^{May 15, 2025}

Do Christians Need to be DELIVERED From Demons?

Inside This Episode

Do demons really exist – and if they do, what power do they hold over our lives? In recent years, there’s been an explosion in the number of ministers claiming to have the special ability to free Christians from demonic influence and even heal sickness caused by spiritual warfare. In this episode, Ken Fish, a leader in deliverance ministry, shares his views on the occult, spiritual warfare, and the gift he believes God’s given him to free people from demons. 

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Transcript

Eric Huffman: Do demons really exist? And if they do, what power do they hold over our lives? In recent years, I've noticed an explosion in the number of ministers claiming to have this special power to free people from demonic influence, and even heal sickness caused by spiritual warfare.

Today, Ken Fish, a leader in this global movement, shares some of his views on the occult, spiritual warfare, and the power that he believes God has given him to free people from demons.

Hey there, and welcome to the show. Before we get into it, I wanted to share one important note with you. While I do believe firmly in spiritual warfare and demonic influence in our lives, some of the comments made in this interview don't reflect my personal beliefs about how the Bible instructs us to fight against spiritual forces of darkness.

This interview is part one in a series where we're going to be exploring the dark world of the demonic. Throughout this series, I'll be sharing some of my own beliefs and my own experiences as well.

So, here we go. Let's jump right in.

Ken Fish, thanks for joining us on Maybe God. So glad to have you here. I'd love to start with just a little bit of background for folks that might not be familiar with you and just how you got into this line of ministry and how you became known as a kind of expert in the field of deliverance and spiritual warfare.

Ken Fish: Well, to borrow a line from Eugene Peterson, I guess it was a long obedience in the same direction. It started more than 40 years ago. I was an undergraduate at my university. I was doing something very dangerous. I was reading the Bible.

Eric Huffman: I imagine.

Ken Fish: As I was reading it, I was noticing that there were many stories of healing and deliverance. I always kind of knew that, but I'd never really paid attention to it in my upbringing and the way I had been taught Christianity, because the Christianity I had been taught was, I would say, more focused on moral matters than the works of Jesus.

Anyway, I was reading the Bible, and I started praying a fairly consistent prayer, and it became an everyday prayer. God, why do I not see these things going on today around me? I wasn't so much asking for me to do it as much as I just wanted to know why nobody was doing it.

I knew people who believed in these things, but nobody that I knew had ever seen anything like them, although there were a couple stories in my family, not in my generation, but a couple generations back, of people who had had miraculous healings.

And so I became particularly interested, for reasons that I still couldn't tell you today, in the stories of demonic encounters, deliverance from the ministry of Jesus. There's no deliverance in the Old Testament, and I think it's because there was no blood of Christ yet. Therefore, there was just no solution to the problem of demons. They knew about them. They're mentioned in various passages, but they didn't know what to do about them.

But I started asking about all of this, and it was somewhat driven, maybe, by the environment I was in, which was highly secularized, not open to the supernatural at all. And there was a complete dismissal of the idea of the demonic. "This was absurd. Nobody believes this way. These are ancient ideas from another time. They're medieval. People who believe this are uneducated, uncouth fools," things like this.

I don't know that anybody actually ever said it with those words, but for sure that was in the air and the water. And so I embarked on a long journey of prayer about this. "Lord, why don't I see this?" I would pray through these passages and these stories, literally reciting the lines and saying, "God, where is this today?"

And I knew the cessationist argument that where there are prophecies, they will cease, and all that coming out of 1 Corinthians 13 but it just never seemed to make sense to me contextually. It just didn't jive, because it was very clear to me from the context there, this is talking about the age to come. When the perfect comes, then the imperfect will be done away with. So why do we not see this?

Then I did something even perhaps more dangerous. I started reading the accounts of the church fathers, and many, many of the church fathers actually recount accounts of deliverance. And so now I had a real problem because we take these guys as worthy of listening to for purposes of establishing foundational doctrines, like say the Trinity or the virgin birth. So why wouldn't we take their accounts of demons being driven out? Why would we not take those seriously? And so that just intensified my prayer.

Eric Huffman: Did you immediately feel a call to that kind of ministry in your own right, or was it just more of an interest at that point?

Ken Fish: At that point it was interest. But I certainly was interested in seeing something supernatural. Kind of anything. When I was a boy, my grandparents used to read the Bible with me after our family meal, and we would talk about the Bible around the table. And I can remember even back then, maybe five years old, six years old, whether it was David and Goliath, whether it was Elijah calling down fire from heaven, whether it was Jesus casting demons out of people or healing them, whatever, I remember praying and saying, "God, I want to do all this stuff. I want that."

Eric Huffman: The supernatural sort of signs and wonders?

Ken Fish: Yeah. That side of the faith. And again, it wasn't really practiced in my family. We did have a few stories of miraculous healings kind of in the background of who we were, but it was not something that was being actively practiced. But I do remember as a boy praying that. So now here I am, and it's in the range of 15, 17 years later, and I'm back at it reading the Bible, and I'm like, "God, where is this? Where is this?"

Anyway, one day a lady at my church, the church that I attended, I didn't lead it, this woman approaches me and she has a brown paper bag filled with cassette tapes. Now this is an ancient technology that may not be known to your listeners.

Eric Huffman: The days of old.

Ken Fish: It's like starting fire with sticks, you know that. But anyway, she approached me with this bag and she said, "I was praying this morning and I felt impressed of the Lord that you might need these." And in the bag were a bunch of tapes by John Wimber. And she'd gone to a meeting that he had led in New York City. She'd bought these materials, she'd consumed them, and then she'd pass them on to me.

So I used my Sony Walkman, another ancient technology to decode the cassettes. I was going to say the golden plates of Neffy, but some might not get the joke. Anyway, this just like inflamed all of that. And I can remember praying multiple times while walking and listening while kneeling and praying, "God, if this is real, I have to have this. I have to have this. If this man is telling the truth, I have to have this."

So eventually I went to California where I lived, I was a student in another state and I took my mother, we went to a service and she had a miraculous healing in front of my eyes. And with that, I was all in. I was like, "Okay, you know, I'm pushing all the chips into the center of the table."

I'm leaving a few pieces of the story out for brevity. But anyway, bottom line, I ended up enrolling at Fuller Seminary. God had spoken to me when I was a sophomore in college, unambiguously, I had a three-day open vision in which he told me to go to seminary.

Anyway, I knew I was supposed to go to seminary, but I have to say, when I got that vision, I didn't know what a seminary was. So I had to figure that out. And then I had to figure out, "Okay, what seminary, where?" And I'd been accepted to a couple of them.

Anyway, I ended up going to Fuller, which in those days was a reasonably interesting place to be because this man, John Wimber, was an adjunct faculty member and was teaching a course called Signs, Wonders, and Church Growth. I took the course and then I later became a teaching assistant in it. I taught until basically John was asked to leave the seminary because the theological faculty did not appreciate his perspective on things like healing and deliverance.

Eric Huffman: Wow. Just to jump ahead a little, give our audience and folks that, again, aren't familiar with your work, some sense of scope for your ministry today. What do you spend your days doing and where does it take you in the world?

Ken Fish: Today, Orbis Ministries is an international ministry. I've never preached in Antarctica, but I've been on all the other six continents multiple times. Last year, I was on all continents, at least twice, some of them more than twice. So I'm out of the country.

I mean, I go to like Frankfurt or London or Amman or Cairo, the way people in Houston might go to-

Eric Huffman: The Woodlands or something.

