Well, we are Live Apologetics Live here to answer your most challenging questions you have about God and the Bible.

I am your host, Andrew Rapoport.

I am not at my regular location, and so I am running around trying to figure out technical issues in the background.

And so with that, I hope that everything comes through okay and that you all will be able to hear without issue.

Let me bring in one of our speakers at striving for eternity, Mr. Daniel Craft, the very short, small apologist.

He's a short guy.

Hello, Dan.

Hey, what's going on, Andrew?

Smooth Jazz intro.

Man, I feel like I stepped into the wrong channel.

Yeah, I think that was the older.

I'm not sure if that was the updated one or.

But yeah.

Welcome to Smooth Jazz with Andrew.

Yeah, well, this is where I.

My regular thing is not working, so let me bring in.

I know he's going to hate that I'm going to introduce him this way, but that's okay.

I don't mind.

Our guest tonight is who I personally think is the best preacher alive.

And if I could handle the cold and being away from grandchildren, I would be at his church, which, Dan, you should consider.

Just saying.

Mr. Jim Osmond, welcome to Apologetics Live.

Awfully kind of you, but way overstated.

Thanks.

Thanks, Andrew.

Appreciate being on here.

Dan, nice to meet you face to face.

Yeah, good to see you, too.

Yeah.

You know, this will be the only time that, you know, you look taller than Dan.

Just saying.

Actually, Dan's really close on the.

On his camera, so he looks tall there, too.

I like the.

Still, the frame, you know.

Yeah.

So for folks who don't know you, Jim, they should.

But if they don't, introduce yourself and tell them how you're.

You're.

What's.

What's the town.

I forgot the town I'm supposed to say you're from.

The town you love that's next to your town.

I'm not even gonna tell you what that town is.

I'm from Sandpoint, Idaho.

I live just outside of Sandpoint, Idaho, up in the northern panhandle of the.

Of the Idaho next to the Canadian border.

My name is Jim Osmond.

I pastor a small church up here in North Idaho and have been pastoring since 1996.

I'm going to ask Jay what the name of that town is.

I was supposed to ask him beforehand.

So.

But yeah.

So you're up in Kootenay, Idaho, and you have done a couple of books.

I've had you on my Rap Report podcast talking about some of the books you've been on this one, this podcast in the past.

We've talked about different things with the charismatic movement and whatnot.

But you are working on a new book, I should say.

So you're, you're the book two books ago, I should say, which a lot of people knew of and I've given out probably several dozen of them already, is the book God Doesn't Whisper.

And, and that is an important book for people that talk about the fact that, oh, God speaks to them, they are hearing from God, they're getting their nudges, their feelings, all that in the hearing of the voice of God type of talk.

Then your last book that you did was on God doesn't try.

So he doesn't whisper.

He doesn't try dealing with God's sovereignty.

And we're going to talk about this next book and I'm going to let you first talk about the two books I mentioned.

But I'm curious what the next one's going to be, what God doesn't do in this next one.

But I will leave that to you to say.

Yeah, it's not going to be God Doesn't.

I don't think that that's going to be the title of it.

I'm not sure what the title is now.

But a book that I'm about to have published in just a couple of months, hopefully, Lord willing, is a book on discipline called the Blessing of Discipline.

It's going to be a study of Hebrews 12, arguing that God appoints discipline as a loving act of training for us, to train us in righteousness, for us to run the race, and that we should embrace that discipline.

As difficult as trials might be in life, we should embrace them and learn from them as we seek to pursue holiness and see discipline as an evidence that God loves us and that we are sons.

So that's the book that I've just finished writing.

It's at the editor's now, hopefully going to be available in a couple of months.

And then I'm studying for a book and that's the subject of tonight on demons and demonology.

I wrote a book called Truth or Territory, A Biblical Approach to Spiritual warfare back in 2015.

And that book deals with the subject of spiritual warfare in general.

It's kind of as a general subject, I get into sort of a lot of abusive practices that go on today, dealing with generational curses and praying, hedges of thorns and pleading, the blood of Jesus and whether Christians can be demon possessed and and see what else.

Oh, yeah, should we be performing exorcisms or not, those are the issues that I deal with in that book.

And I deal with a lot of issues in that book in a very concise and simple way to kind of basically frame what real true biblical spiritual warfare is.

But I didn't get into a lot of specifics with things like should we be performing exorcisms and what should we do with modern day exorcists?

So now we have in modern evangelicalism, a resurgence in the deliverance ministry.

You got guys like Alexander Pagani and Vladimir Savchak who claim to be demon slayers and they claim to be carrying on the ministry of the apostles and Jesus by casting out demons and doing exorcisms.

And they think that this is the sole and main ministry of the church, that any church that's not doing this is not a biblical New Testament church.

So they're gaining in popularity right now.

Greg Locks books and his movies have become quite the thing.

And of course, if you're familiar with his church and what he's doing down there, his deliverance services and his alleged revival are quite the thing.

They draw large crowds, I think still do.

And their YouTube channels, of course, are very busy and popular YouTube channels because they put their exorcisms up on YouTube and their teachings.

And so that's kind of a resurging emphasis in modern evangelicalism.

For years it kind of died down in, if you're old enough to remember, back in the mid-80s to early 90s, maybe late 70s to early 90s, there was kind of the deliverance ministry that was populated by the Hammonds and Bob Larson.

Do you remember Mike Warnke and Rebecca Brown and some people like that were big into deliverance and they claimed that exorcism should be the normal and normative practice of the Christian church.

So that kind of died down in the late 90s, but now it's kind of had a resurgence in interest and I think it needs to be addressed.

So I'm studying and preparing to write a book and I'm hoping to maybe start that in about a year, the writing of it on the subject of the modern deliverance ministry and demon slayers.

So, you know, it's interesting you mentioned and I put your website up for folks if you want to get Jim's books.

Jimosmond.com Jim Osmond.com there's no D at the end of that.

He's not a Mormon, he's not part of the Osmond family.

That that's the difference.

It's all the same.

Not even so it's Jim Osman.

No.

And.

And also no relation to Agnes.

Anyone who knows charismatic circles.

Yeah.

All these people he's not related to.

If you don't know who Agnes Osmond is, she's, She's.

I. I think she's best known for claiming that she got the gift of China, of speaking Chinese and went to China and came back and went, oh, I got an angelic language, not Chinese, because, yeah, my wife has.

Yeah, my wife, who knows Chinese.

I. I still remember Justin Peters sent her a.

A copy of the, The.

The supposed Chinese that she claimed she could write.

And Justin asked my wife, you know, what is this Chinese?

And she's like, oh, Justin, that's chicken scratch.

So.

Yeah.

But, you know, you mentioned Greg Locke, which, when you first talked to me about this, we were back in the.

We were both speaking in the Philippines, preaching there, and you mentioned Greg Locke.

And I was a little surprised because I thought.

I don't want to say I thought he was solid, but I didn't think he was that far gone, if that'd be a fair way of explaining it.

And you were giving me quotes from him and things that were going on, and I went, wait, what?

Like, do I have the wrong person?

And you assured me, no, I have the right person.

What happened with him?

What's going on?

Well, this is Greg Locke, and this is one of his books, Cast it out, the Call to Set People Free.

He claims in here that at one time he was a cessationist of cessationists.

He believed that he was so cessationist that he believed all the spiritual gifts had ceased.

And he wears that kind of as a badge of honor, like I was once.

So far to that extreme, nobody could convince me that spiritual gifts refer today.

And now he's gone to the other extreme.

He's moved so far across the pendulum that now, of course, he believes that he speaks in tongues and he can do miracles, and the miracles are for today.

And he and his cohorts are continuing the ministry of Jesus and the apostles.

So he's had quite a change in his theology.

He also claims in here to have been a Calvinist at one point, very Reformed.

And he gives the impression that he was so locked into that theology that, again, he was a Calvinist.

Calvinist.

He could debate Calvinism in Arminian with the best of them.

And now, of course, his mind has been changed and he has deconstructed his Calvinism and deconstructed his cessationism.

And now he runs a church where they do exorcisms and claim to be able to do healings and miracles.

And just recently, in fact, I think it was less than a year ago, he was ordained to be as an apostle, reigned as an apostle by somebody.

I forget who it is, but if you look up online, Greg Locke made an apostle.

They've bestowed that exalted title on him now.

And, you know, I wonder, I'm going to put a question up for you, but I almost wonder, is that the book that brother John is holding in his hand there?

I don't know.

But John is from Canada, so he's asking a question.

He is a charismatic, by the way.

Actually, he is a family friend.

I don't want to get this wrong, either of the Copelands or the Hagans, I forget which one.

But he'll let us know, I'm sure.

So his question question can name any reformer like Calvin or Luther, taught First Corinthians 13 about the Bible's completion.

So I guess what he's asking is he knows my position.

Do you, Jim?

I believe it's yours as well.

That 1 Corinthians 13 is talking about the canon.

He's asking if we can name any reformer like Calvin or Luther that taught that.

I can't think of any myself, no.

But I can't name a reformer like Calvin or Luther that believed in cradle baptism either.

But I reject paedobaptism and embrace cradle baptism.

So whether they taught it or not is irrelevant to me.

Just because I'm reformed doesn't mean that I have to embrace everything Calvin and Luther taught.

I don't believe in paedobaptism.

I don't believe in the covenant.

I'm not amillennial or post millennial either.

I would say that I don't know about reformers, but if I go earlier back, I know one who did.

Paul believed it because he wrote it.

So John is letting us know both our family friends, Copeland and Hagen, me and Costi Hinn were friends as kids, so I'm sure he meant kids, not kits.

But John is an evangelist up there in Canada.

We love him.

One day he'll correct that charismatic stuff.

We'll have that talk one day.

All right, so let's talk.

And John, if that is Greg Locke's book in your profile picture, I'd love to know.

So.

Let'S discuss this demon hunter stuff, because some of this stuff you were telling me when we were in the Philippines, it kind of blew my mind that people, I mean, like, I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

Jim, at some of the craziness in the charismatic circles, whether you want to call them the extreme charismatic circles or not.

But some of it was, was just crazy, I don't know another word for it.

So describe this demon hunter, what's going on in the these circles and what this movement is all about.

So a lot of is built upon assumptions.

One of the assumptions is that a Christian can be demonized and they would say that there's no such thing as demon possession, that a Christian can't be possessed because possession implies ownership and Christians are owned by God.

So they would say the devil can't possess anyone or anything because God owns everything.

But they, that's just a semantic shell game because when we talk about demon possession, we're talking about a demon inwardly controlling a believer or a person.

That's what we're talking about when we talk about possession.

And they would put demon possession or they would just call it demonization.

So if you are affected by a demon, that means you are demonized.

And they would see the entire spectrum from being deceived, being influenced, being manipulated, being controlled, all the way over to full blown possession where a demon is speaking with your voice and having a conversation and possessing and controlling everything outward from the inside.

They would call all of that demonization.

And they would say, of course a Christian can be demonized.

They would have to say that a Christian could even be so possessed by a demon or demonized by a possession that a demon could take over and speak through that Christian.

So if you watch some of the deliverance ministry videos that they have online, you'll see people convulsing and frothing at the mouth and vomiting up and spitting up and gargling and speaking in different voices and shaking uncontrollably.

All of that lurching about on the floor, losing consciousness, totally out of control.

And they would say that that's demonization.

And demonization is something that a Christian can be subject to.

So we would say that.

And I think scripture teaches that demon possession is not something that a Christian can be subject to.

We can be deceived by demons, we can be tricked by demons, we can be influenced by demons.

Paul tells us, warns us about being steadfast and not being drawn away.

We know Satan's devices, we know what he is capable of.

We're not ignorant of his schemes and, and Paul would not have us, and the New Testament writers wouldn't have us to be ignorant of what the devil would do and the deceptions and the tricks that the devil plays.

On us.

But we're not subject to demon possession.

A demon cannot live within the Christian and possess their soul.

So one of the distinctions that they make in order to kind of maintain this idea that a Christian can have a demon attached to them is they are kind of almost.

The word I would have to use is almost a hyper trichotomous.

And this is something that I found intriguing, you know, dichotomy and trichotomy that we are.

I'm a dichotomist.

I believe there are two parts, an immaterial man and a material man.

And that those two are together and that the soul spirit is describing the same immaterial part of us.

And that you can't distinguish really between.

You can distinguish between the different functions of our immaterial being.

But soul and spirit are used, I think, interchangeably in scripture.

