Re: Naked Bible 120: Fern, Audrey, and Beth
The biggest problem with this podcast is that the featured guest (Beth) isn’t trained to speak directly on parts of the subject she address. It was very frustrating to hear her talk all around the subject the way most people do when they are struggling to organize their thoughts. I get the impression she is still working through some of her own trauma. That’s not meant as a criticism but a warning to you if you try to listen to the podcast. The good part comes in the second half.
Beth started out in a traditional Charismatic deliverance ministry. I passed through a church that included some of that, so I became quite familiar with it. She noticed how something never quite worked when done the way it has been done for decades. She realized that she was being deceived and went looking for help on that. It took a long time for her to find that help in Fern and Audrey.
She proceeds to testify in very confusing words until Heiser starts asking questions, which also prompts Fern and Audrey to comment. Then they start deconstructing the falseness within traditional deliverance ministries.
They don’t mention it much, but the false model of the Spirit Realm common across western churches, and wherever their influence dominates, is the reason so much deliverance ministry fails. It’s not the gifts that fail, but the way they are used. The western mythology of Satan as Loki, that demons are fallen angels, etc., is very misleading. It prompts ministers to misread Scripture and never quite solve the real problems for people struggling with Watchers and Nephilim spirits.
How many Charismatics would you expect to understand that the biggest problem with New Testament translation into English is the problem with translating Hebrew into Greek? The Greek language makes no distinction between angels and elohim as Hebrew does, so the fallen elohim (Watchers) end up translated in English Bibles as “fallen angels”, when there’s actually no such thing.
Thus, the three ladies interviewed in this podcast emphasize getting the Hebrew cosmology established as the first step in healing tormented souls. Getting the lies out of their heads puts them in the right place to hear clearly from the Spirit.
The other major emphasis is teaching people that God loves them as an antidote to bad parenting that left people open to demonic intrusions in their lives. They discussed how authority figures in a child’s life can do their job poorly and leave those kids growing up with trauma. Trauma is the doorway to demonization. The traditional deliverance ministries awaken that trauma by asserting that the solution is yet another authority figure doing something that is going to be painful.
While in childhood, most children have a very limited range of logic. If their parents abuse them, they are ill-equipped to think in terms of the parents being bad. Instead, kids internalize the punishment as somehow justified because they are bad children.
The trio mention how demons will pull back and allow deliverance ministers to torment the victims yet again through using their gifts improperly. The ultimate answer to demonization is to help people understand that God really does love them, that He’s the ultimate parent who makes no mistakes, does no injustice. The primary task of therapy is to be there with the victims, helping them to recover what the Devil took away from them back sometime most likely in childhood.
All of which sounds familiar to me, as I’ve taught for some years on this blog that true deliverance is not “taking authority” over demons for them, but it’s the individual getting more familiar with Jesus and chasing their own demons out. Learning faith is learning the commitment to Jesus and His love for us. It’s learning how to love each other as He does. That’s the Covenant Law that locks out the Dark forces.
