christian!”
I began this article by telling about horrendous violence Muslims are bringing against Christians worldwide—what does that have to do with “Deliverance Ministry” on your home-front? The answer is found in a question asked by the prophet Jeremiah: “If you have run with the footmen, and they have wearied you, Then how can you contend with horses? And if in the land of peace, In which you trusted, they wearied you, Then how will you do in the flood-plain of the Jordan? (Jer. 12:5-6). In other words, if you have failed in the small test, how can you possibly pass the big one? If you do not know how to cast out a demon, how can you possibly cast out an army of them? Get real! We have one major Enemy whom we must face on every battlefield. Hopefully, you will not encounter those who cut off human heads. But you daily face the same enemy in your home, school, work place, and leisure time. In every capacity, you must be prepared to win!
Here is my plea to you: If the religious horse you are riding has died, for Heaven’s sake, dismount! Don’t just sit there until the carcass explodes under you!
The Kingdom needs you, your message, your ministry…now! You don’t have time to waste! You are seeing end-times prophecies be fulfilled every day. You need God’s power in your life! Get filled with the Holy Spirit! Receive the power!
Ready or not, you have been drafted for Spiritual War! Join God’s team of soldiers, take your place on the rope, be part of the battering-ram’s power and help break through the devil’s stronghold! Do it! Amen!###
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CHARLES CARRIN’S ministry spans the final half of the twentieth century. He was ordained in 1949 and in his youth traveled with men who preached in the 1800’s. For the first twenty-seven years of his ministry, Charles was a hyper-Calvinist Baptist pastor and Presbyterian seminarian who denied the miraculous works of the Holy Spirit. Mid-way in his ministry that abruptly changed. Personal crisis forced him to acknowledge Scriptures he had previously ignored. It was a time of intense pain and testing. The truths he saw were frightening; they had power to destroy his denominational ministry and at that point he had no hope that another, more wonderful ministry awaited him. As a result of his submitting to God in that crisis, Charles emerged with an amazing anointing of the Holy Spirit. Today, his ministry centers upon the visible demonstration of the Spirit and imparting of His gifts. This new ministry has taken him to London’s Westminster Chapel, the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship, and other significant places. He, R.T. Kendall, the former, 25-year pastor at Westminster Chapel, and Jack Taylor, former Vice President of the Southern Baptist Convention, travel together holding “Word, Spirit, Power, Conferences.” As an evangelist/writer, Charles’ articles have appeared in major Christian magazines in the United States and abroad, and his books have been read by thousands around the world. He travels extensively, teaching believers how to operate in the power of the Holy Spirit. Visit Charles Carrin Ministries
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