And they would say that there's a hyper distinction between the soul and the spirit, that the Holy Spirit can dwell within our spirit, but the soulish part of us can be possessed by the devil.

So in order to get the devil dwelling inside the immaterial part of the person, they would have the immaterial being being like two chambers.

And the spirit can possess one of them, the Holy spirit and evil spirit can possess the other one.

And they would say that a demon can possess your body, can live on or in various body parts.

In fact, in Alexander Pagani's book the Secrets to Deliverance, he has a whole section in here where he talks about the ways that body parts can be possessed.

So for instance.

He talks about individual body parts.

What's that?

Individual body parts, not the whole person.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

So he talks about how a demon can live inside of your blood.

And for that he quotes Leviticus 17:11.

For the life of the body is in its blood.

I've given you the blood on the altar to purify you, making you right with the Lord.

And then he says, decree freedom in this part of the body by saying this prayer out loud.

Lord Jesus, may your precious blood purge and sanctify my blood.

May.

May all demonic contamination leave my blood.

May all diseases assigned to the blood be eradicated from my system.

Now in Jesus name, I order every demon hiding within my bloodline to be severed and removed.

So he just takes a verse that mentions blood and draws from that that a demon can possess our blood.

And if you think that's a stretch, he does the same thing with the breasts.

Aaron then lifted up the breasts and the right thigh as a special offering to the Lord, just as Moses had.

Had commanded.

And then he says, decree freedom in this body part by saying this prayer out loud.

Heavenly Father, I decree that all forms of malfunction and diseases in my breast must begin to regulate.

Now, in the name of Jesus, all demons hiding in my chest must be removed.

Now, so he does this for the fat.

He does this for the hands, for the hips, for the joints, for the knees, for the lungs, the neck, the seed, the shoulders, the sinews, the skeleton.

And all he does is just quote verses that mention these parts.

And then he has a prayer that you pray to get the demons out of those body parts, the stomach, the tissue, and the unpresentable parts.

And for that he quotes 1 Corinthians 12.

And on the parts of the body that we think less honorable, we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with great modesty.

And then he says, declare freedom in these parts of your body by saying this prayer.

And then he gives us a prayer specifically designed to cast demons out of the unpresentable parts.

So this is.

I'm trying to find.

There's one in here.

If I can find it, I'll read it to you.

But he talks about demons.

The demon of homosexuality lives on the anus.

And this is.

This is their theology.

So every body part must be prayed over.

And you can never know as a Christian if a particular body part is possessed by a demon.

If you have a runny nose, it could be a demon, because they would claim that demons come out through the nose.

In fact, I think it's pigs in the Parlor.

This book here by Frank Hammond, Frank and Ida Mae Hammond, where they talk about how the symptoms of demon possession can be a runny nose, a weepy eye, excessive drooling, vomiting.

All of these are manifestations of demons.

And they have these elaborate ways of describing how demons must exit the body.

One of their theologies is that demons are wandering around as immaterial beings and they want nothing more than to possess bodies.

They feel dispossessed if they're not in control of a body, so they want to inhabit bodies, so they're clinging onto it.

If you brush up next to a Satanist in a marketplace or you pick up a toy from overseas and, say, the Philippines, and it's had some spiritual activity attached to it, that demon could be on your hands if your nose is runny, if you're drooly demons, everything's to be blamed on demons.

So while a demon can't possess you, a demon can control you.

And by possess, they mean own.

But a demon can actually indwell a Christian.

And in his book, Cast Them Out, Greg Locke offers 15 arguments that a Christian can be demon possessed.

So that in general is the theory of their demon possession.

And of course they would argue then that if a demon is possessing you, it is to blame for all of your lust, your addiction to nicotine, your addiction to alcohol, your addiction to pornography, your homosexual desire, your lusting after other women, your anger, your violence, your lashing out, your evil speech, your gossip, your slander, your lying, your lust, your hatred, all of it is blamed on a demon.

And the answer then is that you need to have that demon cast out of you.

So you need to go to a deliverance specialist or to a deliverance service and go through the entire rigmarole of having the demon exercised.

You know how I could prove that's wrong without using scripture?

Just go to Minnesota right now and you'll see a lot of demon possessed people that are just crying, the demons aren't coming out.

Yeah, yeah.

So that's the theology what you mentioned there, Dan.

A book or a movie that it sounds like.

Yeah, it's not a.

Definitely not a family friendly movie.

It's called Seven.

It's called Seven.

And there was this.

One of the key parts of the movie was that there was this one demon that was terrorizing people and it was passed by touch from person to person.

So yeah, it was kind of weird.

Maybe that's where he got it from.

When you get your theology from Hollywood, I guess anything's possible.

Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know if.

Dan, you're not coming through.

On my end, I can barely hear you.

On my end I can hear, I can hear Andrew just fine.

Well, I can barely.

Yeah, that, that doesn't help.

It's the same.

Yeah, let's see if I can.

Anybody else can hear.

I just need to listen.

We, we have, we have non stop audio problems with this new website that he's on.

Yeah, I know.

I may have to pay the money and switch back to streamyard.

I hear him.

Okay.

So I'm not sure.

I'll just try and be careful, real careful to listen.

Yeah, so John says that we were talking about Greg Locke and he said, ironically, Andrew, I'm literally going live on exposing Greg Locke on my YouTube channel in 10 minutes.

So I gotta go.

So.

Good for you.

He, he is a, you know, he, he will.

It's interesting because he's friends with the extreme charismatics and yet he, he exposes them as well.

So Papa Bear, Odin said, my biggest issue with hyper charismatic churches is they exhibit the same behavior I did when I was a witch.

Yeah.

Now, Jim, this is something you've talked about in the past.

Their kind of, their, their, I want to say, tied to witchcraft.

But it's, but it's their mysticism, I think, is the way you describe it.

It's the same worldview.

It's this.

It's the same worldview at the heart of it.

The same worldview that is the heart of witchcraft is at the heart of charismatic theology.

A mysticism and ability to know nature and reality apart from scripture and the means of God's revelation.

And then you have, you have also.

I mean, you've got, you've got a willingness in that realm.

Well, let me say it this way.

In that realm, in the witchcraft realm, they think that they are in control of and in connection with spiritual beings from the supernatural realm.

And they can cast hexes and curses on people.

They can lift hexes and curses.

They can manipulate those physical elements through the spiritual realm and through the powers that they are given.

So what I've just described to you is the deliverance ministry in a nutshell.

They think that they are in control of, that they have authority in Christ's name to control demons in the spiritual realm and that they can manipulate the physical realm through their words, through the things that they say, through the prayers that they pray.

I mean, I just gave you an example of the mantra prayers that you're supposed to pray.

You're supposed to pray over every part of your body that might be mentioned in scripture.

And through those prayers, you are canceling demonic strongholds.

You're canceling demonic legal claims on your life, on your spirit, on your soul, on your children, on your ancestors.

It's a whole view of casting curses and hexes and mantras onto things.

And it's the exact same worldview whether you're a witch or whether you're a charismatic demon slayer.

It's the same worldview.

One is just baptized in Christian lingo.

Do you think that a lot of this starts from a way of trying to excuse human behavior, excuse the flesh?

People who want to give themselves over to things but not blame themselves.

Oh, it's the devil who made it to.

It's demons who make me do it.

Yeah, they.

They get the cause of their sin entirely wrong.

And since they do that, they're also going to have the doctrine of sanctification entirely wrong.

How to mortify sin to.

To them.

In fact, if you read the Book or.

Sorry, not read the book.

If you watch the movie that Greg Locke produced, what was the name of the movie you look up?

Greg Locke movie.

He about two years ago, he did a movie on.

I think it was in 20, 23 maybe.

So it's maybe three years ago, he did a movie on delivery, Deliverance, talking about how his church got into deliverance ministry.

And he has people, in their testimony after testimony, people who say things like, I struggled with lust, and then I had the demon exercise.

I haven't struggled with lust again.

I used to be a serial adulterer, and then I got the demon exercised, and I've never committed adultery again.

I used to be homosexual.

I got the demon exercise, and now I don't struggle with homosexual desires anymore.

And that sounds all well and good, but that's not what scripture says is the answer to those.

Those sins.

Those sins are not deeds of demons.

They're deeds of the flesh.

Galatians 5 says that.

And even amongst the deeds of the flesh is witchcraft is listed as a deed of the flesh.

So those works.

Our sin is not the result of demons dwelling within our nose or our eyes or on our anus or any other body part.

Our sin is due to the fact that we have an unredeemed flesh that cannot be redeemed and will not be redeemed.

Redeemed, it must die.

And we are called to mortify it.

And so they wrongly diagnose our sin problem as being a demon problem.

And since they do that, they wrongly diagnose what the method of sanctification is, that sanctification is not a quick fix where we go to a deliverance specialist and have a demon cast out.

Sanctification is a matter of reading the word of God and being renewed in the spirit of our mind, informing our hearts with truth, mortifying and putting to death the deeds of the body and walking in righteousness, being led by the spirit, which means that we walk in righteousness by putting to death the deeds of the flesh.

And we say no to this.

We become slaves of righteousness instead of slaves of unrighteousness.

And we become the slaves of the one that we obey.

So we are called not to go seek deliverance from a deliverance specialist, but we're called put to death the deeds of the flesh and walk in holiness.

All right, so I got a private text here for you, Dan.

They said someone wants to know, did you know the movie seven just because you're seven foot tall?

I know the movie seven because I actually watched it.

So.

All Right.

So let's see.

So let me first put this up since you mentioned, since this is in line with what you're saying.

Are demons passed through sneezing?

Is the question from truth to chewin.

So they're actually farting.

I will bet that somewhere between this book and this book and this book and this book and this book, I bet I could find a reference to demons being passed by sneezing.

You know, folks, when this book does come out, I'll encourage you be thankful to watch this just.

Or to read this just because it means you don't have to read all those books that he just showed when I did the book.

What do they believe?

I would kind of jokingly say I read all these.

The Quran, the Talmud, Book of Mormon, prologue.

I read all these so you don't have to.

Right.

Basically relying on trusting that I do the original research.

You do original research.

So I know I can trust it.

But I really don't want to read.

All this spiritual sewage that I have to paddle through.

Is just depressing.

All right, so do you know Mr. And meet his name properly, Dr. Reverend Dr. P. Ed Romine, PhD.

You know, we have to get all his titles in there.

But.

But he asks the question of you.

He.

He likes his titles.

We're.

That's a joke.

He doesn't.

But we were giving him a hard time because he is a doctor and he.

So.

But he says, do you.

Do you think that Kenneth Copeland is demon possessed?

He says, also, I am never praying over someone's rear.

That's weird.

So what are your thoughts on Kenneth Copeland?

Do you believe he's the.

I know you and I have a mutual friend, Justin Peters, who believes he is.

Do you think he might be.

If I had to bet on it, I would bet on it.

Yeah, I firmly believe that he is.

And I could probably.

I think I'd be willing to name half a dozen other charismatic word faith teachers that I think are demon possessed too.

I think Todd Bentley is demon possessed.

I wouldn't be surprised if Todd White's demon possessed.

Benny Hinn, probably.

These are men who are so steeped in error, so steeped in false doctrine that it's hard to see how it is that they could not be absolute pawns of the devil himself.

So, yeah, I do.

I really wish that Jim would name names and stop being around the bush.

Yeah.

Hey, let me.

I got.

Hold on.

I got somebody bringing me reading glasses here.

Thank you.

Oh, you're at that age, huh?

Oh, my.

Yeah, well past that age.

Okay, so I just.

This book here, right, The Secrets of Deliverance.

Since you just brought it up a couple of seconds ago, I just was flipping through it to see if I could find this passage.

I want to read to you earlier, and I found this in the book.

It's called the Mystery of a Sneeze.

Since you brought it up, I'll read it to you.

Okay, so this is Alexander Pagani's theology.

So, my charismatic friends, anybody watching this who is in any way sympathetic to Alexander Pagani, Vladimir Savchuk, Greg Locke, any of these people listen to this theology?

This is Mystery of a Sneeze quote.

In the Bible, we find only one verse that uses the word sneeze, and it's when the prophet Elisha raised the Shulamite woman's son from the dead.

When the child was brought back to life, he sneezed seven times.

God gave me the most wonderful revelation about deliverance through the story of the shulamite woman's son.

2 Kings 4:35 says, Elijah got up, walked back and forth across the room once, then stretched himself out again on the child.

