In Mark chapter 1 of the New Testament, we see that Jesus went to Capernaum and preached there. Jesus, the Savior we believe in, preached there two thousand years ago. And even at that time, there were people who believed in God—they were called Jews. Today we call this Judaism, and they believe in the same God we believe in. At that time, the Jews would gather together in a place called the synagogue. Jesus went there and preached, and after the people heard Him, what was their reaction? They said He taught as one having authority, and not as the scribes. Here, “one having authority” would be on the level of a king or a governor. So “not as the scribes” meant something like, “not like a professor, not like a scholar.” At that time, most of those who taught the Scriptures came across like scholars, but Jesus felt so different that people thought, “This man is like a king, like someone with real authority.” The people were astonished.

And it just so happened that there was a man in that place who had an unclean spirit. Now, this man wasn’t someone who acted possessed all the time. Most of the time he seemed perfectly normal—but right there, in that moment, the demon suddenly revealed itself through him, using his mouth to cry out. And what did it say? “I know who You are—the Holy One of God! Did You come to destroy us?”

Then Jesus commanded, “Be quiet, and come out of him!” For those who have never encountered anything like this, it’s a very strange scene. The idea that some being inside a person would suddenly reveal itself and speak is strange enough on its own. And then, instead of treating the man as crazy, Jesus simply turns to that thing inside him and says, “You—come out!”—which might even sound a little comical. But when Jesus said this, the demon that was inside the man caused him to convulse for a moment, and then it came out. And the man was suddenly completely normal. When the people saw this, they were amazed, and said, “What new doctrine is this? For with authority He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey Him!” As word spread that Jesus had cast out a demon, many people came to know who Jesus was. This is what is recorded in Mark chapter 1. Mark is the earliest of the books that record what Jesus did, and it contains the heart of the gospel.

Have you ever come to church and heard about demons? When I was not a believer, I had heard about demons, but I didn’t actually believe they existed. When I was young, there was a TV show dealing with demons. After watching it, I would get scared to even walk into my own house, because I was afraid a demon might jump out from some dark corner. I was terrified of demons like that. And yet, if someone asked me, “Do demons really exist?” I would say, “There’s no such thing as demons! Where would they even be?” But here’s the funny thing—I was afraid of demons. Isn’t that strange? And yet I denied that they even existed. Doesn’t that seem contradictory? If they don’t exist, why would I be afraid of them?

When I was a child, to get to my grandmother’s house, I had to walk around the bend of a mountain. At the foot of that bend stood a village shrine, and right next to it was a place where they kept the wooden frame used to carry coffins to burial. So the whole area had a really creepy feeling to it. Sometimes snakes would even show up there, and they would chase after people. Those snakes moved incredibly fast, so when a snake came after us kids walking together, we’d run for our lives, terrified the whole time. Because the place felt so creepy, every time I passed by, I was scared a demon might appear. And yet, if someone asked me, “Do demons really exist?” I would say, “Come on, where would demons even be?” Isn’t that strange?

But after I believed in Jesus, something changed in me. I came to believe in Jesus when I was a college junior. That was more than twenty years ago now. After I believed in Jesus, I began to acknowledge that demons are real. If someone asked me, “Do demons really exist?” I would now say, “Of course! Demons are real! You can’t see them, but they exist!”

And there’s one more thing that changed. Am I afraid of demons now? No, I’m not. Isn’t that strange? It’s the complete opposite of how it used to be. In the past, I denied that demons existed, yet I was afraid of them. Now, I acknowledge that demons exist, yet I’m not afraid of them at all. Pretty strange, isn’t it? “Wait, you’re really not afraid of demons?” No, I’m not. In fact, it’s the demons who are afraid of me. And that’s really how it is. If a demon and I were to meet, who do you think would end up crying? The demon would. Who would run away? The demon would. Who would be the one doing the scolding? I would—I’d be the one scolding the demon.

