Secular TV has an obsession with the idea of going hunting for demons. You may recall that the original Buffy the Vampire slayer moved from vampire hunting to an obsession with demons. Recently, Netflix has been pushing a film with associated sound track called “K Pop Demon hunters.” At times, it can seem that Christian thinking about demons and deliverance is as much influenced by secular fiction as by the Bible.
In his book “Deliverance”, Jon Thompson writes about the need for the gift of discernment when dealing with the demonic. He writes:
“The gift of discernment has to do with seeing or perceiving the source; its not information. It’s not prophecy or a word of knowledge, With this gift you can discern in three ways.”[1]
He identifies these three ways as “sensing”, “feeling” and “seeing”. He believes that e has this particular gift.
There are two problems with what Thompson claims. The first is that his description of discernment has little, if anything at all, to do with the Scriptural gift of discernment. Discernment is to do with wise assessment of claims to identify their truthfulness. It is seen, used in partnership with prophecy. In fact, we might say that tongues are to be interpreted, prophecies discerned. I would suggest that it is as much about ensuring that the correct interpretation and application of a prophetic word is given as that a binary decision is made in terms of the reliability of a prophecy.[2]
The other problem is that from what we see in Scripture, demons don’t seem to need hunting and tracking down. We don’t need people with mine-sweeper like qualities, exceptionally gifted in the ability to locate and identify demons. As we have seen in previous articles, evil spirits tend to be overt and obvious. They make their own presence known.
We need to be careful that we don’t build a whole mythology and system around deliverance. Keep it simple and go back to what Scripture tells us.
[1] Jon Thompson, Deliverance, 198.
[2] See 1 Corinthians 12:1-11 an d 1 Corinthians 14:14:29-33.
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