The Exorcist Files - Supernatural Healing and Deliverance with Dr. Sam Storms

Episode Date: June 3, 2026

Dr. Sam Storms believes God is healing and speaking today. And it's not just from his doctoral studies, it's from his own experience.He is is the founder of Enjoying God Ministries and Lead Pastor for Preaching and Vision at Bridgeway Church in Oklahoma City. He is a widely published author and host of the Exploring Word and Spirit podcast.He holds a PhD in Intellectual History from the University of Texas at Dallas. Known for his blend of rigorous theology and charismatic ministry, he is the author of over 40 books.His work focuses on the integration of biblical authority and the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit, making complex theological issues accessible for everyday believers.Watch The Born Again Identity with Fr. Gregory Pine on EWTN PLUSGo to shopremi.com/EXFILES and use code EXFILES  at checkout for 50% off with Remi Club Subscribe & Save. Get 25% Off Cowboy Colostrum with code EXFILES at https://www.cowboycolostrum.com/EXFILESOllie. Feed the Obsession. Go to ollie.com/exfiles and use code exfiles to get 70% off your first box!Sign up for the vault at Exorcistfiles.supercast.comChapters00:00 Cold open and intro02:35 Meet Dr. Sam Storms05:11 Proposing on the first date07:59 How spiritual warfare finds you08:40 The wave of darkness15:00 Can a Christian be demonized?23:59 Generational curses vs consequences35:38 Fiery darts and the mind36:39 His wife's 18-year torment40:00 The man in the mirror47:54 Attack or broken world?52:00 Why deliverance takes time58:35 The word of knowledge that healed a boy1:04:43 A working list of the gifts1:16:05 What prophecy actually is1:25:48 The endometriosis word1:28:08 The fall of the Kansas City prophets1:33:39 The prayer walk1:35:04 Closing blessinghttps://www.samstorms.org/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome back to The Exorcist Files, the show where, okay, never mind. I'll let Ryan do the silly intros. Hello, friends, Father Martens here. I hope you've been enjoying the Reflection Series on Christ's Invasion of Hell. If you haven't heard the first two episodes yet, I encourage you to do so. Episode three drops later this week. The series articulates one of the most important truths about spiritual warfare. Satan and his demons are pawns.

God is using them and their rebellion. to accomplish his purposes. This should give us all an immense encouragement. On today's show, Ryan interviews Dr. Sam Storms, a respected author and Christian pastor who shares his experience in spiritual warfare. As a reminder, we interview people for many Christian traditions on this show because there is much we can learn from one another. I would ask you to pay special attention to one part

where Dr. Storms discusses a demon praying on a wound. friends let me remind you if you have a wound such as unforgiveness unresolved trauma in your past etc take care of it now bring it to god and give the enemy no foothold within you lastly i want to give a shout-out to my co-host ryan and his new limited series with father gregory pine the born-again identity well poor father pine had to endure ryan's dad jokes the series tackles a great question who am i and what am i made to do it's a great discussion and I recommend you all check out the born again identity on EWTN Plus or by clicking the link in the show notes. And with that, let's begin today's show. She and our daughter, our daughter was I guess 15, 14 or 15 at the time. She stands in front of the armoire and there's a beveled mirror in it and she sees a man sitting on our love seat about 10 feet behind her and she turned and she looked at him. She said, this is in the middle of of July's hot as Hades, you know, in southern Oklahoma.

He had a winter coat on with a scarf around his neck, and he's sitting there with this like this, and he looked at her, and he went. And immediately, we realized what had happened, that demonic spirit that had tormented Anne for 18 years was trying to go to the firstborn in our family. Because when she told Anne about it, Anne said, oh, it wasn't an angel.

She said, no, mom, it was evil. Welcome back to The Exorcist Files, and today we have a storm warning. And by that, I mean, we welcome a new friend of the podcast, Dr. Sam Storms. And with a name like Storms, you know he had no choice but to chariastically, at least attempt to try and part the seas or at least command the winds. We'll find out his success rate on that as we get into the interview. I have been a fan of Sam's work for a long time. Sam's written several books that I found particularly useful and inspiring along my journey.

And we're going to talk today about spiritual warfare, the gifts of the spirits, and to find out. why in fact Sam did leave golf behind the ultimate spiritual war. But before we get to that, just to introduce my guest here, Sam has degrees in theology from Dallas Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. in intellectual history. I'm very curious what intellectual history is because I'm sure I have a complete deficit of it from the University of Texas at Dallas. He's been a pastor and teacher for decades, author of numerous books, and of course he has one of the cooler last names that someone is going to come by. And he did for better or for worse, depending on which side of the Red River you rest on, go to the University of Oklahoma. So you might pray for him or you might

endorse him. So who knows? Sam, thanks for being on the show. Oh, it's my pleasure. I've been looking forward to this. Amazing. Well, all right, we have a lot of questions to get started. And I've, you have so many great stories. But let me start with this just on an ecumenical note, since you are on the other side of the tiber. And actually, you would, and I don't know, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I have heard you described as a charismatic, which I actually, I typed it into my search bot and it just shut the computer down. It says it doesn't exist. So I want to be fair to be fair to your introduction there.

But since if you would call yourself that, since you're not Catholic, what is something you deeply appreciate about your Catholic brothers and sisters around the world? Well, a couple of things. I think they're standing on biblical ethics, things like the pro-life movement and biblical marriage between one man and one woman. I think we can lock arms together as kind of, They've been called co-belligerence on those particular issues. I also, I really like their robust Trinitarianism. They are very much committed to the defense of the Orthodox understanding of God's nature as triune.

So I think those are a couple things. I'd also throw in their belief in the importance and centrality of the church in God's securing and pursuing his kingdom goals in this age. So there's just a few of the things I appreciate. Awesome. Okay. Well, thank you for. Sharon. I do want to start, and we're going to talk today first about spiritual warfare, and then

we'll get into the gifts of the spirit, and I'm very excited. But before we start any of that, I do have to ask, because there are a couple just interesting flags I made on your CV and resume. One of them is that I know as to live out the godly life, you want to make sure you're with the right partner if you're supposed to be married. And it sounds like your vetting process is pretty underwhelming. It sounds like you proposed on the first date with your wife. So before we get into the gift of discernment and what that is in fact and whether or not you use that. Can you tell us how you felt such certainty? He had it. Yeah, well, did she, I mean, she married you, so I'll have to see. Yeah. So tell us this story. How does that happen? We're just eight days away from our 54th wedding

anniversary. So whatever else you may think about my maturity or immaturity in proposing on the first day, it took. What can I say? It was, it was kind of impetuous on my part, but I just knew she was, was the one and she met people said what she say she didn't say yes or no she just said to herself i bet he does this with all the girls but uh made it a little bit more formal six months later okay so you in all seriousness do you think when people say when you know you know did you know is that kind of a true statement i knew i knew with absolute certainty so as it turned out i was right wow all right well there you go so i guess on that topic for anyone right now who is praying through and wondering and maybe not having the, you know, the road to Damascus date experience

that you had, what would be your general pastoral advice to them and as far as, you know, the sovereignty of God and helping pick a partner? Well, obviously, including the fact that love is a choice and people have to say yes to it. Do not follow my example. When I was teaching at Wheaton College, I told that story to every class and I said, listen, I'm not, I'm not a model for you to follow in this regard. I was immature. I was, I don't know what all I was. That was so long ago. That was, gosh, 1970. You know, so, yeah, don't follow my counsel in that regard. Give it time. And the Lord will speak to you about if that's the right one for you. To put a bow on it, if God has someone for you, then you shouldn't have to worry about missing out on it. Is that a fair statement? Yeah, I think so. I think so. But that doesn't alleviate our responsibility to use wisdom.

wisdom and be mature and be patient and evaluate potential spouses in terms of their character and their commitment to the Lord. So I don't take a fatalistic approach to that sort of thing just because I believe in God's sovereignty. I believe he wants us to act responsibly and with common sense. Absolutely. Common sense is not so common as we learn sometimes. Well, speaking of common sense and whether one should just jump into spiritual warfare or not, I'm sure that we would say generally you don't just run into it. But I'm curious, Sam, if you could walk us through, what is sort of your journey? There's a kind of a fun dynamic that we've heard from a lot of the exorcists on the show,

which is that you don't really set out to do it. It's sort of something that finds you. And a lot of the people I've spoken with who do deliverance ministry and spiritual warfare didn't initially set out to do that, but obviously recognize that that is something that obviously Jesus came to do and to abolish the works of the devil. So what was kind of your first step into this area of spiritual warfare and teaching on it? Yeah, that's a great question.

It's a story I tell in my book, Understanding Spiritual Warfare. But it really happened. I mean, I had encountered some people that I was convinced were demonized or severely oppressed when I was pastoring a small church in Oklahoma in Ardmore, Oklahoma, back in the late 1980s. But the first real encounter I had was actually quite stunning. It's eye-opening. It was at a conference we were hosting at our church in Kansas City. And I was the one in charge of it. and I was just simply standing at the back of the auditorium.

And an individual came up to me and said, Sam, there's a lady behind the sound booth who looks like she's doing demonic rituals. I said, what? I walked around there. I'd never seen her before. She wasn't a part of her church. She'd created a little altar and she was kind of dancing around it and mumbling, whatever it was that she was saying.