This is because, through attending Sungrak Church, I came to know the reality of the spiritual world. Among the many churches Sungrak Church is quite distinctive. What sets it apart is this: it doesn’t just teach you deeply about the spiritual world—it doesn’t stop at knowledge alone. It actually leads you to experience the reality of that spiritual world for yourself. Because of this, there’s hardly anyone at Sungrak Church who hasn’t experienced this reality firsthand. Almost everyone has experienced a demon leaving them and being healed of sickness. And almost everyone has cast out demons themselves. I’m not saying this because I’m a pastor now and that’s just what pastors do—I started doing this the moment I believed in Jesus. Why? Because that’s what I was taught. And what I was taught wasn’t some strange, made-up idea—it was simply what’s written in the Bible. So we’re just doing what the Bible says.

So when you look at the passage you just read, the demon revealed itself on its own while Jesus was preaching. Jesus said, “Be quiet, and come out!” I too have greatly hoped and prayed for such things to happen. And because of that, I’ve often experienced things just like this.

This happened once in China. I went to a certain church there. At that time, I could only speak a little Chinese—not very well. So when I preached using such limited Chinese, the people probably struggled to follow at times, but because what I was sharing was about the reality of the spiritual world, they listened with great curiosity. As they heard this message and began to repent and pray, the Spirit of God that He had promised came upon them. And they began to speak in what’s called tongues. After that, people started weeping and crying out as they repented. They were so filled with joy that they didn’t sleep that night. After my lecture ended around ten o’clock, I went back to where I was staying to sleep, but I could hear about seventy people who hadn’t gone home, praising and speaking in tongues all through the night. When I went out at five in the morning for early morning prayer, I found them still sitting there, just as they had been—praying and praising without rest, all the way until morning. That’s an incredibly fervent atmosphere, full of the Holy Spirit, isn’t it?

So I thought to myself, “This could really work!” I sensed that something was about to happen. So as soon as I went up, I didn’t do anything else first—I tried something. Years before, I had once seen a video of a certain pastor demonstrating the work of the Holy Spirit in this way: he would blow out a breath—”Whoosh!”—toward one side, and the people there would all collapse, and then he’d do the same toward the other side, and people there would collapse too, with the sick being healed and demons leaving. I was in my twenties at the time. So I decided to try it. As soon as I went up, without saying a word, I did the same—”Whoosh!” And just like that, people all over started collapsing and crying out. “Aaaaahhh!” I was shocked myself. The people standing nearby must have been even more shocked. While they were still thinking, “What on earth is happening?”—the people who had been crying out started to speak. And what they said was things like, “I won’t go! I won’t leave!” The demons were revealing themselves. And I was so happy about this—because what is written in the Bible was happening exactly as it is written. If I had explained about demons beforehand, people might have said it was just hypnosis, and I would have had to work hard to explain it away. But I hadn’t explained anything, hadn’t even mentioned demons—and the moment I simply went “Whoosh!”, people collapsed all over the place. Those who needed healing were healed, and demons that were revealed convulsed wildly. I did the same toward the other side, and demons revealed themselves there too.

So I picked one of them and said, “You—what’s your name?” And it answered, “I’m so-and-so!”—giving an actual name. When it said the name, what do you think the people there did? They went, “Whoa!” and started whispering among themselves in shock. I had never even lived in that area, but when the demon revealed itself and started talking, it turned out to be something the people there all knew about. It was so real to them. They were thinking, “Oh—so that person died and went into this person!”

But when I rebuked them in the name of Jesus, the demons’ attitude completely changed—they could barely move, saying, “We’re sorry! We’re sorry!” At first they had been shouting, “I won’t go! I won’t go!” But when I rebuked them powerfully in the name of Jesus, they couldn’t budge. If something like this had happened to me back when I didn’t know Jesus, I probably would have been the one screaming, “Please don’t hurt me!” But instead, here I was, rebuking them in the name of Jesus. And was I just going to let them keep saying they wouldn’t leave? We just read this, didn’t we? Just as Jesus said, “Be quiet, and come out of him!”—and the demon cried out and left. When the people around me saw what I was doing, what do you think they did toward the demons that were revealing themselves and convulsing right next to them? Following what they saw me do, they got up too and started rebuking the demons themselves, shouting, “Get out! Get out! Come out in the name of Jesus!” So in a word, that church erupted. Everything was turned completely upside down.

These kinds of things aren’t just found in the Bible—they happen to me as well. Of course, it’s not always the case that things unfold so dramatically and powerfully like this.

