What do you think about deliverance ministries?

[xdisciplex]

There are people whose only ministry is to travel around and to hold deliverance meetings where people are delivered from all kinds of demons and in most cases these people also call themselves experts are their work field, this means they have tons of extra knowledge which is not in the bible and which only the way, since they are experts. They know names of demons and they know which spiritual instruments are needed to get rid of these demons. Really, there are such weird things, you wouldn't believe it. I have read stuff which is just so creepy, I don't even know why this is even accepted. There is one guy who seems to have a whole arsenal of spiritual weapons such as spiritual acid to burn out the demons. :laugh:
This stuff is really so strange. Where is this in the bible? It's not. But the christians still accept it and welcome it. I don't get it. This stuff is so weird and creepy it would totally disgust me as a non-believer and I would think these christians are nuts. But the strange thing is I also know a person which was at such a deliverance meeting and she claimed it helped her. I don't really know what to think of such christians. Are they even christians?
This bothers me about being a christian. As a christian you have to deal with so many people which seem so strange but yet they also claim they are christians and they also use Jesus' name and the bible and then it looks like they belong to you but you don't want to have anything to do with them. How to deal with this?
Or also these strange prophecies and all this. There are people on the internet which post words from God and prophecies which they claim to have had all the time. They claim that Jesus told them something and that the end is near and that judgement is coming and so on and I don't know how to assess this, wether it's real or not. But I also cannot take every warning seriously which somebody posts at a forum, but what if I think it's trash and the truth is it really was from God? This is also scary.

 

[Snitzelhoff]

I would agree that there are a lot of spiritual nutcases out there who simply throw the Bible to the wayside when it suits them. I would certainly be wary of any extra-biblical way of dealing with demons. As for how to take them, well, understand that they're erring there, but that area isn't the determining factor of salvation; rather, their trust in Christ is. So, in response to your question of whether they are, in fact, Christian, that's where you need to look. You friend who was helped could very well be experiencing the placebo effect, where her trust that something would help caused her mind to experience the desired effects.

Just my nickel (darn inflation!).

Michael

 

[Marcia]

Deliverance ministries usually teach that Christians can have demons controlling them. This is totally unbiblical.

Ironically, a lot of the methods used by people in deliverance are similar to occult methods. Some of the more extreme deliverance ministries make me wonder -- they are so focused on Satan and on demons, not Christ.