So I thought, well, I was just going to leave her alone. Maybe she just won't bother anybody. And a few minutes later, a gentleman came walking toward me, and this lady was following him. And he came up to me and he said the strangest thing, he said, Sam, this woman is harassing me. She's speaking in backwards tongues. I thought at the time, I mean, I'm still trying to figure out forward tongues. What are backward tongues, you know, but as she moved close to me, probably eight to ten feet away from me.

She never touched me. I felt this incredible cloud or wave of dark energy just engulfed me. I don't know how to put words to it. It was like liquid air. It was just, it was something you could tangibly feel. And I suddenly became nauseous. I thought it was going to throw up. I couldn't think.

I couldn't even put together a sentence to respond to what was going on. And fortunately, another lady in our church who realized what was happening, grabbed me by the arm and pulled me away. And the farther I moved away from this lady, it lifted. It was truly bizarre. So about three days later, we were having a prayer meeting in our church on a Monday morning. and then she walks. My wife was the receptionist at the church at that time, and she came running into the prayer room.

She said, that lady is back here today, and the smell she brought with her is overwhelming. And she walked into the prayer room, this lady did. And I'm talking about the most horrid stench I've ever smelled in my life. It wasn't body odor. It wasn't what you'd smell at a trash dump. It was just rancid, horrid. And it just permeated the whole prayer room.

people were on the verge of getting sick. So I was able to take her by the hand or at least lead her up to the upper floor where a couple of pastors were present. And we sat down and counseled her and prayed over her for a couple of hours. We were able to cast out numerous demons. She came to faith in Christ. She ended up becoming a very viable and contributing member of our church. I actually worked a lot with children's ministry. That was the first time that I had, I mean, obviously I had a theological knowledge of the reality of the demonic.

But I had never felt it. in a tangible, almost physiological way. And that was eye-opening to me. And so it just kind of opened up the door to a number of other encounters with individuals. And then, of course, reading scripture and seeing the reality of this and the Word of God, sent me on a trajectory of beginning to really dig deeply into the issues surrounding spiritual warfare. So that's kind of how it happened. And there's, you know, it's been, you know, that encounter with that lady was in September of 1993.

So it's been what, 26, 33 years since that happened. And I haven't had anything quite as visceral and real as that happened, but certainly witnessed a lot of things that testified of the reality of the demonic and of the power of the Holy Spirit to set people free. Wow. And so I guess I hear this, and you felt this, you felt overt effects from this woman. And so, one, do you believe she was just like a radioactive source of negative energy? or do you believe you were being cursed or the church was being cursed and your proximity to it

was allowing it to affect you? Well, I've asked that question many times since it happened. I said, Lord, why did you let this happen? I mean, I wasn't living in sin. I wasn't failing to avail myself of all the resources God had given me. I think the best answer I got from the Lord, I think, was he said, I'm just warning you to always be prepared because I think I was a little presumptuous. I hadn't really thought deeply through Ephesians 6. And it was Lord just kind of giving me a wake-up call. He said, I want you to realize, this is real.

It's not just something you read about the Bible. This is in reality. This is in life. And here's a lady who desperately needed to be set free. So I think it was a wake-up call and a lesson from the Lord more than anything else. Wow. How does that affect your theology as far as? Because there's one camp that says, I'm a Christian, I'm indellled by the Holy Spirit.

And I don't know anyone who says that, like, spiritual forces. can't afflict you at all because that seems to be violate what's great you know paul wouldn't warn us and want us to keep on guard if satan couldn't bear some effect on us on the other hand i appreciate when people suggest that well if i'm i'm not walking in sin and i am staying close to god etc i shouldn't heed too much warnings against curses etc so what's that kind of line of the ability for the enemy to affect via things like curses and witchcraft etc to someone who does walk in a you know a a level of protection by staying close to God. Yeah.

I don't, if a person is walking in close relationship with the Lord and there's no chronic, unrepentant sin in their life, I don't think they need to fear the attack of the enemy. I think they need to be ready because Satan will still launch his attacks against us. But I do think that the enemy can wreak havoc. I mean, think about Peter's language of Satan prowling about like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. I mean, we can be devoured? What does that mean for a Christian? Well, that's pretty vivid language.

And as you said, obviously in Ephesians chapter 6, Paul talks to the fiery darts of the enemy raining down upon us. There are numerous other texts that talk about the influence of the demonic on Christians. But if we're walking in confession and there's no unrepentant sin in our lives and we haven't dabbled in any kind of occultic activity, I don't think Christians need to live in fear. you live in faith and the strength of knowing that greater is he who's in you than he who's in the world, as John said in 1st John 4. It does bring up the question, though, which is very controversial, is that can a born again justified by faith in Christ Christian be indwelt by a demonic spirit,

or what the New Testament would call demonized? Now, I don't like the word demon possession. It's actually not in the Bible. People say, wait a minute, it's right there in my Bible. Well, you're probably reading the King James Version. That's why you see it. But, It's not in the Greek text. The word in Greek is daimonidzami, from which we get our word demonized. And in every case of diamondizumized use in the New Testament, it refers to an indwelling demonic spirit that is subsequently cast out. And so that's a major source of controversy.

I happen to believe that a Christian can be demonized. I don't think it's something that happens often. I don't think that Christians need to live in fear of it, as I said, as long as they're walking with the Lord and close relationship with him. But there are instances, I think, of demonization of believers, and we need to address that. We need to be willing to step forward and help them seek freedom. Absolutely. Well, and that's another area of immense alignment with you and the Catholic Church, too, obviously,

is that, you know, we've heard respected Protestant ministers go on large media outlets and say, oh, no, if you're, you know, you're Christian, you can't be possessed. And the issue is, and everyone will say, yes, the possession is, extraordinarily rare. But I think the issue right is we're conflating ownership with affliction. Because, and I love Father Martin's example where he usually uses this example of having a sort of an Airbnb or a condo that could be left derelict and then squatters could move in. And while legally it is his house, it is up to him. If he never does anything and he leaves all the doors open, et cetera, someone else can temporarily take possession of it. And they're currently

like operating it, even though legally it does not belong to them. And then obviously he can use the law, or in this case, Christ, the ultimate exorcist, do come and revoke those rights that the demons have gained. And so it is interesting. Another book, I'm curious if you ever read Derek Prince's and they shall expel demons, because I found it really interesting that he actually lamented just the amount of people he had sent home as a pastor saying, you can't have a demon problem. You know, it's got to be fixed with counseling or a pill. And he said, once he got delivered, I think it was a spirit of depression. He said, wow, my, I don't know where it crept into the church on our side that, you know, somehow if you're a believer, all's perfect and, you know, goes well all the time,

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Yeah, I've done a couple of debates on this issue with people who insist that a Christian cannot be demonized. I still don't like the language of possession because that implies ownership. And Christ owns us. He's bought us with a price, his blood of obviously. We are owned by God.

But in those debates, I always start out by saying there's nothing explicitly stated in the New Testament that either defends the idea that a Christian can be demonized or precludes the possibility. Now, there are some texts

that I think have strong hints that a Christian can be demonized, but it's not as airtight as we would want it to be. So it comes down to, and again, I want to be careful in saying this, it comes down to our experience. I don't base my theology on experience, but when the New Testament is not explicitly clear one way or the other, I have to ask, well, then what just happened when I ministered to this individual, who I know is a born-again believer?

And it certainly seemed as if this individual had a done. demonic spirit, and it sure seems as if he or she's been set free. And when you have multiple instances of that kind of thing happen, it kind of swayes you to say, well, I wish it were more explicit in the New Testament, but it isn't. But this seems to confirm my belief that, in fact, this can happen. And there are, I mean, there's, you know, Ephesians 427, I think is fairly clear where Paul talks about, do not let the sun go down on your anger, lest you give the devil a foothold. I think some translations rendered opportunity. It's kind of a poor rendering. The Greek word is tapas. We got our word topography from it. And everywhere else it's used in the New Testament,

it refers to inhabitable space. I mean, even when Jesus said in John 14, I go to prepare a place for you. Place there is tapas. In Revelation 12, when it says that Satan was cast out of heaven, there was no longer any place for him there. Same word. So it seems to refer to. inhabitable space. So I think Paul is saying if you allow unforgiveness and unresolved anger to fester in your soul or any other sin for that matter, you are giving the enemy an open door into your life. So I think there are texts like that that I think support the notion that a Christian can be demonized, even though it doesn't demonstrically prove it. All right. So Sam, I'm also curious. So this is a controversial topic that comes up in this regard as well.

generational curses or Christians experiencing the ill effects of sin from an ancestral cause or just the consequences of sin from someone else at a spiritual level. Have you encountered anything like that in your ministry? And for context, we've talked a lot about on the show. People have come out of Freemasonry, generational cult lineage. And then most famously, Tammy Comer, John Mark's wife and her testimony of her, I think was her grandfather. or great-grandfather, having had interacted with a witch and that witch cursing the first-born of the female line. And then when she got deliverance ministry, she was radically healed.

So I'm curious if you've seen anything of that dynamic in your ministry. Yeah, every so often, yes. I really don't like the language of generational spirit. I do believe, because it raises the question of what I call involuntary demonization. Is it possible for an individual who has not committed any overt sin to suffer from a demonic intrusion into their life that can't be traced to something that they themselves have done? And there are two texts in Mark's Gospel that seem to me to indicate that that is very much the case. Mark 7, for example, I've got it open here, the Sire Phoenician woman obviously comes from a very pagan, idolatrous culture and background. and she came and she said, my little daughter has an unclean spirit.