I cast out a demon for the first time while I was in the army. I had been believing in Jesus for only three months when I went into the military, but because I was so eager about evangelism there, word got around that I was “one of those Jesus people.” Even though I’d only believed for three months, once that reputation spread, whenever there was a worship service, people would always come looking for me. One day, there was something called a “religious roll call.” In the military, at night they take a count of everyone, and this time it was a religious roll call—so they called out, “All Christians, gather over here! All Catholics, gather over here! All Buddhists, gather over here!” And then they told me to give the message. I had never preached before in my life. On top of that, I was a new believer—and they wanted me to preach? There was even a chaplain’s assistant already there. But I thought to myself, “If an opportunity like this comes, I shouldn’t turn it down.” So I decided to preach. And because I wanted to give these people something that would really shake them up, out of all the things I could have talked about—Jesus, or God—what did I choose to talk about? I talked about demons.

My only goal was to shock them and make them realize that demons are real. So I talked about demons for a while, and then I asked, “As you listen to this, is there anyone whose heart suddenly feels uneasy, whose heart starts pounding, who starts breaking into a cold sweat? If that’s you, raise your hand and come forward!” And then I waited. But one minute passed, two minutes passed, and no one came forward. So now I was the one starting to sweat, my own heart starting to pound. While I was thinking, “How am I going to get out of this,” thankfully, one senior soldier stood up with a mischievous look on his face and came forward to stand in front of me.

So I asked him, “Do you feel uneasy right now?” He said, “Nope.” But I said, “Just stand here for a moment anyway!” and then I rebuked him: “Unclean demon!” No reaction. I said it more forcefully: “Unclean demon!” Still no reaction. But since I had decided to keep rebuking until something happened, I kept going. “Unclean demon!” Louder and louder—”Unclean demon!” If anything, it felt like the demon was coming out of me instead. I was sweating buckets, breaking into a cold sweat, and the whole thing was agonizing. But the man himself didn’t move a muscle—if anything, he looked like he was trying not to laugh. And when I glanced around, I saw that the others, who had at first watched curiously, wondering what would happen, had by now lost interest and were chatting among themselves about other things.

So there I was, thinking, “What do I do, what do I do?” —it felt to me like about fifty years had passed, though in reality it was probably only about five minutes. Suddenly the company commander came over and said, “Hey, that’s enough!” So I stopped right there, dripping with sweat, and stepped down. I wished I could have crawled into a hole and disappeared. It hadn’t been long since I’d believed in Jesus, and I had really pushed myself too far that day. Still, I believe God looked kindly on that courage.

Then the next morning, someone came looking for me. “Hey, I’m a private from the 2nd unit next door…”—it was a soldier ranking above me, and he said, “Hey, can you cast a demon out of me?” This man was a believer in Jesus, and he said his voice had gone hoarse and wouldn’t come out. He was barely managing to get the words out in a whisper just to ask me for help. When I asked what had happened, he said that a few days earlier, at the Wednesday service, he had sung praises at the top of his lungs. At some point he thought to himself, “What if I lose my voice from singing this loud?” And sure enough, the next morning he woke up with his voice completely gone and his throat in pain. So he said, “This must be a demon that came in through that very thought! After hearing your message yesterday, I’m sure this is a demon! I need to have it cast out!” So I said, “You’re right! It’s a demon!” and agreed to cast it out for him.

But where could we do this? We needed somewhere quiet. It was morning, and I hadn’t even eaten breakfast yet. So the place we ended up going to was the outdoor pit toilet past the parade ground. It had about ten stalls with ten doors, and sometimes soldiers would sneak in there to eat hardtack crackers in secret. I know that probably sounds strange—but in the military, people would sneak into the bathroom, of all places, to secretly eat crackers in that smelly place. Anyway, the two of us went in there and stood facing each other. We had to be careful not to fall into anything. I took off the senior soldier’s glasses and put them in my pocket, took off his hat, placed my hand on his shoulder, and shouted a few times, “You unclean demon!” And then suddenly the door burst open, and a voice yelled, “What are you two doing?!” It was the personnel officer.