This time the boy sneezed seven times and opened his eyes.

Through this passage, God showed me that sneezing is a sign of deliverance in the natural.

It's one way the body removes foreign matter and the same happens in the spirit.

In the story, the young boy had been delivered from the spirit of death along with the other spirits associated with death.

Demons always work in gangs.

Where you find one, you'll find others more wicked around it.

His sneezing was a sign of his deliverance.

When leading a deliverance session in which I feel I need to address the nos I, I often encourage the person to breathe in and out through the nose while he is inhaling and exhaling.

I command the demons to leave through the exhale, and I command all demons attacking the person's discernment to cease in their plans.

Usually the person starts releasing mucus out of his or her nose, which is usually a sign that the demon is leaving.

Mucus is the perfect vehicle for a demon to use to ride out of the body.

Sometimes during deliverance, people will feel muck mildly embarrassed, and try to keep the mucus from coming out.

But it is important that the mucus be released from the body as the demon is leaving the body on the mucus.

If the mucus is swallowed or sniffed back into the nose, the demons will be able to remain.

This is something I've learned from personal experience.

I had a dream once where I saw a Demon hiding in a curtain.

It started to come toward me, still hiding behind the curtain.

And when it came close enough, I grabbed it by the throat.

Throat.

And ordered it to leave.

When the demon was on its way out the window, my wife walked in the room and the demon nipped her nose and she sneezed.

When I woke up, I knew the devil was trying to attack my wife's discernment and that she needed some deliverance in this area, which she readily agreed to receive.

I prayed and commanded the attacks to stop, and my wife received her freedom.

I could read to you what he says about the anus.

It's the very next segment if you want.

Please.

No, thank you.

Mercy.

Uncle.

Uncle.

So he's basically saying his wife was demon possessed.

His experience, his dreams, and what he has learned and what God revealed to him through the shulamite woman's thing.

There's no exegesis there.

There's no studying that passage in its context.

There's nothing about what that passage means in its original context as a proof that Elisha was a prophet and that this was God's authenticating of him and his ministry.

None of that for.

For him.

The story of that was to show how a demon can leave the.

The person through a sneeze.

Wow.

That's.

That is.

I can't even.

But listen, guys, I have got.

I have got volumes of that garbage.

I mean, it is just unbelievable.

I hope you bought these books secondhand so that the authors didn't get any royalty.

It's like I'm a. I'm a Scott at heart.

I am as cheap as they come.

And one of the things for me to do is to buy these books and to know that I'm spending two or three or four hundred dollars on these books.

And I've got all these books.

I've got, I don't know, 10 of them here or something.

And I've got another 10 or 12 that I've got to read before I start this project.

You should have at least gotten Kindle Unlimited so that the authors don't get any of the money.

Because for folks who don't know when.

When you're on Kindle Unlimited and you read a book.

Yeah.

The only people making the money is Amazon.

Yeah.

You get a little bit as an offer, but it's negligible.

Not if it's Kindle Unlimited.

Kindle Unlimited.

They make all the money.

Yeah.

It's really interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They use your content and they make all the money.

You know, I do.

I will say This.

I sure hope Candace Owens never finds out about these folks because she already has dreams that, you know, Charlie Kirk has come back to her.

I don't know if you heard her latest.

Charlie Kirk was actually a time traveler.

Yeah, yeah.

And so man's like, what?

Yeah, she, she, she claims she knows that, that Charlie Kirk was killed by the guy who, who is taking over his podcast.

Andrew.

I forget the guy's last name, but he, he's.

He, he.

She knows it because Charlie Kirk came to her in a dream and he was actually a time traveler.

That's how he knew he was going to die early.

I'm listening to that and listening to what you're saying, Jim, and going, there's almost no difference.

It's like, well, I had a dream, therefore I know it's true.

Yeah.

So much of their theology comes from their experience and experiences they've had with demons.

So back in the late 80s, early 90s, the works of Mike Warren Warnke, Rebecca Brown, Bob Larson, they were very popular because Mike Warnke claimed to be an ex Satanist.

So he claimed to have had the ability to control demons and interact with demons.

Rebecca Brown, the same thing.

And then they come out and became, allegedly became Christians and then wrote these books about, well, when we were in, when I was a witch or a warlock, this is how, this is how things worked.

And so then they would take that same war worldview, that same mentality, that same theology, and impose it upon scripture and then say, now as a Christian, we can use what I know about the spiritual realm and the demonic realm that I learned as a witch.

We can use this for good, for the Lord.

And they would talk about how they had interviews with demons and they found things out about the demonic realm and how demons work.

A lot of these books that I'm quoting to you, they give keys in there.

This book here, let's see, what is it?

I think it's this book here, Break Free.

He talks about what he has learned during various encounters with demons.

And these are the secrets.

These are the secrets that they learned by talking to demons.

And then if you ask them, well, demons are liars.

What makes you think you can trust a demon?

Well, the demon told us that if we command them to tell us the truth in the name of Jesus, they have to tell us the truth.

Well, they heard that from a demon.

So how do you know that you're being told the truth by a demon?

Well, we commanded them to tell us that in Jesus name.

Well, where did you hear that that would work?

Well, the demon told us.

And so all of their theology, all their demonic practices, their deliverance practices, are based in experience, not scripture.

And they're based in information that they've received from the spiritual realm from demons themselves.

And that information takes precedent over scripture.

That almost sounds like in the Pearl of Great Price, which is the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints, there's a way to tell if you're talking to a demon or an angel.

And their way of arguing is that the demon will pretend to be a human.

And if you offer your hand in a handshake, it will shake your hand, but an angel knowing it's a spirit would not.

And I always ask the question like, well, why would a demon try to shake your hand?

Because once you actually go to shake it, you know it's not there.

So the gig is up.

If the demon wants to deceive you into thinking it's angel, wouldn't it pretend it's an angel?

And like, no, See, that's how, that's.

How he gets into you, is you give him a handshake.

Right.

So you've got to think about these things, Andrew.

Yeah.

So what do you think, Jim?

And I know I'm asking you to read into the minds of these folks, but we would look at a passage like First John 4:4, which says, you are from God, little children, and have overcome them, because greater is he that is in you than he who is in the world.

And we would see this as saying that in the context speaking of the spirit of God, that, that when the Holy Spirit indwells you, he's greater than the spirit of the world.

And the spirit of the world wouldn't be able to possess a believer because they have the Holy Spirit.

What would they do with a passage like that, you think?

Well, they would say that the spirit of the Antichrist or demons are definitely in the world.

And so this is describing, from their vantage point, they would say this is describing the ideal situation in which a Christian has no demons.

And so the one who is in us, the spirit, is greater than the one who is in the world now.

But still they would say, and the text does not say that a demon cannot possess a Christian.

It doesn't explicitly say that.

Correct.

But the implication of the clear teaching of that passage is that it can't be.

There's the spirit that is in you, Christian, and then there's the spirit that is out in the world.

And John doesn't need to say, oh, and by the way, the spirit in the world can never possess a Christian.

Because everything that's said about Christians makes it patently obvious that a demon can have no part in indwelling or controlling a believer.

That we can be tricked, we can be deceived, but we can't be indwelt and we can't be controlled.

If a demon could possess a Christian, then that verse should say, greater is he who is in you than he who is in you.

The other one who is in you.

Yeah, yeah, the other one who's in you.

Dan, let me ask you.

I don't know if you have any questions.

I. I've been asking most of them, but I'll give you a shot if you have some questions for Jim.

No, I was wondering if you had any.

If you, if you've ever interacted with the book Spiritual Warfare by Carl Payne, if you.

If you knew anything about that.

What do you think?

Look at that.

He's got it right in his right hand that quickly.

Yeah, it was.

It's actually this year's one I'm currently reading, so that's why I got my marker in it and I got it kind of opened up here.

So I'm.

You can see I'm about halfway through it.

So this book.

How would I describe this?

This book was a bit of a curiosity and I'm trying to remember where I originally heard about this book.

And I wish I knew because somebody said this is a great book on spiritual warfare.

It's like a classic or something like that.

It turns out, I think that this is the, if memory serves, this is the reprint of it or an updated version, slightly updated version of it came out, I think, 20 years ago.

Let me just make sure.

I've read so many of these things recently.

I just need to make sure that I'm getting my details right here.

But yeah, there's a 2025 edition, a 2021 edition, and a 2011 edition.

So this has gone through multiple editions.

I got the book and I'm going to tell you something kind of curious about it before I kind of give you my assessment of it.

But I got the book expecting that it was going to be kind of probably a little quasi charismatic and it would have some good stuff in it, but it wouldn't be out on the limb with like Greg Locke and Pagani and others.

And so far, that is kind of my assessment.

But what I found interesting is I was reading through the endorsements of the book and the endorsements include Irwin Lucer, Janet Parshall, Jonathan Lotz, Kurt Warner, NFL star Brock Heard, Retired NFL.

Those sound pretty solid people so far.

Mark Bubik.

Now, see, this was interesting.

Mark Bubik is one that I critique.

Critique in.

Pardon me.

Mark Bubek is a guy critique in Truth or Territory, who's into the canceling generational curses and exorcisms and all of that.

He's fully into that camp.

So I thought, okay, well, this tells me a little bit about where it's at if Mark Bubek is giving an endorsement.

See Fred Dickason, who was a professor emeritus of theology at Moody Bible Institute.

He wrote a book on arguing that Christians could be demon possessed.

And I think I've got a couple of his books.

I don't have any of them here with me.

And then Gary Habermas, who's pretty conservative apologist.

Yeah, I think he's one of the good guys.

Randy Alcorn, Earl Rodmacher, Ray Comfort.

So it's endorsed.

Ray would be solid.

Ray's in there.

Kirby Anderson, Jason Elam, and ever another.

Another football player, Ken Hutcherson, who's kind of known as a conservative guy.

Mark Driscoll and Ergen Kaner.

So, I mean, that's a.

That's an eclectic blend of theological.

The Mark Driscoll endorsement came way before he went off the rails.

So wait, when was he on the rails?

Could have come even back in the 2011 edition when it was originally published.

Published.

But the long and the short of it is he does argue that a Christian can be possessed, but he uses the term demonized, and then he tries to lump all of that into it.

So I'm at the point now where I think I just read the chapter on.

He has a chapter on the world of flesh and the devil.

So he's kind of balanced in that he talks about the different ways in which the different enemies that we have to battle.

He puts a lot of emphasis on the spiritual warfare aspect of it.

And then he has a whole passage on how we are to handle being demonized.

And I think he is going to argue in the book for a Christian to seek deliverance and be part of a deliverance ministry.

So I'm about halfway through it.

He's not as far off the bend as some of these other writers, but I do think that he approaches spiritual warfare from the territory perspective, which is that Satan can own territory and that we need to claim back these physical things and these realms of our life from the devil and we need to bring down strongholds and there's mantra prayers later on in the books.

There's all kinds of prayers that he suggests you pray to apply the armor of God, to put on the armor of God and to cancel curses and generational bloodline strongholds and things like that.

So he's kind of got his foot in, boy, both camps.

Sort of a conservative, I'm trying to be balanced approach, but also sort of embracing the charismatic deliverance ministry territory model of spiritual warfare.

I'd be interested to hear your, your, your, your complete analysis on it when you finish, when you finish the book.

I, I have a personal connection with the author.

Oh, okay.

Well, I don't know.

His stuff is probably not going to be as front and center in my critique or my answer to it as some of the other guys.

And because I don't think that he is as unbalanced as some of the other guys are.

It's like he took their worldview, where he took their assumptions and their worldviews, and he just kind of dialed it back a couple of notches to make it more palatable to guys like Gary Habermas, Ray Comfort, Randy Alcorn and some of the other conservative guys.

So it has more of a ring of truth to it.

But I do still think it approaches spiritual warfare from a flawed premise.

So let me ask Jim.

You know, we're talking spiritual warfare.

Some folks may have different definitions, different thoughts of that terminology.

What does the Bible teach about what spiritual warfare is and what is it not?

Maybe you want to do the latter.

First, but yeah, so what?

It's not, it's not a battle over territory.

And by territory, I mean, you know, there might be a demon in my roof, so I have to exorcise the demon from this room and from my whole house and my property.

And I need to keep demons at bay.

And before we can have a church service, we need to bind the devil to keep him from influencing these different geographical or spiritual locations.

So that's kind of the territory view.