Ken Fish: Chicago. Yeah, the Woodlands, sure. It's my world. And I do preach around the United States as well. I want to pay attention to my own home country. Our core message is the Kingdom of God, which was Jesus' core message.

When I was a boy, the way that was interpreted from pulpits was get saved and go to heaven. But that's actually not what the Kingdom of God is about. It's about God breaking into our world in a dynamic way, a tangible way, a measurable way that includes healing and deliverance. So that's my core message. I mean, I obviously have many messages on it, I have many things to say, but in a nutshell, that's what the Kingdom of God is about.

And that's what John the Baptist said was about to happen. And that's what Jesus said was happening. If you look in the New Testament after Jesus' ascension, the message of the apostles was about the Kingdom of God. So I mean, it's a very important core message. And then we teach on healing. We teach on deliverance. We teach on prophecy. We teach on miracles. We teach on a lot of things—church structure and governance. There's a lot of things I teach on.

But anyway, from the realm of the supernatural, I grew over time by working alongside of John Wimber in these gifts. Even to this day, I don't think I'm anywhere near as good as he was, but I guess I'm good enough that the Lord's feeding me and sending me everywhere to do it. So even if I'm not all the way to Yoda level, I guess I'm good enough to be a Jedi knight.

Eric Huffman: The Christian equivalent of a Jedi knight. I like it. All right. Well, if anybody's watching and listening and wants more from Ken, as you hear our interview today, this is the book that I've read most recently of yours, On the Road with the Holy Spirit.

It's sort of a decades-long journal or diary that you've kept and you've shared with the world about all the different things you've done and seen by the power of the Holy Spirit over the years. I really was fascinated by the book, and so I encourage everybody to pick it up. That's not why you're here to sell a book, but I just wanted to make sure everybody knows that.

And of course, a lot of your talks and teachings are available on YouTube and elsewhere online. So you can just Google Ken Fish or Orbis Ministries.

Let's break it down a little bit. What exactly is this deliverance you keep speaking of? I'm pretty acquainted. As a pastor, I'm pretty well aware, but for many others, I'm sure a definition is in order. What are we talking about when we talk about deliverance ministry?

Ken Fish: Well, at the simplest level, demons are evil spirits, and deliverance is to expel them, to drive them out. The Greek word is ekballo, and it means literally to thrust them out from where they live. So it was an essential core part of Jesus's ministry, and it appears to have been a part of the apostles' ministry, and as I mentioned, even the church fathers record it.

I think there's a lot of confusion around this notion of demons because for many people, they think a demon is some kind of a psychological aberration. Maybe it ought to be in the DSM-5 or something. The way people think about that, I'm going to use a term that's meant to be humorous or at least ironic. Many people believe in what I might term New York Times demons.

People say, what in the world is a New York Times demon? Well, think of someone who's a probably undeniably bad person. Let's say Jeffrey Epstein. He's a known kind of serial offender. He ended up committing suicide after his arrest.

Eric Huffman: Apparently.

Ken Fish: Apparently, yeah. I mean, he could have been knocked off. I know that line of reasoning. But anyway, he's not with us anymore. Jeffrey Epstein, people might say, well, he had a New York Times demon in my nomenclature. If he just had a little more Prozac, if he had a little more counseling, he would have come to terms with all the things that assailed him internally, and he would have come to peace with himself, and things might have ended differently.

And I'm not saying that sometimes that isn't true of people, but when the Bible talks about demons, it is definitely not talking about New York Times demons. It is talking about, and I'm going to use some specific language from the field of philosophy, it is talking about third-party ontological beings, meaning they have a ground of being in and of themselves.

It doesn't reside in the consciousness or the psyche or the fears and phobias and neuroses of the individual. It exists independent of the host that it is inhabiting, and it causes that host to do things that, depending on how yielded to it the host is, either wouldn't do on its own, his or her own, or maybe would even resist doing, but the demon is persuasive enough, powerful enough, compelling enough, something enough.

And demons do have power, spiritual power. Some people say theologically demons are power, so they are beings. They are not visible, typically, unless you're functioning in discerning of spirits, in which case in that moment you might actually see them, but generally they're not visible. You can't usually smell them or taste them or feel them, although, again, if the gift of discerning of spirits is functioning, you might actually experience them in each of the dimensions I just named additionally. And they cause people to trend and to perform evil things. And so they can create a tremendous battle inside the soul of a human being who maybe doesn't want to be all of that.

Eric Huffman: Where do we believe these demons come from? What's their origin story?

Ken Fish: Well, my personal belief, based on the book of Jude and the book of 2 Peter, is that demons are evil spirits, which means they were angelic spirits once upon a time, and when Satan rebelled against God in eons gone, however far back that was, when Satan rebelled against God, they fell with him and are in rebellion against God.

Most people would say that Satan took a third of the angels with him. That's based on a particular reading of a passage in the book of Revelation. It might not be a third, but it's enough for sure.

Eric Huffman: So the demons we're talking about are the fallen angels themselves?

Ken Fish: That's my belief. Now, I will say that there is a competing theory, and it's advocated by many people, but nearly all of them are basing what they believe on the work of a man named Mike Heiser or Michael Heiser. He believes that demons are the disembodied spirits of the Nephilim who were killed in the flood. I don't hold that view. I'm aware of it.

I mean, at the end of the day, from the standpoint of what we do in deliverance, I don't think it much matters which theory is correct. But part of why I don't hold Heiser's view is he's drawing very heavily on the Enochian traditions out of the book of 1 Enoch, which is not even Apocrypha, it's Pseudepigrapha, which means kind of A-level is the canon of Scripture, B-level is the Apocrypha, and C-level is down here. It's the Pseudepigrapha.

I don't think we need to be building anything on the book of 1 Enoch, but some people are really fascinated with it, and they kind of allow it to filter in. So do what you want with it.

Eric Huffman: Yeah, it's big these days. That sort of theory, I hear it a lot, and others that are watching probably have as well. We won't get too deep in the weeds there, just because, as you said, it's not essential doctrine. We're talking theories, and what really matters is what's in front of us, and this demonic activity you've detected and dealt with over the years.

You've said that there has been an explosion in recent years, in the last decade or so, of deliverance ministries. What are you seeing as the reason why? What do you attribute that to?

Ken Fish: Well, there's probably a couple things and they're interrelated. One is, I personally believe we are approaching the end of time, the second coming of Christ. Now, I can't put a year on it, but I've said many times publicly, personally, I will be shocked if the year 2100 ever comes about.

So we may be in that kind of timeframe. I could also be wrong about that, and I know it, but it's one of the reasons I won't be pinned down to a year, because Jesus said, no man knows the day or the hour, and so it'd be a fool's errand to try to nail that down. But there are so many things that are going on that fit the prophetic time clock that's elaborated in Scripture that it seems quite probable to me. So that's part of the reason.

But the other reason, but it's related to the first reason, is there is a rising tide of evil in the world. And Jesus said, "As it was in the days of Noah, so will it also be in the days of the coming of the Son of Man." In the days of Noah, there was violence in the earth, and the Lord repented that He had made mankind upon the earth for the thought of mankind was only evil all the time.

You look at just the level of violence, you can look at the conflict in the Middle East, you can look at what's happening right now with between India and Pakistan, and God forbid that escalates into a nuclear exchange, but potentially it could. They're both nuclear powers. You look at what we have seen through the 20th century of just the bloodshed of communism, fascism, it just sort of goes on and on.