Well, it's talking there about a young child, maybe under the age of five. And she was demonized and she begged Jesus to cast the demon out. Jesus did that very thing. The child was set free. It was just an amazing incident in the life of this young girl. Well, you say, well, what could she possibly have done to be demonized? what, it's because he spilled her milk or didn't pick up her toys or it just doesn't seem reasonable to think that. And then they have the case in Mark 9 where the disciples were unable to heal and

deliver this young boy. And the father comes to Jesus and he says, if I could find me here. Jesus asked him, how long has this been happening to him? His father said, you know, he grinds his teeth, he foams at the mouth, he rolls over. The devil, demons try to cast him into the fire and into water to destroy him. But then Jesus asked him, so how long has this been happening? And the man's response is, from childhood, from childhood. How can that be? Now, the case with the Sarphanician woman, my guess is, this is just speculation. That's a very pagan, idolatrous, Gentile background. There was probably in all likelihood, pagan idolatrous worship going on. And this little girl being raised in that context became demonized.

I don't know how to account for that any other way. Same thing with this boy that from childhood had this problem. And Jesus doesn't say, oh, no, no, you don't need to worry about it because that can't happen. Well, it did happen. And of course, Jesus healed him, lifted him up and cast the demon out. So those are two very explicit examples of what I would call involuntary demonization. So that brings us back to this issue of generational spirits. Let's just imagine for a moment.

I mean, you gave one a good example. Let's just say that my great-great-grandfather was involved in the highest echelons of the Masonic Lodge or something of that sort. And he had passed that down to his son, who had passed it down to his son, who had passed it down to my father, And if I passed it down, I mean, and brought them into the Masonic rituals and the Masonic Lodge and all the oaths that they take. And could it be that because of their open door and invitation, as it were, into these demonic spirits, that then, even though I may not do it, I would never join the Masonic Lodge. Nevertheless, the influence of a demonic spirit from their lives has come to wreak havoc on mine. Is that possible? Well, they think it's possible, yes.

But we also have to remember, you know, the Old Testament was pretty clear. that the sons are not punished for the sins of the father. Each is responsible for his own. And I believe that, but I don't know how that little Saur Phoenician girl and that little boy in Mark 9 could have done anything to have warranted demonization. So you put all these pieces together,

and you're almost left with more questions than answers. I don't believe that I would, of course, my ancestors were not in the Masonic Lodge, but I don't believe that I would be punished or because of maybe the sins that they would have committed. But at the same time, there are cases where from almost infancy in childhood a person has a demonic spirit. I don't know what to do with that. I just have to say, there it is in the text, and I have to live with it, and I have to respond appropriately. But those are two very clear and explicit examples of involuntary demonization.

That doesn't mean I'm in doing. endorsing the notion of generational spirits. I prefer to talk about generational consequences. So let's suppose that my grandfather was an addicted gambler, and he squandered his and all, everything he owned, all of his estate. And my father, who was born into that family, lost his inheritance and was born into poverty because of the sins of my grandfather. And then I'm born into that. And my dad's a godly Christian. He's now with the Lord. But let's just suppose, hypothetically, that he was given over to gambling and he inherited just by imitation the sinful ways of his father, that's going to have immense negative consequences on me.

And that comes from a generational experience from one generation to another. I don't know that we would call it a generational curse or generational spirit, but certainly there are devastating consequences that can come upon us because of the sinful behavior, the unrepentant sinful behavior, our ancestors. Sure. Well, yeah, and it's, I'm surprised to how controversial this topic is, because one, technically we're all living in a world that is broken from the action. If we believe, if we subscribe to the Christian narrative, then two people made a tragic decision and broke the universe, and now we live in a world that is populated through sin and are, you know, in plan B,

for lack of a better term, uh, of what happened. And also, scripture is really confusing on this sometimes because I think it's Deuteronomy 5.9 that says, you know, I will punish the children for the sins of their father, and maybe there's a different context for that. And then I think about, was it the blind man in the scriptures and the apostles where I was like, who sinned that this man should have been born blind? And Jesus says, no one. It's just, I'm literally, and this is a weird one for me, is I'm going to let this healing take place so the works of God may be made manifest. And that breaks my box a little bit too. But to your point, you kind of go off experience because I hear Tammy's a good friend and her story just defies,

you know, so much to me and so much, you know, of my Protestant evangelical kind of narratives I had growing up. And that you go, okay, scripture is a little gray on this. And yet I don't know what to say. She was really sick and then got healed after a curse from a witch, you know, generations prior was broken. And you go, all right, God, I don't know. That's wild. Yeah. I do want to say one thing about that Old Testament passage where it says, I will visit the sins upon the third, fourth, fifth, under the 10th generation or whatever, but it says, of those who hate me.

So it's not saying that people who love the Lord are going to suffer any kind of spiritual damage from the sins of their ancestors, but it's of those who hate me. So again, it's your hate, your rejection of the Lord that leads to the kind of consequences that it's describing there. Sure.

And then, you know, another one too, right? I mean, the child of Bashiba and David's dalliance was killed for the sin of their parents, right? Exactly. Yeah. That's true. And that's a wild one, too. And so, of course, the question is in the new covenant and the dynamic. And I know that's where a lot of the discussion takes place.

But I'm curious. So, Sam, in your own life, as you've kind of walked into this and been awakened to this, because growing up, you know, I grew up Frozen Chosen, Presbyterian, you know, we never talked about demons whatsoever. but I'm curious. When you started getting into this, did you become aware of? And maybe you could use yourself as a template, because I know the enemy comes after Christians in all sorts of different ways. But in your own experience, how has the enemy kind of come after you, besides cursing you with a terrible stench that gave you brain fog in terrible cognitive deficiencies?

But what are some ways that you now, having studied this, are like, ooh, before I would have just been like, whatever? and now I'm like, oh, maybe that's, maybe that's a little bit. I see what you're doing adversary. You know, what are some ways that you kind of, and then we can all learn to be on guard against? Sure. And after this, I do want to tell the experience of my own wife in this regard

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That's why he says, put on the helmet of salvation. hold up the shield of faith because raining down upon you as it were again it's metaphorical language are these missiles or darts of the enemy and and i've been talking with people and ministering to them what i discover is they'll say to me boy it's just weird just out of nowhere just out of the blue as it were i wasn't looking at anything sinful i wasn't doing anything bad but all of a sudden this this thought or this impression or this image just erupts in my mind and it's defiling it's disgusting And they start thinking, what's the matter with me that I would experience that? And I think that's a good example of these kind of these incursions into our thought patterns of ideas and images that we would never have willingly sought after.

And I think that's the main way that Satan attacked us, the main way he would attack me anyway. Let me give you the example of my wife. And this should bring it home very, very clearly. in 1975. We'd been married three years. And we and my wife had set up a time for us to go out into dinner and then we were going to go to a hotel room and spend the night. And so we had a wonderful dinner. And then I did something incredibly stupid. I've never cheated on my wife. I've been faithful for 54 years, thank God. But I did something incredibly stupid and unthinking and insensitive. I didn't know about it for the next 17 years. But we walked into the hotel room. I turned on the TV and sat down and watched a baseball game. Well, my wife did not react well to that. And it was just, it hurt her so deeply that I would care so much about watching a baseball game and care so little about her on our anniversary.

Now, she never said anything to me about it. Didn't open her mouth. But from that day forward, for the next 17 or 18 years, literally, she'd get up every day and she would hear this voice in her head, which would say, Sam hasn't made you happy. You can't trust God. You come with me. And she kept seeing this finger kind of beckoning her.

You come with me. I'll make you happy. And she believed it. She didn't know it was a demon. She just wasn't as theologically sophisticated as she is now. But she felt that she heard that voice every day. She started having years down the road. She started having these perverted nightmares and dreams and just things that would vile and

offensive. And she finally began really. really, and again, she's been faithful to me all our married life as well, but just these temptations to just leave and run away were very powerful. But we were finally, we were at a conference and the man who was leading the service said, I think God wants to minister to people who have a fear of failing him. If that's you, would you stand up? And there are about 2,000 people present. And all of a sudden I look up and my wife is standing up. I'm thinking, what are you standing up for? You're a pastor's wife. You're fine.

sit down, you're embarrassing me. You know, that's what's racing through my head. And I just saw tears start coming down her face. And these women gathered around her from behind and laid hands on her began. They didn't, she didn't know them. They didn't know her. She didn't to sing over her and pray over her. This went on for about 30 minutes.

After it was over, I tried to ask her. I said, Anne, what happened? She said, all I know is I felt this massive gob of black goo come up from my feet, up through my chest, and out of it. my mouth. And she said, for the first time in 18 years, I feel clean. Now, we didn't necessarily put it together with a demonic spirit that she'd opened the door to way back on that fateful night in 1975. But the next morning, we're driving to the airport because I had to, she had to return back to Oklahoma. I was staying for the rest of the conference. And I said, can you tell me what

happened last night? She said, I don't really know. All I can say is I felt clean for the very first time. And then I looked over out of the corner of mine, she's going, I said, what do you do? She said, it's gone. So what's gone? That voice, that voice that I've heard every day for the last 18 years, it's gone. It was just, it was shocking, to say the least. And then she got real nervous. She said, I'm afraid it's going to be waiting for me back home.