I believe that the Bible teaches that true biblical spiritual warfare is a battle for truth, that what we're doing right now is spiritual warfare.

When we preach the word, we're involved in spiritual warfare.

When we teach words, when we make apologetic arguments, when you do evangelism on the streets and we're answering people, people's objections and communicating the truth of the gospel.

Spiritual warfare is the pulling down of every ideological stronghold, not demonic strongholds in your bloodline or generational curses or sins of your ancestors or hexes or curses that people placed on you, but it is the pulling down of ideological strongholds.

We are to demolish Atheism and agnosticism and evolution and false religion and demonic lies and.

And agnosticism and every ism and every worldview, every ideology that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, we're supposed to do battle with those.

The weapons of that warfare are not carnal.

They're spiritual.

And it's the truth.

And so we use the truth to assault lies so that people will.

So that the strongholds, the walls that they put up against the knowledge of God will come crumbling down.

And then they have to behold the glory of God in the face of Christ and they have to come to a knowledge of the truth.

That's what real, true spiritual warfare is.

It's 2 Corinthians 10, 3, 5.

That's my perspective on it.

I don't think anywhere that we are called to do exorcisms or cancel generational curses or pray hedges of thorns or exercise demons from arenas or meetings or cities or homes or cars or dogs or anything else.

All right, so Papa Bear Odin, and I am wondering if he has some sort of Jewish background, because I saw him earlier put spell God G dash D, which is a Jewish way of doing it.

But I'm just curious, but he asked you the question.

Do you think is different than possession?

I think that it is.

I think the demonism or being demonized in Scripture, that word refers to only one extreme, and that is to be inwardly controlled and indwelt by a demon.

So the evil spirits that were in people in the Gospels, in the Book of Acts, that type of demonic possession, that is what is being described there.

But I think that Christians can be assaulted and afflicted by the spiritual realm.

I think that if we give our mind and our heart over to lies and we begin to believe lies, if we give the devil foothold in the sense that we are yielding ourselves to sin and to demonic influence, that we can be oppressed and that there can be a spiritual presence that weighs upon us.

I do think that that is possible, but that's not possession as the Bible would describe it.

He also mentions that the book of Jude makes it pretty clear that we don't directly rebuke demons.

Yeah, not only that, but Jude and Second Peter describe the marks of a false teacher as being those who think nothing of reviling authorities, angelic authorities.

So one of the marks of a false teacher is that they revile things that they do not understand.

They rebuke the devil.

They cast him out.

These false teachers think that they are exercising control over the demonic realm and that that's not just something that we shouldn't do.

That's something that Peter says.

The mark of a false teacher.

Do you know anybody who's currently preaching through First Peter there, Jim?

I'm doing through Second Peter.

Is that what you meant?

Oh, yeah, Second Peter.

That's right.

You're doing Second Peter.

Oh, well, I was close.

Yeah.

If you guys want to.

Actually, I should have mentioned two things earlier.

If you want to join the discussion, you can go to apologexlive.com just scroll down to the duck icon.

Well, Dan Kraft there created that duck icon.

And click on that, you can join the discussion.

But also, if you want to hear Jim, which I highly recommend.

Okay, let me put it this way.

I don't know that you need to listen to Jim's preaching weekly to go to heaven, but why take the chance?

All right, you're kind of unnecessary, but.

I'm currently in the.

I'm currently in.

What is it?

I'm in the near the end of Hebrews.

I'm trying to catch up.

I'm going through about.

I'm going through at least one sermon a day, sometimes two.

Oh, my gosh.

So, okay, I'm trying to.

I'm trying to catch up.

Dan, don't you agree that he should just.

His next book after this one should be a commentary on Hebrews.

I mean, have you.

Have you seen anything better on Hebrews?

I don't know.

John MacArthur stuff is pretty good.

There we go.

There we go.

Yeah.

So I. I don't know.

Jim hasn't quite gotten to my.

My favorite favorite pastor yet, but my favorite living pastor probably.

Yeah.

Thanks, guys.

So.

So.

But if you do want to listen, you can he.

His.

His sermons are on the Kootenay worship service.

It's.

You can find it at Christian Podcast Media, which this podcast is.

Is a member.

So it is a place you.

You can find that.

So a question that came in for you.

One of our other podcasters, Bold Apologia podcast.

Now he is a charismatic.

Not for long.

He'll only be a charismatic while on earth unless we can convince him otherwise.

I have hope that we can convince him out of this, but he says I would be curious to hear if you guys have David Miller, author of the Secret History of Exorcism.

He might be a good person to represent the deliverance side.

Have you guys read.

You know, I don't know if either one of you have heard of that book.

I have not.

And I don't know if this is.

The David Miller, the only David Miller I'm familiar with is the one that went to be at the Lord recently.

The Southern Baptist guy who was crippled.

Yeah.

Remember him?

Was it a car?

Was it a car accident or a disease that put him in a wheelchair?

I think he and his son were both in wheelchairs of America.

Correctly.

Yeah, I think it was.

I think it was.

I think it was an illness that took his life.

I'm not.

I'm not sure.

I'm just looking for.

Redacted now.

The Secret History of Exorcism.

No.

Why you looking that up?

Familiar with that book?

I'm not familiar with the author, but now I got to spend another 14 bucks.

Yeah.

So Reverend Dr. Ed Romine, PhD, sir, is saying he doesn't see the duck icon.

Go to apologeticslive.com, scroll down and you'll see a little duck icon.

I know it works because that's what Jim used to get in here.

Technically, it's not an icon.

It's an AI generated image of a duck reading a Bible and wearing earmuffs.

Ear.

Headphones.

Headphones.

Headphones.

All right, so let's see.

There was another question in here from.

From We.

We always have to do this, you know, Reverend Dr. Ed Romind, you know, PhD, he says, have you read King James book on demonology and William Perker's work, the Damned Art of Witch Witchcraft?

I have not.

I've not read either one of those.

Well, we can.

We can ask him himself, because here, the doctor himself.

Sir, welcome.

Why do you do this to me?

Blame.

Blame Matt Slick.

Slick.

Yeah.

It's all his fault.

Yep, that's right.

That's right.

So.

So yeah, I would just say that I agree with Brother Jim on how the idea of spiritual warfare.

To me, a lot of Christians, even non charismatics, dangerously fantasize about the spiritual realm and they want to make it like the Diablo series, video games almost, if.

If you've ever seen those.

And that's just not really what it's about.

And.

And yeah, those old books, you know, you've got King James work on demonology and William Perkins work, that damn Dart of Witchcraft.

A lot of what they're saying there's very good because they would agree with our living brother that it's all about truth rather than territories.

Somebody I've heard of wrote a book by that title, Truth and Territory or something like that.

Who might that be?

I don't know.

Some.

Some preacher that's good friends with Jason Peters.

So could you get that book@jimosmond.com you.

Can get the link to Amazon@jimosman.com for sure.

Yeah, I. I don't know if this is a good thing or not, Jim, but Jesse Heller says, dude in the middle looks like Michael Horton, so I don't know if you consider that a compliment or not, but I think he.

Was talking about you stuff.

I like him.

I don't know what he looks like, so I'm not gonna say whether that's a compliment or not.

All right.

I got your voicemail.

I appreciated it.

I've been meaning to get back to you, but I just been busy right now.

Oh, you're welcome.

I don't even remember what that was.

It was a couple weeks ago, right?

It was.

Yeah, it was.

For sure.

Okay, so it's.

Oh, the book you're talking about is called A Discourse.

A Discourse of the Damned Art of Witchcraft.

Right?

Yeah.

Yes.

Volume, volume, volume nine.

I'm down 35 bucks since this podcast started.

Okay, well, you know what?

I can't tell you how many books I've got in my queue, thanks to you, so.

Yeah, that's a good one.

That's a really good one, especially.

I know.

That's why I bought it.

You recommended it in one of your sermons, so I was like, oh, no, I have to get that one.

Well, why don't you tell folks what you just held up?

Oh, it's for those in audio.

By.

By.

I can't read it because I'm on the other side.

Thomas Schreiner, Thomas Shriner, and.

And Bruce Ware.

Yeah, it's Contemporary Perspectives on Election, Foreknowledge and Grace.

My.

It has, I think, the best treatment of the warning passages in Hebrews in There by Wayne Grudem.

Wayne Grudem.

Wayne Grudem's chapter on the warning passages, Hebrews, is just perfect.

It's stellar.

Yeah, I need to read it again because it's dense.

It is very dense.

It is very heavily footnoted, and I just.

Yeah, it's.

It's a really good book.

I have one of my sons and one of my daughters are both kind of one.

My.

My son kind of doesn't really.

He's kind of bought into more of the Armenian view of.

Of God's salvation.

Whereas my daughter is dealing with a.

A family friend her age, one of her peers who is on that side.

So they keep coming to me, asking me questions.

So I was like, well, I got the book now, so.

Yeah.

So, Jim, someone in the audience is saying, I was visiting my brother's church over Christmas time and spotted God doesn't whisper in their library.

And Mennonite too.

I'm not sure who that is, but that's great.

Yeah.

My wife comes from a Mennonite background.

Well, knight was spelled with a K. Just.

Yeah, but so.

So let me ask you, I mean, there's a question that was asked earlier, if I could find it in the chat, about open air preaching.

And one of the things that comes up with open air preaching is the question of when you have someone that you think is demon possessed.

I, I have a video on our channel where I talk about how to deal with a demon possessed heckler.

And because a guy who I really believe was demon possessed, because he told me he had five spirits within him.

The five spirits were the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, Allah, and I forget who the fifth one was, but so he kind of covered all his bases.

But, you know, so should.

Do you think that Christians should be casting out demons from people?

Is that something we should go round doing?

No, I don't.

I don't believe that exorcisms are something we're called to do.

It's in scripture.

It's described as a sign and a wonder.

It's linked in or lumped in with healing, raising the dead, making the lame to walk and the blind to see.

It's a miraculous work.

In the New Testament, Jesus exorcisms demonstrated that he was the Messiah who came into the world.

He exorcised demons because he was God in human flesh.

She gave a limited number of people, the apostles and a couple people closely associated with apostolic ministry, the power to do that as evidence that they spoke for God as well.

But there's nothing in the epistles or anywhere in scripture that says that we should be doing it today.

There's, there's no instructions to any of the churches to deal with sin by.

By casting out demons.

There's no instructions on how to do an exorcism.

Who qualifies for an exorcism, who should do exorcisms, how exorcisms should be done, done where, when, how many people, how much prayer, what words do you use?

None of those things are ever described in scripture.

Now you'll find all of that information in all of these books that I've been holding up here.

They go into great length about how to exercise demons, how to cast out demons, what words you use when you do it, what things you need to have there, how many people, how do you know if the demon is left?

All that information that they provide, but none of it is given to us in Scripture so we can draw a conclusion from that.

And it is either that the Spirit of God was negligent and did not give us everything we need to know in scripture for casting out demons, or the Spirit of God did not intend for the exorcisms to go on after the first century and the death of the apostles.

So it is a sign and a wonder we're not commanded to do it.

There's no examples of just your average ordinary church or Christian perhaps performing exorcisms.

And in fact, the implication of scripture is that the Gospel itself is the power of God into salvation and that what somebody needs is not a power encounter or an exorcism.

They need the gospel.

If somebody's demon possessed, it's because they're not a believer.

How do you cast a demon out of an unbeliever?

You give them the gospel, you present the gospel to them.

And if they repent and they believe, then the demon will leave.

He will be forced to leave, and the Spirit of God comes to dwell within that, that redeemed sinner.

So that is the prescription for exorcisms today, is simply sharing the gospel.

Now, if you have a manifestation of a spirit, I don't think that we're called to engage in that.

In some cases it might be better to wait or to simply sit there and just proclaim the truth.

So a follow up from Jesse, he asks, wait a second, are we not to pray that God in his sovereignty should release the spirit, the possessed man?

I didn't say that.

I did say that we should present the gospel.

We should pray for that person just like we'd pray for anybody else that we present the gospel to.

And we pray.

When we're presenting the gospel, we're praying that God would release them not just from any evil spirit, but we can pray that God release them from their sin, from their blindness, from their deadness, that he would raise them to spiritual life.

That's what we're praying for.

Yeah.

So Papa Bear, Odin brings up an interesting idea, Jim.

He says they believe, think they can, you know, cast out demons because of the long ending of the book of Mark.

And so with that, you know, do you, do you agree with him?

And you know, what, what's your view of the.

