This is the third part in a series on the subject of deliverance written by my good friend, Charles Carrin. As best as I can recall, I believe it was in the mid-90s when I first had the great honor and privilege of meeting Charles Carrin. The first night I met him at the church he was pastoring at the time, he graciously invited me and my wife to join he and his wife for dinner following the service. I immediately recognized the special anointing upon his life and that God had “set me up” for one of those divine connections. Over the past few years, I felt led to reach out to renew fellowship with Charles. Each time I’ve called, he graciously invited me to join him and his precious wife, Laurie, for lunch at one of the South Florida restaurants he dines at for lunch most every day of the week, usually sharing it with one of the many younger ministers who look to him for fatherly and sometimes grandfatherly mentoring. I’ve always hated when anyone refers to a man as being “sweet,” and still refuse to do so myself, but no one I’ve ever known manifests the sweet presence of the Holy Spirit like Charles Carrin. One of the best tributes I can give him is I always feel disappointed when the visit’s over and it’s time to leave — a rarity for me.
One of the things Charles and I share in common, though it has actually never been the subject of any of our conversations, is our experiences with the deliverance ministry. As I’ve shared numerous times in live preaching, conversations with other ministers, as well as a few of my articles, my personal introduction to deliverance ministry occurred totally unexpectedly and without my permission in one of the evangelistic meetings I was ministering at early in my ministry in 1977. In this article, Charles shares that that was the year he personally received the Baptism in the Holy Spirit and was introduced to the “charismata,” or manifestation gifts of the Spirit, as well as deliverance ministry.
In my case, as I was ministering right along in this meeting, and trying to conduct a nice, neat, and “orderly” meeting like the many I had attended in my first two years after giving my life to the Lord, when all of a sudden a man seated about three-quarters of the way back on the right side of the room let out a blood-curdling screech, pitched out of his chair, and proceeded to slither like a serpent up the middle aisle between the rows of chairs toward me with his eyes rolled back in his head, making hissing sounds, and his tongue flitting in and out exactly like a snake as no human can possibly do on their own. It was a supernatural sight! The whole crowd was alarmed and some began shreeking in fright. To finish the story, let me quote from another article I wrote in which I related this story:
I was so angry and chagrined that this guy was messing up my meeting and that God let this happen! Silently, after calming myself a bit, I asked the Spirit what in the world was happening and what I was supposed to do. To which He calmly replied within my spirit that this was a demon manifesting through the man, that it was happening because of the anointing that was present that causes demons to manifest just like I had read in the Gospels they did during Jesus’ ministry after being Baptized in the Holy Spirit, and that what I was to do was to command that the demon leave the man. In righteous indignation, I did! Then, it did! That is, the demon departed screaming out of the man with a blood-curdling scream, and he got up, totally delivered and in His right mind, just like when Jesus cast them out of demonized people.
This article written by Charles Carrin that follows in which he pays tribute to his late friend, Dr. Derek Prince, and his pioneering ministry in the area of deliverance ministry, to me, is a diamond-studded crown upon the deliverance series he has recently published in his monthly newsletters, which I have republished on my blogs and sites. There’s such a powerful and convicting anointing upon it that I started weeping the first paragraph. In fact, I feel I received some deliverance myself through the words of this article from the brokenness I’ve felt for so long because so many in the church today refuse and refute the Biblically irrefutable message and greatly needed ministry of deliverance. As I read the article, I felt such a kinship with the pain of Charles, Derek, and most importantly, Jesus, because the ministry of casting out of demons IS the ministry of Jesus that He so desperately wants to be extended to a lost, dying, and bound world population through those who have heeded the call to minister in His stead. Please enjoy the article. Read it over and over again. But, then, don’t just stop there, please take a second and click on the “ShareThis” icon at the end of the article and share it on your social networks, Facebook, Twitter, and any and all the others you use, and email it to a dozen or so friends. Do your part to spread the word to all you care about that Jesus is the DELIVERER, and whosoever calls upon Him SHALL BE DELIVERED![Ed.]
Here’s the link to the first article in the Deliverance Series as well:
Deliverance Ministry May Be Your Answer
CLICK HERE if you think you might need deliverance.
DEMONIZED PEOPLE NEED MORE THAN “RELIGIOUS BANDAGES”
A TRIBUTE TO THE MAN WHO TAUGHT US: DEREK PRINCE
Part III of the Deliverance Series
By Charles Carrin
My Baptism-in-the-Spirit occurred in 1977, and within the first year I was introduced to the ministry of Derek Prince. Later, Derek and I met, we became friends, and he preached to my congregation at Grace Fellowship in Boynton Beach, Florida.