Now, the personnel officer is the one whose job is to investigate, report, and punish incidents of violence within the unit—and that’s exactly who had caught us. So I was caught in the act, as if I were assaulting someone. “Which unit are you from, and what’s your name?” he demanded. Looking at it from his perspective, my rank was lower than the other man’s. So as far as he could tell, I had been assaulting someone of higher rank—and on top of that, I’d been caught with his glasses and hat off, gripping his collar with my hand raised. So I was hauled off. They dragged me to the officers’ room for questioning. “You’re both going to the guardhouse! And you especially—assaulting a superior? That’s the worst of it!” What was I supposed to do?

I quickly asked them to call the chaplain’s assistant. The chaplain’s assistant is the soldier responsible for religious activities in the unit, and there was one who had come from seminary. I said, “He’ll know about this! He’ll know that Christians cast out demons. So please call him and ask him about this!” But even as I said this, I felt a chill inside—because this same chaplain’s assistant was someone who had told me before, “Casting out demons is heresy!” Even though it’s in the Bible, the church he attended was known for being very conservative, and they absolutely did not accept things like miracles, healing, or casting out demons. He was even the one who had told me not to pray in tongues. And now, of all people, he was the one being called in to answer this question. The whole thing hinged on one question: is this in the Bible or not? If he said, “Yes, this is in the Bible,” I would go free. But if he said, “No, there’s nothing like this in the Bible,” I would be heading to the guardhouse.

The officer called him in. “Hey, this guy is saying that casting out demons is in the Bible, and that if you cast out demons in the name of Jesus, people get healed—is that true?” What an ironic situation this was! He was asking the very thing he himself had always told me not to do. I stood there, on edge, because everything depended on this one man’s answer. He didn’t answer right away. He let out a long sigh—”Phew…”—not knowing what to say. If he said the wrong thing, it would be remembered before God forever; one person would end up in the guardhouse, and he himself would feel the weight of his conscience. But if he said, “Yes, this is in the Bible,” it would contradict everything he had always said before. After agonizing over it for a long moment, he finally had no choice but to answer, “It’s in the Bible. You can cast out demons in the name of Jesus.” And just like that, I was set free.

So we left the interrogation room and started heading back to our units. I really thought it was over—I was just trying to leave. But this senior soldier said, “Hey, why are you just leaving? We still have to finish casting it out!” I said, “Wait, after everything that just happened, you still want to finish?” And he said, “That’s exactly why! After all that, I’m not going to feel right unless we get to the root of this! Come on, let’s find another spot!” So we went looking for somewhere quieter and more private, and the place we found was the underground boiler room. The boiler room was safe—no sound would carry out, and we could just turn on the light. So as soon as we got in there, I put my hand on his shoulder and said, “You unclean demon—come out!” And right then, the man collapsed flat, falling face-down at a perfect ninety-degree angle. He just dropped, with a thud. That was the first time I had ever experienced anything like that. I was completely stunned.

I helped him back up, and I was so grateful that I said, “Come on, let’s pray! Let’s give thanks!” I was about to pray myself, but he started praying first. And the voice he prayed with wasn’t that hoarse voice from before—it suddenly came out clear and bright. I learned then that when a demon leaves, it’s not just the demon that goes—the sickness and the symptoms it had brought with it leave as well.

And that’s when it really hit me: “Wow, this is truly real! Even someone like me—someone who’s only just believed in Jesus—can do this!” From that point on, I cast out demons with boldness. And as I had more and more experiences like this, I went on to see many other things happen too—people who were blind, mute, deaf, or paralyzed being healed.

Of course, it didn’t always work. People’s faith varies from person to person. But even if it happens just once, what does that mean? Even if I tried a hundred times, I couldn’t make it happen by my own ability. But if even once out of a hundred times it happens, that’s not by my power—it’s by God’s power. And in my experience, it wasn’t just one out of a hundred—it was more like half the time. I’ve had many experiences like that.

But this isn’t something only I’ve experienced. Everyone who believes in Jesus can have these kinds of experiences, though to different degrees. And among us at Sungrak Church, these experiences are especially abundant. That’s because Jesus Himself promised this. Jesus said, “He who believes and is baptized will be saved.” That person will not go to hell. If you believe and are baptized, you will not be condemned. And He also said, “He who does not believe will be condemned.” Then He went on to say that these signs would follow those who believe: in His name—that is, in the name of Jesus—they would cast out demons; they would lay hands on the sick and they would recover; they would speak with new tongues; and even if they drank something deadly, it would not harm them. So for those who believe in Jesus, these signs are meant to be a normal, ongoing part of life. These days, I find great peace especially because of that last promise—that nothing harmful, no matter what we take in, will hurt us. Just think about how bad fine dust pollution is these days, or how much hidden toxicity there is in our food, whether we realize it or not. But when I remember that promise, I can live at peace.