In addition to that, there's been a departure in the West, which was historically... I mean, I can remember as a boy, the West was Christian, and people went to church. When I was a boy, and you and I look to be approximately the same age, I don't know how old you are, but we're in the same range anyway. When I was a boy, 90% of America was either in church or synagogue on Sunday, or if they were Jewish, synagogue, then they would have been there on Saturday. But they were worshiping, I'll just say the Judeo-Christian God and following the Judeo-Christian tradition.

You couldn't find a yoga studio. There was no mosques to speak of, maybe New York City had one possibly, but I mean, they just weren't around. This was not what America was. And that was also true of Europe, East or West.

Now in Eastern Europe, it was all under the communist regime, and so basically that was more atheist, and they tried to stamp it out, but there still remained a root of faith in even the East Bloc countries. In the Western countries, I mean, this was the bastions of Christendom. I mean, the Vatican is in Rome, and the Archbishop of Canterbury is in Canterbury, England, and sort of on it goes.

Anyway, all of that began shifting in the 50s, and it accelerated in the 60s, and there are cultural reasons for it. But anyway, we get the sexual revolution, we get the drug revolution, and suddenly everything is changing, and people begin secularizing. And today, in Europe, the number of people who have fallen away from the faith, just counting the living, not the generations that have passed in the last two generations, is in the range of 600 million people have departed from the faith.

The Scripture even says that the man of lawlessness will not appear until the great falling away happens. Well, if this ain't it, we've never seen it.

In America, so I said 90 percent of people were in church in my boyhood, my childhood. Today in America, in what's left of the Bible belt, maybe 25 percent of people are in church. But I live in Los Angeles County, Los Angeles, California, and on any given Sunday, something below three percent of our population is in church. People just do not go to church. They abandoned the faith.

Now, some still believe in God, but they practice their faith very irregularly, and they think it's sort of me-

Eric Huffman: Half-hazard.

Ken Fish: Yeah, half-hazard is a really good way to put it. I say it more colloquially. But anyway, the net effect is that there is a rising tide of evil. People are behaving in ways that they previously would have never done. And the result of that, the net effect of that, is what were once Christian lands have opened the doors for all kinds of demonic incursion, whether through immorality, whether through the use of drugs, whether through violence. And we could just keep going.

There's a whole bunch of other things. I mean, we've got the occult that has resurfaced. When I was a kid, I mean, I remember my mom had a friend who gave me an Ouija board. That was a bit unusual. Didn't really know what to do with it. Didn't want to know what to do with it. But nobody was talking about the occult. Today the occult is everywhere.

We've got all kinds of other religious traditions that are out there, many gods, not unlike what we see in ancient Rome and in the time of Jesus, also what we see in the time of the departure of Israel from the worship of Yahweh. So our times actually look very similar to those. They're more technological. But I think all of this collectively has opened doors for demons to be brought in, whereas maybe previously they'd been driven out.

Eric Huffman: Interesting. Yeah, we could probably talk another hour about that because I think there's back and forth to be had there. I think the number of Christians worldwide is greater than I think it's ever been as Africa continues to be evangelized and Asia. And so there's signs of hope, I guess, on the one hand. But I do hear what you're saying. There do seem to be some novel and explicit examples of the occult and the darkness breaking through.

It seems like when I go to the movies, every single trailer for upcoming films is demonic or Christian. Those are the two options. You can have a demonic occult film or you can have a Jesus… The Chosen film these days. But let's keep moving.

I want to hear a little bit of your explanation. I find this pretty fascinating and helpful. Your explanation of how the structure of the demonic realm works in terms of kind of military rank and the different regions and countries and things like that, because I just think that helps break it down to help people to see how this actually functions.

Ken Fish: Well, you know, there was a theologian I read, and I still have his books, although they're out of print now. So to get a copy, you're going to pay up if you want to go get one. There's a theologian named James Kallas. It's spelled the same way as the city of Dallas, north of you, but he has a K as his first letter rather than a D. James Kallas.

So he was a Lutheran man, but he wrote a book called The Satanward View. The premise of this book is that most Christians have been taught to read the Bible with a view towards God's activity. But they've really kind of downplayed and marginalized the many, many passages, including in Paul's letters, where Satan and demons are mentioned. Peter is also fairly focused on this.

So the book kind of seeks to help us see that actually there is a Godward view and there's a Satanward view. In a nutshell, there's the book.

And so I read this book and I started looking at all these passages and I realized, by golly, he's right. You can find this quite readily in the writings of Paul and Peter. Your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.

Of course, the standard preacher's line in my childhood would have been, yes, but he's a chained lion. Well, Peter didn't seem to think so, actually. He says, "Be sober, be vigilant, be alert. This guy is prowling around." And he doesn't say, Don't worry about it because he is a chained lion. He says, he might devour you. That's really the implied. Well, that's interesting.

Paul says, we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against thrones, against principalities, against rulers of this present darkness in the heavenly realms. So Paul has this view and he has other passages. He's quite very clear about it in both Colossians and Galatians. But anyway, I would get too wide a field if I start making this into a Bible school. Bottom line, that's in the Bible.

That point of view really awakened me to the way things work. And what I have seen in practice is there is something very analogous to military order in the demonic world. So Satan is the ruler of the demonic kingdom. He's called the prince of the power of the air.

Biblically, when we see the word prince, this is not something that we think. We think kings are higher than princes. But generally, in biblical thought, and this occurs in Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14 as well, princes are demonic entities that are over earthly kings and they influence and incite them to certain kinds of activities.

So the prince of the power of the air. All right. And underneath Satan, there seems to be some sort of a demonic council, but it's not particularly well elaborated upon in scripture. You need to move to some of the secondary literature if you're going to delve into that, should you want to do it.

But then we come to thrones. Now, the thrones imply royalty of some kind. The thrones are what I call world spirits. They have dominion over the entire earth. So think of an empire. This isn't just the throne of some petty king. And then we have dominions. These are regional spirits. And how big that region might be could be fairly substantial. Maybe a portion of a continent as an example.

But anyway, so below thrones, we get dominions and then we get rulers. Now, rulers are kind of like officers in an army of whatever rank they might be. If you want to think of it this way, when I was a boy, I grew up watching John Wayne movies like The Sands of Iwo Jima.

So sergeants usually had a bunch of privates and corporals underneath them. Rulers might be akin to sergeants, but they might actually be officer level. They might not just be NCOs. Then below them are the authorities. So rulers are over authorities. And authorities are like your rank-and-file demons that you run into every day. Things like, I don't know, anger, rage, lust, addiction, alcoholism, whatever, things like that.

Eric Huffman: Is it fair to say then that in this understanding, certain people in certain places, like depending on where you live, what land you call home, you're more susceptible to certain demonic activity than in other places?

Ken Fish: Yeah. Probably. And worse than that, you might not recognize it as problematic because you're habituated to it. You live under that economy, that particular demonic, you know, dominion or ruler. And you become so accustomed to that that you think it's normal. And it is normal for you, but it's not God's normal.

One of the ways you can recognize that this is so is get on an airplane and go to some other country. And when you get there, you look around and you're like, "Man, this is really different." I remember the first time I went to Taiwan. Now Taiwan is a very Western nation. They use a 10-volt power. Their water is potable.

