Just as Satan is trying his best to tear families apart in this chaotic and challenging end times, he is also trying to spread division in the body of Christ.
Many times, his mission is to confuse believers and to use the tool of offense over petty differences, fighting against God’s mission of unifying the church for His greater good. It happens often, and sometimes it happens between prominent kingdom leaders, as is the case with Alexander Pagani and Dr. Michael Brown.
Recently, the two became embroiled in an online discussion about the issue of Christian demon possession. A deliverance minister, Pagani, who wrote the Charisma House book, “The Secrets to Deliverance: Defeat the Toughest Cases of Demonic Bondage,” has said previously in public that “A Christian is not possessed, as in owned, by a demon.”
Brown, an author and theologian, has asked the questions, “Can a Christian come under demonic power? Can a Christian be demonized in a sense where they are tormented or afflicted spiritually, emotionally, mentally and they need to be set free?”
His answer was “yes, it’s possible. We can open the door in certain ways we can get beaten down and yield the authority that we have in the Lord. Any number of things can happen.”
But Brown also argued that a Christian cannot be indwelt by a demon the same way they are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, nor can a Christian be demon possessed so that they have lost their own.”
There became a misunderstanding between Pagani and Brown, and a discussion ensued to where the two tried to correct each other through social media. That led to a one-on-one live discussion between the two kingdom giants on YouTube.
But instead of getting in an argument or shouting match, much to the dismay of the enemy, the two smoothed out their differences and expressed their mutual respect for each other.
“We’re (Christians) fighting about non-essential things, even though in our hearts we know this has no bearing on salvation,” Pagani says. “But we act like it does.”
“It’s something really unfortunate and certainly contrary to the prayer of the Lord in John 17,” Brown says. “It’s contrary to the many calls for unity throughout Scripture. It’s Old Testament and New Testament, with Jesus explicitly saying that a house divided against itself can’t succeed. We know that the devil is a divider.
“Something that struck me as there was a swirl of controversy about the subject of deliverance in recent weeks and months, as this came to the forefront of the discussion in the body, suddenly issues were secondary and we were now attacking each other. And I thought, ‘that’s exactly what the devil wants,’ right? So why flip out if we have a different view on some points that do not determine who God is and what it means to be saved. If God sees fit to accept you and me into the same family, that makes you and me brothers and we’re going to be together forever. That means we have more in common than what divides us. Sometimes, we do get petty over that.”
Brown says Christians, no matter what their differences on subjects like deliverance or eschatology—which tend to cause major division within the body of Christ—must put those differences aside and work on things that matter, like getting lost souls saved.
“Let’s always recognize God’s heart to unite us around the essentials,” Brown says. “Satan’s desire to divide us, the fleshly and immaturity that divides us, and lets major on the majors and, in that sense, glorifying the Lord and give Satan a black eye.”
For more of this compelling conversation, watch this video featuring Pagani and Brown, and watch the mutual respect flow between the two. It is a call for believers to put down their petty differences and unite in what’s most important in the kingdom. {eoa}
Shawn A. Akers is the online editor at Charisma Media.
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