Randy Clark: In Jesus’ Name They Shall Cast Out Devils

I had been a pastor for 14 years when I encountered my first demon. At the time, I was pastoring a Baptist church. We had invited a team from the Vineyard to come minister at our church, and during their visit, we experienced a powerful move of the Holy Spirit. Some time earlier, a female evangelist was ministering at a nearby Assemblies of God church. Having heard that manifestations of the presence of the Holy Spirit occurred when this woman preached, I wanted to see for myself what was going on.

At one point during her teaching, a large man got up, roaring, making noises and growling. As his behavior got out of control, four men tackled him, one on each limb. They were screaming at him, and he was yelling, hitting and sweating. He got up and tried to run, and they tackled him again. They wouldn’t let him get away; they were wrestling with him. It was a classic deliverance scene, American-style, and it made me think I didn’t want anything to do with deliverance. Then this guy started vomiting. I’m not a fan of vomiting, so that really sealed the deal for me.

I believe a lot of the behavior we see during deliverance is nothing more than manifestations of cultural expectations. In our limited knowledge as a culture, we expect chaos and things such as vomiting when someone is experiencing deliverance. Other cultures have different expectations. Koreans don’t vomit. They burp—because that is what they believe is supposed to happen when demons come out of a person. Pablo Bottari teaches that vomiting and the like is not necessary to deliver people of demons. His 10-step model for deliverance is found in his book Free in Christ.

Deliverance Is the Children’s Bread

Each one of us is a body, soul and spirit, created as a spirit being. It is our spirits that connect us with God. When anyone asks Jesus Christ to come into his life, God’s Spirit connects with his spirit, and he is joined with Jesus. God’s Spirit bears witness with our spirits that we are children of God (Rom. 8:16). When sin separates us from God, our spirits still function, but because the spirit was designed to connect and relate to God, sin causes it to separate from God.

The soul is also a part of our inner man. It comprises the mind, which gives us our capacity to think; the will, which is our capacity to choose; and emotions, which are our capacity to feel. Our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit, and they give us our physical identity and enable us to relate to the physical world.