You don't need to worry about drinking it. You don't need to bring a power adapter when you go to Taiwan. Use the one you're used to. You can drink the water there. Yes, they speak Chinese, but it's not... I mean, everything's double signed. It's in English too. So it's kinda like if you went into... I don't know. Does Houston have a Chinatown?

Eric Huffman: Oh, yeah. Chinatown has a Houston.

Ken Fish: All right. So if you went to Chinatown or, you know, we have one in LA, New York's got one, Chicago, so forth, it would be like you went to Chinatown except the whole country is Chinatown. Yeah, many people don't speak English, but, you know, it's a high-tech hub, a huge percentage. I don't know now what it is, but a very high percentage of the silicon wafers that we use in all of modern technology.

Silicon Valley is linked to everything that goes on in Taiwan. I've been in the presence of CEOs of Taiwan Semiconductor, just to name one really prominent company. But there's a number of them like that. So they function like they're us. But they're not.

When you go into Taiwan and you go down the equivalent of Park Avenue and there is a street in Central Taipei where they actually have plants planted in the center median just like on Park Avenue in New York City, you will see about every three meters or so, about roughly every 10 feet, some kind of a throne of an altar, some kind of a sacrificial site, some place to burn incense or lay down flowers or fruit or meats or whatever to the various gods of Taiwan.

In addition to that, if you say go into a neighborhood, you'll find that the gods that are being worshiped in those neighborhoods in a high rise building might be a tenement, could be a five-star, you know, where only the richest of the rich went go.

I led a meeting in one of these higher end buildings, and one of the people in attendance was Chiang Kai-shek's widow. I mean, we're talking top of the cream here. Right? You know, top of the pile. But, I mean, just outside the gate, when you walked in, boom, here was something that was an altar that was there for the god of that building.

And if they're just that little tiny territory well, not that tiny, but, I mean, you know, it wasn't the whole city. It wasn't the whole country. It was just that city block maybe or that building itself. Yeah. That's how they function. And you look there and you go, "Wow. We don't do this in The United States, at least not yet." And so you realize this is really different. These people are idolatrous.

Eric Huffman: I would even say in certain other cities in the United States even that there do seem to be certain sins or predispositions, temptations that fall upon certain cities more than others. I mean, there are certain cities that are known for sex sins and sex trafficking and other cities that are known for atheism or a tendency toward totalitarian kind of communism or something. I don't know.

There do seem to be certain regional influences, whether they're visible, like in Taiwan or not. And I guess the question about all of this, I mean, as people are hearing this, I can only imagine people are thinking if they're really listening, this is terrifying. We're talking about a roaring lion with an army of other lions that are invisible most of the time that are all around us and threatening us. How trepidatious and afraid should we be about this stuff, Ken?

Ken Fish: I live in zero fear. First of all, the scripture speaks of the armor of God, which we are given. We're commanded to put it on. Now, if you're not wearing your armor, it's like being a soldier going into battle. I mean, that is what armor is for.

And even in modern warfare... my daughter is an army ranger. She knows what body armor is. She knows what it is to put on her Kevlar helmet. She knows what it is to... She doesn't carry a sword anymore. She would be carrying probably an M4 or maybe a grenade launcher on that or, you know, whatever.

But the point is, we understand what armaments are. And the scripture says, you are to put on the full armor of God, not just some of it, not the parts that appeal to you, but all of it, that you may be able to withstand the devil's schemes. So I spend zero time worrying about that and having fear.

I have occasionally had legitimate spiritual warfare and maybe on some level just with the way my time gets sucked up. I continue to have an ongoing vector of it with attacks on my time. But I don't wander around thinking the devil's gonna devour me, devour my wife, devour my children.

There have been times where, as I say, maybe there's been an attack or something, but we’ve driven it off. We’ve defeated that attack. And I think that's where the Lord wants us to live. We live on a battlefield, but we also live in victory.

Eric Huffman: Amen.

Ken Fish: So fear should not be our companion.

Eric Huffman: I think you're speaking especially about Christians that are suited up with the armor of God. But in terms of unbelievers and even unprepared believers, what are some of the ways or openings that we provide to some demonic activity in your experience? What sorts of things do we dabble in, or do you see people getting into that that provide those sort of portals or openings?

Ken Fish: Well, again, many times, demons will be drawn to specific expressions of sin. There's different ways that sin can come. Sin's a generic concept in American Christianity. There is sin where I didn't know it was wrong when I did it. That doesn't mean that you are exempt from its effects. It just means you didn't know it was wrong when you did it.

A really good example of that might be, you know, take a typical non-holy or non-committed Christian or a non-believer. Well, they start dating someone, and, of course, they're going to go to bed with them. Of course, they are. Because we live in a world now post the sexual revolution where that's what you do and no one even questions it. So that might be an open door.

Maybe if you're in a state where marijuana has been legalized, you begin consuming cannabis gummies. That might be an open doorway. Maybe you learn to drink and you kinda like your sauce, whether it's wine or harder things. That might be an open doorway.

By the way, I'm not by that saying you should never drink at all, but the scripture does say be not drunk with wine wherein is excess. So you don't wanna drink to the point of excess to where you are inebriated. But, you know, if you like your margarita with your Tex-Mex food, I think that's okay. I mean, Jesus drank wine at the Last Supper.

Anyway, what are some other things? Well, you might have been raised in a home where grandma was what we would term a necromancer or a spiritualist. She called for spirits. Maybe she even imparted this gift to you before she died. Or maybe you did play with an Ouija board when you were little. I mean, there are a number of things that can be open doors. I'm giving a few examples, but I could give many more.

Eric Huffman: You mentioned yoga earlier as one opening, and I've heard that talked about a lot lately. Could you share a little bit more about your thoughts on yoga?

Ken Fish: Yeah. Yoga is highly controversial, and I'm aware that it's highly controversial. Up on my shelf right up there, I have a book with a silk cover on the ins and outs of yoga. I've got another one up here written by a sociologist who, he's dead now, but he used to teach at the University of Chicago. It's about this thick, and it's on yoga.

To cut to the chase, yoga is an expression of Hinduism. It is designed from the ground up to be the worship of Hindu gods, most particularly the goddess Shiva, S-H-I-V-A, who is one of the three highest gods in the Hindu trinity. But there are others that kinda pile on, and so depending on what mantra you're using and what style of yoga you're using, possibly you're bringing in some others. But you are engaging in Hindu worship.

Now the scripture is 100% clear. "Hear, Oo Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, in Him only shall you serve." So you are not allowed to serve or put your body into a worship posture that is consistent with Hindu worship because Hinduism and Christianity are incompatible. Christianity is monotheistic. It derives from the Jewish tradition. Jesus taught us to call what the Jews the name of God in Jewish, Hebrew is Yahweh.

Jesus said, don't even call Him that. Call Him Father because you've been drawn into that relationship with Him. But the Hindus are polytheists. And according to the charts and the books, again, if you read the Puranas and the Puranas and so on, the Vedas, there are more than 300,000,000 Hindu gods. So we aren't even talking the same religion. And so this idea that all religions are the same, this is just something that somebody made up with no real knowledge and it sounds good and it might work on a political platform somewhere, but it's actually not even true.

Moreover, and this is really important, in Psalm 106, it says, "All of the gods of the nations are demons. So every single god out there is a demonic force masquerading as a God in order to arrogate worship that should only be going to our Father. Period. That's it.

So anyone who's engaging in yoga is violating that commandment to worship only God, and anyone who's engaging in yoga is actually inviting, because of what they're doing with their body, they are actually inviting evil spirits into themselves.