I said, what's going to be waiting for you? She said, that demon that's been tormenting me for 18 years. And me and my incredible wisdom, I said, nah, don't worry about it. That won't happen. You're okay. So she goes back home. I'm wrapping up the story here. but it's just so vivid.

She goes home and that night, it was a Thursday night, she and our daughter, our daughter was, I guess, 15, 14 or 15 at the time. And she was just a straight-laced little teenage girl. She didn't know anything about spiritual warfare. And they're up late upstairs packing. And Melanie, my daughter, goes downstairs. She stands in front of the armoire and there's a beveled mirror in it. And she sees a man sitting on our love seat about 10 feet behind her.

And she turned and she looked at him. She said, this is in the middle of July's hottest Hades in southern Oklahoma. He had a winter coat on with a scarf around his neck. And he's sitting there with this like this. And he looked at her and he went. And immediately, we realized what had happened. That demonic spirit that had tormented Anne for 18 years was trying to go to the firstborn in our family. Fortunately, Melanie had the wisdom to turn and run upstairs.

She realized, because when she told Anne about it, Anne said, Oh, it wasn't an angel. She said, no, mom, it was evil. And she had the wisdom and the discernment to recognize that. So, I mean, that was a whole series of events that awakened us to the reality of this. So when I go to conferences or churches and they want me to talk on this topic, I share that story. And I'm not kidding you, you can't count the number of women that I can watch weeping in the audience or who come up afterwards and say, you describe my life. And I'm terrified to tell my husband about it. And the ministry of seeing them gain freedom is just absolutely wonderful. But that's kind of how spiritual warfare has took root in our lives,

just alerted us to the importance. By the way, it was probably two months after that incident with my daughter and my wife that I was in the church where that lady came in and I had that encounter with her, with that overwhelming sense of darkness that overcame me. So all these things happened in 1993 that just kind of launched us into an increased awareness of the presence of the demonic and the fact that we have to be constantly

on our guard and prepared and avail ourselves of all the resources God has given us. Wow. We have heard. So it sounds like with your wife's case in particular, it was an attack on the mind. There was this wound that was opened with the baseball game. And it seems like a lot of her battle was. And it seems like this is something that illustrates for a lot of Christians is that there's dark thoughts, nightmares, and there's also just, there's these temptations and sin,

these temptations and thoughts that come in. And I'm just curious, I've always wrestle with that because the idea is that demons don't have access to our minds, but can somehow influence our thought life. So I'm curious, do you agree with that assertion? And then two, what do you think is actually happening when the baseball game happened? Like, did the enemy say, okay, cool, there's a wounding here. I'm going to try and come in and it was maybe inadvertently, your wife made an agreement to engage with it in the mind, and that's what opened a door. Is that what do you think happened? I think that what happened is what we call an inner vow. Now, again, that's not necessarily biblical language, but it's basically when you resolve in your heart or your

mind to believe something that, in fact, is not true, and it just kind of takes hold of your heart. The intervow that she made was, she isn't going to trust her husband anymore. She isn't going to trust God anymore. And that's the key that I think opened the door to her heart that Satan took advantage of. Basically convinced her you can trust me. I'll make you happy. People take intervals all the time like I'll never be a success in life and they live in constant defeat. It kind of confirms their belief. And sometimes through what I would call a word curse, people can say that to an individual. It's like a parent who's so insensitive and unloving says to a child, you're never going to amount to anything. You're an embarrassment to this family. I can't believe

we ever had you. And that becomes internalized at a part of their sense of identity. And I think Satan and the demons can take real advantage of that. And it's just kind of like a flame has been lit and they just blow on it. But get back to this question of Satan influence in our minds. Think, for example, of what actually happened with Peter that he would deny or try to resist Jesus going to the cross to accomplish redemption. And Jesus has to say, get thee behind me, Satan. Now, we know he wasn't calling Peter Satan. He recognized that Peter's attempt to deter him from the cross was in the plan of Satan.

Somehow Satan had stirred Peter's mind in such a way that he was deceived about what was intended for the Lord. Or take Anonice and Sapphire in Acts chapter 5. Now, I know that some people try to argue. that they weren't believers. I believe they were. But it's interesting when opening verses of Acts after 5, Peter says to Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart, excuse me, to lie to the Holy Spirit? I don't believe Anonias, somehow Anonias was necessarily demonized, but Peter says, Satan has filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit. And of course, you know, the discipline of the Lord came on both

him and his wife. So it does seem that there is the possibility that the enemy, me, even though I don't think he can read our minds, unless a person just is so wholly devoted to the dark side, as it were, and they say, Satan, you can read all my thoughts. I want you to come in. I want you to, you know, take over. It might be conceivably possible for somebody who's that into the demonic and the occult. But for a Christian, I don't believe Satan can read our minds. I don't believe that he's not omniscient. Obviously, only God is. But Satan is incredibly well-versed in human behavior. I mean, think about this.

From his fall and that of the other demonic spirits, for several thousand years, they have been observing human behavior. They're observing my behavior, your behavior. They know our inclinations. They know our words. They know where we are weak and where we are strong. And, you know, Paul talks in Ephesians 6 about the strategies of Satan.

In 2, He talks about the design of Satan. has a plan. He has a purpose for each and every one of us. You know, God has a wonderful plan for your life. Well, Satan has a diabolical plan for your life, and he's learned a lot about us and how he can influence our thinking and our actions based on what he's already observed. So, again, I don't think Satan, he certainly doesn't have the knowledge that God does, but I think he can influence our minds, especially when we are walking. Because remember, Peter, took the initial step and saying, no, you're not going to Jerusalem. You're not going to be crucified.

God forbid that this would happen. That was when the enemy entered in. With Anonice and Safira, it seems as if they had already resolved to hold back the money they had promised to give to the church. They had already sinned and they were unrepentant. And it was then that Satan filled their heart to lie to the spirit and say, yeah, we've given you all the proceeds of the sale when in fact they hadn't. So it seems to me that there are instances. in which Satan can, in fact, plant ideas in our minds. But again, that's what, I think those are, again, the fiery missiles, the fiery darts of the enemy,

that we just have to constantly resist and deny and push back on in the name of Christ. And I think if we do that, we don't have to worry about it. I think Satan is compelled to flee. Sure. And granting that, I know you've written that, you know, you're not a demon under every bush, and I think it was Gary Bashers who said, I'm a demon under every third bush. but the world's a little more spiritually charged than we think probably. But obviously, you know, we live in a broken world that, you know, cars do break down and

Wi-Fi does shut off. Although today's Wi-Fi interruption is bordering on Praternatural for me. So I will be calling and leaving that complaint with Cox. But what general advice would you have, Sam, to a Christian who is genuinely trying to discern whether something is spiritually caused and obviously not mutually exclusive, then it can be both causes. But what advice would you give to someone who says, you know, this is strange, this is repetitive, this is weird, but also, hey, the people closest to Christ, you know, in the years right after his resurrection, all got martyred for the most part and died. So, you know,

persecution comes with being a Christian, and he actually makes an explicit promise for that. So how would you help someone delineate, you know, trouble from living in a broken world and just being a Christian to actual, no, this is the enemies behind this? Yeah. Well, I think there are several things. First of all, they need to be extremely conversant with scripture, to be able to apply the principles of God's word to everything they're thinking, everything they're feeling, everything they're experiencing. And that will, I think, filter out a lot of unfounded fears that maybe this is all the work of the enemy. Secondly, I think they need to seek the counsel and the wisdom of other people who are maybe a little bit

more experienced than they are. Then thirdly, I think this is where the spiritual gift of the discerning the spirits comes in, which I think is a reference to the spirit empowered ability to differentiate between what a demon is doing and what the spirit of God is doing, or what the flesh is doing. This is a vitally important spiritual gift. In fact, I ask people when I speak in these events, how many of you all have ever experienced just this overwhelming sense that a demonic presence is there and is actively trying to influence people? Almost 100% of the people raise their hands. we don't hear much about discerning of spirits, but I think it's far more prevalent in the Christian

world than people would acknowledge. So I think obviously a person should pray intensely. They should, you know, the old Psalm 139, search me, O Lord, and try me and see if there's anything unrighteous in me and lead me in the path of your ways. So constant prayer, self-examination, confession of all known sin. If something becomes evident, to them, repent of it immediately, cry out to the Lord to fill you with the Holy Spirit, to give you the power to discern what is happening. And again, sometimes it's hard. I mean, people, for example, who are caught in some sort of chronic sinful behavior.

I mean, we had a lady call us not long ago. She said to live here in Oklahoma City, and she said her husband is once again into pornography, and he just cannot break free from it. And I wonder sometimes is that kind of addiction, spiritual as well as physiological? And I think it can very likely be that that is the case. But we need to be careful that we don't blame the devil for everything. You know, I had a colleague of mine at Wheaton College used to say, Satan doesn't need any, or human depravity doesn't need any help from Satan to sin.

We're more than capable of doing that on our own. So I think there was a lot of the steps that I would. advise a person to take, constantly just bathing yourself in scripture, bathing yourself in worship, you know, just spend time praising the Lord. So yeah, all of those, the so-called means of grace, the sacrament of the Lord's table is, I think, a very powerful way in which we draw near to him and he draws near to us. So I think all of those factors would weigh in on if somebody is feeling as if maybe Satan is toying with their mind and they don't know whether it's their own fallen flesh or him.

