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Week  11 Assignment: Read MacArthur and Ephesians 6:10-17. Read and comment on the three posts (Parts 1-3) for week eleven.

A pastor tells an amusing story about a man who was on his way to attend a costume party one Sunday evening. He was wearing a red suit with a tail and a skintight mask with horns. He looked like the false, but widely accepted picture of the devil.

As he hurried along, he was caught in a sudden rainstorm, so he took shelter in a church where the service was just ending. As he entered the building, he shocked the members who thought he was the real thing. A flash of lightning and a clap of thunder added to the illusion.

The congregation panicked and rushed for the exits. The intruder thought the church had been struck by lightning and was on fire, so he raced after them. Everyone got out except an elderly lady. Turning in fear, she stretched out her hands and pleaded for mercy, “Oh, devil, please don’t hurt me. I know I’ve been a member of this church for 30 years, but I’ve really been on your side all the time.

Sadly, many church members have no more insight as to who their greatest enemy is. There are certainly extreme views on the devil and his demons.

1. One extreme view on demons is to obsess over demons.

An example is “deliverance ministries” as represented by Frank Hammond’s book Pigs in the Parlor: A Practical Guide to Deliverance.  According to Hammond, nearly every problem in life can be attributed to a demon. Hammond has a three-page list of three hundred demons: demons of resentment, stubbornness, bickering, faultfinding, envy, procrastination, pride, self-righteousness, greed, gossip, shyness, daydreaming, discouragement, headache, retardation, forgetfulness, heartache, embarrassment, sexual frigidity, and intellectualism. Hammond also teaches that demons enter a person before birth or during infancy. A child’s stuffed frog could attract demons. Robert M. Bowman, Jr. states Hammond’s book is a very influential manual among the deliverance ministry genre (Kenneth D. Boa, Robert M. Bowman, Jr. Sense & Nonsense About Angels & Demons. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007, 130).

Jimmy Swaggart had the so-called demon of lust cast out of him by Oral Roberts only to fall back into that sin again. Oral Roberts said he saw demons with long fingernails digging into Swaggart’s flesh and had cast them out (Huntsville Times, Huntsville, Alabama, AP report, March 31, 1988; reported from Calvary Contender, April 15, 1988). Three years later Swaggart was stopped by police in Indio, California who found that the woman riding with him was a prostitute. The devil and demons get falsely accused alot.

The earthquake in Haiti this week got blamed on the devil by Pat Robertson who said the Haitian slaves made a “pact with the devil” and have been cursed ever since. Jesus’ attitude more accurately evaluates this tragedy in Luke 13:1-5.

2. The other extreme view on the devil and demons is to deny their existence.

Sigmund Freud said the devil was a personification of evil. He took the “D” off of devil. Stephen F. Noll wrote that “people are now talking about angels. But does anyone think about them seriously.” Other scholars consider angels “superstitious nonsense” and “endangered species” (Bowman, 15).

3. The Biblical view is to acknowledge that the devil and his demons exist and can be resisted in God’s strength.

Paul writes his most extensive treatment of the devil and demons in Ephesians 6:10-20 and informs and challenges the church to resist them in God’s strength.

The method for resisting the devil and his demons is not exorcism in Ephesians 6. In contrast to Paul, theologian Wayne Grudem explains five steps in exorcising demons (Systematic Theology, 431-432). Mark Driscoll lectures on Spiritual Warfare and gives intricate details on casting out demons. Both Grudem and Driscoll refer to Ephesians 6:10-20 as a text that justifies exorcism. In Ephesians 6, Paul explains seven pieces of spiritual armor to wear to defeat Satan and his organized army. No steps or intricate instruction on exorcism are ever mentioned in the Epistles.

See our post Is There a Gift of Exorcism Today? for a refutation of Grudem’s and Driscoll’s views.

In my next post, I will begin discussing the three methods Paul states for resisting the Devil.