by
Bob Rhyne
Here is a report of three
exorcisms I’ve been involved with. I don’t know why my most tangible,
objectively verifiable experiences with the unseen realm have been with the
dark side, but such is the case. These exorcisms have helped to confirm my
conviction that there is an invisible reality and that it operates consistently
with what I would expect given my reading of the Bible.
My first encounter with a
demon happened during my first year as a pastor. I was conducting a class for
inquirers at my home. Among the ten or so gathered was a middle-aged woman, a
widow, who had a teenaged daughter living at home. This woman had never
belonged to a church, had never been baptized, but had decided to attend my
study. During probably the third session I was discussing what happens to a
person’s soul when he dies, that it leaves the body and goes immediately either
to heaven or to hell (Luke 16:19-31). The woman, who had been listening without
saying much through the studies so far, asked, “Pastor, what’s a poltergeist?”
I gave the dictionary answer that the term comes from German and means “playful
spirit.” A poltergeist would be a spirit that makes its presence known by
creating disturbances such as knocking over objects. She asked, “Is it a ghost,
like the spirit of a human who’s died?” I answered that I didn’t think so,
since as I understood it human spirits don’t linger on earth after death, but
go directly into eternity (Ecclesiastes 12:7). “Then, what is it?” she asked. I
told her that, as far as I knew, a poltergeist must be a demon, one of God’s
angels which had rebelled and become what the Bible calls demons or unclean
spirits.
“I’ve got a poltergeist at my
house,” she said matter-of-factly. “It slams cupboards, throws towels around,
scares the cat, and has an odor of lavender some times or at others of a hot
iron. I call it ‘Polly’ because I thought it was the ghost of my dead
mother-in-law; it seems to have her personality. When people come over to the
house I can tell it, ‘Polly, go home with these folks,’ and it will go to their
house and come back in a couple of weeks. When I hear something knocking around
at night and call my son-in-law to come over and make sure it isn’t a burglar,
he won’t come. He says, ‘I know what it is!’ It has never bothered me before to
have it around, but if it’s a demon I want to get rid of it. What do I do?”
I said, “Well, assuming it’s a
demon, you command it to be gone in the name of Jesus and it has to go.” “Would
you do it?” she asked. “You can do it,” I said. “I’d rather you do it,” she
said. “I don’t think you could afford me,” I said. She laughed, and said, “How
about Thursday?”
It was a bright and sunny day;
early afternoon in the spring of 1982. I felt very odd as I approached her
house up the flower-lined walk. She answered the door and I asked her to take
me to the area of the house where the manifestations were most common. That
place turned out to be her teenage daughter’s bedroom and adjoining bath. “I
didn’t tell you that my daughter has been having nightmares that someone is
trying to strangle her. She wakes up at night gasping for breath.” She went on
to describe the strained relationship she had with this daughter.
“Do you sense that the thing
is here now?” I asked. She said she didn’t. “Here’s what I’m going to do,” I
said. “I’m going to pray and then I’ll command it to be gone and we’ll see what
happens. Lord Jesus, I’m not sure what’s going on here
or what we’re dealing with. I assume it’s a demon. So I’m going to command it
to be gone in your name and I’m looking to you to do the rest. –In the name of
Jesus I command this poltergeist be gone and never bother this family again.”
We looked around the room,
looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders, and I left. She began attending
church, so each week I’d ask her if Polly had been back. “Haven’t seen hide nor hair,” she’d say. The daughter’s nightmares stopped and
never returned. As the weeks passed the woman reported a drastic improvement in
her relationship with her daughter, and both she and her daughter were
baptized.
The second time I was asked to
deal with a demon was about twelve years later. I was greeting a retirement
aged woman on her way into church one Sunday when she took me aside and said to
me, “Pastor, I need to talk with you after the service: I’ve got a ghost in my
apartment.” I said okay and she made her way to her seat. It so happened that
my sermon that day was from Ephesians 6, about “spiritual forces of evil.” When
I saw her after church she looked amazed, “Whoa!” she said, struck by the
coincidence. “Yeah!” I agreed, and we made an
appointment for me to come by her place.
A couple of days later I was
sitting with her in the living room of her apartment. She told me that she had
been seeing this ghost, a little boy, for about two years. She would wake up at
night and see it standing in the doorway to her bedroom. She hadn’t told anyone
about this because she thought she’d sound crazy. But then, a few weeks ago,
another ghost began appearing with the little boy. This second ghost was a
grown man. Now she was frightened and began asking a couple of close friends
what she should do. The recommendations were unanimous: leave the apartment.
But she didn’t want to move, so she decided to tell me about it and see what
her options were.
I told her she wasn’t crazy
and that it was a simple thing to fix. I told her about my former experience
with a demon and what we would do. I prayed, then I commanded
in the name of Jesus for the spirits to be gone. I assured her that she would
see them no more; and I left.
The following Sunday morning she arrived at church
pale and nervous, very much looking as though she had seen a ghost. “It didn’t
work, Pastor,” she said. “Last night I woke up. I was on my side, facing the
wall of my bedroom. When I opened my eyes the tall one was leaning over my bed
staring into my face.”
“I don’t get it,” I said, “but
I’ll look into it.”
In a neighboring city I had a
pastor friend whom I knew to have some experience in deliverance ministry, so
that afternoon I gave him a call. “The usual stuff isn’t working,” I told him,
and he laughed, recognizing the line from Ghostbusters. I described the woman’s
situation.
