Demons are real. Exorcism isn't the answer.

By Dale Moreau, Op-ed contributor Tuesday, September 15, 2026

Ask most Christians about the powers of darkness and you will get one of two answers, and both are wrong. One camp treats every hardship as a demon to be cast out. The other treats demons as leftover superstition the modern world has outgrown. Scripture rejects them both.

The first error turns the Christian life into a permanent exorcism. Every illness, every setback, every dark mood becomes a spirit to be named, bound, and rebuked. Whole ministries are built on charting which demon rules which city and staging confrontations to break its grip. The second error is quieter but just as costly. It reads the Gospel exorcisms as first-century confusion about mental illness, treats Paul's warfare language as mere metaphor, and files the supernatural under “things educated people no longer believe.”

Here is what both miss. The Bible does not offer a world of either constant demons or no demons. It offers a world of real supernatural powers who are already, decisively defeated — and a Church whose weapon against them is not the exorcism kit but the Gospel itself.

Start with what the New Testament says believers are up against. Paul tells the Ephesians they wrestle “not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness” (Ephesians 6:12). Those are not vivid words for bad habits or social pressure. They are the ancient world's technical vocabulary for supernatural rulers set over the nations — and gone corrupt.

That assignment runs back through the Old Testament. Deuteronomy 32:8, in its oldest form, says the Most High fixed the borders of the peoples “according to the number of the sons of God,” keeping Israel as his own portion. The nations were placed under supernatural administrators. Psalm 82 puts those administrators on trial before God — charged with defending the wicked instead of the weak — and hands down the sentence: “you shall die like men.” Daniel gives the picture flesh. An angel sent to answer Daniel's prayer is held up for 21 days by “the prince of Persia,” a supernatural power resisting until reinforcements arrive (Daniel 10:13).

The affairs of the nations, the text says plainly, are shaped by unseen powers in rebellion against their maker.

None of this leaves the Church helpless, because the decisive blow has already landed. At the cross, Paul writes, God “disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them” (Colossians 2:15). The sentence pronounced in Psalm 82 was carried out at Calvary. The powers still operate, but they operate as a beaten enemy — loud, dangerous, and out of time.

This is where the calibration matters, because both popular errors break down at exactly this point. Mental illness is real. Trauma is real. Neurological and developmental disorders are real, and withholding medical care to stage a deliverance is not faith but negligence. Scripture never asks us to choose between a doctor and God. Yet the opposite reflex is no wiser. A world scrubbed clean of any genuine supernatural agency is not the biblical world; it is the modern one, pressed down over a text that never shared its assumptions. The powers are real. So is the psychiatrist. Wisdom refuses to pretend either away.

And that brings us to the war the church is actually called to wage. Read the Great Commission against everything above and it changes character. When the risen Christ says “all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” and sends His people to “make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:18–19), He is not launching a membership drive. He is announcing a change of government. The nations once handed over to corrupt powers are being reclaimed — one proclamation, one baptism, one disciple at a time.

That is the point the deliverance-ministry machinery keeps missing. The powers are not overthrown by Christians shouting at territorial spirits or diagramming the demonic chain of command over a zip code. They are pushed back the way an occupying army is pushed back when the rightful king's messengers arrive to announce that the throne has changed hands. Ephesians 6 hands no believer a specialized deliverance technique. It gives every ordinary Christian the same plain armor — truth, righteousness, the Gospel of peace, faith, salvation, the word of God, and prayer — and tells them to stand firm and keep proclaiming.

This is why Jesus could promise that the gates of Hell would not prevail against His Church (Matthew 16:18). Gates are defensive. A defending army has no need of gates unless it is the one under attack. The Church is not crouched behind its walls hoping the darkness stays outside. The Church is the advancing force, and the gates already have cracks running through them.

So, the next time someone tells you the Christian life is mostly about binding demons, or that thinking about demons at all is beneath a serious modern believer, remember that Scripture will sign neither statement. The powers of darkness are real, they are hostile, and they answer to a sovereignty they cannot escape. They were disarmed at a Roman execution 2,000 years ago, and the operation that finishes them has a name. It is the Great Commission — and every believer who carries the Gospel across a border the darkness once owned is fighting the only war that was ever going to be won.