And what is, what does he mean by the long ending of the book of Mark?

Yeah.

So Greg Locke, in his book Cast it out, he goes into a whole argument, why from four exorcisms based upon the promise of Mark 16, those who believe the gospel, these Signs will follow.

They shall speak in tongues.

They shall cast out demons.

And then he just kind of stops there and basically says, if your church and if you are not casting out demons and involved in this kind of ministry, then you're not experiencing the fullness of what God has promised.

Locke's argument is that the Christians who believe this is the promise of Mark 16 is that Christians who believe they will do these signs, speak in tongues, cast out demons.

Now, Mark 16 is that notorious sort of textual variant at the end of the Gospel of Mark that I don't think is original to Mark's gospel.

I don't think that the original ending of Mark's Gospel has been lost after verse eight.

I think that Mark's gospel ended at verse eight.

And I think John MacArthur, in his very last sermon in the Gospel of Mark that he did back probably 10 or 12 years ago, I think he made a good case for Mark ending with verse eight being the first Gospel that was written.

I think that's where Mark's gospel ended.

Well, there was an ending that got attached to that.

Verses 9 through 20 of Mark's gospel.

And these guys based their exorcism ministry on that command to cast out demons in Mark chapter 16.

And interestingly, Greg Locke in his book, when he's talking about that, he says, look, those who believe should speak in tongues.

And so he argues for speaking in tongues.

And then he says, those who believe should cast out demons.

And then he argues for casting out demons.

Here's how it should be done.

We need to literally do this.

The Bible says that we should literally do this.

And then, I mean, the very next phrase or verse in that passage says, and they will handle snakes and drink poison.

And then Greg Locke backs off of the hyper literalism of it and says, that just means that God will protect you from any threats that come against you.

He's not literally speaking of really genuinely handling snakes and drinking poison.

He's just saying that if you accidentally do something that God doesn't intend to take your life, God will sovereignly protect you.

And he just kind of brushes it off.

So he makes bank on that phrase casting out demons, but then just sort of brushes past the other signs there.

Mark's Gospel.

So people who challenge me and say, shouldn't we be casting out demons based upon the command of Mark chapter 16?

Then I say, okay, then I want to see you handle cobras and water moccasins and rattlesnakes, and I want to see you drink some poison as well.

Prove to me that You're a believer by fulfilling all of the signs of Mark 16, not just the ones you think are easy to do.

You know, I know Justin actually sent me a video of some guys that actually do handle snakes.

Dan, I know you got a drop.

Anything that.

Any questions you want to ask, any.

Anything you want to.

To say before you take off.

No.

It was good to meet you, Pastor Jim.

Other, you know, virtually.

Anyway.

Hopefully one day we'll get a chance to meet in person.

We're not that far away.

You're just.

You're just on the other side of the state from me.

So I. I hope our paths cross.

And it's good to.

Good to meet you as well.

Finally.

We emailed a little bit after Andrew kind of introduced us.

I'm grateful for that.

So, yeah, thanks.

And thanks for listening to the podcast.

I appreciate it.

Like I said, just for Andrew's benefit, he asked me if I was planning on being out there.

I said, well, if you invite the SFE team out there, I'm guaranteed to make an appearance so long as Andrew drags me along.

Well, so, Dan, when are you moving to Kootenai to go to church?

As soon as I can either find a house or figure out how to build a house on land.

I'm still trying to figure out how that all works.

So I may be talking to the pastor soon about, you know, talking to his son or somebody out there in his church who can give me some knowledge.

Folks, that's what you do when you find a good church.

You figure a way to get there.

That's what I'm doing.

If I could figure a way to get my grandkids there, it might.

It might be tempting.

More tempting, I should say.

Yeah.

All right, see you guys later.

Thanks, Dan.

There.

There was.

Let's see, I thought I saw something in the.

In the question that came up.

Let me find if I started.

Oh, no, it wasn't here.

It was Papa Bear.

Odin says, please stop recommending books.

I still haven't finished my.

My MacArthur Sproul Begg and Spurgeon books.

You know, Ed, you'll never finish all those books.

That's half of what's been published in Christianity since the dawn of time.

But if he wanted a good book on Spurgeon, Ed, is.

Is there any author that you could think of that wrote a really good book, maybe on Spurgeon's open air preaching, shall we say?

Well, I wouldn't call it good, but people found it helpful, so.

But yeah, I wrote a book called the Booming Baritone Bell of England.

And the subtitle is the Pedagogy and Practice of Charles Haddon Spurgeon's Open Air Preaching.

And, and basically what I argue in my book is that one of the reasons why Spurgeon was such a good preacher and a disciple of Jesus Christ is because he believed in and practiced and called others to do open air preaching.

So I've got a wonderful recommendation from, from the Andrew Rapaport.

So it was probably, you got better.

You just hit the bottom of the barrel.

You had many better endorsements, but it is a good book.

So I'm down, I'm out 60 bucks since this podcast started.

We're gonna have to start you a GoFundMe, brother.

Yeah, hey, listen.

Okay, I, I'm gonna let folks know if, if you do buy Jim's book, any of his books.

You know, it used to be that his books went toward helping to pay for their church building, but now they got the building.

And so this is very interesting for folks that may not realize this.

And if you want to get any of his books, just go to jimosmond.com but what Jim does with his books, instead of profiting the money for himself, he donates that money for the church to use to basically help missionaries that have retired.

And I don't know if people think about this, missionaries, when they retire from the mission field usually don't have much of a 401k because they usually don't have any.

And they have nothing in retirement.

They don't have a home, they don't have equity in a home.

And Jim's church there has, is one of the things they do is try to help missionaries that have retired from the mission field.

And if you buy his book, not only do you get excellent books, but you're actually helping missionaries who served their life in the mission field, retired, and basically have now come home and are looking to live out their days.

But they need, that basically need help because people didn't think about their retirement.

So just a consideration, not only do you get excellent books.

Yeah, not only that, missionaries, when they come back, oftentimes if they're not out in the mission field, their support goes down because people think, well, since you've retired now, I can direct that a hundred dollars a month or 50 bucks a month or whatever, I can give that to a missionary, it's out active on the field.

So their, their support decreases.

And so yeah, the, the money for the royalties goes into a fund at the church overseas and, and they give a little stipend to a few missionaries that we are supporting now and hoping as that fund grows that it would, the amount that we can support them would also grow eventually.

It might support me in my retirement at some point, but if I don't live long enough to take anything out of it, then I still do not make anything off my books.

So my needs are met.

So, Papa Bear, Odin, you'll get encouraged by this.

Dr. Ed says to Ed, I have your book on my list when it showed up on the Justin Peters YouTube channel.

So there you go.

He already has that book on his list of books to read.

So there you go.

Well, thank you, Papa Bear.

I appreciate that and I hope it's helpful.

If I could say one thing, I didn't know I was going to be joining this discussion till, until I decided to.

And I'm glad you're having me.

But I hadn't.

It was God's sovereignty.

Yeah, there you go.

But I, I had the thought on that longer ending of Mark question.

For the vast majority of church history, people did receive the longer ending of Mark as scripture before, before the manuscript evidence the other way came out.

And so you look at Henry Matthew, Henry Matthew Poole, Matthew Gill, a lot of the early church and medievals, they all wrote commentaries on those weird sections of scripture.

So I got to thinking while Jim was talking about it, what did John Gill say about those weird verses?

And basically what I saw in his commentary just now is that it's not for the entire church forever until Christ comes back, but that Christ was prophesying specifically about the apostles and their ministry.

So for example, with the taking up of serpents, this is what Gil says.

Oh, let me go back to it here.

He says in 1618, the, the Arabic version adds in their own hands.

And in an ancient manuscript of bezos, it is read in the hands.

So the apostle Paul had a viper which fastened and hung on his hand, which he shook off without receiving any harm from it.

Then he quotes Acts 28, verses 3 through 6.

So that, that's how the, the, the old guys interpreted those verses.

At least ill anyway.

Interpreted those verses without being a weird charismatic.

And you know, I've seen what those snake handling Pentecostals do.

They basically, they basically treat the vipers like jump rope.

And you know, you, you sit there and you watch that and then you start rooting for the poor snakes.

You know, I, I would bite you too.

I would bite you too if you were sitting there twirling me around like a rope and you know, playing jump rope and Stomping.

On me.

I mean, what you think's gonna happen?

Yeah, that's a good point.

They did, they did mention a lot of commentators that treated that as authentic, mentioned that Paul got bit by a serpent.

So we do have an example of that, but we don't have anything in any examples in scripture of being.

Of drinking poison and not being hurt by it.

Right, right.

You know, one of the things John MacArthur had said when he came, when he's preaching through Mark and came to the long ending, he basically dealt with the long ending in one sermon.

The whole thing, which if you know John MacArthur, to deal with that long of a text in one sermon is a lot.

But he basically said that if you look at it, almost everything is supported in other scripture except for the drinking of poison.

There's nothing new with it.

So there's nothing that we need in there other than the fact that there's the talk of that we can cast out demons.

Where in other passages it doesn't say we do that, but it does talk about casting out of demons and the drinking of poison.

It doesn't recommend.

I mean, Paul was bitten by a snake, but it doesn't say we should go play with snakes.

And I think there's a big difference there.

But this gets, this gets to a question, Jim, that I think with this whole demon demonology type of stuff, it reminds me a little bit of people who focus so much on the end times.

It's the sensationalism looking for this extra biblical practice to, to.

To.

I almost want to say, so they could feel more spiritual maybe.

But do you, do you see this in, in the books you're reading that there is an over.

Overemphasis on the cessationalism and extra biblical practices?

Extra biblical practices?

Yes.

They all believe, all of these demon slayers, two or one of them believes that they're getting private and personal revelation outside of scripture through the Spirit of God.

You read it or you heard in that book that I read about from the Secrets of Deliverance, where he got a dream, he got a vision, the Lord showed him this thing, the Spirit revealed to him through this.

It wasn't exposition.

It was what the Spirit made that verse out to be.

The Shudammite Son and the sneezing, it was what the Spirit made that verse to mean to him.

So there is that practice, the extra biblical practices, like the information that they get about the spiritual realm, about how to deal with demons.

All of this is derived from extra biblical revelation from, from conversations with demons, from experiences, from practices from other authors who have also written on these subjects, etc.

So there is a lot of stuff outside of Scripture now, the sensationalism.

I wouldn't say that they promote in their books a sensationalistic approach to things.

So it's not like in the books.

It says, okay, make sure that when you cast out a demon that you do it in front of of a lot of people.

Make sure that you have a microphone in your hand.

Make sure that you're stomping up and down the stage and you're yelling into the microphone.

Make sure that you're yelling into the face.

Make sure the music's playing in the background.

Make sure the YouTube cameras are all set up and you're live streaming this.

Make sure the people have been whipped up into a frenzy before with the music.

Make sure the lighting is right.

Make sure that the atmosphere is right.

Make sure that you have people there to catch them.

They don't talk like that.

They're arguing for the need for deliverance and hear all the secrets.

But then when they practice it, that's exactly what it is.

It's live streamed on YouTube, it's recorded, it's carefully edited, it's posted on YouTube.

The lighting is right, the music is right.

These guys, Greg, Locke, Pagani, all of them, one of their shticks is that they have the handheld microphone, which they use as a prop, and they're yelling into that.

They're emphasizing it, they use it, they're waving it around.

They're, they're, they're stomping up and down.

They're getting all worked up, they're getting everybody else worked up.

They are crafting and creating an environment in which this phenomena takes place.

And people are made susceptible to the suggestions that they're giving, the strong suggestions that they're giving.

You need to come forward, you need to be part of this.

You need to get a demon exercise.

And then you tell people enough times, look, here's what you're going to do.

You're going to.

You're going to convulse, you're going to spit up mucus, you're going to spit up phlegm, you're probably going to vomit.

You're not going to be able to speak.

You're going to be controlled by this.

And people give themselves to the very thing that has been suggested to them, that is going to happen to them.

And then you put them in this almost hypnotic environment where they're subjected to all this stimuli and they end up manifesting all of this stuff.

And I think that some of these people, here's my assessment of it, because there are probably people out there wondering, then how do you explain this going on?

We're creating Christians, are going forward, and they're having these manifestations, speaking with voices, and they're getting quote, unquote delivered.

I think that Greg Locke, Alexander Pagani, Vladimir Savchuk and the rest of them, I think that they really are having experiences and encounters with real demons.

