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Thread: Deliverance

  1. #51
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ezekiel 33 View Post
    You are reading that wrong bro. Jesus did not state the father's faith as a condition for the deliverance. Read it again. Smitty nailed it on the head.
    "if you can believe"

    I know the meaning of the word "if". The word "you". And the term "can believe".

    I'll concede that "if and only if" would have been one notch clearer.

    Likewise,

    "So the Lord said, “If you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you."

    means that you need faith for that to happen, it doesn't mean that it will now happen whether you believe or not.

  2. #52
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    Quote Originally Posted by fuego View Post
    He's not speaking of 'this kind' of unbelief as in different types. He's speaking of 'this kind' as in a subtle unbelief that inhabits us that we're not even aware of, putting a glass ceiling on our life, that keeps us powerless. Just a little earlier in Matthew He had given them authority over ALL devils and they had said the devils are subject to us in Your Name. Now all of a sudden they can't cast this one out and they're wondering why. Jesus tells them the root cause, their unbelief, and gives them the remedy for that unbelief. The devil isn't the problem. He has bee defeated. The unbelief in those that have been given the authority is.

    This brings up an interesting point. Jesus clearly taught that He cast out devils by the Holy Spirit, by 'the finger of God'. So if the devil comes out when we speak to it, it is because the Holy Spirit drove him out. If the devil doesn't come out, the Spirit didn't drive him out. So this puts no 'responsibility' on the devil to come out based on any characteristic of the devil. If the Spirit drives him out, he comes out. So the 'problem' with casting out devils has nothing to do with the devil, it has to do with whether the Holy Spirit drives the devil out or not when we speak.

    That make the 'problem' the relationship between the Holy Spirit and the believer. If there is no unbelief, the Spirit heeds our words and drives the devil out. If there is unbelief, it keeps the Spirit of God from moving, because He moves in response to faith. Hence, 'prayer and fasting' is addressing the fellowship between the believer and the Holy Spirit. Prayer and fasting removes the hindrance in us, the unbelief, which keeps the Holy Spirit from moving when we speak.
    It occurred to me that Jesus could be referring to unbelief in Mat 17 even if he's referring to "this kind of demon" in the sense that he's referring to unbelief as a kind of evil spirit. Not an other, evil spiritual being but rather as the wrong type of spirit inhabiting the heart and mind instead of the spirit of faith.

    2 Cor 4:13 And since we have the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, “I believed and therefore I spoke,” we also believe and therefore speak,

    The spirit of faith vs "the demon" of unbelief

    This still doesn't work particularly well with Mark 9 but at least Mark 9 makes sense now since he is in fact referring to a type of evil spirit. Which means that it's more tempting to let Mat 17 explain Mark 9.

    So the disciples had to cast the "demon" of unbelief out of themselves before they could cast the demon out of the boy.

    Note that this doesn't really affect anything else I've been saying about the passages in this thread.

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