“Teacher,” said John, “we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us.” “Do not stop him,” Jesus said. “For no one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me.” –Mark 9:38-39

The number of those who were expelled from the Society was sixty-four:

Two for cursing and swearing.

Two for habitual Sabbath-breaking.

Seventeen for drunkenness.

Two for retailing spiritous liquors.

Three for quarrelling and brawling.

One for beating his wife.

Three for habitual, wilful lying.

Four for railing and evil-speaking.

One for idleness and laziness. And,

Nine-and-twenty for lightness and carelessness.

–John Wesley’s Journal, March 1743

—

Richard Foster, Streams of Living Water.

Thomas Oden, John Wesley’s Scriptural Christianity, pp. 91-98.

John Wesley, “Catholic Spirit” and “A Caution Against Bigotry.”

The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion. John Wesley held to this confession of the Church of England.

Different models of exorcism and deliverance were identified in John Wimber’s Power Healing (somewhere in the footnotes). He mentions Catholic charismatics being represented by Francis MacNutt and Michael Scanlan. He also mentions classic Pentecostals being represented by T. L. Osborn and Oral Roberts. He mentions non-denominational charismatics being represented by Derek Prince.

In Understanding Spiritual Warfare: Four Views, different approaches to exorcism are represented by Walter Wink, David Powlison, Gregory Boyd, and C. Peter Wagner. Of these four, more people would be familiar with Wagner and would say that he probably represents people like the Third Wave Neocharismatics, IHOP, and Vineyard people.

Walter Wink represents the mainline liberal tradition, and as such, he takes an anti-supernatural view of demons, allegorizes them as bad attitudes, and simply challenges people ethically to give up their old prejudices. Wink then falls pretty far from the mark for what Wesley would consider to be part of the body of Christ. While a moralist like Wink might have some noble aspirations, he is essentially an unbeliever (Luke 12:46), and his words on spiritual warfare are not to be taken seriously. Unfortunately, something like 75% of Americans view demons as mythological like Wink does. That’s not going to get people anywhere if they’re suffering in this way.

David Powlison represents Reformed Baptists / Gospel Coalition people like John Piper who believe that Biblical counseling and prayer is the way to cast out demons. However, the idea is that this barely happens in the Western world, because our cultures are not as demon-driven as the occult ridden cultures of Africa, Latin America, Asia, etc. So this is mainly something that happens on the foreign mission field, because of the prevalence of witchcraft in those countries.

Gregory Boyd, or just Greg Boyd as he usually goes by, is what I would call a “confused charismatic brother.” He believes in the reality of the devil, and has cast out demons in Jesus’ name, but his soteriology is sort of screwy. He believes in universalism and annihilationism: not the traditional view of Hell. However, he rejects Biblical criticism and the usually anti-supernatural attitude of liberals. I would not call him an unbeliever, because he not only theoretically believes in the supernatural but has experience with it. Its just that he needs to be more grounded in Reformation theology. I think you could probably put John Crowder into Boyd’s category. The not-so-New Age but almost New Age pro-supernaturalist universalist charismatic Christians…yeah. Get these guys to read the sermons of John Wesley or some Banner of Truth books and they’ll be okay, maybe.