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!