Those are the kind of the steps that I would recommend. Awesome. Let me ask you this, Sam, because one thing, another area of convergence I think you have with Catholic spiritual warfare sort of paradigms and doctrine is that it's oftentimes not a one and done contrary to what we see in the Gospels. And you've written about that sometimes these things take a long time. I wrestle with that initially, and then I thought about it more like intense therapy where if someone got healed after a session, fantastic.

But if someone has chronic ongoing sin and there's consequences of sin, even if it's forgiven, it might ostensibly take time to get to a place where you genuinely want it out of your life, you know, because sin is intoxicating. So has that been your experience that oftentimes it is not instantaneous deliverance like we see in the Gospels? And then how do you reconcile that with the template that kind of Jesus gave us? And then what some of these Catholic extras are saying and your own experience of, well, actually, no, honestly, it takes longer. or can. Yeah, a couple of things that come to mind. If it takes longer, you need to explore the

possibility that the person you're trying to help experience freedom isn't as open to experiencing freedom as they might have expressed. In other words, if people say, why won't the demon go? Sometimes it's because the person doesn't want it to leave. And I know that sounds weird. Why would anybody want that? Well, maybe it's because it kind of draws attention to themselves that they otherwise wouldn't get. It kind of has formed part of their idea. This is just who I am. But oftentimes we find that we can say all the right words and pray all the right prayers. And an individual just simply doesn't want to change.

They might say they do, but deep down in their heart, they really don't. They just like the fact that you're spending time with them and showing that they're important to you. So that's one reason. Another reason why it might take longer is because of what Jesus said in Mark 9, going back to that story. Remember at the end of Mark 9, he said, this kind of. does not come out except by prayer and fast. This kind, there's a kind of demon that is extraordinarily powerful.

They aren't all of the same power or the same authority. So you may be demon with the kind of demon that the disciples found they couldn't cast out that only Jesus could. So that's another helpful explanation for why it might take more time. Then there is the, I can't remember if it's Mark 5, I think it's Mark 5, where it says that Jesus was casting out the demon. and the imperfect tense there seems to suggest repetitively saying to it come out. So I'm not convinced that in every case, Jesus delivered people instantaneously.

And the majority of them, he certainly did. But there might have been some cases in which that didn't happen. And again, for example, Mary Magdalene says Jesus cast out seven demons from her. Well, it doesn't tell us how long it took. It doesn't tell us that it happened instantly or that it took a couple of hours or days. So again, so much of it depends. upon the contribution, the willingness of the individual who's demonized. You know, even healing, for example, people say, well, Jesus always healed instantly.

Well, no, he didn't. Remember the story of the 10 lepers? He says, after the, as they were leaving, they were healed. It wasn't immediately when Jesus spoke the word, but only later, as they were leaving and only one of them returned to give thanks. And then, of course, we have to recognize we're not Jesus. I'm not the son of God. You know, I have a sinful nature.

I live in and struggle with doubt and second questions and hesitations and struggling with my own sinful life. Jesus obviously was in perfect communion with the Father. He never sinned. He heard directly from the Father through the Spirit what needed to be done. So, I mean, like in, was it John 5 when Jesus heals only one man at the pool of Salome, if I remember correctly. And there were apparently dozens of invalids there. heals one. And then later in that chapter he says, I only do the things I see my father doing. The father was only healing one person that day. That's what Jesus did. So I think people need to,

number one, they shouldn't grow discouraged when they're trying to help someone experience freedom from demonic oppression. Don't be discouraged if it doesn't happen all at once. Be faithful and persevere and meet with them again and if need to be again and with other people joining you. And again, and I think that if an individual who's born again, who really does desire freedom, but who's deeply enmeshed in some sin over time, I think if they are sincerely crying out to the Lord with your assistance to be set free, I think they will experience freedom. So I think the final thing I would say is,

let's say that a person that was demonized, we minister to them, and they're set free instantly. And another person who's demonized, and they're set free only after five sessions of two hours each in length. Do you think that person, the second person, is going to gripe? He's like, well, man, I don't very much appreciate what God just did for me and set me free because it took five sessions. He did it in one session for that other person.

It's like healing. Some of our cessationist friends mock us because they say, well, yeah, I heard you pray for somebody who had migraine headaches and they were healed of it and said, but why aren't they healing cancer and other terminal diseases? Well, I think God is, by the way, but that's not my point. My point is this. If a person has a migraine headache and they only get 50% healed, do you think they're going to complain? I think they're going to say, wow, I'm grateful for what little healing I've received. I'm going to continue to pray, so I'll receive complete healing.

So if healings are partial, if deliverance ministry sessions takes multiple occasions, the person who is afflicted and hurting isn't going to complain or gripe about whatever degree of relief they receive. They're going to be happy about that and thankful for it. And that just says we need to continue praying. with them, continue working with them. Because like I said, we're not Jesus, so it doesn't surprise me in the least that our operation in these gifts of the Spirit is not nearly as effective or instantaneous as his was. For those who need a little faith boost right now and encouragement

that, yeah, you know what, I could potentially have a spiritual affliction. And there is hope. Could you share a couple test? Obviously, your wife is one beautiful one. But are there any examples of people that were prayed for that got healed, for example, experienced a physical healing after having deliverance ministry, emotional healing, perhaps misfortune in their life ending. I'd love to kind of as we move on to spiritual gifts. I'd love to give people some encouragement just to take the step and go talk to someone if you're lacking the belief that, you know, God could move in this situation. Yeah, I'll give you one example that comes to mind.

It's happened several years ago. It's a Sunday morning. We had two services in our church. And at the first service, one of my elders came up to me. And he said, Sam, I have a really strong impression about somebody here today. Can I share it? I said, sure. I trusted him.

So he said, I sense that there's a lady here. And 10 days ago, you visited your doctor, exactly 10 days ago. And you got a very bad prognosis for your condition. And you were supposed to be at the first service today, but you came. And the initials, SJ, are significant with regard to your physician. And I think if you'll come up front, I'd love to pray for you. And oh, by the way, you have a six-year-old son with severe asthma. And if you'll go get him out of the nursery or children's ministry and bring him in, I'll pray for him too.

Well, he had no knowledge of who the woman was or whether or not she had a son. This lady makes her way to the front. She said, Sam, you won't believe this, but 10 days ago, I was at the doctor. And she suffered from some sort of debilitating, very painful affliction. I don't know if it was fibromyalgia or what. I can't remember, but it was very distressing. to her. And she said, here's the amazing thing. When I woke up this morning, I felt the compulsion to go to the first service. She said, we've been attending the church for six months. I've never

once gone to the first service. I always go to the second because it takes me a long time to get going in the morning. And for some reason, I felt compelled to come to the first service. If I hadn't come, I would have missed the word, just seeing God's providential oversight of these sorts of situations. She said, oh, by the way, she said, when you said, S.J, it didn't resonate, but then I looked at my medication and on the bottle, the initials of my doctor are S.J. So she went and got her son, brought him in, prayed for them. They were both completely healed and set free from whatever painful affliction it was. He was set free from asthma. Just a powerful testimony of how God used a word of knowledge, for example, as well as a healing gift to set that woman and her son

free. Oh, yeah. And to be just to play skeptic here, there's no way your friend could have known any of these details. Nope. He had no knowledge of who the the woman was when she came up. She said, what's your name? And how long have you been here? And so, no, he had no knowledge of it. He's a man of great integrity.

So, you know, we've had a number of those kinds of instances. We just praise God for them. Yeah, I find it so interesting because I joke. I don't have enough faith to be a cessationist because it's just one of those things. And again, I have a couple of cessations, good friends who are cessationists. None of them would say that this, see, you're lying or this story is not possible. They would say, of course, anything's possible with God. But it just to your point earlier about experience, right?

That doesn't author my theology, but man, it sure translates it because I go, this, you can read First Corinthians, you know, 12 and 14, however you want. But at the end of the day, you hear a story like this. And if Paul's saying eagerly desire that you may prophesy, you know, and obviously it doesn't really get into words of knowledge. But if he's, if at all, he's talking about hearing the voice of God with a level of specificity that just gets people, you know, to just give their life to God, et cetera. It seems like there's just a lot of people with experiences, and I can't in good conscience dismiss all of them outright as feigned, wrong, misled, or lying, right? I mean, there's just too many stories like this, right? Right, right. And the point that you made that cessations will say, well, of course, I still believe in miracles.

God can perform miracles. He can heal somebody. What they don't believe in is miracle workers or healers. They don't believe that the gift exists beyond the time of the first century. And I think that is the result of a very flawed understanding of how spiritual gifts operate. When I look at the New Testament, I differentiate between what I call permanent or residential gifts and occasional or circumstantial gifts. So permanent residential gifts are things like teaching.

I'm a teacher. I can teach anytime, anywhere, any place. I don't have to think about it. I just do it. My wife has the gift of mercy and serving. She can do that without hesitation. But gifts that are more overtly supernatural like healing, or miracles, even prophecy or word of knowledge, are not something we carry in our back pocket,

that we can pull out and exercise any time we want. We can only exercise those gifts on certain occasions or certain circumstances where God wills us to operate effectively. So I give you an example. Something similar to this actually happened, but I'm not going to, I'm just going to give you it as a hypothetical. A person comes to the front with, let's say, severe arthritis in their knees. And we say, Lord, would you please grant a gift of healing for this person?