Eric Huffman: I have never once done yoga. It's not because I'm super faithful. It's mostly because I'm lazy. But I have friends that are Christians and claim they can safely do yoga because they just replace whatever names the original yoga honored, in this case, Shiva, as you said, but, with the name of Jesus or the Father. Christians call it holy yoga sometimes-

Ken Fish: I'm aware.

Eric Huffman: ...redirecting or co-opting the practice as a newly Christian one. Is there a problem there still?

Ken Fish: Yes, 100%. I've dealt with many, many people who have had back problems, sciatic problems, knee problems, hip problems. One of the first questions I'll ask them is, have you ever done yoga? I would say maybe not every single one, but nearly all of them end up getting delivered of a Hindu spirit. Kundalini is nearly always there. Shiva is frequently there. And there might be some others depends on the branch of yoga they were doing, what mantras they were given. But they actually have evil spirits that are causing illness or whatever hindrance in their body.

Eric Huffman: That's a good segue. I kinda wanna get into the ins and outs of your deliverance ministries, things that you've seen and experienced because I think people would be amazed and shocked by some of the things that go on at these kinds of gatherings. You write about some of them in the book I mentioned, earlier.

Let's just talk about the things that go on at a deliverance event. Typically, you've got a lot of falling on the ground, sometimes being slain in the spirit. You've got speaking in tongues, obviously being healed, saved from demons. And it's usually in a very, in my experience, dramatic fashion, kind of, the signs and wonders on display for everyone to see sort of as a testimony, I guess. But help me understand the purpose behind the sort of public and dramatic manifestations of the spirits work compared to let's say how my Catholic friends and the Catholic exorcist department want to handle things sort of backroom, you know, privately. What's the purpose of making a spectacle of these things?

Ken Fish: Well, my goal is never to make a spectacle of them, and I am aware that there are deliverance ministers who, shall we say, put on a show. It actually reminds me of the movie Gladiator. You've probably seen that movie where Maximus has been captured after they failed at executing him. And the next thing you see, he's in North Africa somewhere, and he's in a coliseum... not the coliseum, but a coliseum and he's owned by this bag of scum named Proximo.

Maximus, of course, is the best gladiator in the lot because he was a general and was well trained and disciplined. Proxima comes to him after one of his resounding victories in the arena, and he says, "Your problem, Gladiator, is that you kill the people too quickly. You kill your opponents too quickly. Give the people a show." And I think in the deliverance ministry there are many who wanna do that.

Eric Huffman: Are you not entertained kind of?

Ken Fish: Yeah. Are you not entertained? Yeah, exactly. So, there are times where there are very visible manifestations. But let's be clear. There were very visible manifestations in Jesus' ministry as well. In Mark chapter one, He drives a demon out of a man in a synagogue, it appears to be the middle of the worship service, and this man just stands up and starts manifesting. And Jesus says, "Be quiet and come out of him." And it says, "Screaming or shrieking and also throwing him to the ground and shaking him violently, it came out of him." So that was fairly public.

Then we see Mark 9 there's a boy. The disciples have failed with him. And the demon, as it sees Jesus coming, it does what it had always done, which the father recounts in the story. I won't go through the whole account. I mean, I can quote it. But anyway, Jesus is there. This evil spirit sees Jesus, and it throws Him to the ground, and he begins thrashing and foaming at the mouth.

I don't seek to create a show, but I'm aware that demons will manifest in this way many times. So what we do, we may have deliverance sessions that are private where we do them one-to-one in a backroom as your Catholic friends would do and my Catholic friends might do.

But if we're having a meeting where we wanna call people up and we wanna say, look, all of you who have Freemasonry in your background or all of you who have done yoga and you now realize you need to turn away from this and you wanna get free of it, whatever effects it may be having on your body, well, we might have 30, 40, 50, 100,n200, depends on the size of the meeting. 5,000 people come forward, there we have to resort to something that I call mass deliverance.

So we command the demons out of everybody who has come forward after leading them in suitable prayers. And the demons come out en masse, and then you might see people falling to the ground or whatever. It's why I like to have a prayer team along so they can come alongside of these people. And if they're stuck, the demons are, you know, maybe they're gagging, but they're not fully clearing. They can, as it were, midwife the process and assist. But I'm not really interested in the show. I'm interested in freedom.

Eric Huffman: I guess one of the questions I have about it, you mentioned Jesus in the New Testament. It's clear that these occurrences happened, where the demons were dealt with accordingly, and we should be willing to deal with them too. But it seems to me that methodologically, Jesus and the apostles, they never held services or events specifically to deal with the demonic. They were holding sermons or worship services and a demon approached them or someone who loves a demonic, you know, possessed person brought them to the service that was otherwise just about worship or the teaching Jesus was doing. And it wasn't a seeking out of the demonic. The demonic, if anything, picked the fight almost exclusively, I think, if I'm not wrong.

I guess when I see the deliverance ministries at work, it seems like they are the ones picking the fight with the demonic. And I'm not so sure about that. What do you make of that?

Ken Fish: Well, I would look at a couple of passages where it suggests that there were these types of gatherings. One of them is in Mark 4. It says that the crowds were gathered, and He drove out demons from many. Now did Jesus specifically hold a deliverance service? Doesn't say it wasn't. Doesn't say it was. It was probably a healing and a deliverance service, and they sort of flowed back and forth.

There's a comparable kind of dynamic going on in Matthew 9, which again speaks of the crowds, and it's just prior, by the way, to when Jesus sends out the 12 apostles in Matthew 10. It's right at the very end of Mark 9. So remember, when the Bible was written, there are no chapter dividers. There's not even any verses. That gets put in later.

So it's basically saying Jesus saw the crowds, He had compassion on them, and He sent out the 12 apostles. Well, Matthew 10 has a parallel account in Luke 9. And then Luke 9 is followed by Luke 10 where He sends out the 72. So in Luke 9 is about the 12 just as Matthew 10 is, but Luke 10 is about the 72. We don't know who they were, but the church fathers call out maybe 15 of them. But that still leaves more than 60 that we don't quite know exactly who these people were.

Eric Huffman: Got it.

Ken Fish: But his commission is you are to declare the kingdom of God, and when you do it, you are to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, and drive out demons. So they were actually looking, as we might say in military language, to close with and make contact with the enemy and to destroy him.

And then in Mark chapter 16, and I'm aware of the controversy around the ending of Mark, but I don't think it's in the canon of scripture by accident. Jesus says, "These signs will accompany those who believe. First on the list, in my name, they will cast out demons." So I think the deliverance ministry is a legitimate ministry that has largely been either sidelined or maybe even ignored or suppressed in Protestantism for virtually all of Protestantism.

In Catholic circles, it's always been the thing you kinda do in the backroom because we don't wanna have this be a thing. But I will tell you, if you get into, say, crusade type evangelism or, you know, breaking strongholds in seeing massive breakthrough in countries, the kind of crusades where may maybe 50 or 100,000 thousand or if you're Daniel Kolenda, 1M or 2M might come to Christ in a meeting, you are going to be closing and making contact with demon to the star.

Eric Huffman: Sure. 100%. There's no doubt. I think that-

Ken Fish: So I'm-

Eric Huffman: Go ahead.

Ken Fish: No. I was just gonna say, I don't think we want to have demons be always our center point, but at times, that is what you have to go after because it is a reality.

