WesleyGospel Ministries

Many cessationist evangelicals with an anti-supernatural, if not a fully deist worldview, will counsel people to ignore what they think is the devil acting on their minds. They’ll even say things like, “We can’t see demons, because that’s from the occult. Dreams and visions are from the realm of the occult. Just read the Bible, ignore the supernatural, and live in the realm of the intellect.” The Bible doesn’t say to IGNORE the devil through anti-supernatural deism and science, which is unbelief. It says to RESIST him after you recognize his presence (James 4:7). Big difference! What does the Word of God say? And what should you do if you have a demonic experience? The answer: JESUS! JESUS! JESUS! Just say it…even in your nightmares, say it. Works every time (Mark 16:17). To consider a deliverance ministry to be in error because they have a theology informed by spiritual experience is neither consistent nor defensible. In the Bible, every time the devil is resisted or cast out, a spiritual experience of some type is assumed. Only a confused, deistic, anti-supernatural philosophical theologian would accept a demythologized view of the devil and spiritual warfare; and think they have arrived at the truth regarding this. Spiritual warfare and deliverance are related to miraculous gifts, plain and simple (1 Cor. 12:8-10). The moment that a cessationist tries to understand this subject without the involvement of miraculous gifts, is the moment they are in error, because they have started off on the wrong foot. –J.B.

¹⁹ Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, WHY COULD WE NOT CAST HIM OUT? ²⁰ And Jesus said unto them, Because of YOUR UNBELIEF: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you. ²¹ Howbeit THIS KIND GOETH NOT OUT BUT BY PRAYER AND FASTING.
–Matthew 17:19-21 (KJV)–

I SAW THREE IMPURE SPIRITS THAT LOOKED LIKE FROGS; 
they came out of THE MOUTH of the dragon, 
out of THE MOUTH of the beast 
and out of THE MOUTH of the false prophet.
–Revelation 16:13 (NIV)–

I SAW SATAN FALL LIKE LIGHTNING FROM HEAVEN.
–Jesus in Luke 10:18 (NIV)–

The woman said unto Saul,
I SAW GODS ASCENDING OUT OF THE EARTH.
–The Witch of Endor in 1 Samuel 28:13 (KJV)–

RESIST THE DEVIL AND HE WILL FLEE FROM YOU.
–James 4:7 (NIV)–

These signs will accompany those who believe:
IN MY NAME THEY WILL DRIVE OUT DEMONS; 
they will speak in new tongues.
–Jesus in Mark 16:17 (NIV)–

Whenever the spirit from God came on Saul,
DAVID WOULD TAKE UP HIS LYRE AND PLAY.
Then relief would come to Saul; he would feel better,
AND THE EVIL SPIRIT WOULD LEAVE HIM.
–1 Samuel 16:23 (NIV)–

¹⁷ Then Micaiah answered, “I saw all Israel scattered on the hills like sheep without a shepherd, and the Lord said, ‘These people have no master. Let each one go home in peace.’” ¹⁸ The king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, “Didn’t I tell you that he never prophesies anything good about me, but only bad?” ¹⁹ Micaiah continued, “Therefore hear the word of the Lord: I SAW THE LORD sitting on his throne with all the multitudes of heaven standing around him on his right and on his left. ²⁰ And the Lord said, ‘Who will entice Ahab into attacking Ramoth Gilead and going to his death there?’ “One suggested this, and another that. ²¹ Finally, A SPIRIT CAME FORWARD, STOOD BEFORE THE LORD and said, ‘I will entice him.’ ²² “‘By what means?’ the Lord asked. “‘I will go out and be A DECEIVING SPIRIT IN THE MOUTHS of all his prophets,’ he said. “‘You will succeed in enticing him,’ said the Lord. ‘Go and do it.’ ²³ “So now the Lord has put a deceiving spirit in the mouths of all these prophets of yours. The Lord has decreed disaster for you.”
–1 Kings 22:17-23 (NIV)–

¹ Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. ² After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. ³ THE TEMPTER came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” ⁴ Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” ⁵ Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. ⁶ “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written: “‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’” ⁷ Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” ⁸ Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. ⁹ “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” ¹⁰ Jesus said to him, “AWAY FROM ME, SATAN! FOR IT IS WRITTEN: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’” ¹¹ Then THE DEVIL LEFT HIM, and angels came and attended him.
–Matthew 4:1-11 (NIV)–