We pray for them. They're instantly healed. Another person standing next to them says, I've got arthritis in my knees too. Will you pray for me? We do. We say the same things. Nothing happens. Why?

Because healing isn't in our power. It's not in our back pocket that we can exercise at will. The reason why the first person was healed is because God granted a gift for that healing. He didn't grant it for the other person. Why he wouldn't? I don't know. He's sovereign in his wisdom. and according to his timing, he oftentimes will grant a healing.

Other times he won't. But my point is, certain gifts only operate under certain circumstances or occasions when God wants it to happen. Like I said, there are a lot of gifts of leadership, administration, gifts of giving, gifts of exhortation. A Christian can pull those out anytime they want and exercise it. They can't do that with a number of these other gifts. So I think if we keep that in mind, the whole issue of, well, God still heals, but there are no healers. Well, there never were healers. You know, the gift of healing never existed.

If by that, you mean the ability that a person had to heal somebody every single time they prayed. That never existed. Paul couldn't do it. He couldn't heal apaphroditis. Couldn't heal trophamous. Couldn't heal Timothy. Couldn't heal himself of a thorn in the flesh and of his eye affliction. That doesn't mean the gift of healing wasn't operative.

in that day, just simply means that it wasn't God's will to heal in those particular cases. Sure. All right. So, Sam, could you list out from our understanding right now that you think would probably be the most ecumenical list of spiritual gifts that maybe all believers have access to, but not everyone walks in the same anointing of? Yeah. In my book on spiritual gifts, I think I identified 21 gifts.

I mean, the ones that everybody knows, the nine gifts at 1 Corinthians 12, Word of knowledge, Word of wisdom, tongues, interpretation of tongues, prophecy, discern in the spirits, healing and miracles. I think that's nine. I can't remember if I left something out. And then other gifts like teaching, apostleship, leading, giving, faith. I think faith is, at all likelihood, an occasional gift because all of us have faith. But I think the gift of faith is that that supernatural surge of confidence that God's going

to do something right now, for which I don't have biblical warrant. So you go on, on and on through those gifts. And then, of course, prophecy, okay, I don't think I mentioned prophecy among a go. Prophecy, obviously, is another. Evangelism is another one. I mentioned in Ephesians 411. Administration and hospitality as well?

Yeah, absolutely. All those gifts. The ones in Romans 12, 6 through 8, 1st Corinthians 12, twice he lists gifts. First Peter 412, he lists the gifts. but I think there may well be spiritual gifts that are not mentioned in scripture. Now that upsets a lot of people. They think I'm kind of saying the Bible isn't sufficient. Of course it is.

But there's no reason to why we should believe that the only gifts God will ever give are the ones explicitly mentioned in the Bible. I mean, every listing of spiritual gifts, no two are exactly the same. In fact, the only gift that is mentioned in all four listings is the gifts of prophecy. But in all the others, there is a differentiation. So, for example, what about the gift of deliverance ministry? We've been talking about deliverance. I think all Christians have authority over the enemy.

All Christians can operate in deliverance, but some seem to have an extraordinary authority, an extraordinary beyond the normal capacity to set people free. Or let's say, let's talk about the gift of interpretation. I don't mean interpretation of tongues. I don't mean the interpretation of biblical text. All of us should be able to interpret John 3,6. But what about, let's just take two examples in the Old Testament, Joseph and Daniel. When Pharaoh had his dream and nobody could interpret it, but Joseph did.

And he said, dream interpretation comes from the Lord. Or Nebuchadnezzar and Belchazar and Belchazar have dreams and only Daniel can interpret them. He says, these come from the Lord. There are certain Christians who have an uncanny spiritual ability to interpret revelation of that sort. I can't. People come to me and they said, Sam, I've had this incredible dream. Can you interpret it for me? No, I wouldn't even try, but I can tell you somebody who likely can, or let's take another gift that I think is real.

Intercession. All of us are to intercede. All of us are to pray. But I've known many people that that's almost the only thing they do, and they have an incredible track record of answered prayer. They just want to spend their lives in the prayer closet on their knees. So these are, that's at least three other possible gifts. But if they are gifts, they still must align with everything the Bible says about spiritual gifts. They can't be in contradiction anything scripture has said.

So I think when I tally them all up, I think I had about 20 or 21 gifts that are possible for believers. And it's interesting. To your other point, too, about I had a pastor who I loved this phrase. He said, the Bible's all truth, but not all truth everywhere is contained in the Bible. And even, right, it's Luke who admits, hey, there's so much, right, is it Luke who said, I can't write down everything that Jesus did, right? There's just, or is it John? Yeah, John, I can't write down everything that was written.

And you think it's so interesting because there's just there's so much beautiful experiential history of the church that we can learn from from the church fathers and the saints and ministers and revivals. And, you know, we don't have to build theologies out of them. But I do find interesting. Well, it's like, show me where it says that in the Bible. Well, you know, the Trinity isn't explicitly stated in the Bible. Yeah, we infer it.

And there's a lot of beautiful discussion that went into that. So I think it's, you know, on this, our audience won't mind you saying that there's stuff found, you know, that's not explicitly denoted in scripture. And I agree with you. There's probably gifts, you know, and what's interesting, too, is a lot of people tend to take these quizzes, it feels like, and it's like, find out your spiritual gifts. And tell me from wrong here, but it seems like there's nothing that says you get a certain amount of gifts.

He does say gifts to this person, this and this, but are they, do you kind of view them as kind of yours for the taking if you want to pursue them and just get out there? And obviously, I'm not guaranteeing, obviously, everyone would walk in the same anointing, but I don't see a lot of limits on you can only go after what you like preset template have, right? Yeah. Let me answer your first question before I answer that. I do not believe the Bible is encyclopedic.

In other words, it doesn't address everything in every area of life. And I mean, it doesn't say anything about nuclear fusion or, you know, Artemis II trips to the moon or cars or, you know, there's so much that is not mentioned because obviously it was given at a particular period of time. But whatever it does say is true. and whatever else we may learn. And this is, I think, a thing where I, me and our Catholic friends, would agree and disagree. I believe that tradition is tremendously helpful.

I believe there are things that we do today that I can't find explicit biblical support for it. But if the Bible excludes it, if the Bible explicitly says that is not allowed or the principles of scripture would preclude it, then I have to have to reject it. So I think there are levels of authority. I think scripture, that's what I mean by Solas Scriptura. I don't mean scripture only. What I mean by that is scripture is the final arbiter of all truth. It judges all other claims to truth, whether that's tradition or experience or whatever.

Now, to your other question, I'm not a fan of spiritual gifts inventory tests. My wife loves them. I don't. They're just not nuanced enough for me. It's like the, if I can give it a similar example, you know, you take these personality profile tests and it says, Which would you rather do? Stay in the living room conversing with friends or be in your study reading the book? I said, what kind of question is that?

What book? Who are the friends? What's the topic of discussion? And I don't get to choose. So I think sometimes what? I want to do both. Some days, I want to read my book in the morning and then hang out with my friends in the evening.

Like false choice. My approach to discovering one spiritual gift is not so much to take an event. If you want to take an inventory test, have at it. I take a more pragmatic approach, and that is, stop gazing inwardly at your navel, trying to figure out what gift you might or might not have, and open your eyes and look for a need that you can meet. Look for somebody who's hurting that you can pray for, somebody who's struggling financially that you can help by writing a check, somebody that's depressed, that you can speak words of encouragement, somebody who's an invalid, you can go mow the grass in their yard. When you do that, your gift will meet you. God will empower you in that moment to do something that you otherwise never thought you were capable of doing. So that, I think, is absolutely vital in our pursuit of these things.

And as far as, you know, excuse me, earnestly desire spiritual gifts, especially you may prophesy, you have to ask the Lord, Lord, what gift do you want to give me? How do you want me to minister to the people in my church or in my family or in my neighborhood? And, Lord, whatever it is, would you please grant that gift to me that I might, you'd utilize it for your glory and your praise. So I think if we would stop doing such an introspective examination of our lives and just look outwardly and see where there are needs that need to be met and then go step out in faith and meet that need, I think the Spirit of God will empower you in that moment with whatever gift is necessary to accomplish what you hope to

accomplish. So in the daily, you know, Jesus says in John 10, like, my sheep, know my voice. So we are to try and hear the voice of the shepherd. What does that look like for you? And what is your advice for trying to discern the voice of God, both for, you know, guidance in everyday life, but also as it pertains to how it expresses through prophecy, words of knowledge. Because it seems like if you're going to draw like a hierarchy, right, there's like, like Jesus was the master of this, right? I see and I hear what the father is doing. And then that manifests as, I'm going to heal someone. I'm going to do this, et cetera. So it seems like it all goes back to, God, I want you to speak to me. And then how that comes out. seems to be the manifestation of the gift. And I'm curious how that looks in your life and then

how we can kind of differentiate between words of knowledge. What is prophecy? That's a very controversial thing right now. Like, what is prophecy? And et cetera. So if you're some thoughts on that, I'd love to get into that. I will confess, I don't regularly, and by that I mean daily, hear the voice of the Spirit of God in my heart or my mind. There are times when I do, and it's so unexpected and so vivid that there's no mistaking what the Lord is saying. I think if God wants to speak to us, he will make himself clear. If I feel like I have this impression or this sense, but I'm a little confused, like, man, it's kind of fuzzy.