I just don't think that they are rightly assessing what's truly going on.

I don't think they're in control.

I don't think.

I think they're being played.

And so I think that they are having experiences with demonic beings, real spiritual beings, but I think that they're the dupes.

They're not the ones who are controlling it.

They're the ones being controlled and manipulated.

If people wanted a really good resource or book to deal with the idea of hearing the voice of God, Jim, what would that be?

I would point them to God Doesn't Whisper.

I think it's the most comprehensive or thorough.

Thorough book on the subject.

I hate to say that because I wrote it, but I do endorse it, obviously.

Do you endorse your own book?

Just curious.

I do, yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I think that, you know, I think you and I agree with this, and I'd like to talk about this because it's an important issue as we look to this.

I think a major issue that I see with what you're talking about with these, not just the Charismatic moon, but even more so with the demon hunters and whatnot, is the topic of the sufficiency of Scripture.

Because I think at the heart of this is an attack on the sufficiency of Scripture.

So I know you agree with that.

So if you could explain to folks what the sufficiency of Scripture means and how all this stuff is an attack on that.

So when we talk about the sufficiency of Scripture, we're not saying that Scripture tells us everything that can be known or everything that there is to know.

It doesn't mean that we're saying that Scripture is the only source of truth.

You can find truth in a physics textbook, you can find true statements in a newspaper, etc.

But we are saying that by the sufficiency of Scripture, what we do mean is that Scripture tells us everything that we need to know in this life, all spiritual truth that we need to know in order to live God, honoring Christ, glorifying obedient Christian lives in this world.

So it tells me everything I need to know.

Not everything that can be known at.

Everything that I need to know about God, about Christ, about the Holy Spirit, about my sanctification, about salvation, about sin, heaven, hell, walking in the Spirit, being obedient, having a victorious Christian life.

Scripture tells me everything I need to know about those things.

And there is nothing that I need to know in order to live a victorious, obedient Christian life outside of.

That's a clever comment.

Demons do a lot of whispering.

There's nothing I need to know that is outside of Scripture that has not been revealed in the scripture.

So that's what we mean when we talk about the sufficiency of Scripture.

This is an attack on that.

Because what these guys are saying is scripture tells us a lot of good things and it's good as far as it goes.

But if you really want to know the secrets to deliverance, Allah Pagani's book, if you want to know the secrets to deliverance or the secrets of how to stay delivered delivered, or how to cast out demons, or how to do any of those other things, you need to buy their books.

You need to have this information that they have learned through years of experience, through deliverance encounters, through exorcisms, through power encounters, through interviews with demons.

All of this information is necessary.

And you need this information in order to have victory over the devil, in order to have deliverance and freedom in Christ there.

Their information that they're providing is necessary for that.

So that is an attack upon the sufficiency of Scripture, which is why these men don't just appeal to scripture.

They will quote scripture when it's convenient and they'll quote it out of context when it's not convenient.

They will say biblical and true things in their books.

It's not that the books are.

There's nothing true in them.

Of course there are true things in those books.

But the worldview that they're presenting about demons and the supernatural realm and exorcisms is basic Harry Potter mysticism, baptized in Christian vernacular.

So, I mean, and I think this is really at the heart of why I personally have such issue with the Charismatic movement.

It comes down to sufficiency of scripture.

It comes down to where they put, as you mentioned, through these books.

It's their experience over Scripture.

It's right.

The issue we would have with the Roman Catholic Church is that they believe you need the church to interpret Scripture.

Therefore, the church by definition has to be above Scripture because it's required to interpret scripture.

In the Charismatic movement, it seems so much like their experience becomes the old ultimate thing to interpret Scripture.

So if you have scripture and experience, your experience becomes the thing to interpret scripture by therefore making your experience a higher authority, a more ultimate authority than the Scripture.

Would you agree with that?

And do you see that in their writings?

Yeah, they do because they will quote the Bible, even phrases out of the Bible which seem to support their position on one thing or another often.

I mean, you saw when I quoted from this book about the sneezing, how they abuse Scripture and how a demon can attach themselves to your blood or your liver, your kidneys.

They're just quoting a verse that mentions kidneys or blood or liver.

They're not even quoting you a verse that has to do with how a demon can affect the body of a believer.

These are just verses that mention these things.

So they're quoting Scripture, but in order to interpret scripture and apply Scripture, they're going outside of Scripture for that.

They're appealing to their own experiences and to extra biblical sources as sources of authority with those issues.

Not just like to interpret it, but as sources of authority.

So really, they're looking for things in Scripture that support their experiences, phrases that they can divest from or divorce from their context and, and use in order to support or make it look like scripture is describing the same thing.

So I think it's one person who, I forget who said it originally, but this applies to them.

They use scripture like a drunk uses a lamppost for support rather than illumination.

And I think that that's exactly how charismatics use scripture.

They use it for support, not for illumination.

Oh, I got to know who, who.

I'm going to quote you on that.

Don't quote me.

Yeah, I want to know.

Yeah, I want to know who said that, because that is a great line.

Yeah, I mean, you know, Ronald Small, kind of along the lines he quoted earlier, 2 Corinthians.

Sorry, 2nd Timothy, 3, 16 and 17, and says, if Scripture thoroughly equips, that is sufficient.

But why would we need God to give us anything more?

I think it's more of a rhetorical question, but I don't know if you want to comment on it, but these.

Guys will talk about how deliverance ministry is God's gift to the church.

Today.

God's doing a new thing.

He's giving information to the church today through the deliverance ministry, through visions and dreams that he hasn't given to the church.

I mean, it was C. Peter Wagner with his practice of strategic level spiritual warfare.

The.

The whole prayer walking where you name demons over geographical areas.

He says this is a new thing that the Spirit's given to the church today.

Well, that implies that for 1950 years, this was something unheard of by the church, something that was really necessary and useful, that Paul didn't know about it, Peter didn't know about it, John didn't know about it, Whitfield, Luther, Calvin, none of those guys knew about this practice.

But this is something that Spirit's given to the church today.

And so it's this new practice.

Now we need this.

It's not in Scripture, so we have to.

And, and they'll quote the, you know, the passage.

It talks about the angels wrestling together and the delay and the answer to the dream in, in Daniel.

They'll quote that and refer to that, say, see, that's what that's describing.

But then they build this whole theological edifice upon a, A, a dream, a revelation, something new the Spirit is doing that the Church has never had.

And it just.

That presupposes something about the Spirit's sovereignty and the Spirit's wisdom and God's provision in Scripture that I think dishonors God and is blasphemous.

I think it's blasphemy.

I mean, so much of it.

And this is going to be read up Dr. Ed's.

Sorry.

Reverend Dr. Ed Romine, PhD.

Sir.

You know, he's really.

Jim.

He's really big on his titles.

He likes them.

But his name tag at the bottom.

He doesn't even put his last name there.

Yeah, actually, you mentioned that.

Let me go back.

Someone said his book title was too long.

And I was going to say here, Melissa says that's a long title.

I think he thinks he's a Puritan.

She said it would be better for him to put his, you know, put out his name.

And he just says Ed.

It's, you know, just, just think of the lettuce, Ed Romaine, and you'll be fine.

But it's not how it's pronounced.

But, you know, what you were describing sounds so much like Mormonism.

It's just this new gospel that was never heard of until Joseph Smith.

Right.

I mean, Ed, you're in Utah.

You deal with a lot with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

I mean, is this similar to what they're saying where there was, like, there are restored gospel, as if, like Jim's saying, this was never heard of before.

Yeah.

Recent times.

It's basically the same demonic lie with a different wrapping and a, and a different bow on it.

You know, there's nothing new under the sun.

And the devil's got the same lie he's been peddling ever since his downfall.

And, and one of the things that I find so pernicious about these hyper charismatics and the Mormons is both of them have a craving and a desire for God to keep on speaking.

And if God doesn't keep on speaking, then by definition God is silent and doesn't care.

And it really devalues the supernaturality of the Word of God.

We believe that the Bible is a living book that God speaks to us today in his special revelation only by this book.

And I would say that, that those who hold to the sufficiency of scripture actually have a more supernatural worldview than so called Charismatics because we believe that through the written words of scripture and the preaching of that scripture in God's Word, he is changing hearts.

That's excellent.

So, so I would actually argue that, that having a desire to see with your physical eyes more supernatural happenings and more miracles is actually disbelieving the supernatural claims of Scripture itself.

Jesus.

Jesus puts a premium on those who believe, but they haven't seen.

But one day we will see, as Peter says.

So yeah, that's what I would say is ironically, I think those who uphold the sufficiency of scripture actually have a more supernatural worldview because of who and what were saying about the Bible.

Well, let me ask both of you whether it is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints or these demon hunters.

Jim, as we're discussing this, the sufficiency of scripture things, what is the authority that the Christian does have?

I mean, as Christians, what should be our ultimate authority for the Christian life?

Jim, I'll start with you and then.

Ed, go ahead.

Yep.

Well, I would say that our ultimate authority is the Word of God and that we can do only those things that Scripture says that we can do.

We, you know, we are limited.

Our authority in this realm is limited by what the Word says we are able to do.

We are to preach the truth, we are to defend the truth.

We are to give an answer to everyone who asks us a reason for the hope that is in us.

We're to proclaim the gospel, we are to administer the church, we serve with our gifts.

We're to love one another, serve one another.

We do all the things that Scripture commands us to do, but we do not have authority to do everything that Christ has the authority to do.

The people.

Well, here's a book, Spiritual Authority by Rob Reimer, not to be confused with Rob Reiner.

But Rob Reimer.

So this book, and I'm trying to think of some other ones, they all kind of make this claim to one degree or another.

Greg Locke certainly does in his book Cast it out, he makes the claim that we are in Christ, that God has given to us every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, and he has raised us up and seated us with Christ in heavenly places, and that all authority that is in Christ because we are with him has been vested to us.

So all the authority that Christ has, we have.

And we are to use that authority in the natural realm.

Yeah.

So here in his book Spiritual Authority, Reiner says this.

The keys to the kingdom and the mission of the kingdom are entrusted to God's redeemed people.

So they should extend the manifestations of the kingdom throughout the earth and take back the territory of the kingdom of the Satan, overthrow his dark reign and undo his evil works.

And he describes this as the work that if we are intimate with Christ, if we are in him and we are united with him, then his authority is our authority.

Therefore, we should be doing all the things that Christ did.

Now, these same people won't go out and multiply food in hungry villages in Africa.

They won't go out and stop a tornado or a hurricane or a tsunami about ready to make landfall.

They won't, they won't call them storms.

But they do say that we can cast out demons and lengthen legs and heal tumors and all the other stuff that they claim to have the ability to do.

And they say we should be doing this because we have all the authority that Christ has.

So it is word of faith theology applied to deliverance ministry.

But wait, Jim, don't they claim they have power over the weather as they get on their private jets and flee the areas where hurricanes are coming?

Yeah, exactly.

Standing out on the, on the seashore with her, her Gandalf staff saying, thou shalt not pass and speak into a hurricane.

Yeah, they, they.

And then jumping on her private jet.

To get out of town power and authority.

And, and they claim to be able to do all the things that Christ did.

And it's, it's a deception.

So we, we have a certain delegated authority, but it's not nearly what they claim it is.

They really do.

They really, they really commit the same fallacies that the Word Faith movement commits in deifying man and minimizing God.

Yeah, yeah.

Ed, do you see the same, as far as, you know, where your ministry in Utah there with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, You See the same thing as far as what, what should be the authority of the believer in Christ.

Right ABS Absolutely.

Oh, capitalism.

On brother Jim said there about deifying man and humanizing God.

The LDS literally do that, you know, that they want to be exalted to be like Heavenly Father.

That's, that's their ultimate goal, shall we say is, is to be like Heavenly Father in essence.

So, so they believe that God was once a man and is still a man, but he's an exalted man.

And so LDS take the theology, the word of faith, joy boys, and they, they just put it all out in the open that it's really the same dastardly religion.

It's pernicious and it's demonic.

Whereas we see in scripture, our brother, the Apostle Paul charges Timothy this way.

He says starting in second Timothy 3, verse 16, all scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete equipped for every good work.

I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead and by his appearing and his kingdom, preach the Word, be ready in season and out of season, Reprove, rebuke and exhort with complete patience and teaching.

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off in the mists.

As for you, always be sober minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.

