Dealing with Demons

Dealing with Demons

Charles H. Kraft

Foreword by William P. Payne

Dealing with Demons

Copyright ©

2018

Charles H. Kraft. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,

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Wipf & Stock

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

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paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-4658-4

hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-4659-1

ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-4660-7

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1: Are Demons for Real?

The Biblical View of Satan And Demons

References to Demons in the Bible

Chapter 2: Paradigm Shift/Western Worldview

Chapter 3: Understanding Demonization

What Are Demons?

How Demonization Happens

Our Power and Authority

Chapter 4: Ten False Beliefs

1. I’m a Christian, I Can’t Have a Demon

2. Demons Possess People

3. It Takes a Fight to Get Demons Out

4. Demons are Just Psychological Problems

5. The Demonized Are in Spiritual Rebellion

6. It’s Either Psychological or Demonic

7. Demons Are Behind All Emotional Problems

8. You Need Special Gifting to Deal With Demons

9. Demons Don’t Live in America

10. A Demon’s Voice Will Sound Different

Chapter 5: A Paradigm Shift

Chapter 6: Approaches to Demonization

Model One: Blast Them Out

Model Two: Normal Prayer In Church

Model Three: Healing, Not Just Deliverance

Chapter 7: Evaluating the Ministry Models

Differences Between the Ministry Models

Which is the Best Approach?

Chapter 8: Dealing with the Rats

The Kinds of Things Demons Do

Rats and Garbage

Cosmic and Ground-Level Demons

Function Names Of Ground-Level Demons

Chapter 9: Dealing with the Garbage

Demons Are Secondary

What is Deep-Level Healing?

Who Needs Deep-Level Healing?

Negative Attitudes Toward Others, Self, God

The Presence of Demons

Reactions

Turning Against Ourselves

Chapter 10: Spiritual Factors Resulting in Garbage

Chapter 11: Strength of Attachment

What Demonic Strength Means

Chapter 12: The Ministry Of Deliverance

How The Holy Spirit Leads in Deliverance

Look for the Rules

Initial Considerations For Deliverance Ministry

Other Rules or Principles

Chapter 13: Conducting A Deliverance Session

Challenging Demons

Demonic Tactics

Chapter 14: Ministering Deliverance

Go For Intergenerational Roots First

Canceling The Legal Rights of Demons

Casting Demons Out of a Person

Chapter 15: Post Deliverance Counseling

Chapter 16: Promised Too Much

Concluding Word

Appendix A: Model Warfare Prayers

Appendix B: Short Spiritual Warfare Bibliography

Foreword

Before discussing Dealing with Demons , I want to share some thoughts on Charles Kraft. While living in Japan 30 years ago, several encounters with evil supernaturalism stretched my evangelical worldview. One haunting was so severe that a group of people for whom I had a ministry responsibility fought off an evil spirit that came through the roof on a regular basis. It scratched the residents and caused everyone to live in fear. Even though I helped the people find freedom and regain peace, I could not integrate the reality of a vile apparition into my theology. Like most evangelicals, I believed that the Bible was true and that Jesus cast out real demons, but I lacked an operating category for spiritual evil. In other words, my theology and my practice were not in alignment.

In 1993, a doctoral seminar in which I participated studied Spiritual Power and Missions: Raising the Issues.¹ In that book, Kraft confronted evangelical naturalism when he argued that demons were real and that they negatively influenced the spiritual environment, hindered the spread of the Gospel, and afflicted people. Kraft supported his position with scripture and experience. His dialogue opponent accused Kraft of advocating animism as he disallowed Kraft’s theology and his experience. In response, Kraft rejected the animism label and showed how Enlightenment thinking and rationalism influenced many western missionaries more than the plain teaching of the scriptures. Such people preach a powerless Christianity that is not able to set people free from the demonic entanglements that entwine their lives.

Before Kraft spoke to my seminar group, I read additional writings from him on this topic. Already, I knew that Kraft was a premier anthropologist and linguist. I also knew that his work on Christianity and Culture² was the best book I had ever read on contextualization. In terms of mission theology, I knew him to be a scholarly giant! Because his work was light years ahead of his colleagues, people had to warm up to his insights. In the meantime, some pushed against them.

When Kraft presented to my seminar, his stories and careful scholarship overwhelmed my naturalistic tendencies. In addition, his demonstrations of power ministry (inner healing) made me hunger for his gifting. Since that fateful day, I have read all his books, completed a sabbatical at Fuller so I could learn from him, and taught two classes with him. Additionally, whenever I encounter a problem when doing inner healing, he always knows how to fix the problem. Truly, no one in America is more qualified than Dr. Charles Kraft to write a book on demons and inner healing!

Dealing with Demons is an easy to read ministry manual for those who want to do power ministry. Even though this book builds on material that Kraft has written in other books, I strongly recommend that people buy it because the book quickly walks the reader through everything that one needs to know in order to understand the issues and do effective power ministry. In particular, Chapters 6 and 7 are very helpful. In these chapters, Kraft analyzes and contrasts three approaches to deliverance ministry. In the end, he makes a very strong argument in support of inner healing.