I really don't know what direction that's going. That's probably not the Spirit of God. I think the Spirit of God speaks with clarity. So, yeah, there have been times when I have internally heard the voice of the Lord. I had one experience. I won't go into all the details where I was praying for a young girl who was in college, who was under incredible demonic attack. And I told her, I said, let's just get quiet for a moment, see if the Spirit of God will give

us some direction. And we sat there for about 30 seconds, and I mean, I heard in my head, to the same degree, you and I are hearing each other through our ears. I heard in my head, Phil, just the name, Phil, just a very slight little word. And I looked at her and I said, who's Phil? And she just almost exploded. She said, how did you know that? That's the name of the man that seduced me in his mother's home and his mother was a witch.

And that's when all my problems started. I thought, well, I think the Lord just spoke to us and gave us a little direction on how we're to proceed and able to set help get free of that. Let me real quickly address. You said, how does it play into decision making? I don't think people should look to the voice of the Holy Spirit or the revelatory giftings to make every decision in life. When you look at how Paul made decisions, he said, I reckon that this is good. If it be God's will, that it is good.

Or he might consult with somebody else as to what he might do. I had a student at Wheaton one day, literally, true story. He was in my office. And I said, how's it going today, John? He said, oh, great. He said, I had a little struggle this morning trying to figure out which pair of socks to wear, the green ones or the blue ones. He said, I prayed forever.

I said, John, God doesn't care which pair of socks you wear. Just make up your own mind and go for it. As long as it doesn't involve a sinful decision. I don't think God cares. So I think sometimes people are too dependent on spiritual gifts like prophecy or word of knowledge in making routine daily decision. You're going to go buy a new car. I don't think God cares what color it is.

Just whatever you want, whatever color fits your fancy. Now, real quickly, prophecy and word of knowledge. The Bible nowhere defines word of knowledge or word of wisdom. The only place in the New Testament where those words are found are in 1 Corinthians chapter 12. Now, nowhere else. Now, prophecy isn't so much defined as it is illustrated. Prophecy is speaking forth in merely human words, something the Spirit of God is brought to mind. I think there are three elements in every prophecy, every exercise of the gift.

There's the revelation. The Spirit of God has to reveal it, and he always reveals truth. He never speaks out of both sides of his mouth. But secondly, there's the interpretation. That's our part. And we can misinterpret what God reveals. And then thirdly, there's the application. What are we to do once we think we have interpreted what God is saying?

said to us, only the first of those is infallible and inerrant. God speaks truth and only truth. Unfortunately, we oftentimes misinterpret and misapply it. I mean, think, for example, I'm picking up my Bible. You and I could open to a passage of scripture, and it's right there in front of us, black and white, unmistakable. We know what the words, what the words are. And you and I could differ in our interpretation of that verse of scripture. And somebody will say, well, I guess that means we just should throw out the Bible. If we can have different interpretations of God's revealed word, what good is it? But of course we don't do that. Why do we do that with prophecy? Why is it that simply because we might misinterpret a prophetic revelation that it's of no value?

We misinterpret this revelation. This is far more explicit, far easier to interpret than a revelation from the spirit, and yet we misinterpret it all the time. But we don't ban the gift of teaching. We don't tell people to shut their Bibles and don't bother reading it. So prophecy, me, prophecy is when the Spirit of God reveals something, 1st, Corinthians 14, 33, 34, somewhere along in there, he says, if a revelation comes to an individual, then that person is to speak it forth and the others are to judge it or weigh it, to evaluate it, to determine what in it is right and good and what in it is bad. So I think that's the same thing with the word of knowledge. I think it's a revelation from the spirit that we then speak forth and hopefully and properly interpret it,

but sometimes we misinterpret it. Sometimes we interpret it correctly, but we misapply it to the person's life. So we need to be careful in being too quick to push back on people if they miss it. You know, I think every individual who's gifted in the spirit has prophesied falsely. That doesn't make them a false prophet. False prophets in the New Testament are always unbelievers, always, who deny the incarnation and deity of Christ. But all of us, to one extent or another, are going to make mistakes. we're going to misinterpret what God has revealed in the same way that we misinterpret this Bible, sadly.

So that was a, I went on a rant there. I don't know how much more you wanted me to say. No, that's what's wonderful. I mean, I, you know, I've had the same experience. And actually a shout out to Antioch Church. I was there for a wedding. And I just went in and stopped in Waco, Texas. And they have a prophetic ministry team there. And I'm always curious to learn more about that. And a friend of mine had worked there. And so he's like, hey, come check it out. And you sign up. And they don't know anything about you. first name down. And I walked in a room and there were four people and they just spent 15 minutes

praying for me. But they, they, before you even got a word, they said, look, we may not hear the voice of God. We're not going to force it. If it is God, you know, it'll make it clear, but you are to run it by scripture. You are to run it by your community. God will not contradict himself. This is the scriptural precedent. Nowhere in scripture does Paul or Peter or Jesus say, you're not going to hear from God anymore. I've always found that to be very interesting. It's just like, you know, there's a lot of cessationists are very sole scripture and yet there's not an explicit statement that's like, I know they go, they take these gifts will continue until the end until the perfect comes. And I'm like, the perfect is the Bible? Well, it sounds like the perfect would be Jesus.

But all that aside, I had a beautiful experience there. And one of the people prayed and knew something about me that it would be impossible to know, like something very secret and encouraging, like a special name. And it was like, cool. And I've had others where people pray for me and nothing happens. And you just go, okay, I don't know. God, if God is good, then I trust his timing of all that. So I'm with you. It's one of those things where it's happened enough where I know it's real and not enough to where I'm comfortable. And I would love it to happen more. But God seems to know that we might grow addicted to these kind of, you know, charismatic experiences versus the walking in faith day by day without the cloud

of fire, right? Precisely. By the way, I love Antioch church in Waco. I love their pastor Jimmy Seiber and they have some really gifted people that are very evangelistic, very mission-minded. Yeah. Tell him he's a cessationist after watching food multiply, you know, and like are an angel guiding him out of Czechoslovakia when the iron curtain fell or when the Berlin wall fell down. It was just like wild. They just, you know, just tell him it's not happening. I'm curious. So since we're not, you know, we're not really big on tests right now. But what are some inklings that you might encourage someone. If they have like a stirring in their hearts, hey, you know what? I'd pray into that. That might be an opportunity where God's like, hey, you know what? I got gifts for you. They're not even realized. I mean, you work out five days a week in the gym. You never miss leg day, but you're not practicing this thing, right? So what might be some inclinations that would point towards spiritual gifts that God may be excited for us to step into more? Sure.

Well, we have to keep in mind, first reading this 12-11, where it says the Spirit of God distributes gifts according to his will. We cannot force the Spirit. We can't compel him to do something against his will. but I would simply say to people in prayer as you're constantly seeking the Lord and spending time with him and you're reading the Bible, do you sense in your heart a desire to minister in a particular way? Do you sense in your heart you really wish you had more boldness to evangelize or greater clarity with which to share the gospel? Or you want to learn how to, you want to teach the Bible more clearly, or you want to pray for the sick more powerfully and effectively. as you sense that impression in your heart, there's no guarantee, but it may well be the Holy Spirit doing that because you have just landed on a gift that he wants to grant you. I think people say to me, well, wait a minute, Sam, if the Spirit always determines what gifts are given to whom, why zealously desire them? Why pursue them?

Well, that's like saying, well, we preach the gospel to people, even though whether or not they get saved is up to God. we pray for the sick, but even though we might not know whether they're going to be healed. So the point is, when you feel an impression, when you feel an urgency in your heart about some gift that you would love to be able to use, that may well be, more times than not, that's the Spirit of God who's awakened that in you, precisely to prepare you to receive the gift that he's later going to give. So I think that's the best approach to this is just because you want it, doesn't mean you'll get it, but you have to say, Lord, just purify my heart, purify my motives. Lord, help me to make sure that I'm not wanting this for self-promotion or for my own ego, but it's for your glory and for the good of your people. And then pray into that repeatedly.

And my guess is strongly that the Spirit of God will grant you that gift. You know, I'd had a few experiences early in my Christian walk where I'd given some profoundly accurate words, like the kind of really kind of makes the room still. And you're like, whoa, a level of specificity that was both almost frightening. to me. And it was only on a handful of occasions. And the rest of the time, I said, my, my success rates got to be like 0.0007%. And somewhere along the line, I kind of just didn't dig into that. And in hindsight, I look back and I go, okay, he did it before. And what did you do to develop? And of course, and I've always enjoyed praying for people, but it was actually

only, and it was through my good friend, Abby Robertson, who we did, we did a show together called Heaven Meets Earth. And she just wakes up now. I will push back. she does pray about what outfits to wear and does pray about what flight to take because her philosophy is God, you might want me to meet someone on the flight. So I'm all yours. And if there's, it's a posture of surrender. And I think he honors that. But even she was like, you need to pray about this more. And I said, you're right. Like I do. And this year, I started taking 10, 15 minutes every morning as much as I can saying, Lord, would you give me three people to pray for today? And if I get anything. I just share it with them. And I got to tell you, it's been transformative. And I've been

so blessed. In fact, I had a good friend that I kind of had some just, you know, past disagreements with, et cetera. And I heard this phrase in my head, the prophetic is reconcilatory. And I was like, what a weird thing to hear? Like, what do you mean? I mean, I know with prophets encouraging. But I was like, okay. And I got this image for this friend of mine. And I gave, I gave the word to them. And it led to this incredible conversation and kind of hashing out a disagreement we'd had. And the word was completely unrelated to it, and that we're like basically, you know, full, full, full communion again. And I went, that's, wow, God, what another level of the prophetic that when you reach out to another believer and God and God is moving through you and speaking to them, hard to stay mad at someone

when God is operating through that. And it just, and it kind of added a whole new level of depth. And I thought, man, that's just so beautiful. So to your point, I've just been asking God and they're not, I don't, I'll get, you know, they're not fireworks every time. But it's happened now. enough times to where God has honored that and put someone on my heart. And they said, this is what I needed to hear today. And at the very least, if I don't get anything, you send someone a verse, you know, it's hard to get that wrong, right? Sure. No, I agree completely. That's actually wonderful in the spirit of God does that. Amen. Now, Sam, we got to get you going here soon, but I wanted to, I had a couple stories I want to

prompt you just to make sure I don't forget. You had a story about receiving a word of knowledge about someone's illness in particular, and it was a word that's not on everyone's bingo card. You felt the Lord say to you endometriosis, not something that you just imagine pops into one's head on regular intervals. Certainly not into a man's head. Yeah, it was back in the early to mid-90s in Kansas City, and we had a bunch of people over to our house after a conference, and there was this couple there who had come from Oklahoma City.