Later, Derek invited me to join his ministry team for Pastors’ Conferences in Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkey, et al. Looking back over 61+ years of ministry I can truthfully say that no other minister impacted me as he did.
I was awed by his scholarship in the Word, his love for God, and the power of the Holy Spirit in his personal, hands-on ministry. Derek was a statesman among ministers. Hardly a day now passes that I do not hear a recording of his voice in my house. My wife, Laurie, remains his ardent student and admirer.
Derek died in 2003, was buried in Jerusalem, his adopted home, but his world-wide ministry continues from offices in Charlotte, North Carolina. I am privileged to maintain my contact with DPM through the Chairman of its Board, Arthur Loewy, Sally Fesperman, and other Board members. More importantly, every time I preach, congregations benefit from what I gained from this amazing man. He, “being dead”, still speaks.
During the Second World War, as a young British medical corpsman, Derek was stationed in a North African field hospital. One day he carefully cleansed a wound in the shoulder of a fellow soldier and was applying the bandage when the doctor stopped him. “Let me examine that wound more carefully,” he said, and then inserted an instrument directly into the injury. The soldier let out a yell; the probe had touched something buried deep within the flesh. “Get me the forceps,” the doctor requested. Within a few minutes the foreign object — a piece of shrapnel — was removed, the wound cleansed and the dressing applied. As Derek watched the procedure he was deeply grieved by his error — one that could have cost the other soldier his life. The real injury was not on the surface as he had supposed; it was deep within.
The impact of that incident remained with Derek into his later years. In time, God called him to preach, and began speaking to him about the reality of unclean spirits that were hiding below the surface of believers’ lives. Though it was a truth emphasized by Jesus and clearly explained in the Scripture, most of Christianity did not want to hear Derek’s message about it. Derek pressed on. Not only could he prove it from the teachings of Jesus but he saw it verified in the lives of people who experienced deliverance from demonic power. Lives were changed. Homes were saved. People in the grip of addiction, depression, disease, sin, were set free. But with many Christians that was not sufficient. They wanted no part of it. Derek was severely criticized, at times castigated, for his position. Thankfully, he pressed on.
Let me illustrate. Before the fall of Communism, a Hungarian woman who wanted to study authentic English listened to a Derek Prince teaching tape. She was not a Christian and had no thought of becoming one. Her motive in listening to the cassette was solely to acquire “Cambridge” diction. Before finishing the tape, however, which was on the theme of “Deliverance From Unclean Spirits,” she experienced the power of the Holy Spirit and was set free. Her husband listened and was delivered. They invited their neighbors to listen; these were delivered. From that beginning, an underground-church was born under the very gun-sights of God-hating Communism. That tiny congregation of secret believers began to grow. When it finally came to the surface it became home to more than 10,000 members and grew into the largest full-gospel church in the nation.
This story is not unusual. Twenty years ago, at an interdenominational Conference in Brighton, England, I met numerous Pastors from Africa, Asia, and the Pacific islands, whose ministry had been empowered by Derek Prince. New Zealand is virtually saturated with his ministry. But that is not surprising when we realize that from birth Derek was an international citizen. He was born of British parents in Bangalore, India, and as a five year old, spoke Hindustani and English. That same year, age five, he was sent back to England to a Boarding School. At age ten, Derek began a serious study of Greek and Latin. He would later add to that an understanding of Hebrew, Swahili, and a variety of other European languages.
At age thirteen, Derek’s scholarship gained him admission to England’s distinguished Eton College. Five years later he went to Cambridge as the Senior Scholar of the Year. Still hungry for knowledge, Derek was one of the youngest scholars in the history of Kings College, Cambridge, to hold a Fellowship at the University. His primary study was Philosophy. Academically, he was superior, his family background prestigious, and his future with the University secure. But God had other plans.
When World War II began, Derek left Cambridge and joined the Royal Army Medical Corps. For generations his family’s background was military. His grandfather had been a general in the British Armed Forces and his father was a colonel. After enlisting and having to travel light, Derek took a single “philosophical” work with him — a book he had never read — the Bible. He had grown up in the Church of England but found it offered him no real answers. That disappointment pushed him deeper into secular philosophy for the explanations he sought. Compulsively, he wanted to know “the meaning of life.” Late one night, in his army barracks, after reading much of the Old Testament and having visited a small back-street church, he was miraculously saved. In that same room two weeks later he received the Baptism in the Holy Spirit.