In addition to the Blast them Out, Normal Prayer in Church, and Healing, Not Just Deliverance approaches, Kraft did not evaluate a growing approach that does inner healing without casting out the demons. Recently, I worked with a person who had gone through this model of inner healing. At first, she reported that her symptoms were lessened. She was aware of her deep wounds and had forgiven all who had hurt her. Furthermore, she was no longer projecting her negativity on those who lived with her. In fact, the process greatly benefitted her emotional health. However, since the demons never left her, they resumed their malice after a short time. As Kraft says, any approach that does not address the deep wounding and the demons (garbage and rats) will not lead to long-term healing.

When the woman came to me, I had her read Kraft’s Two Hours to Freedom: A Simple and Effective Model for Healing and Deliverance³ before I ministered to her. Then I followed the Kraft inner healing model as I helped her heal her deep wounds. Lastly, I removed many enfeebled demons who were no longer able to exert much force because the inner healing process had taken away their legal grounds, weakened their hold on her, and neutralized other factors like curses, past involvement in occult activities, and evil spirits that she inherited from her ancestors. Three months later, the woman is still living in complete victory and singing the praises of the Kraft model.

In the seventeen years that I have served as a professor, I have never found anyone who understood demons and inner healing better than Charles Kraft. Dealing with Demons will give you the knowledge base to understand what the scriptures teach about demons and to do what Jesus did in relationship to them. In the end, Jesus gave us a powerful Gospel that strikes terror in the heart of the evil empire and frees people from its grip.

William P. Payne, PhD.,

The Harlan & Wilma Hollewell Professor of Evangelism and World Missions,

Ashland Theological Seminary in Ashland, Ohio

1. Rommen, Spiritual Power and Missions. (Rommen, Edward, ed. Spiritual Power and Missions, Raising the Issues. Evangelical Missiological series

3

. Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library,

1995

.)

2. Kraft, Christianity in Culture. (Kraft, Charles, Christianity in Culture: A Study in Dynamic Biblical Theologizing in Cross-Cultural Perspective. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis,

1979

.)

3. Kraft, Two Hours to Freedom: A Simple and Effective Model for Healing and Deliverance.

Acknowledgments

I want to acknowledge and thank two ministry associates who played important parts in this treatment of a reality that our churches have neglected.

· Dr. David DeBord who has ministered with me for about ten years helped with the first draft of the book before he needed to leave our ministry. When he left we agreed that this book should be done and that I should finish and publish it.

· Rev. Judy Taber has been my close associate for more than twenty years and has for most of that time run her ministry Hearts Set Free in which I participate. She has the gift of intercession and has written the prayers in Appendix A.

I am deeply grateful to you both.

I would also like to acknowledge the editorial work of Sallie Vandagrift at Wipf and Stock Publishers in getting this book ready for publication. Thank you, Sallie.

I bless you readers with the consciousness of demonic reality and pray that more of you will invest yourselves in the ministry of deliverance in which Jesus spent so much of his time and energy. Demons are very active and Jesus has given us the power and authority to deal with them. Wake up church!

Introduction

The world is in a mess. Wars, murders, immorality, leaders misusing their authority, families in chaos, youth going wild. Are these just human things? Or could we make a case for an evil spiritual reality that is influencing humans?

Our society would call us kooks if we believed in such a spiritual reality. But we who call ourselves Christians follow One who believed in demons and regularly dealt with them. Could it be that demons still exist and are active in human life? If we say No, is there any better theory?

After over 30 years and more than three thousand experiences casting out things that act like what demons in Scripture acted like, my colleagues and I can’t come up with a better theory. The theory that there are demons influencing people is both biblical and squares with experience. Jesus dealt with them continually. So the New Testament plus our experience leads us to believe that demons are still in existence and continue to be active in human life.

Chapter One

Are Demons for Real?

The Biblical View of Satan And Demons

Is the demonic kingdom for real? It was for Jesus and for the others whose stories are told in the Bible. The Bible assumes the reality of the spirit realm.

Our enemy and his forces are taken very seriously throughout Scripture. Throughout the Old Testament, we see awareness that the evil kingdom is always lurking in the background and affecting what goes on in the human realm. But Satan is not omnipresent. He has to depend on the principalities, powers and rulers mentioned in Ephesians 6 and the ground-level demons that Jesus dealt with. Whether in the Garden of Eden or in afflicting Job, whether in his activities during Israel’s wars or in influencing the pagan nations, these messengers of evil have been the agents of Satan’s working.

In the New Testament, it would have been ground-level demonic spirits that carried out the killing of the babies (Matt 2:16–18). Though Satan himself confronted Jesus in the wilderness (Luke 4:1–13), he was undoubtedly accompanied by a host of demonic spirits. Demonic beings were especially active during Jesus’ ministry. Indeed, we frequently see him exposing and casting them out. Satan must have assigned some of his choicest ground-level spirits to work with the Pharisees and the other Jewish leaders to build up the opposition to Jesus. Demonic beings were very active in many of the events recorded in both the New Testament and the Old Testament (see the listing below). Paul writes

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms (Eph

6

:

12

NIV).

In spite of the continual activity of demons, neither Jesus nor the other New Testament personages seemed alarmed by the satanic kingdom or its activities. They didn’t seem to be impressed by them at all. When confronted, they dealt with the demons matter of factly, knowing that God’s Kingdom and power is infinitely greater than theirs.

But Jesus and his followers took the satanic kingdom seriously. While they were never afraid of them, they certainly acknowledged their existence and used the power of the Holy Spirit to fight them. Over and over again references to