Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. -- 1John 3:8 (ESV)
And if I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore they will be your judges. -- Matthew 12:27 (ESV)
But if it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. -- Luke 11:20 (ESV)
The first verse states that Christ came to destroy the works of the devil. This is of course through His salvation by defeating death and the grave. The Matthew verse is Jesus saying He cast out demons and the Luke verse is the same. There is absolute no commission for us in these verses. There is no mention of any power we have been given to overthrow the kingdom of darkness and certainly no mention of healing or deliverance. This is all NAR code-speak without a shred of biblical basis. The bible says to resist the devil and he will flee. I know, not as sexy.
"We speak things into existence: God spoke the worlds into existence (Gen. 1 & 2). We are made in His image, and we also create as we speak (Heb. 11:3; Prov. 18:21; Mark 11:23, 24), with our goal being to speak the things God has spoken to us.
As imitators of Christ, we can say: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed" (Luke 4:18)." -- Mark Virkler
Wow. First of all, we do not speak things into existence. The bible is clear that this is a power God alone possesses. Hebrews 11 reiterates that God has this power, not man. Mark 11 and Proverbs 18 are favorite verses to twist from the word faith crowd and in no way suggest we have the power of creation. If this wasn't brazenly arrogant enough, Virkler triples down by claiming the moment Christ revealed Himself as his own. Again, wow. Now he reviews errors we need to avoid.
"Error 1: To reject, condemn, attack and call people heretics when they disagree with us. We choose blessing rather than cursing (James 3:10). We respect those who disagree without becoming disagreeable. By choosing this, we obey Christ's command to show honor (1 Pet. 2:17, 3:9), and prove to the world we are His children, in that we love one another (John 13:35). Maintaining honor and love are some of the weightier issues Jesus spoke of in Matthew 23:23 and Luke 11:42." -- Mark Virkler
