Tradition
Deliverance & Spiritual Warfare
Pentecostal and charismatic teaching from the 1970s onward that treats the Bible's 'spirit of X' phrases as named entities with characteristic methods. The most widely read demonology alive, and contested within Christianity as much as outside it.
What is the Deliverance & Spiritual Warfare tradition?
Deliverance and spiritual-warfare teaching is the most widely read demonology alive, and the one most likely to be encountered by someone searching these names today. It is Pentecostal and charismatic in origin, largely post-1970, and its distinctive move is to treat the Bible's "spirit of" phrases — a spirit of fear, a spirit of infirmity — as names of discrete entities with characteristic methods and points of entry.
It belongs on this site because it is real, dated, attributable teaching by identifiable authors, and because its vocabulary now circulates far beyond the churches that produced it. It is filed separately and dated precisely for the same reason everything else here is: so that twentieth-century material is never quietly presented as ancient.
It is contested within Christianity as sharply as outside it, on both exegetical and pastoral grounds, and this site records the teaching and the contest without adjudicating either. Where a named figure exists only in this literature, the attestation score reflects that, and a low score there is a statement about the age and breadth of the evidence rather than about the sincerity of the teaching.
Which texts does this tradition rest on?
The Apostolic Faith (Los Angeles)
ed. William J. Seymour · 1906–1908
The periodical that carried the Azusa Street revival to the world, and the closest thing early Pentecostalism has to a founding document. It is a newspaper rather than a confession, which is itself the point: a movement holding that the gifts continue does not settle its doctrine by synod.
0 entries contributed
Pigs in the Parlor: A Practical Guide to Deliverance
Frank and Ida Mae Hammond · 1973
The founding handbook of the modern deliverance movement, and the source of its characteristic method: demons grouped into families under a ruling 'strongman', each named for the behaviour it is held to produce. Its list of groupings is the direct ancestor of nearly every deliverance taxonomy since.
5 entries contributed
The Three Battlegrounds
Francis Frangipane · 1989
One of the books that established the 'spirit of Jezebel' as a fixed category in charismatic teaching, characterised by control, manipulation and the usurping of spiritual authority rather than by anything the Book of Kings describes.
4 entries contributed
Territorial Spirits & Strategic-Level Spiritual Warfare
C. Peter Wagner and the Third Wave writers · 1989-1996
Extends the framework from individuals to geography: named spirits are held to hold authority over cities, regions and nations, and are addressed by name in organised prayer. Draws its warrant from Daniel's princes of Persia and Greece. Widely criticised within evangelicalism, including by theologians otherwise sympathetic to the charismatic movement.
3 entries contributed
They Shall Expel Demons
Derek Prince · 1998
The most theologically careful book in the genre, by a Cambridge-trained philosopher turned Pentecostal teacher. Argues the case from the 'spirit of X' phrases directly, and is more cautious than most about what can be claimed from them.
2 entries contributed
Unmasking the Jezebel Spirit
John Paul Jackson · 2002
A book-length treatment of the single most discussed figure in the tradition. Sets out the profile — control, seduction, false prophecy, the undermining of legitimate authority — that most later writing repeats.
1 entries contributed
Operating in the Courts of Heaven
Robert Henderson · 2014; revised 2016
Recasts prayer as litigation rather than combat: God as Judge, Satan as prosecutor citing legal rights from unrepented sin and ancestral iniquity, the believer presenting a case and revoking those rights by repentance. The fastest-spreading model in charismatic prayer teaching since the 2010s, and contested within the movement as much as outside it.
0 entries contributed
Which marks belong to it?
Oldest first. A mark used by several traditions appears on each of their pages — which is the point: the shapes crossed these boundaries far more easily than the names did.
Who is filed under Deliverance & Spiritual Warfare?
Ordered by attestation score — how early and how independent the texts that name each figure are, rather than how famous the figure has since become.
Asherah
Mother of the Gods · Deliverance tradition
Consort of El at Ugarit and mother of the gods, whose cult objects stood in the Jerusalem temple itself for long stretches — and who disappears from English Bibles behind the word 'grove'.
The Spirits of Affliction
Group of Named Spirits · Deliverance tradition
The remaining 'spirit of X' phrases, grouped because the tradition's whole method stands or falls on how they are read.
Tammuz
Dying God · Deliverance tradition
Ezekiel is shown women weeping for Tammuz at the north gate of the temple — a Sumerian god still being mourned in Jerusalem two thousand years after his cult began.
The Korah Spirit
Named Spirit · Deliverance tradition
Deliverance teaching names this spirit for the Levite who told Moses the whole congregation was holy, so why did he exalt himself — and was swallowed by the ground.
The Jezebel Spirit
Named Spirit · Deliverance tradition
The most discussed figure in modern deliverance teaching, and a category rather than a being — built from a queen in Kings and a rival teacher in Revelation.
The Absalom Spirit
Named Spirit · Deliverance tradition
Named in deliverance teaching for the son who stood at the gate, listened sympathetically to everyone with a grievance, and stole the hearts of Israel.
The Ahab Spirit
Named Spirit · Deliverance tradition
The passive half of the pair — named for the king who let his queen act and then took the vineyard she obtained for him.
The Familiar Spirit
Named Spirit · Deliverance tradition
The biblical term for a medium's attending spirit — and at Endor, the one occasion where the practice is depicted as working.
The Leviathan Spirit
Named Spirit · Deliverance tradition
Job's sea-beast read as a spirit of pride, and specifically of the twisting of words between people who are trying to understand each other.
The Lying Spirit
Named Spirit · Deliverance tradition
A spirit that volunteers to deceive, is asked how, explains, and is authorised — by God, in open council.
The Queen of Heaven
Named Spirit · Deliverance tradition
A goddess the people of Judah tell Jeremiah, to his face, that they will keep worshipping — because things went better when they did.
Legion
Named Spirit · Deliverance tradition
The only spirit in the gospels that answers when asked its name — and answers with a military unit.
The Prince of the Power of the Air
Named Spirit · Deliverance tradition
A single phrase in Ephesians that supplies the whole idea of spirits holding territory in the air above a place.
The Python Spirit
Named Spirit · Deliverance tradition
The one figure in this tradition whose name is genuinely in the Greek text — and invisible in English, where the KJV renders it 'a spirit of divination'.
The Spirit of Infirmity
Named Spirit · Deliverance tradition
A woman bent double for eighteen years, described by Luke as having a spirit of infirmity and by Jesus as bound by Satan.
Nehushtan
Cult Object · Deliverance tradition
The bronze serpent of the Hebrew Bible: Moses was told to make it, Israel kept it for centuries and burned incense to it, and Hezekiah finally broke it up with the dismissive name 'bronze thing'.
The Spirit of Antichrist
Named Spirit · Deliverance tradition
Defined in the epistle by one specific test — denying that Christ came in the flesh — and stretched considerably since by deliverance teaching.
The Religious Spirit
Named Spirit · Deliverance tradition
A deliverance category with no proof text at all — assembled from the gospel confrontations and directed, pointedly, at religious people rather than at outsiders.