And what I hate is that the, the word of faith, so called preachers, they stand up in, in, in a, in a synagogue of Satan and they actually invert everything Paul, Paul says to do.

They, they don't care about preaching the word.

They don't care about using the scripture for teaching, for reproof, for exhortation.

They would rather use it for their own filthy lucre.

And that's what it is.

At the end of the day.

They don't care about actually freeing people from demons.

They care about lining their pocketbooks by, by appealing to people's sensitivities to the supernatural.

So, so it's all a big show, it's all a big scam.

They don't care one bit about helping people that are spiritually possessed or oppressed.

They only care about their, their own appetites and they'll go to hell for it.

God changes their heart.

So Jim, we could look at this stuff we've Seen what for many, I hope in the audience see as extreme.

But this false deliverance ministry, I mean, I think it distorts the gospel.

I think it's a harm to the church.

I think you would agree with.

But if you could expound, how does it distort the gospel?

How is it a harm to the church of Jesus Christ?

I think one of the ways that it distorts the gospel is it puts the emphasis in the wrong place.

So rather than talking about deliverance being something that God does when he delivers us from our sin, delivers us out of a state of spiritual death, delivers us from our damnation and the wrath of God, God deliverance is seen as something that Christians need to have constantly done to them.

They need to be delivered from this demon, from this sin, from this other demon, from this other spirit, and the ongoing work of constantly having demons exorcised and removed from your life.

That twist takes the focus entirely off of the gospel.

The gospel itself.

And the work of the church is to proclaim the truth that Christ died for sinners, he died for those under the wrath of God because they have violated the law of God, and that Christ died in the stead of sinners and provides not only forgiveness for their sins, but also righteousness that only comes to the repentant who turn to Christ in faith.

And so the gospel is that you must repent of your sins, turn to Christ, believe upon him for salvation, the one who lived in your place, died in your place and rose again in your place.

And that God promises that all who do that will receive eternal life and receive the righteousness of Christ.

Well, that's not the emphasis of the deliverance ministry.

The deliverance ministry movement is about.

It's about authority, it's about money.

It is about signs and wonders.

It is about all of the things that cloud over the true gospel of Christ.

So I think that that's the harm that it does to the church.

I think that it confuses people about the nature of sin, the nature of sanctification, the nature of what the gospel has done.

For those in the deliverance ministry, the gospel has not delivered them from the kingdom of darkness and placed them into the kingdom of God's own Son.

Instead, it has merely forgiven their sins and placed them in a place where now they get to be afflicted by Satan for their entire lives.

And they have to be on a constant treadmill of always seeking another deliverance encounter in order to be free from this sin or this demonic influence.

They can never be sure of their Salvation.

They can never be sure of their sanctification.

They can never be sure of their standing before God.

Because all of that is dependent upon how active they are on this treadmill of always trying to please God and stay delivered and keep delivered and serve the Lord.

So I think that that is the harm it does to the church.

Another harm is the way they treat scripture.

I think that they absolutely abuse scripture and they take it out of context.

Their abuse of scripture make a Jehovah's Witness blush, it is so bad.

And they, they don't have a high value, place a high value on scripture or the word of God.

They say that they do, but they don't.

The way they quote it, the way they use it, the way they abuse it demonstrates that they don't have a high view of scripture.

Instead, they have a high view of themselves and what they think they have to offer to the church.

So those are the various ways that I think the modern deliverance ministry harms the church and distorts the Gospel.

Amen.

And again, if folks want to get more about Jim his books, go to jim osmond.com that is the place to get his resources.

I recommend all of his books, even though I jokingly used to.

We, we had.

When you, I think it was when God doesn't whisper, we needed to set up your website and when it went live, we, we.

The guy who was doing your website asked me for a quick, you know, endorsement and I think I, I think I said the best book I never read.

And, and they went live with that.

He put that up there before.

Like he, I sent him the real one, but he left it up there for a bit.

Yeah.

So to go back to the authority thing, Andrew, to show you how these guys twist and abuse scripture in this book here, the Spiritual Authority by Reimer, let me read you just a couple of quick quotes.

He says, Kingdom Normal comes with a demonstration of supernatural power that is unmistakably linked to the supremacy of Jesus.

The proclamation of the kingdom must be authenticated with a demonstration of power.

And there can be no power without authority.

Then he says, my philosophy of ministry has always been very simple.

We should do the things Jesus did.

Jesus cast out demons, heal the sick, saved the lost, and set the captives free.

So that's the stuff we ought to do.

By the way, Jesus also walked on water and Jesus raised the dead as well.

You'll notice they didn't mention that because those things can't be fabricated.

He can't go into a morgue and literally raise the Dead if he can.

I don't know why he's not, but that is kingdom normal, he says.

But it isn't always church normal.

When the church isn't operating in the kingdom, Kingdom normal, that's because the church is abnormal.

Jesus hasn't changed.

Neither has his mission.

If we forgive, we pick up the tool of the kingdom, we give access to God.

If we hold on to bitterness, we're picking up the tool of the kingdom of Satan and we give access to Satan.

He says the keys of the kingdom and the mission of the kingdom were entrusted to God's redeemed people, so they could extend the manifestations of the kingdom throughout the earth and take back the territory of the kingdom of Satan, overthrow his dark reign and undo his evil works.

So in that theology, we have been given all of the authority, and authority comes with power.

And so we have the power to do everything that Jesus did.

Heal the sick, raise the dead, walk on water, multiply bread and fish.

We are to do all the things that Jesus did.

Now, ironically, these men and women do not go out and do all of the things that Jesus did, but they say that we have the power to do it.

So that is not the gospel, that is not the fruit of the gospel, that's not the effect of the gospel, that is not the proclamation of the gospel.

You know, just as you're saying that it brought to mind a quote from a quote unquote religious book.

I'm going to quote it.

I'll let the two of you decide which religion this is.

But this is what it says.

The Word became flesh to make us partakers of the divine nature.

For this is why the wor word became man, that the Son of God may become the Son of Man, so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become the Son of God.

For the Son of God became man so that we might become God.

The only begotten Son of God, wanting us, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature so that he made man, might make men gods.

What religion do you think that is?

What do you think, Ed?

Eastern orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, that is the Roman Catholic Catechism, paragraph 4, 4, 60.

That's what we said.

That's a distinction without a difference there.

Yeah, that's their theosis.

Their theosis emphasis.

Right.

Eastern Orthodoxy develops in a little bit more of a mystical way, but there is that view that we were made to become gods.

I mean, I.

It just seems what I'm.

As I'm Listening to you, this goes right back to the garden with how the, the serpent deceived Eve.

Yeah.

You could be like God.

Yeah.

And it, you said it earlier, Jim, there's nothing new under the sun.

The sin is, you know, he just keeps tempting with the same things.

And it just seems like this whole demon slayer thing is, is about us having some authority that we don't have, some power that we don't have over.

Over demons and, you know, looking for, for demons everywhere, seeing them everywhere.

Yeah, I, I just, I really think that in my mind, where this is so important is not just the sufficiency of scripture, but as he dealt with in the issue of the Gospel, it distracts people from the gospel of Christ, the sufficiency of scripture, from the idea of repentance and sanctification as the means of grace to something that we could do, which is what every false religion, man made religion does.

So, you know, I want to let you close with anything that you think we haven't addressed, but also for any who are listening who are caught up in this, two things.

One, if they're caught up this and a believer, what things should they be concerned with to come out of it?

And if they're not a believer but caught up in the sensationalism of it, what's the gospel message they need to hear?

So I'm gonna.

I'm quote from Pigs in the Parlor here.

Fred and Ida May Hammond say, does everyone need deliverance?

Personally, I have not found any exceptions.

While we have walked in ignorance and darkness, the enemy successfully made inroads into each of us.

We must learn how to get him out and how to keep him out.

Talk out loud to demons that their.

Their view is that every Christian without exception, needs deliverance.

And my message to anybody listening to this who would be tempting to believe any of the lies of the modern deliverance ministry movement, my message to you would be deliverance is a reality to those who are in Jesus Christ, not an ongoing perpetual treadmill of power encounters and exorcising demons, but because of the good news of the Gospel that those who are in Christ have been forgiven of their sins, transferred into the kingdom of light.

We are God's precious sons.

The devil cannot touch us.

The devil is not even our main enemy.

Our main enemy is our flesh.

We have been delivered from him and we do not need a further deliverance.

We need to walk in the truth, to know the truth, to love the truth and have our minds renewed by the truth of God's word.

Stand in the gospel.

Stand in the deliverance that God has given to you in His Son.

That would be my message.

That's what I would close with.

Yeah, I mean, and that's, that's the thing that we look folks, every, every false religion, because it's based on, on.

I mean, it's.

The enemy doesn't need to deceive if it, you know, he, he wants to deceive because he doesn't want the truth.

And the, the one area that there needs to be deception on is that Christ and His Word is sufficient and that you need to look to something more.

And I, I think actually in your, in your book, God doesn't whisper.

That's one of the things that came out about it is that so many people are looking for anything else than what God actually says.

Yep.

We always want more.

Always seeking after something more.

Yeah, yeah.

And, and rather than the truth of God's word, as if that's not enough.

And, and so that's a thing that I really want to encourage folks with is to think about the fact that God has spoken.

He's given us His Word.

Is that not enough for you?

You need, do you need something more than that?

Do you need to have some experience as if that will vindicate what God's word says?

It shouldn't be.

God's word should be enough.

And so I think that the enemy would do anything they can to distract from the truth.

And so that's where we see stuff.

Now.

I do want to.

Jim, there was some comments earlier that I saw.

I didn't save them.

About Michael Heisner.

When it comes to this supernatural world, his name comes up a lot.

So what are your thoughts on Michael Heisner when it comes to the view of the supernatural world?

My quick take is I have not read his book the Unseen Realm yet.

Our friend Fred Butler has done some work on that.

He read the book and then wrote 10, I think a 10 part series of critiquing the book and analyzing the theology of it.

Here's my brief assessment about Heiser and this is from what I've heard about him, but also from some things that I've read Heise and I've listened to him on a number of podcasts, present his own opinion or his own position on things.

I think the error that he makes is that he insists on taking what is revealed in Scripture and insisting on taking extra biblical sources, whether it's the Book of Enoch or whether it's ancient near east literature or Semitic language domains or whatever it is.

And in practice imposing them upon scripture.

And there's a lot of speculation and connecting of dots and drawing of lines and all of the stuff that goes with that.

In order to try and get this idea that there is a council of gods or a council of beings over which God is sovereign and he exercises authority, they've rebelled against him and this conflict explains everything we see in scripture.

So I haven't read his book yet.

I think Fred has a really good assessment of the his book on Justin Peters YouTube channel.

Justin and Fred did a one hour treatment of Heiser's work recently on Justin's channel.

So I would point people to that.

Fred is far more equipped right now to answer that.

I would point people to his 10 part series on that.

I trust Fred, I trust his discernment, I trust his ability to give an evaluation of those things and of course I trust Justin as well.

So I think Heiser's hermeneutics are fraught with, with error and bad approaches to hermeneutics.

I think his hermeneutic is fundamentally unsound and out of that comes his whole philosophy.

May I add to that?

Guess?

Of course, yeah.

You're the PhD.

Yeah.

Just.

Why?

Go ahead Ed.

So a while back I, I did read, read the book and I've got two major concerns with it.

Number one is, is remember I said Ecclesiastes, there's nothing new under the sun.

Well, he claims that there is something new under the sun that we missed from his reading of Psalm 87.

How the, the scriptures use, uses gods there in the plural.

And that's how he gets this creaturely divine counsel, the these quote unquote divine beings that are creaturely.

And, and in so doing he really poo poos all of church history, downplaying the good work and exegesis of other men saying they got it all wrong.

I've got it right and my district, my work, my scholarly work is going to correct the rest of the church.

So there's a downplaying of, of church history there to just an unhealthy level.

And then secondly, he has a disdain for local churches.

To my knowledge, he never actually went to a local church.

He thought that Bible study and Bible study groups are fine.

That's not directly from the book, that's more office podcast.

But if you downplay church history and you think most pastors are getting stuff wrong, then of course if you think you're smarter than every pastor, you're not gonna really find yourself under the authority of a local church.

And I don't Know if you guys talked about this before I joined, but I really do think that the local church is where the greatest spiritual battle happens weekly.

Because you have the whole church, the whole local church gathering together to participate in God's means of grace, primarily preaching.

And it's through the preaching of the word that spiritual battles are fought and won.

