Derek Prince - Casting Out Demons Was a Major Part of Jesus' Ministry
This is an excerpt from: Basics of Deliverance: How to Identify The Enemy
All right. Let's look at one other picture of the ministry of Jesus which is parallel, in fact it describes the same incidents in Luke 4 verses 40-41. That's the same part of Jesus' ministry that's described in Mark 1. Luke 4:40-41: Now when the sun was setting all those who had anyone sick with various diseases brought them to him. And he laid his hands on every one of them and healed them. And demons also came out of many crying out We don't need to read more. See, the ministries of healing and deliverance were interwoven. They came because they were sick but in many cases their cure demanded the expelling of evil spirits. And notice Jesus laid His hands on every one of them. There used to be a Pentecostal tradition that it's unscriptural to lay your hands on somebody who has an evil spirit. If that is so, then Jesus was unscriptural. And I'd rather follow His pattern than a tradition.
Now, let's look on in Luke just to one other chapter, Luke 13. We find the woman who was bent double in Luke 13 verses 11-16. Another incident in another synagogue later on. Behold there was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years and was bent over and could in no way raise herself up. Now notice this was caused by a spirit of infirmity an evil spirit that had doubled her body over so that she couldn't straighten herself up. When Jesus saw her he called her to him and said to her: Woman, you are loosed from your infirmity.
Notice the word loosed indicates binding. He said that in faith nothing had changed, notice that. And he laid his hands on her She had a spirit of infirmity but he laid his hands on her. and immediately she was made straight and glorified God. The ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath: There are six days on which men ought to work, therefore come and be healed on them and not on the Sabbath day. The Lord then said: Hypocrite. Does not each one of you on the Sabbath loose his ox or his donkey and lead it away to water? So ought not this woman being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound think of it, for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath? She was a believing woman. She was a Jewess, she was a member of the synagoque. She had this terrible physical problem; her back was bent over. It was not primarily a physical problem. It was caused by a spirit of infirmity. And the moment the spirit of infirmity left her, she straightened up.
Now that demands discernment, but I am simply pointing out that some problems we would classify as physical are actually caused by evil spirits. Jesus also dealt with dumbness, deafness and blindness as being caused by evil spirits. And in many cases His ministry to heal the people was to deliver them from the spirits that caused their dumbness, their deafness and their blindness. Now without going into details I have to say I have seen parallel instances in my own ministry in each of those areas. Then we read on just a little further in Luke 13 verses 31-32. This is the last of our glimpses of the ministry of Jesus. On that very same day some Pharisees came saying to him: Get out and depart from here, for Herod wants to kill you. And he said to them: Go tell that fox that's Herod: Behold I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow the third day I shall be perfected. That's a Hebraism.
Today, tomorrow and the third day means from now on until the job is finished. So he said: I'm going to be doing two things casting out demons and performing cures. That's how He started, that's how He continued, and that's how He ended. His whole ministry from beginning to end included in it as a major part probably one third of His time in healing the sick and casting out demons. And the two were so intertwined that it was really impossible to distinguish between them.