Eric Huffman: Yeah. I'm appreciative of the point that deliverance ministries are mostly needed because the local churches and denominations have completely punted and failed on the point. And if we had a faithful church, deliverance, para church ministry wouldn't be needed. I think we agree on that point. But that's not where we are in this age. Deliverance ministries are needed in some instances because churches are just dropping the ball and not talking about this stuff enough. I totally believe that is the case.

But I think another point of confusion that I have is the extent to which deliverance is needed for Christians. Another trend I see in the New Testament is that the deliverance, in terms of being healed or exercised of demonic possession is almost always, if not always, a person that's not a Christian. Like they're not in yet. Their conversion happens as a result of their deliverance or subsequent to their deliverance. But are there instances of believing Christians being delivered? And if not, then how do we justify deliverance for believers today?

Ken Fish: Let me back up to the Old Testament, and I'm aware there were no Christians in the Old Testament. But I wanna draw on the idea of covenant, because there were covenantal people who I believe were genuinely saved people in the Old Testament. So where do we see examples of it starting there? I'm only gonna give a couple of examples because I'm aware that we have limitations on time.

But I do have a teaching where I take people through 13 different case studies from Scripture. King Saul, he was anointed by the Spirit of God unto ruling the nation, and yet he doesn't obey God. So there we see the sin issue, the disobedience. And it says, "An evil spirit came upon Saul." He doesn't get delivered because it's the old covenant, but he does become demonized.

I don't use the term demon possession. I use demonized, which really is referring to being under the influence of an evil spirit. So Saul is an example of, I would say, a believer, one who doesn't end well, but nevertheless, he was a believer and he becomes demonized.

David, the king who succeeds him, becomes demonized. It says in the book of 1 Chronicles that Satan incited David to number the people. You have to understand this concept of demonization. When I teach a deliverance conference, I specifically get spend one entire session on the Greek term daimonizomai because for many Christians, all they've ever heard is the language of possessed. That word doesn't even occur in scripture, not in the Greek or the Hebrew.

But demonized, which means under the influence of a demon, and depending on the level of control they've given over, they might actually have a fair amount of demonic activity. But this is a very important dividing point, and then I'll come back to my comments on David.

For Christians, they cannot have a demon in their spirit man or their spirit woman because that's where the Holy Spirit is going to dwell at starting at conversion. This is explicitly stated in 2 Corinthians 1 and in Ephesians 1. So there be no demons in the spirit of a Christian. But in a non-Christian, absolutely. And especially someone who's given themselves over to the occult, to witchcraft, things like that.

Eric Huffman: Sure.

Ken Fish: Now, we still have the rest of our soul, which is our will, our emotions, and our mind. Or you could say intellect, but it really the mind has three dimensions to it. The past mind, which is memories, the future mind, which is the imagination, and the current mind, which we might call consciousness. And so evil spirits can definitely afflict Christians in their minds and in their emotions, and under certain conditions, in their will as well.

And then there's the body. Now, the Bible speaks of people in synagogues whom Jesus delivered who had evil spirits that were causing them to have physical maladies. But they were in synagogues. They were covenant people. They were expressing the faith as it being given to them as best they knew how anyway, in that time. So I would put them in the category of believers. They didn't have the full revelation that we have because of Jesus. That's true. But they were practicing the faith as it had been given to them.

Now, back to David. David, it says, Satan incited him. I would say that's demonization of the mind. And you know who else had a similar type of dynamic going is none other than the high priest of Israel. This is found in the book of Zechariah chapter 3. It says that Satan was accusing Zechariah as he was performing his earthly duties.

Zechariah apparent appears to be having a vision or something, and he says, well, you know, give him new clothes and give him a new turban too. And the angel of the Lord is standing there, which is Jesus. It's a preincarnate form of Jesus. So the angel of the Lord is there, but Satan is right there. And so why does he need a new turban? Well, this is the realm of the mind. A turban covers the head.

So, apparently, whatever the issue was, this high priest had something going on with his mental processing. Maybe he had dirty thoughts. Maybe he was prone to vulgarity. I don't know what it was. Doesn't say. But the point is he needed something.

Now let's move into the New Testament. So when we look in the New Testament, the very first case of deliverance occurs in a synagogue. It's a man who was a synagogue goer. Again, I'm gonna say he was a believer according to the standards of the day.

Eric Huffman: Not under the blood of Jesus. As you mentioned earlier, that's sort of the defining- 

Ken Fish: That's the defining thing. But we actually do have some problems. I should probably pull out my Bible here-

Eric Huffman: Sure.

Ken Fish: ...since we're talking about this.

Eric Huffman: Please.

Ken Fish: So now I'm going to 1 Corinthians 5. In that passage... Hang on. My pages are sticking.

Eric Huffman: It's okay.

Ken Fish: 1 Corinthians 5, Paul says this. I'm starting in verse one. "It's actually reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of such a kind as does not even exist among the Gentiles that someone has his father's wife. So it sounds like it's his stepmother, and we're talking about incest. That's what we're talking about. "You have become arrogant, and have not mourned instead so that the one who had done this deed would be removed from your midst. For I on my part, though absent in body, but present in spirit..."

Now we don't know exactly what that means. It sounds like maybe Paul is having some kind of a... he has a prophetic gift where he can look in on what the Corinthians are doing when he's not there. But we also have this kind of language of in the book of 2 Kings when it refers to Gehazi's sin, he goes and he runs after the commander of the Syrian army and Elisha, most Americans say Elisha, Elisha the prophet says, "Did not my spirit go with you, Gehazi, when you ran up to the chariot?"

And so even though Elisha wasn't present, he could see what was going on somewhere else. This is analogous to that, and Paul is using, I think, that language. So I have already judged him who has committed this as though I were present, and in the name of our Lord Jesus when you are assembled, and I with you in spirit, there it is again, with the power of the Lord Jesus, I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.

Paul is clearly speaking of this man as though he is a sinful believer, and he's saying, I'm gonna hand this guy over so Satan can have had him with the idea that he'll be so chastised by what occurs that he will repent of what he is doing, committing incest, uncovering his father's nakedness by sleeping with his father's wife. I'm borrowing that language from Leviticus 18. And with that, presumably, he will turn away, and he will actually still go to heaven. That is unmistakably what's going on in this passage.

So here, actually, under apostolic authority and apostolic correction, we see a believer who is gonna have an evil spirit.

Eric Huffman: Well, yeah. I see a believer that's... I mean, I hear what you're saying. I see a believer that's sinning, that's wrapped up in sin. I guess I would suggest... I mean, brother, you know more than I do on this stuff, but he doesn't call the other believers to cast out the demon that's in the man. He just refuses to stop sleeping with his stepmom. And so he needs to be... you know, it's sort of Matthew 18 as a tax collector or a pagan is. Like, he just needs to be cast out of the communion of the church.

Ken Fish: And he doesn't say that, though. He does say he should have been put out and disciplined. But now he says, I'm turning him over to Satan. That's different from putting him out of the church. I mean, that might be also part of it. But that's not what he says. He says, I'm turning him over to Satan. You gotta follow the language.

Eric Huffman: I see.

Ken Fish: Say what you don't want it to say.

Eric Huffman: No, I see it. The sin itself isn't described as demonic. I mean, I think all sin is in a way, but he's not reported to be under demonic influence or possession or what's the word you used earlier?

Ken Fish: Demonized.