“It could be a couple of
things,” he said. “If she is practicing some sinful behavior and hasn’t
repented, that could contradict the exorcism and invite the demons to remain.
Also, if she has any occult objects in the house: a Ouija board or something, or artwork that has occult
significance, these things could invite the demons to remain in spite of being
told to go. Demons are very literalistic,” he explained, “and if you tell them
to go while at the same time welcoming them symbolically, they’ll figure you
don’t really want them to leave.”
“You say she lives in an
apartment?” he asked. “Then it could be that the spirits aren’t attached to her
at all, but to someone else in the building. In that case, when you begin the
exorcism, they simply wander off and never even hear your command to leave.
What you need to do is first to command all the spirits in the building to come
and be present, to listen to everything you say, and only afterward are they
allowed to go wherever Jesus sends them.” I told him I didn’t like the idea of
summoning all the demons in the building to come a-calling. He offered to email
me a “prayer of cleansing” which would guide me and cover all the necessary
bases.
I paid a second visit to the
apartment and related to the lady all that my friend had shared with me. She
was aware of no unrepented sin in her life, so we
began a search through her place for any item with occult significance. We came
up empty. So I pulled out two copies of the prayer of cleansing and we sat down
and prayed it together, out loud.
The prayer began with a
summons to all demons to be present and not to leave until sent away by Jesus.
It continued with confession of sin and assurance of forgiveness. It went on
for some length reciting Bible verses about God’s love for us and His victory
over Satan through the cross. Finally, in the name of Jesus it commanded the
demons to go and never come back again. When we were finished we looked around,
looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders, and I left.
The ghosts never appeared again.
My third experience with an
exorcism was five years later at a neighboring church which was widely rumored
to be haunted. The congregation had undergone quite a bit of internal strife,
had recently called a new pastor, and wanted to do something about the ghost
before he arrived. A friend of mine who had been providing music for the church
invited me to meet with the elders and discuss their options.
We met in the sanctuary with
the elders relating their experiences with the ghost. It would appear as a man
walking the halls at night and turning light switches on or off. Many members
of the church had seen it. Their method of dealing with it was to instruct
everyone to ignore it, not to engage it, but to act as if it weren’t there. It
manifested particularly in a room where the choir robes were stored. Years
earlier a man in the congregation was discovered to have molested several
children in the room. (That, and similar cases, have caused me to think of demonization as a kind of spiritual infection of a psychic
trauma, analogous to bacterial infection in a physical wound.)
I asked the elders if they’d
rather continue to co-exist with the demon or get rid of it. They agreed they
wanted it gone. I distributed copies of the cleansing prayer to each of them,
we went to the choir room, and we prayed it out loud in unison. The ghost was
never seen again.
Here’s a copy of the prayer I
had received from my friend. There’s nothing “magic” about using this
particular prayer, of course, but it does cover all the bases so that demons
cannot remain. Any believer in Jesus can use it, but it would be very dangerous
to use if you are not a Christian (see Acts
PRAYER OF CLE
In the name of my Lord and
Savior Jesus Christ I command that any demons associated with this place be
present during this cleansing in all their parts. I Insist
that each demon must listen to what I have to say. Each demon must listen to
every word and must not be shielded from any of it. No demon may leave until it
is commanded to leave at the conclusion of this cleansing. It can go only into
the abyss or wherever the Lord Jesus allows. No demon can return to this place
or this person ever.
Jesus Christ, the Son of God,
is my Savior. God’s holy Word says: He who dwells in the shelter of the Most
High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the LORD, “He is my
refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust. Surely he will save you from
the fowler’s snare and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with his
feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness will be
your shield and rampart. You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow
that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the
plague that destroys at
I stand against every enemy in
the infinite strength of almighty God, just as David stood against Goliath. I
say with him, “Come here, and I’ll give your flesh to the birds of the air and
the beasts of the field!” So, demons, I say with the confidence of David: “You
come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the
name of the LORD Almighty, the God of the armies of
“Being found in appearance as
a man, Jesus humbled himself and became obedient to death--even death on a
cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name
that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee must bow, in
heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus
Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:8-11).
“No one is like you, O LORD;
you are great, and your name is mighty in power” (Jeremiah 10:6).
“I have made the Most High my
dwelling--even the LORD, who is my refuge--therefore no harm will befall me, no
disaster will come near my tent. For he will command his angels concerning me
to guard me in all my ways; they will lift me up in their hands, so that I will
not strike my foot against a stone. I will tread upon the lion and the cobra; I
will trample the great lion and the serpent. ‘Because he loves me,’ says the
LORD, ‘I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name. He will call upon me, and I will answer him; I will be with her in
trouble, I will deliver her and honor her’” (Psalm 91).
“As for me and my household,
we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15)
“Jesus was put to death in the
body but made alive by the Spirit, through whom also he went and preached to
the spirits in prison who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the
days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in
all, were saved through water, and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves
you also--not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a good
conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who
has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand--with angels, authorities and
powers in submission to him” (1 Peter 3:18-22).
Jesus said, “If I drive out demons by the Spirit of
God, then the
“If God is
for us, who can be against us? He
who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all--how will he not
also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge
against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that
condemns? Christ Jesus, who died--more than that, who
was raised to life--is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or
persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it
is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as
sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than
conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor
life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any
powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be
able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans
“Jesus has disarmed the powers
and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by
the cross” (Colossians
I stand in the power and
authority of Almighty God, through Jesus I am his child. Covered by the blood
he shed for me on
Amen! Thank you, Jesus!