I didn't know them, had never met him before, and I knew her first name. name, but I couldn't, I couldn't even remember their last name. And while we were having a worship time, that word just popped into my head. And I said, God, that's weird. I said, especially for a man, does it apply to somebody here? And it's like the Lord just turned my head to look at her. He said, yeah, it's her. So, oh, oh me a little faith. I took out a business card, and I wrote down the word and her name. And so after we'd finished worship, and I said, well, folks, I think I've got a word for somebody. And the word is endometriosis. And I I think I know who it is.

Is that apply to anybody? I'm looking out of the corner of my eye and her hand just goes straight up in the air. I said, I knew it was you. Now, somebody could say, yeah, after the fact, I said, no, before the fact. And I pulled out that business card and showed it to them. And it turned out they had been trying to conceive for a long time, hadn't been able to. And here's an interesting point. I did not have any confidence that God was going to heal her of that just because he revealed that condition.

So I told her, I said, I think you need to go back home. Now, again, remember this is way back in 1994-95, so technology was in its infancy stage then. I said, go back and have your physician, check you for this, and maybe he can do something surgically to alleviate it. But we went ahead and prayed for it, and I said, I'm not guaranteed that God's going to heal you of this right now. So she went back home nine months later, I get a picture of their twin boys. She sends it to me.

It was just an incredible miracle of healing. So, yeah, that sort of thing is unusual from me. me, I'm not, I'm not gifted in the prophetic or word of knowledge arena. I probably, it's happened maybe to me five or six times in the last 35, 40 years. So that doesn't make me a profit by any stretch of the imagination. Yeah, that's beautiful, though. That's, that's awesome. And I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you.

Obviously, it's been a tough, tough year with everything that happened with Kansas City, et cetera. And I think this is a broader topic of, we know that anointing and character are not always connected to each other. We know Saul was deeply anointed and actually the textbook of no character, same with Samson. And our pastor I had one time would say, he used to say character without, what is it, anointing without character is catastrophic. How have you processed the, you know, wool over the eyes of being deceived by someone you care about deeply and what happened there? And also being able to encourage people and say, hey, look, you know, because I've told Bill this, But I had a friend with, I want to name one of the prophets, who met them 30 years ago.

And they got a word, this pre-Facebook, pre-everything, right? And it was incredibly accurate. And I tell people, you know, people, annoying and character are not always connected. And that doesn't negate everything that happened in that period there, just because someone ends up being a more sinful individual than we thought, right? Yeah, it is paradoxical. It really is. I wrote my book, The Rise and Fall of the Kansas City Prophets,

it's been out now for about two or three months. And in the opening chapter, I talk about the paradox of the sinning saint. It doesn't make sense to us that somebody who really does know the Lord could sin so grievously. But look at Corinth. I mean, Paul says in 1st Corinthians 1, they had more of the Holy Spirit than anybody else they knew of. And yet they were carnal and immature and were tolerating all manner of evil in their midst. I can't explain that. I don't understand it, but it has been, yeah, it was one of the most devastating things I've ever walked through. Somebody that I loved and had such a close 35-year friendship with. I'm talking about Mike Bickle, of course.

And I still love him. I care for him deeply. I just wish that he would repent. But he hasn't, as far as I can tell, at least not in any public way. And I tell people, I say, look, just don't ever underestimate your capacity for being deceived. If you'd asked me back then, are you the sort of person who could be easily deceived? I said, no, not at all. But we were. We were lied to. We were deceived. I was with just on Saturday, just what, two days ago, sat with two of my friends who were on staff there.

They were pastors with me. We were all in the inner circle with Mike Bickle. And I said, guys, how did this slip by us? Were we just idiots or what? And they said, we don't know. We don't know we were just lied to and deceived. and we were so impressed with his personality and his charisma that we didn't think that there was any flaw in his character. But wow, boy, we've learned a lot of lessons from that whole scenario and everything else that's happening in the charismatic world.

All these exposures of people who are living double lives. It's tragic. It's just heartbreaking. And I mean, my mind always goes back to the disciples. Here was Judas Ascariot who was with them night and day for three years, even apparently performed mirror. miracles and yet on the night Jesus was betrayed and he says one of you's going to betray me and they're all going who is it is it I Lord is it I they still didn't know it was Judas so if they could have been deceived in that way any of us can be but I think if if anything else my antenna are up a lot more quickly now

I don't want to swing to the other end to the spectrum you know there's one you can be naive and goable at one end or you can be a cynic and a and a skeptic at the other end and I don't want either one It's difficult to know. In fact, in the book, I talk about this a great deal. I talk about events that happened and claims that were made and kind of leave it to the reader to make up your own mind. Some of them, I think, have been discredited altogether. Others of them are confirmed in ways that you can't deny. It's a challenging issue. I hope I've grown from it. Learned a lot of lessons from it. But I hope I'll never be deceived again like I was with Mike. So on the record, despite moral failings and just the, you know, fraudulent behavior by some of these individuals, can you say, though, hey, amidst all that, people still got blessed, people got real words, people, the Lord moved in the midst of even a very imperfect and sinful environment? Absolutely. I don't know why God does it that way. Maybe it's just because he's gracious. He's so kind.

And sometimes he won't even let our sin and our unbelief get in the way of him accomplishing great things in people's lives. There were thousands of people who were blessed by our church, our conferences from all over the world. And I know some of them. I have a friend who, like, experienced a profound prophecy that changed their life. And it was from an individual who's now under significant scrutiny. And, you know, and it's just like, okay, you know, I had friends who knew Benny Hinn back in the day. And they said a long time ago. And they said, that man, I have a good friend who was in the room with Benny Henn.

And he said, I mean, 40 years ago. He said, that guy, at the time I met him, he's like, there was a power of God. And he called out things and he knew things. And I thought, wow, okay. Like, it's not one or the other usually, right? Sometimes you can have terrible, you know, issues and still be very prophetic. Yeah, but I think what we always have to do is what you already mentioned. We have to prioritize character over gifting.

And it's when you get those inverted that you get in trouble. But it's a hard lesson to learn. I hope I've learned it. Sam, I'm curious, you know, we talked a little about discernment of spirit. but how has the, I'm curious if the gift of the discerned spirits, how it pertains particularly maybe to spiritual warfare, that's how I've typically understood the discernment of spirits. And I'm curious if you have an example where you felt like God might have give you an inkling for something that might have led to a spiritual victory.

Yeah, we were conducting a prayer walk in our neighborhood. And it's on a Saturday morning, about half a dozen of us spread out. We just walked the neighborhood, prayed over the homes. And we came to the elementary school was at the end of our block. And I remember when I set foot on it, it just put my feet. foot out, I suddenly felt almost the same thing I felt with that woman I described earlier, just an overwhelming sense of darkness. And I just stopped and I said to the people, I said, hey, something really evil is here. We need to be careful, need to be on our guard. So we walk

a little further, we turned a corner and there was this little, you know, where the walls would meet. And there were 666 and pentagrams and all sorts of satanic symbols had been spray painted on the walls. And there was a little fire pit there where I, Obviously, somebody had conducted some sort of ritual sacrifice. And that was, I think, an exercise of the gift of discern the spirit. The Lord alerted me to that before I even got there and saw anything. So we prayed about it and just prayed protection over the kids in that school and the teachers. But, yeah, that was an interesting experience to say the least.

Well, like all good storms, they eventually pass. And so it is time for us, unfortunately, to adjourn and say... You got a prophetic word that I'm going to die? No, I think this is just, our storm is just, you know, subsided. Our storm is subsided today. And I want to thank Dr. Sam Storms for coming on and talking and sharing your wisdom with us. And we appreciate you. Thank you for fighting.

We know you persevered against not stonings and famines and beatings, but bad Wi-Fi and intermittent disruptions. And so thank you for, you know, now we can, as Paul wrote, unite what was lacking in Christ's suffering on the cross, right? He never understood bad Wi-Fi the way we do, right, Sam? Absolutely. Amazing. Well, thank you for joining us, Sam. Really appreciate it. God bless you in your ministry.

And we hope we come back and see us again soon. All right. Blessings.