Eric Huffman: Demonized. He's just sleeping with his father's wife. I shouldn't laugh at that. Then it says, I'm gonna hand him over, you know? I guess I see what you're saying. I don't see a clear enough line to get on board with the deliverance of believers. I guess I fall, you can probably tell, I fall more in the ‘deliverance is for unbelievers, deliverance is for the lost’. And when you're in Christ, it's a matter of sanctification.

For me, I think for Christians, deliverance boils down to discipleship and sanctification. And I'm just wondering why we need this added extra plus one thing over here to ensure the salvation that is promised to us by the blood of Christ.

Ken Fish: Well, I'm writing my doctoral dissertation on this, and all I can say again, it's a podcast, we can't go into all the detail, but the church fathers would beg to differ with you because they perform deliverance on many Christians. They're the ones who are the nearest to the time of Jesus. It's an assumption. It might not be right, but I think it's safe to assume they probably were nearer in practice to what maybe we do today because we're 2,000 years away.

Eric Huffman: And I've heard some deliverance ministers say things like, every person, every Christian needs deliverance. Is that where you land on it?

Ken Fish: Maybe not every believer, but many many do. Because here's the thing that I've learned. I wanna give you one other passage as well in just a second.

Eric Huffman: Sure.

Ken Fish: But here's one thing I've learned, that when deliverance is what you need, nothing else will do. Not Bible study, not Bible memory, not taking communion, not more prayer, not whatever, another round of water baptism. Deliverance is the driving out of spirits that should not be there.

I've seen many people, for example, who had been in incestuous situations get delivered of evil spirits that were that entered them through incest. I'll give you an example of that, and then I'll look at this passage quickly.

There was a woman who came to me in another city, not Houston. She was an elder in a prominent Presbyterian church. I talked with her and her husband, and I had 0% doubt about the sincerity of her faith. And she and her husband had been married for nine years, and they had never consummated their marriage because she had been incested by her uncle who had lived in their home when she was growing up.

And by the way, most of her siblings had comparably been abused. But she didn't know how many times she'd been raped by him, but it was many, many, many, many, many. And she was, I'll just say of Asian descent and, you know, a petite young woman with not a large body. And we filled half a trash barrel with vomit driving the demons out of her. I don't even know where all that vomit came from because her body... I mean, there was more vomit in the can than I think was the volume of her body. I can't explain it. I'm just telling you what happened.

Her husband was sitting there slack-jawed watching this happen because did I mention she didn't just go to a Presbyterian church, she was an elder in a Presbyterian church and a believer? In the aftermath of that deliverance, about ten months later, they had a baby because now she was able to consummate the marriage.

When deliverance is what you need, nothing else will do. They tried counseling. They tried pills. They tried, you know, all the sort of things that you might do in a therapeutic regime. They'd give them nine years. Today, there's a baby girl.

Eric Huffman: Okay. Let's keep going with that. And I'm sorry to cut off the other passage you wanna talk about. We're up against it, and I'm sorry for that. I don't always manage time well. But let's-

Ken Fish: That's fine.

Eric Huffman: But let's assume that's the case that many Christians, as you say, do need deliverance. But do they need a deliverance minister or ministry to deliver them? I've heard you say that a Christian can't deliver themselves or be delivered on their own. Explain that to me.

Ken Fish: We live near Disneyland, so I've been there a lot in my life. There's a ride called Pirates of the Caribbean. They also have it at Disney World in Florida. Near the end of the ride, the city's on fire, and there's three men in a jail cell. There's a dog sitting there and he has a ring in his mouth. It's a ring about so big. It's hanging down and at the bottom are keys.

And they're trying to lure the dog to come over with a bone. And they're whistling to the dog, and they're trying to get that dog to come over. And you know what's gonna happen. The dog's gonna grab for the bone, and they're gonna grab the key ring and let themselves out of the jail cell because they can't let themselves out.

Now there is something that I call, this isn't a biblical term, but it's descriptive. There is something called sovereign deliverance. This is where the Spirit of God will come over someone and they get free. And I've known people who have had these experiences. I don't know what percentage it is, but it's a low percentage. I'd say it's under 10% of deliverances or sovereign deliverances. But they do happen.

But if you look carefully at scripture, there's no place in scripture, not a single place, where Jesus says, cast demons out of yourself or where He instructs the disciples to go and teach people to cast demons out of themselves. What He says is, "You go drive demons out of others." That is the clear expression of how deliverance is to occur by the lips of Jesus Christ Himself.

And so a lot of people want self-deliverance to be a thing, and I'll tell you why. Because a lot of times when you're dealing with deliverance, you're dealing with really horrible situations like the one I just mentioned where a woman had been raped multiple times through her childhood into her adolescence by her uncle. And who wants to talk about that publicly? Who wants to disclose that kind of thing?

So many times, people want it to be true, but it's really wishful thinking. And they think, "Well, you know, I've been given so much authority in Christ, I can command the demons out." Well, I'll tell you what. If I had a dollar for every person who has come to me and said, "I've tried self-deliverance and it did not work, and that's why I've come to you because I've heard you know how to deal with this stuff," I would be a very wealthy man.

Eric Huffman: I hear that. And I'm sure you can understand sort of the hesitancy there from those that might say, well, that sort of seems to... it's a convenient argument for deliverance minister to make is that it creates a job security kind of situation. Like, if-

Ken Fish: I'm not looking for jobs. 

Eric Huffman: I know you're not.

Ken Fish: Not even close.

Eric Huffman: I'm talking about their hearts and criticism toward that and what that sounds like, I guess. And then I think of New Testament passages like the encouragement from James to resist the devil, and he'll flee from you, you know? And that seems to be for the individual believer. What do you make of that?

Ken Fish: You're right. And here's what I think about that James. By the way, before we answer that, let's just remember also that James says we should confess our sins one to another in order that we may be healed. Well, we could just slightly broaden it without really butchering the meaning of the passage. We should confess the sins we've committed and that have been committed against us as in the case of this Presbyterian elder in order that we might find freedom, whether healing freedom or deliverance freedom.

But now back to your question about James. Yes, resist the devil and he will flee from you. So when you're being tempted and the devil has not found a secure attachment point or an inroad into your life, you can resist him and he will nick off.

Additionally, once you've been delivered, if whatever that portal or gateway or doorway, whatever word you wanna use, that allowed him access to you, if that's been secured and closed, he will typically try to return. And when I say he, it may not be the devil himself. It's one of his lieutenants.

Eric Huffman: Sure.

Ken Fish: But he will typically try to return and to seek reentry or reaccess. But with him having been removed from whatever that point of access was, you now can successfully resist him. But resist the devil and he will flee from you is not the same thing as cast demons out of yourself.

Eric Huffman: Yeah. No. I hear that. I appreciate that. That's a helpful clarification. Would you say that an undelivered Christian is in danger of not actually being saved? Is it a salvation issue?

Ken Fish: Not at all.

Eric Huffman: I know you would say that. I think that's an important distinction.

Ken Fish: There are many, many saved Christians who need deliverance, and they are going to heaven. But as I sometimes say jokingly, they may be going to heaven, but they're living like hell in the meantime. Because they're afflicted, because they're harassed, because they have whatever it is, a mental affliction, a disease, you know, some compulsion they can't break.

It might be as seemingly simple as pornography or an addiction to cigarettes. It might be something where they can't control their anger. Maybe something like that. Could be something far more sinister than that.

