Deliverance Minister Isaiah Saldivar Says The #1 Sign You’re A Christian is That You Cast Out Demons
Deliverance minister Isaiah Saldivar, who is quickly becoming one of the prominent and visible representations of the charismatic right due to a rapidly growing social media presence, continues to teach weird and wonky things to justify his raison d’être.
We’ve written about him previously after he claimed that a gospel presentation without signs and wonders is inadequate, that the Apostle Peter was demon-possessed, that Christian couples and their children can be inhabited by demons all the time, and so families should cast demons out of each other every few months after he led a mass deliverance event to remove demons that got ‘passed down’ in the womb, and after he claims he doesn’t wear glasses while preaching because otherwise, he would start seeing demons everywhere.
In a recent YouTube video, he offers:
Do you know what happened when the lame man got healed in front of the gate called Beautiful? He went in the temple with them, why? They didn’t invite him to the temple, he got healed and said, “I wanna go where you’re going.”
Do you know why our friends and family don’t wanna come here (to church)? Because they haven’t experienced demonstration first. Guys, we have lost the convincing element of the gospels. Jesus said, “these signs shall follow them that believe. In my name, they shall drive out demons.”
Sign number one that you’re a believer: you cast out devils.
Saldivar then gives a hypothetical scenario of how he imagines this would look like
“Imagine if I’m like at the grocery store like,
“Oh, you’re a Christian?”
“Yeah”
“You are?”
“Yeah”
“Oh, you cast out devils.”
That’s the number one sign, and that’s the one thing the church hates.”
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Well, setting aside the cessation debate, his first error is to ignore the Apostles explanation of Jesus’ teaching in the Epistles. Namely the gifts of the Spirit, body of Christ, and that not all are purposed for the same tasks. We all have different gifts. And this is true whether or not one believes the sign gifts still remain. At no time did all believers in the early church cast out demons. Some did, but not all. His claim that all believers would all share certain specific gifts in common is not Biblical.
You can’t just take something Jesus said and make up your own interpretation of it, without consulting the Apostle’s explanation of it. That’s basically what the Epistles are all about – the Apostles explaining things in greater detail. That context cannot be ignored.
Once we consult the Apostles detailed explanations, then we can go back to Jesus’ words, and have a clearer understanding. In this case, the meaning of what it means that signs “follow”, and to whom “them” refers – namely, the entire body, not each and every individual.
He does not have the ability to rightly divide the word of truth.