Hey folks, I just *had* to post this, it's so weird. My mother brought this over from last Sunday's (11/13/94) Hartford Courant's Northeast section. As a lifelong Christian she was pretty disgusted with this charlatan's blame-everything-on-the-devil style, and with the fact that one was never required to take any responsibility for one's actions, you could either blame all your problems (or "demons") on your parents or just on demons themselves.

I thought it would stoke up a few interesting fires here...

He is the founder and director of Dipsychos Counseling, which follows the evangelical concept of "Deliverance Ministry". He is also pastor of New Covenant Christian Assembly in Granby [CT].

Q: How does your counseling differ from typical counseling?

Could I give you my background? I went to New York University for a master's degree [in counseling]. At the same time, I was doing an internship as a psychotherapist. I became very frustrated because nobody was getting any help. And I don't mean just my patients, I mean the psychiatric social worker's patients, the psychologist's patients, the psychiatrist's patients. Once a week the patients would come in and unload and the psychiatrist would push them some pills to control symptoms, and the next week we'd do it all over again. There was, to my knowledge, not one finalizing of a case. In my frustration I cried out to God, and in answer, within a two-week period two of my patients went through what is called instantaneous remission of symptoms. The first was a girl about 16. She experienced what the Bible calls being born again or being saved. Her symptoms disappeared. Another woman received an experience called being baptized in the Holy Spirit, and the same thing happened to her.

Q: Because you changed your way of counseling them?

No, as a result of the fact that they came to the church where I was pastor. I felt as though God said to me, "I've taken you through this so you could see the futility of man trying to help himself. Now I've shown you what I can do." From that point on, God took me through years of experience to the knowledge that what we refer to as mental, emotional problems are in almost all instances really a problem with what the Bible calls demons. Evil spirits get into people and cause these problems. Through teaching from the Scriptures and casting out of the spirits, people are completely healed.

Q: How do you cast out demons? Ceremony and prayer?

No ceremony. Prayer, yes.

Q: And you think you've seen demons leave people?

Oh, hundreds of times. I've been doing this for 23 years.

Q: So if a child is manic depressive or has severe emotional problems, you would suspect that the cause is demons and not physiology or trauma? Why would a demon possess a child?

In the Old Testament, God laid down certain rules in which he warned the people that if they involved themselves with the worship of other gods--demons--that there would be consequences, and the consequences would pass on from generation to generation. And that is primarily if not totally the reason why babies, little children, have these problems.

Q: Mental health workers would say, "It's not that three generations ago this child's ancestors--"

"--were involved in witchcraft or something--"

Q: "--it's that this child was sexually abused or that this child's mother was addicted to drugs."

Whenever I have run into someone who has been sexually abused, I have never found that to be the real problem. It's always something before that.

Q: In the past? How would the child know what his ancestors did two or three generations ago? How do you find out?

If a child were brought to me with these problems, the first thing I would do is minister to the parents. Until they get straightened out, the child can't get straightened out.

Q: The parents know about these transgressions in the past?

In most cases they do.

Q: You mentioned witchcraft. Is it usually that?

Yes, it is. A broader term would be the occult.

Q: So you suspect that most children who have emotional problems had ancestors who worshiped the occult?

I not only suspect that, I am completely certain of it.

Q: And you believe that psychology and psychiatry have usurped the position of the ministry in treating these problems?

That is exactly what has happened.

Q: Is that part of Satan's plan?

Well, yes, of course.

Q: The idea that psychology and therapy are the devil's conspiracy against true healing is hard to accept.

The devil has always counterfeited whatever God does. My experience has been that most problems are demonically caused. That doesn't mean that there is no place for the flesh, because there certainly is.

Q: So you aren't saying that things like cancer or heart problems are demonic? You think that doctors have a place?

I believe that some of them could be demonically caused, although I have never cast a demon of cancer out of anybody. I don't disbelieve in medicine. I go to the doctor myself.

Q: What is skeptics or therapists said to you, "This is simple-minded. The concept of spiritual warfare makes everything black or white, God or the devil, and that's not a very good model for discussing mental illness"?

Something just came to me that may help you. A doctor came to me and his problem was that he had an obsessive compulsion to put on women's underwear and strut around in it. I was able to set him free of that. Shortly thereafter, he began to minister to his patients by casting demons out of them. The nature of demonic deception [in America] is that people don't think they have a demonic problem. They think it's mental illness. As long as you believe that, you can't get free.