But the evil spirit answered them, "Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?" And the man in whom was the evil spirit leaped on them, mastered all of them and overpowered them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded. - Acts 19:15-16 (ESV)
First of all, a thanks to Sean Christie at Revealing Truth Ministries who did a video exposing this. Isaiah Saldivar is one of the You Tube demon slayer whackadoodles selling deliverance from imaginary demons. Headed up by charlatans like Greg Locke and Kathryn Krick, demon slayers prey on the ignorance of people stuck in the apostate church system, by wowing them with the oohs and ahhs of Charismania. Krick famously pretended a child writhing on the ground in front of her was possessed and she refused to deliver the child until the mother sowed a big enough seed into her ministry through a phone app. Cause you know, Jesus. Beloved, the spiritual realm is real but these hucksters are not. The bible is very clear about demons and casting them out. In the key verses we see what happened to the sons of a Jewish High Priest named Sceva when they thought they could dabble in casting out demons. Now, I do not know how badly you have to be beaten to end up naked, but it sounds like a pretty good thrashing to me. This is serious business beloved, and these clowns trivialize it and bastardize it. The above link is to a video from Saldivar where he offers seven steps to cast demons out and sells it in only eight minutes. Please keep in mind that the only reason he does this is to sell his new book coming out which expounds on these seven points. Shameless self-promotion at its best. Joel Osteen would be proud. So, let us reason once more together.
"This is the call of every believer - to cast out demons. Everywhere Jesus went He cast out demons. The disciples cast out demons. He gave them authority over demons. The early church cast out demons. Bottom line is we live in a demonized generation and a demonized culture. We can't keep being scared of demons and scared of deliverance. I'm going to teach you in the next eight minutes, seven steps to cast out demons." - Isaiah Saldivar
The call of every believer is not to cast out demons. That is absurd. It is true that Jesus, the Son of God, delivered many people from demons. It is also true that He gave his disciples, not us, authority over them. It is true that the Apostle Paul and others in the New Testament cast demons out. None of this is prescriptive for us today. We are not supposed to be walking around decreeing, declaring and thinking like the Seven sons of Sceva that we are spiritual tough guys. This generation and culture is no more demonic than any other that preceded it. We are not special. Notice he also plays the macho card claiming we are scared because this drivel is often marketed to young men. If you think you can command demons as this idiot is going to teach you, then you should be scared, unless you like being beaten until your clothes fall off.
"The first step is the person needs to be a believer and want deliverance. Demons recognize free will. They recognize whether someone wants it or doesn't. So if you are forcing someone to get delivered it is not going to work. Demons are going to laugh you and say they have legal right to be here and technically they do have a right to be there. They don't have to leave if you are forcing it on somebody. If you manage to deliver and unbeliever Matthew 12 says they are just going to come back stronger. So to me there is no point doing deliverance on somebody who is going to go right back to their sin. If you read the bible the people who got delivered were desperate they wanted it and they came to Jesus." - Isaiah Saldivar
So, right away we abandon the bible. Beloved, a born-again believer CANNOT be demon possessed. Do you know why? Because we have the indwelt Holy Spirit. All of the biblical examples were involving unbelievers, who often became saved because of the deliverance. Yet his entire premise is the person must be saved, which would make possession an impossibility. The problem for Isaiah is that he cannot sell that because people who are not in the church, unbelievers, would never buy it. So, to fleece his flock, he must convince them that they have demonic possession struggles, so that he can sell them books about deliverance. The second criteria is equally stupid. So, these people have to want to be delivered? Is that how it worked in the bible? Did Legion want to be delivered? Did the slave girl in Acts? Of course not. What this criteria does for Saldivar is it sets up the excuse that if deliverance fails, it must be because the person did not really want to be delivered. The Matthew 12 verses highlight that the person who has had demons cast out must then be saved, and thus the Holy Spirit fills them, or else the demons could come back stronger. It only further proves that his premise is ridiculous. Those that were delivered by Jesus were not always desperate at all. The notion that Jesus would deny deliverance unless they somehow were desperate is blasphemous.