Eric Huffman: When it comes to healing, especially of the believing Christians, to what extent do we expect healing to happen when we declare it, when we pray for it, when we confess the sins that might, you know, be leading to our illness or mental illness? Is it across the board 100% kind of expectation? Is ongoing illness a sign that you haven't actually been delivered like maybe you thought?

Ken Fish: Well, again, we need to separate healing and deliverance because although they can be related, they're not actually the same thing. But the general principle, it says of Jesus that all who came to Him were healed. And I will say, while I don't see everybody healed in my meetings every time, I have had many meetings where as near as I can determine, 100% of the people got 100% healed. And I call this 100 by 100 healing.

It tends to occur in foreign countries more than in The United States, but I've had it happen in The United States betimes. I always go in with the expectation that God is gonna heal everybody. And my approach to healing and deliverance is when people aren't receiving that breakthrough, typically, we miss something. We overlooked something.

And the reason we might overlook it is many times people don't disclose everything that we might need to know, and they might not disclose it because it's embarrassing and they don't wanna go there. Sometimes they've forgotten about it. They think, well, I confessed it and it's... you know, they just don't remember. But actually, the lingering effects of that sin are still haunting them, and they don't realize it. They're forgiven, but there are lingering effects.

It's akin to when David confesses his sin with Bathsheba, but Nathan said, "The sword will never depart from your house." What you've done is open Pandora's box. He doesn't say that, but that's... That's the metaphor we would use.

So they may have forgotten to tell us about it. Other times, they just don't know that they should even be talking about this particular thing at all. In the course of the conversation, maybe as we go back and pray a second or a third time, and we dig a little more deeply, we have a more thorough conversation about, well, what were you doing and, you know, what kind of things were you into and what was the timing of the onset of this situation and all of that, it comes to the surface. And they literally just had no idea because they'd never been taught that this is not okay.

I mean, I remember one time I was attending a doctoral intensive in school, and there was a woman there, and she was a bishop in her denomination. It doesn't matter what the denomination was. She wanted prayer for her knee. I was talking with her a little bit just trying to figure out, okay, what's the problem with this knee?

Now, it was a healing problem, apparently, but it actually became a deliverance problem because, again, sometimes physical healings require deliverance. Not all of them do. Again, this is a bishop in her denomination. I really wanna emphasize that. I can't remember the number exactly, but she had in the 50s or maybe low 60s of churches underneath her.

As I talked with her, she was sharing a few things and there was something about one thing she said to me about how when she would pray, cardinals would gather in the bush outside of her window. So that's unusual. I said, "When you're praying that way, what are you praying, or to whom are you praying?" She said, "Well, I'm talking to my mother." And I said, "Your mother?" I said, "I thought you said you were praying." She said, "Well, my mother's dead." I said, "So you're committing necromancer. You're communing with the dead." She said, "Well, what's wrong with that?" I said, "Well, other than the fact that it's strictly forbidden in scripture?"

So this is a woman who's a bishop, who's in my doctoral program. I had to lead her in a prayer of confession for the sin of communing with the dead. I broke the power of the spirits. I drove them out. There were about a dozen other students around who watched this happen. They were like... and then her knee was healed. Mhmm.

The coming of the cardinals was the way the spirits manifested and how she knew they were there. Her mother's was there. In this case, I would say it was an evil spirit that was masquerading as what we call a familiar spirit. It masquerades as the deceased.

Eric Huffman: Man, so many questions that that come to mind and just knowing we're up against the time, I'll try to land the plane here. But I've got-

Ken Fish: Maybe we need a part two. I don't know.

Eric Huffman: Maybe, brother. I've gotta ask, though, to what extent do you think that lack of healing represents a lack of faith? How often is that the case that someone who doesn't experience healing from their illness or what whatever malady they're dealing with is a result of lack of confessing sin, lack of acknowledging sin, and lack of faith? Because you could imagine where that could lead people.

Ken Fish: No place good. Let me say this. There are times when it is lack of faith, but it's not the majority of the time. And more importantly than that, it's usually lack of faith on the part of the prayer minister, not the person who came to receive prayer.

We have a lot of people in healing ministry who don't really believe much is gonna happen. They're just going through the motions because it's what they do in church, and it's a way of, you know, volunteering their time. But there is a structural unbelief that exists over Western society. All of us are susceptible to it on one level or another. And it involves desupernaturalization of our worldview, sometimes called agnosticism.

Many of us have been tainted in one way or another with atheism even if we're not atheists, even if we're Christians. There's a little bit of it in there in the background because we were taught it in school something like that. So these kinds of things can... and there are a few others. I'm just naming a couple.

These kinds of things can dramatically influence the prayer minister such that if you ask them, "Do you think they're gonna get healed?" "I don't think they're gonna get healed. They just asked me to pray, and I'm trying to be nice."

Eric Huffman: What about a prayer minister or pastor that, I mean... I would normally pray because I don't feel quite right in my spirit about telling God what to do, but I fully believe in healing, and I've seen it. And so my prayer is typically, Lord, I know you're able, if it be your will, bring healing or heal this person. But in my deliverance ministry friends might say, just if it be your will, you know, that's the problem with your prayer, Eric, is that you're saying if it be your will. Of course, it's the will of God to heal this person. I just don't necessarily believe that's a leap that I'm willing to take biblically because I don't know completely the will of God.

And certainly there are cases in scripture where you could point to and say, it wasn't God's will to take Paul's thorn and his flesh away. Paul prayed and asked by faith. It wasn't God's will to remove that. And so there are instances where we trust the sovereignty of God. And so for me, if it be your will is a faithful way to pray for healing. What do you think?

Ken Fish: I think Jesus perfectly reflects the Father's will. He says, "I always do what pleases Him." As far as we have a witness in scripture, there was nobody who ever came for to Jesus needing healing or deliverance who did not get it. Now, of course, there were some he didn't heal. For example, the man at the gate, beautiful, he probably walked by there multiple times. He left that one for Peter and John to take care of in Acts 3.

But Jesus reflected the Father's will, and the way He prayed was never, "Father, if it be your will." It was speaking the words of healing or deliverance because He knew the Father's will. I think Jesus reveals to us the Father's will.

So this goes back to something I said previously that when somebody isn't healed, there's usually an impediment or a block of some kind that keeps that healing from happening. And part of what we do is we figure out what is that thing and we remove it. It's gonna be something that has to do with spirituality, past sin, sin sinned against them. Maybe they didn't do it. Could have some other dimensions to it. But that's the way it's gonna roll.

Many times when we pray a few times and we're more thorough and take a deeper cut, we see those very conditions that were not previously healed, they get healed.

Eric Huffman: Yeah. Okay. We'll have to leave it there, brother. I've kept you for longer than I said I would. So I'm grateful for your witness and your clarity and your expertise and experience talking these things through, helping a faithful skeptic like me and many others understand this world a little better. I truly am grateful and respect you as a brother in Christ and admire your work for the kingdom. So keep going. We'll have another conversation another time. Grateful for your time today.

Ken Fish: When we do, I wanna talk about 1 Corinthians 10, which deals with believers who are partaking of the table of demons. So that's the one we didn't get to.

Eric Huffman: Okay. We'll start there.

Ken Fish: And I also wanna talk about Paul's thorn because I don't even think it has to do with healing.

Eric Huffman: Okay. I can't wait for the follow-up then. We'll start there next time, brother.

Ken Fish: Yeah. Look forward to it.

Eric Huffman: All right, Ken. Thank you.

Ken Fish: God bless you.

Eric Huffman: God bless you. Bye bye.