Satan himself may put on
the appearance of an angel of LIGHT.
–2 Corinthians 11:14 (Mace’s NT)–

His appearance was like LIGHTNING,
and his clothes were white as snow.
–Matthew 28:3 (NIV)–

He makes his angels WINDS
and his ministers a flame of FIRE.
–Hebrews 1:7 (ESV)–

 To another discerning of spirits.
–1 Corinthians 12:10 (KJV)–

⁶ One day the angels came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them. ⁷ The Lord said to Satan, “Where have you come from?” Satan answered the Lord, “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.” ⁸ Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.” ⁹ “Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied. ¹⁰ “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. ¹¹ But now stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.” ¹² The Lord said to Satan, “Very well, then, everything he has is in your power, but on the man himself do not lay a finger.” Then Satan went out from the presence of the Lord.
–Job 1:6-12 (NIV)–

Certain women, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities,
Mary called Magdalene, OUT OF whom went SEVEN DEVILS.
–Luke 8:2 (KJV)–

Take heed, brethren,
lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief,
in departing from the living God.
–Hebrews 3:12 (KJV)–

⁹ When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. ¹⁰ Let no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in WITCHCRAFT, ¹¹ or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. ¹² Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord; because of these same detestable practices the Lord your God will DRIVE OUT those nations before you. ¹³ You must be blameless before the Lord your God.
–Deuteronomy 18:9-13 (NIV)–

—

Athanasius, The Life of Antony (Paulist Press, 1979).

Gabriele Amorth, An Exorcist Tells His Story (Ignatius Press, 1999).

—. An Exorcist: More Stories (Ignatius Press, 2002).

Francis MacNutt, Deliverance from Evil Spirits (Chosen Books, 2009).

Herbert Thurston, Ghosts and Poltergeists (Burns Oates, 1953), “The Exorcism of Haunted Houses.”

John Wimber, Power Healing (HarperCollins, 1987), ch. 6: “Healing the Demonized.”

Daniel Jennings, The Supernatural Occurrences of John Wesley, ch. 2.

Pope Benedict XIV, Heroic Virtue, ch. 9: “Of Discerning of Spirits.”

James Beilby, ed. Understanding Spiritual Warfare: Four Views (Baker Academic, 2012).

Walter Martin, The Kingdom of the Occult (Thomas Nelson, 2008).

Bob Larson, Larson’s Book of Spiritual Warfare (Thomas Nelson, 1999).

Graham Twelftree, Jesus the Exorcist (Hendrickson Publishers, 1993).

—. In the Name of Jesus: Exorcism Among Early Christians (Baker, 2007).

Ruth Brown, Destroying the Works of Witchcraft…Fasting and Prayer (Impact, 1994).

Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.
–1 Corinthians 16:13 (ESV)–

The principles of the doctrine of Christ…the foundation of REPENTANCE FROM DEAD WORKS, and of FAITH TOWARD GOD, of the doctrine of BAPTISMS, and of LAYING ON OF HANDS, and of RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD, and of ETERNAL JUDGMENT.
–Hebrews 6:1-2 (KJV)–

This gravity
Is feeling like a tether
I want to want to be
So high above the weather

All frequency around
Round, round, round, round
Without a sound

And there’s today
And there’s two spaces
And too many places
Not to go to, ooh

This big old sea
Is feeling like a pleasure
I look cautiously
At all the falling treasure

With some frequency it comes down
Down, down, down, down
Without a sound

And there’s today
And there’s two spaces
And too many places
Not to go to, ooh

–Frank Black, “Two Spaces”–

—

Be not conformed to this world:
but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind,
that ye may prove what is that good,
and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
–Romans 12:2 (KJV)–

Your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you.
–1 Corinthians 6:19 (KJV)–

—

John Wesley, “On Dress.”

—. “Letter to Mr. S. at Armagh.”

Dr. Hugh Pyle, The Truth About Rock Music (Sword of the Lord, 1985).

Dr. John R. Rice, What Is Wrong With the Movies? (Sword of the Lord, 1938).

—. The Double Curse of Booze (Sword of the Lord, 1960).

