Pilgrim
Puritanboard Commissioner
And why don't we have the need for excorcisms in other denominations?
Because the people aren't taught to need them. They are taught to be transformed by the renewing of the mind.
It's been a while since I've looked into this issue, so I can make no definitive statement about it. (Actually, interest in this topic that was piqued by listening to some Malachi Martin interviews eventually led to my conversion a year or two later once I came under evangelical influence.)
That being said, what Rev. Winzer notes here does make a big difference. I can attest to it from personal experience. It seems that one's belief and emphasis on this issue will to at least some extent impact one's view of the Christian life in general. In many if not most cases it has a significant impact.
For a number of years I was under the teaching of an independent "Calvinistic" or "sovereign grace" (not SGM) man who had previously been engaged in itinerant preaching/evangelism for several decades and who had extensive experience with deliverance ministry. (He was not the usual kind of 20th Century Southern evangelist and was influenced by Tozer, Ravenhill, as well as older sovereign grace men.) During that time he had considerable influence within his circles and gained some notice among Calvinistic Baptists generally. My connection with this ministry was early on in my Christian walk, when I was convinced of TULIP but knew of no other baptistic ministry in the area that affirmed it. (There were issues which at the time kept me from considering local Presbyterian. churches, one of which is actually openly charismatic.) This brother published a book on demonology in which he argues that a Christian can be posessed or indwelt (I can't remember the exact terminology) by a demon(s) as well as the Holy Spirit at the same time. I don't know of any exorcisms or deliverance ministry that he engaged in at that later stage of his ministry. But that's not the kind of thing that was made public knowledge regardless, at least not by this ministry.
While much of what was taught there was helpful and true, after a few years I picked up on an attitude toward sanctification or growth in grace that basically amounted to "Let go and let God." If somebody had some kind of persistent sin problem, then demons must be the cause. The approach apparently was that you had to come to them with such a problem, they weren't going to force it. While they aren't perfectionists, the idea that we sin daily in thought, word and deed was openly disdained and dismissed as being a defeatist view. There was an antipathy toward blaming anything on the flesh. It was very reminiscent of how psychotropic drugs are often sold. "If there's a pill available that can help you, why blame it on sin?" Why blame the flesh when it's demonic, etc.
Once I realized this deficiency, as well discovering that the prevailing view of scripture among at least some of the leadership was arguably neo-orthodox and mystical and statements were made that undermined the verbal plenary inspiration of Scripture, I left. In retrospect, the latter fits well with a book on deliverance that is based on personal experiences that cannot be proved from Scripture, if at best many of the experiences recounted therein do not outright contradict Scripture.
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