The power of that encounter with God decided the all-important issue of his career: Scripture — not philosophy — had the answers he sought. With that assurance, he gave up the opportunity to return to Cambridge and plunged himself into a pursuit of God. Thankfully, his years of intellectual training and discipline were not wasted; Derek thrust all his mental prowess into exploring the Word of God. Though he would not realize it until years later, his emphasis on Deliverance Ministry — casting out demons — actually had its beginning that day in World War II when he bandaged a soldier’s wound but left the villain within.
The results of Derek’s “exploration of the Word” have been sent around the world in millions of books, cassette tapes, and videos. Hundreds of his radio broadcasts reached all parts of the globe. These included translations into four Chinese dialects: Amoy, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Swatow. Millions of Chinese who knew Derek as Ye Guang-Ming (Clear Light) assumed him to be Oriental. Other broadcasts went out in Mongolian, Arabic, Malagasy, Russian, Samoan, Tongan, Spanish, and English. More than 100 Spanish-language radio stations in Spain and Latin America dispatched his message to 15 nations. Millions of Derek’s teaching cassettes, books, videos, were given away free of charge to spiritually-hungry people around the world. In the U.S., his broadcast was carried by some 115 stations. It was this same wonderful man whose example and in-depth Bible teaching blew my theological-life apart.
In 1995, when I sent word to Derek that I would be unable to be part of his Ministry Team at the Pastors Conference in Turkey, he faxed a message to me saying, “I don’t want you to disobey God but please pray again!” I did and soon joined representatives from some 23 nations at an undisclosed site for the Conference. This was followed by a second Conference for Turkish pastors in a different location. Pastors came from Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Croatia, Serbia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Kurdistan, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Israel, and numerous other areas. Messages delivered in English were translated into six other languages. Worship songs varied from Turkish to Albanian, Hebrew to Romanian, English, etc. Though the languages were different, everyone knew the songs and each sang in his own tongue. It was beautiful!
Turkey being an Islamic country, it was necessary to carefully protect the identity of the pastors attending and photographs were not permitted. With its population of 65,000,000, Turkey is the world’s largest Moslem nation, and has less than 1,000 Christians in the entire country. Many Pastors were former Moslems who had been converted. An Albanian Pastor and his wife had been instrumental in establishing 27 churches in four years. One of the most stirring moments was a feet-washing service in which former Moslem Arabs washed the feet of Jews, Serbs washed the feet of Croatians, and others from warring nations knelt before one another. This was a scene of weeping, some breaking into wailing, as God healed wounds from their warring past. We all watched with joy as a Pastor from Iraq baptized his eight year old son in the Aegean Sea. Tragically, this father had been warned by our Government that he was targeted for Moslem destruction. Since the two Iraq Wars I have often wondered about him and his precious family.
At Derek’s request, I ministered the first night to all the Evangelists in the meeting, laying on hands, and praying for the Holy Spirit’s imparting of specific gifts. This was a beautiful event with numerous ministers receiving the Spirit’s power in a way that crashed them to the floor. One Turkish pastor, a former Moslem, received such an impacting of power that his body arched from the floor, vibrating him for some forty-five minutes. When Derek began preaching two men carried the man to the only spot available — a hallway — where waiters going from the kitchen to the dinning room had to step over him. These stopped, staring incredulously, knowing they were witnessing the power of God. The Holy Spirit displayed a “sign and wonder” in him that will never be forgotten. One of the waiters got saved.
Being a Christian here in the US is so easy that it has lost much of its meaning. This is not true in other parts of the world. One young Turkish man whom I had met the previous year at Derek’s Conference in Kazakhstan is an example. He was twenty-eight years old, had become a Christian ten years before, and never wavered in his love for Christ. When he renounced the Moslem religion his family disowned him, declared him to be dead, and refused to see him ever again. At the Conference in Turkey when he saw me, he came running across the room hugged me, lifted me from the floor, yelling “Dad! Dad”! Such a transformation from Mohammad to Christ would be impossible without the Holy Spirit’s radical empowering. Thankfully, he had experienced more than “bandage” Christianity.
God only knows how many times in my former ministry I made that horrendous mistake of applying spiritual bandages. God’s accusation against me, as against ancient Israel’s priests, was that I had “healed the hurt of the daughter of God’s people slightly” (Jer. 6:14). I had cleansed and dressed the exterior wounds but had not probed into their injuries and removed the real culprits.