—. Tobacco: Is It’s Use Sin? (Sword of the Lord, 2000).

Elizabeth Rice Handford, Your Clothes Say It for You (Sword of the Lord, 2000).

The dragons in the waters.
–Psalm 74:13 (KJV)–

Evolutionists confidently tell us that every single dinosaur went extinct at a grand total of no less than 65 MILLION YEARS AGO! That’s right! National Geographic says it, BBC says it, Bill Nye says it, schools and colleges say it, heck even the pope says it. An astonishing amount of time that would stagger the mind of any person. They say that a meteor of great size hit the Yucatán Peninsula and caused the entire world to burn on fire. The big dent in the ground that it left is called the Chicxulub crater. This is the reason why no dinosaurs exist today–is what these evolution teaching scientists say. Then life appeared all by itself again, and eventually monkeys, and the people that came from them in Africa. God had nothing to do with this either. This just happened by itself. I guess one of the forms of life that they allow to not be extinct anymore is this very old crocodile…which, incidentally enough, looks a whole lot like a dinosaur.

So why is it that dinosaurs went extinct millions of years ago? Because the scientists say: always remember this: SCIENCE says so. That makes it right, right? WRONG!

Not only the KJV Bible, but practically every account of ancient history, presents an entirely different vision about the distant past of earth’s beginnings. And one of the details you will find in many of the histories of ancient civilizations, is THE COEXISTENCE OF DINOSAURS WITH HUMAN BEINGS, like in the Flintstones cartoon, or the old Lost World film from 1960. There is no picture of them existing before people in ancient history. Not at all. The world was then viewed as beginning around 4000 B.C.; and humanity emerging out of Iraq in the beginning. Iraq used to be called Mesopotamia by everyone in society as recently as the 1700s. A plain fundamentalist reading of Genesis was the popular opinion about the human history timeline. Millions of years is a figment from the imaginations of modern-day atheistic scientists, communists, natural history museum curators, confused philosophers, and confused theologians that reject a plain reading of the Bible. There was no Yucatán Peninsula extinction event that happened 65 million years ago–that is a FALSE TEACHING. But there was something similar. The Bible says that God flooded the entire world in the time of Noah, around 2500 B.C., because he was so mad at people for their widespread violence (Genesis 6:11). Only Noah’s family was saved from the flood, but then they repopulated the world after it was over; and God created the rainbow as a sign to man that he would never do anything like that again. The word “dinosaur” was invented in the year 1851 by Sir Richard Owen. Before that, they were always known by the word DRAGON. And so there have always been many such species of dragons that have coexisted with mankind, some of which were probably on the ark with Noah; but most of these dragons were eventually killed off by, you guessed it, DRAGON SLAYERS. It might be that the reason why crocs and gators were not hunted to extinction is because they are aquatic, and can evade capture easier. –J.B.

DEAD BODIES EVERYWHERE!
DEAD BODIES EVERYWHERE!
DEAD BODIES EVERYWHERE!
DEAD BODIES EVERYWHERE!

–Korn, “Dead Bodies Everywhere”–*

And they shall go forth, and look upon the carcasses of the men that have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh.
–Isaiah 66:24 (KJV)–

