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Summary
- In the Bible, deliverance is God rescuing people from what they cannot escape by themselves: enemies, slavery, danger, sin, death and the devil.
- The Exodus sets the pattern, where God says at the burning bush, “I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians” (Exodus 3:8).
- The two main Hebrew verbs are natsal, to snatch away, and yasha, to save, which is the root of the name Joshua; Jesus is the Greek form of that name.
- The Greek word behind “deliverance to the captives” in Luke 4:18 is aphesis, the same word Paul uses for “the forgiveness of sins.”
- The noun “deliverance” appears in 16 verses of the King James Version, and only two of them are in the New Testament.
- The Catholic Church allows a major exorcism only by a priest with the bishop’s permission and says illness, especially psychological illness, is for medical science.
- The Assemblies of God teaches that believers can be oppressed but not possessed, and warns against mistaking mental illness for demonic activity.
Bibliography (Click to show)
- Scripture is quoted from the King James Version (BibleGateway): Genesis 45:7; Exodus 3:7–8; Exodus 14:13; Judges 3:9; Psalm 18:2; Daniel 3:17–18; Matthew 1:21; Matthew 6:13; Mark 1:25, 27; Mark 5:3, 15, 19; Luke 4:17–18, 21; Luke 10:17, 20; Luke 11:20; Acts 12:5, 7, 11; Galatians 1:4; Colossians 1:13–14; 2 Timothy 4:18; Hebrews 2:14–15; Hebrews 11:35; James 4:7; 1 John 4:4. Psalm 18:2, Genesis 45:7 and Luke 4:18 are also quoted from the Reina-Valera 1960, and Psalm 18:2 from the Almeida Revista e Corrigida (BibleGateway).
- BibleGateway, keyword search for “deliverance” in the King James Version: biblegateway.com; word counts checked against Project Gutenberg, The King James Version of the Bible.
- Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew lexicon and Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance, natsal (Strong’s H5337): biblehub.com/hebrew/5337.htm
- Brown-Driver-Briggs and Strong’s, yasha (Strong’s H3467): biblehub.com/hebrew/3467.htm; Yehoshua (H3091): biblehub.com/hebrew/3091.htm
- Thayer’s Greek Lexicon, rhuomai (Strong’s G4506): biblehub.com/greek/4506.htm; aphesis (G859): biblehub.com/greek/859.htm; Iesous (G2424): biblehub.com/greek/2424.htm
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1673: vatican.va
- Code of Canon Law (1983), canon 1172: vatican.va
- Church of England, Safeguarding e-manual, section 4.1, Deliverance Ministry: churchofengland.org
- Assemblies of God (USA), Position Paper on Spiritual Warfare and the Believer, adopted by the General Presbytery on July 30, 2019: ag.org
- Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction on Certain Aspects of the “Theology of Liberation” (1984): vatican.va
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