Let me explain. There were numerous instances in my former ministry when church members came to me for help with sin-problems ranging from alcohol to anger, adultery to blasphemy. These were not hardened sinners but genuinely repentant, weeping people who desperately wanted to be free from their own sin and the mutilation it brought. I prayed with the guilty parties and exhorted them not to sin again. I sterilized their wounds and used the best denominational-bandages I had. What more could I do? Like the young medical corpsman, I did not know that I was sending them away with the real cause of destruction still buried in their flesh. All I could do was to say, “Depart in peace, be warmed, and filled” — but without giving them basic Christian ministry.
My worst example of failure is this one. My ministry began in Atlanta in 1949, and in 1962, shortly after leaving that congregation, I read in the newspaper where one of my former members, a quiet, lovely young woman and the daughter of a well-known pastor, had murdered her husband, her three children, and committed suicide. I was numb with grief — grieving for her horrendous crime — but also for my failure to recognize the deadly potential within her. That was years before my baptism in the Spirit or learning about spiritual gifts.
What am I saying? I am confessing that as a pastor, trying to operate intellectually, without the baptism and power of the Holy Spirit, I could not meet my congregation’s needs. I rejected the Holy Spirit’s baptism and gifts, as I had been taught. The “discerning of spirits” gift might have identified the demon within her.
I am not alone in my failure. There are many more pastors preaching in posh pulpits whose ministries are utter failures in the area of genuine spiritual power. Skill, performance, oratory, has replaced the miraculous presence of God.
Like them, my band-aid ministry was an undeniable loss for everyone. During that time I attempted to help a church member with a major drinking problem. I took him from one alcohol-detox center to another. On one occasion, I drove off and left him standing on the steps of a state-operated facility that had refused to admit him. Fortunately, God later took that brother from my congregation and placed him in the care of another pastor who operated in the power of the Holy Spirit. He was miraculously delivered when the spirit of addiction was cast out. The buried shrapnel was removed. From that day forward he remained a clean, active Christian with a lay-ministry that sent thousands of Derek Prince teaching-cassettes around the world.
Today, that brother would not have to go unaided. I have been able to “teach others also” (2 Tim. 2:2) who are continuing the ministry. Here is an example from a reader in the U.S:
Dear Charles, You ministered and taught us at Belmont Church, Nashville, and at a small church in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Your ministry and anointing have caused the Holy Spirit to rise up in me and my wife so that we now minister emotional healing and deliverance in our church. In one year we saw over 400 people set free by the great power of the Spirit. Charles, it is so amazing! All we have to do is listen to what the Spirit is saying and then say that to the person. We sit back and watch Him work! What an awesome God!!! Charles, what is happening in our lives and the lives of 400 others is all because you taught us the power of the Holy Spirit and how to use it. I am grateful to God for you and your ministry. Thank you for your newsletter, Gentle Conquest. It has been a valuable tool in our ministry and our own personal walk with the Lord… For the next generation, Charles, may God give you the strength of Caleb in your faithfulness to Him.
Your servant in Jesus.
Before my Baptism in the Spirit, such a letter was impossible. Thank God!, that has changed. Since my ministerial-renewal and Derek’s teaching, I have seen drug addicts, suicidals, homosexuals, depressives, and people who have been abandoned as hopeless, be set free by the power of God. In every case, removing spiritual shrapnel was necessary for their rescue. Interestingly, the language used in New Testament Greek to identify the charismatic gift of “discerning of spirits” was used anciently as a medical term. It meant to “cut and look below the surface.” Through this wonderful gift (see, 1 Cor. 12:10), a believer is able to see beyond symptoms and identify the underlying cause. The Spirit’s miraculous gifts are indispensable in this type of ministry.
The greatest disappointment I now encounter is with church leaders who close their eyes and deny the plain, straight-forward message of Scripture. When they say, “Charles, those verses no longer apply. That power passed away in the first century. They won’t work today,” et cetera, et cetera, I reply, “It’s too late to tell me that! I am seeing them work!” Though I am now in my 61st year of ministry, I am still eager to learn, to be changed, to increase in the power and anointing of the Holy Spirit, and to see the Kingdom come in authority.
With God’s help, I am through with bandage-religion forever!###
___________________
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
Books by Charles Carrin — via AMAZON.COM
CLICK HERE if you think you might need deliverance.
DELIVERANCE FROM DEMONIC POWERS, by Dr. Steven Lambert
[Click on image to learn more about this powerful book]
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that has helped many to be set free from the fetters of demon powers! |
Charismatic Captivation — Get Print Book, eBook (PDF/EPUB)
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