That their thankful sense of God’s distinguishing favour to them should be very much increased by the consideration of the fearful doom and destruction of those that persist and perish in their infidelity and impiety. Those that have been worshipping the Lord of hosts, and rejoicing before him in the goodness of his house, shall, in order to affect themselves the more with their own happiness, take a view of the misery of the wicked. Observe, (1.) Who they are whose misery is here described. They are men that have transgressed against God, not only broken his laws, but broken covenant with him, and thought themselves able to contend with him. It may be meant especially of the unbelieving Jews that rejected the gospel of Christ. (2.) What their misery is. It is here represented by the frightful spectacle of a field of battle, covered with the carcasses of the slain, that lie rotting above ground, full of worms crawling about them and feeding on them; and, if you go to burn them, they are so scattered, and it is such a noisome piece of work to get them together, that it would be endless, and the fire would never be quenched; so that they are an abhorring to all flesh, nobody cares to come near them. Now this is sometimes accomplished in temporal judgments, and perhaps never nearer the letter than in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Jewish nation by the Romans, in which destruction it is computed that above two millions, first and last, were cut off by the sword, besides what perished by famine and pestilence. It may refer likewise to the spiritual judgments that came upon the unbelieving Jews, which St. Paul looks upon, and shows us, Romans 11:8, c. They became dead in sins, twice dead. The church of the Jews was a carcass of a church all its members were putrid carcasses; their worm died not, their own consciences made them continually uneasy, and the fire of their rage against the gospel was not quenched, which was their punishment as well as their sin; and they became, more than ever any nation under the sun, an abhorring to all flesh. But our Saviour applies it to the everlasting misery and torment of impenitent sinners in the future state, where their worm dies not, and their fire is not quenched (Mark 9:44); for the soul, whose conscience is its constant tormentor, is immortal, and God, whose wrath is its constant terror, is eternal. (3.) What notice shall be taken of it. Those that worship God shall go forth and look upon them, to affect their own hearts with the love of their Redeemer, when they see what misery they are redeemed from. As it will aggravate the miseries of the damned to see others in the kingdom of heaven and themselves thrust out (Luke 13:28), so it will illustrate the joys and glories of the blessed to see what becomes of those that died in their transgression, and it will elevate their praises to think that they were themselves as brands plucked out of that burning. To the honour of that free grace which thus distinguished them let the redeemed of the Lord with all humility, and not without a holy trembling, sing their triumphant songs.

—MATTHEW HENRY’S COMMENTARY—

—

These words of the prophet are applied by our blessed Saviour, Mark 9:44, to express the everlasting punishment of the wicked in Gehenna, or in hell. Gehenna, or the valley of Hinnom, was very near to Jerusalem to the south-east: it was the place where the idolatrous Jews celebrated that horrible rite of making their children pass through the fire, that is, of burning them in sacrifice to Moloch. To put a stop to this abominable practice, Josiah defiled, or desecrated, the place, by filling it with human bones, 2 Kings 23:10; and probably it was the custom afterwards to throw out the carcasses of animals there, when it also became the common burying place for the poorer people of Jerusalem. Our Saviour expressed the state of the blessed by sensible images; such as paradise, Abraham’s bosom, or, which is the same thing, a place to recline next to Abraham at table in the kingdom of heaven. See Matthew 8:11…for we could not possibly have any conception of it but by analogy from worldly objects. In like manner he expressed the place of torment under the image of Gehenna; and the punishment of the wicked by the worm which there preyed on the carcasses, and the fire that consumed the wretched victims. Marking however, in the strongest manner, the difference between Gehenna and the invisible place of torment; namely, that in the former the suffering is transient:-the worm itself which preys upon the body, dies; and the fire which totally consumes it, is soon extinguished:-whereas in the figurative Gehenna the instruments of punishment shall be everlasting, and the suffering without end; “for there the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.” These emblematical images, expressing heaven and hell, were in use among the Jews before our Saviour’s time; and in using them he complied with their notions. “Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God,” says the Jew to our Saviour, Luke 14:15. And in regard to Gehenna, the Chaldee paraphrase as I observed before on Isaiah 30:33, renders everlasting or continual burnings by “the Gehenna of everlasting fire.” And before his time the son of Sirach, Sirach 7:17, had said, “The vengeance of the ungodly is fire and worms.” So likewise the author of the book of Judith, Judith 16:17: “Wo to the nations rising up against my kindred: the Lord Almighty will take vengeance of them in the day of judgment, in putting fire and worms in their flesh;” manifestly referring to the same emblem.**

—ADAM CLARKE’S COMMENTARY—

—

* I would not generally recommend listening to this band in the sense of entirely approving of their albums 100% or wholesale. I’ve only extracted a part of this song to illustrate a point. This goes for several of the songs on my podcasts. Amos 8:10: “I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation.” Ecclesiastes 7:5: “It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise, than for a man to hear the song of fools.” –J.B.

** “Woe to the nations that rise up against my people! The Lord Almighty will take vengeance on them in the day of judgment; he will send fire and worms into their flesh; they shall weep in pain forever” (Judith 16:17, NRSV).

What a turnaround.
I’ll acknowledge light when I see it.
I thank God for that.
–J.B.–

They repented at the preaching of Jonah.
–Jesus in Matthew 12:41 (NIV)–