That.

That's God's means.

He.

He loves the use preaching.

And for those who downplay church, they're already in a spiritually dangerous position, I think.

Does that make sense, brothers?

Yep.

Yeah.

Good word.

Yeah.

I mean, I think that, you know, there's a lot of dangers.

And I think that, as Jim has pointed out, that a lot of these folks use spiritual language to deceive people into following anything but the truth.

And I think that's really the thing that when.

When Jim first explained some of this to me.

Oh, my.

It must be like almost a year ago now, Jim, that we talked.

I mean, I know that some of the charismatics can be wacky.

I mean, I don't know a better word for it, but when they start seeing demons and everything, I mean, I remember there.

There was that phase where it was like the Jezebel spirit.

Everyone had a Jezebel spirit if they.

Yeah.

Didn't agree with whoever was preaching.

And they're always looking for something.

But the common thread, as I was talking with you and as you shared tonight, more so is it's like they'll do anything.

They'll take the Bible, but they don't stay there.

They use it as a jumping off point to get into anything but the Bible, into experience.

So people feel something.

And like, oh, see, this is right, because I had this experience.

You know, I. I remember people in college that had experiences that elephants were coming out of the wall after doing mushrooms and lsd.

It didn't mean it was real.

You know, your experience isn't proof of truth or reality.

Right.

You know, and you know, it's.

As our friend Justin would say, I can't exegete your experience.

Yeah.

The problem with experience is people can be fooled.

I always think about the guy.

I don't know, Jim, if I ever told you this, but I.

On the Jersey shore, I met a guy.

We're out evangelizing.

And he explained to me that before he got saved, he was a hypnotist.

And he said that he could plant a memory in almost anybody.

And I thought he was nuts.

And we were out on the boardwalk and he decided.

He said, I will plant a memory.

We'll go talk To a bunch of people, I will plant a memory that.

That whatever they did for the summer, I will convince them that we met when they were a child in.

In whatever summer activity they would typically do.

And I still remember this one young lady who was talking about how she.

Every summer she would go to her uncle's cabin and they had this lake, and she had all these memories of it.

And he convinced her in about 20 to 30 minutes that he was there, that they met as young children.

He remembered her uncle and was describing it.

And by the end of that conversation, she was thoroughly convinced that the two of them had met as children and that he knew her uncle.

And I sat there watching this, knowing that he told me before he talked to her, he would convince her of that.

And she wasn't the only one.

And it.

It made me realize how easy it is for someone who's trained in that.

To actually plant memories in someone where they really are convinced that this is reality when it's completely made up.

Yeah.

And I wonder if that's what some of these people do when they talk about their own experiences.

And people want that so badly to have the experience that these other people have, that they start imagining a memory that's not real, but they start to believe it's true and start to think, oh, this is my experience.

It must be true, because look.

Look what happened in my life, you know?

Yeah.

So.

So, Jim, any.

Any other comments you want to make?

When might we expect this book to come out?

Because you just gave us, like, you know, this desire for it.

Because we don't want to read all these books, and you already did.

I'll tell you what I want to do with this book.

I want to.

I want to deal with the modern deliverance ministry movement and all their claims, how they handle scripture, as well as expose who these people are, where they're at, why they're dangerous.

And then at the end of the book, what I want to have is an appendix.

And this might be a good portion of the book, but basically an appendix that deals in a short expository fashion with every single passage in the New Testament that deals with demons, evil spirits, demonology, Satan, that mentions exorcisms, signs and wonders.

I want to deal with all of those so that you could say, you know, somebody brings up, hey, what about Mark 9 and this exorcism?

People would just be able to flip to the page of my book that deals with Mark 9 and explain what's going on there and why it fits with the biblical perspective of Demonology and Deliverance.

So it's going to be a thick.

It's probably going to be the thickest book I've ever written.

It's going to take me at least a year to write it.

I'm kind of thinking about taking a brief writing sabbatical in order to get a bunch of it really knocked out as fast as I can in a short period of time.

I've got probably.

I mean, I've shown you guys some of these books, but, you know, these are the books that I'm.

So far I've got another.

That's what like almost a dozen books.

To go through in the next few months, hopefully before summer hits.

I want to get them read highlighted and noted up and.

And then I can start beginning to come compile this.

I'm hoping to start writing it maybe next fall and through winter and probably be done with it maybe two years from now at the most.

It's.

It's going to be a big project, but it's going to be thorough.

Well, that's the one thing I do find about your books.

They are thorough.

They are original source, which is good because a lot of people, you know, when you, when you don't do original source research, you end up realizing that some people say things and you think that's what they meant and then you realize, oh no, it's not what actually what they said.

That's one of the things I do credit you with because you do the work work you do.

I mean it's not easy reading all of the original source.

I do that myself.

It's a pain, but it's necessary and it is.

That's what makes your work so valuable.

I appreciate it because you give large quotations from them and you know, it's interesting with God doesn't whisper you.

You.

Originally you and I were talking about folks that were, you know, with hearing the voice of God that were more the extreme.

And then you ended up dealing a lot with guys like Charles Stanley that we thought were pretty solid.

And it was like, wait, how many he's.

He's talks about this how often?

Yeah, yeah, it was.

I mean it showed how it.

This is so throughout all of Christian thinking.

Yeah.

Ubiquitous.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That'd be a good word for you.

Yeah.

So, Ed, I know you joined us.

I'm always grateful.

Even though, you know, you're smarter than all of us with your PhD.

Well, I mean, Matt Slick won't let me not mention it.

You know, he said you require that.

But so, but seriously, anything you want to let folks know that you're working on, that you're doing there.

I will say, because I know you won't, you are, you're full time as pastoring at the church and yet you're not supported through the church fully.

And so folks can support you directly with not only your ministry at your church, but also your open air to and work with the Mormons out there in Utah.

So let folks know how they can get a hold of you and anything that you're working on.

Yeah, so, so they can get a hold of me through my email.

That's ed romine90gmail.com edroman90gmail.com I can give you instructions on how to give to the church.

Basically my church has an account.

All my fundraising goes into that account and then I pull that out for my salary.

So you're not giving directly to me, you're giving to my church.

Then my church votes on an annual salary every year or to raise it if I get a spike.

But that's how I would love for them to do that.

I am not a word of faith preacher.

I am not rich.

And any, any, any donations and blessings would be gladly received for the work of the gospel ministry here.

First Baptist Provo is in a place that's 0.3% evangelical, 0.3% evangelical.

And that we, when you give to good gospel preaching churches, that really encourages the Christians here.

So, so with that said, I'm working on a book on George Whitfield, analyzing his preaching in a similar vein to the way I analyze Charles Spurgeon.

And then I also want to write a book on the attributes of God, classically speaking, comparing them to the Mormon conception of deity.

So, so I've got a, I've got a paper coming out soon.

I can't talk about the format yet which will be coming out, but I've got a paper coming out very soon this year that deals with the doctrine of divine simplicity, God without parts, and that I'm going to enlarge into an entire book.

So talking about divine simplicity, talking about impassibility, talking about pure actuality, all that's fundamentally how God in his essence is not like us.

So with that said, that's what I'm working on academically and you know, really it's just the life of the church.

I just want to be a good, faithful preacher and pastor and learn from older brothers like you guys and if I can contribute anything along the way to God be the glory.

So, you know, I do tell people that I'm.

I'm the younger yet uglier version of Justin Peters.

Jim, did he just call you and I old?

You old?

Oh, okay.

So Ronald Small says, I think Ed is richer than he admits in what matters.

And I agree.

So, you know, just for the sake of embarrassing Ed and Jim informing you, I gotta tell my favorite Ed Romine story.

Oh, boy, here we go.

So, Jim, we're in New York City.

We're at the.

I think it was a Super bowl outreach.

And we're in, like, this round kind of area where Ed is in the middle with a wireless headphone on and two speakers, and he's preaching the gospel.

And at the time, I happened to actually be on the phone with Paul Washer's pastor.

We were talking about an issue with the church of Wells.

And there's this black guy that's really getting angry at Ed's preaching.

And at one point, he shakes his fist at the speaker and says, whoever you are, I'm gonna punch you in the face.

I'm kind of realizing I might need to get off the phone and help protect Ed.

And so Ed just looks.

And as I hang up the phone, Ed goes, you're gonna punch a handicap, man?

For folks that don't know, Ed has cerebral palsy.

That's the reference to Justin Peters.

And the guy that's shaking his fist at the speaker suddenly turns and looks in the center and sees Ed with the headset on and starts walking over to him.

And I, like, hang up the phone, and I'm, like, mad dashing trying to get over there because the guy just threatened to punch whoever was saying this.

And he walks up to Ed and fist bumps him and goes, keep up the good work, man.

And keeps walking.

And I'm just.

I'm like, what just happened?

And I'm sitting there, and after Ed gets done preaching the gospel, I talked to him afterwards.

Like, what was that?

He goes, a handicapped man can get away with anything.

Yeah, that's right.

I'm like, I would have been punched in the face.

Ed's just like, you're gonna punch a handicapped man in the face.

I wish I had the boldness of Ed Romine.

I.

To be honest with you, I got the opposite problem of creating memories.

I tend to forget things.

And for the life.

I told you this at Matt's house.

I do not remember that.

But, you know, I'm not gonna sit here and call you a liar.

So I'm.

I'm sure that happened, but I really don't remember it.

You know?

Now they.

Nowadays, with all the woke stuff, you know, I've just resorted.

Resorted to calling it my cripple privilege.

There you go.

Oh, you know, and, you know, this is the thing I love about Ed.

He's so humble.

Similar to Dustin as well.

Jim, I thank you for coming on.

I think that you're a wealth of knowledge.

And I don't say this just because Jim's on, but I do strongly recommend if any of you are in Idaho, you're passing through, or if you are looking to get to a country that's free, you know, say you live like I do in the communist country of New Jersey, and you would like to get to a free country and you want to go to Idaho, check out Kootenay Community Church.

I do believe that.

I'm not saying this just because he's on.

I've.

I've said this privately.

I've said this publicly.

Jim, I think, is the best preacher alive.

I know my wife gets upset when I say when.

I used to say when MacArthur was alive that I would still say that.

And she was like, are you saying that he's better than MacArthur?

Yeah, I do.

And I know he hates that, but I.

No, I know.

I appreciate it.

I do.

But if you guys could get out to Kootenay Community Church, it will be something you will thoroughly enjoy.

Melissa's Ed is saying this crippled white boy, which is a.

A quote from Justin Peters.

That's what he calls himself, the crippled white boy.

In fact, Justin.

Actually, I was supposed to meet Justin.

We were in California, and I was with a pastor who never met Justin.

And Justin said, hey, look, I'm in the restaurant.

I said, where are you?

It's a big restaurant.

He said, just ask for the crippled white boy.

So that's what I did.

I walked in the restaurant and I said, I'm with a party.

They said, do you know the name?

I said, I'm with the crippled white boy.

And he goes, oh, okay.

And he starts walking us over there, and halfway over, he stops and.

And he turned around and said, I feel so bad that I know who you're talking about.

And I said, that's who he told me to ask for.

And the pastor that I was with was horrified that I did that because he didn't.

He didn't know.

Justin asked me to ask for the cripple.

Yeah, but, you know, Justin doesn't want people to think of him as.

He's a human being.

He's not some cripple.

He's not, you know, And, Ed, I know you're the same way to not think of yourselves as, as, you know, oh, I, I have some privilege or whatever.

So it is really a testimony to God for, For both of you.

So, Jim, I.

Thank you for.

Go ahead, Ed.

I, I was going to say, you know, look at the.

Look at the words that Andrew is using to talk about Justin and me versus the guys that would say, oh, you've obviously got a demon in your legs.

That's.

That's why you have cerebral palsy.

They're the more insulting ones because they think I'm fraught with the evil spirits.

Whereas true Christianity preaches that the cause of the fall.

We are like this.

It's an effect of the fall.

But God still gets glory out of all fallen human beings, including the disabled ones.

And so, you know, if I've got to be for a time in a wheelchair, I want to give God the glory.

I want to make his name great, proclaim his Son's excellencies.

And it is blasphemous to say that God's glorious plan to bring him glory is the direct work of demons in my legs.

What a small, pitiful view of God.

So I. I'm preaching.

I'm sorry.

Thank you, guys.

All right, so thanks, folks, and next week, we'll be back.

Remember to strive to make today an attorney for the glory of God.

And we will see you next week.