And while we can see these kinds of experiences in the Bible, the reality is that many churches in Korea—and many churches around the world—treat them as if they belong to the past. They say things like, “All of that was for the old days! These things don’t exist anymore! Faith is just something to bring peace to your heart—things like demons or resurrection are just old stories!” But we have experienced for ourselves that this simply isn’t true.

Why does our Sungrak Church have such an abundance of experiences like this? It’s because Founder, Pastor Ki-Dong Kim, experienced and taught these things himself. From the very beginning, when he established Sungrak Church, he grieved over how powerless and weak Christianity had become around the world, and he founded this church with this purpose: “Let’s recover the power that the Bible promises! And let our church make a great contribution toward that goal!” So he didn’t focus on growing the number of church members. Instead, he focused on teaching the word of life, the word of power, and on helping every believer receive that power.

If you look toward the back, you can see some people from overseas listening through interpretation. They came from China to attend this service. We didn’t invite them—they came on their own to worship with us. In China, there are hundreds of churches that, like our Sungrak Church, are part of the Berea movement—the movement to “return to the Word.” Among them, more than 200 churches have included the word “Berea” in their name as a way of identifying with this movement. And even though Christianity in China is currently facing tremendous persecution, these 200 churches don’t try to hide that name—they use it openly as part of how they operate. The members who came today came voluntarily from those churches. They didn’t come on a sightseeing trip. I didn’t even know they were coming, but when I asked, they said, “We came to worship. We don’t need any other plans.” We thought that was such a beautiful heart, so we quickly arranged a two-day training for them. They had no interest in going anywhere else to travel. So they received two days of training, and today they’ve been in worship all day long. They attended the first service, and since they heard there’s a new members’ service during the third service, they wanted to see that too. And tomorrow morning, early, they’ll be heading back.

Think about it—if you came overseas for the first time in your life, would you really want to spend the whole time just at church? You’d probably want to see the sights, wouldn’t you? But they came with this kind of heart instead. And more and more people like this are coming. Why? Because our church is the mother church for those churches. Those churches grew through the books and messages from the Sungrak Church. So there are many churches there that grew from unbelievers becoming believers, and believers becoming pastors. This teaching isn’t something that only works in Korea—it’s something that people in various regions of China are actually experiencing for themselves. If what Sungrak Church teaches didn’t line up with the Bible, then even if it seemed to work in Korea, when people in China heard the message and put it into practice, there would be no power demonstrated, no demons cast out. But because they heard the message and did exactly what it said, all across that distant land of China, demons have been leaving, people have genuinely received the Holy Spirit, and the gift of tongues has appeared everywhere. And so these people said, “Wow—to think I would meet someone like this in my lifetime! I want to be discipled in the teaching of Sungrak Church. Please teach us!” And so, for ten, twenty years, they’ve been discipled by our church, and countless churches have sprung up as a result. These people are living witnesses to that.

Usually when we go on mission trips, we go to the field and spend time there, sometimes even living alongside people. But interestingly, with these Berea churches in China, we’ve never gone to visit them in Korea—we’ve never gone to them, and they had never come to us either. They were simply, steadily discipled through the Word alone—through the weekly sermon messages. And yet power was manifested, they experienced it for themselves, and out of that longing for the mother church, they came. This is really just the beginning, and it seems like something remarkable is ahead. It might turn out that, week after week, we wake up on the Lord’s Day morning and find one new group has arrived, and then the next week, another group arrives, and so on.

So how did Pastor Ki-Dong Kim come to understand casting out demons so well? The truth is, he had an extraordinary experience. This happened decades ago. One day, he heard that a young unmarried woman had died of heart disease. At that time, he didn’t yet know how to cast out demons. When he went to her house, he found people gathered in a dark room lit only by an oil lamp, singing hymns. The customs for sending off the dead are pretty much the same everywhere. While this was going on, suddenly—he wasn’t a pastor yet at the time, just a young man named Ki-Dong Kim—a passage from the Bible came to his mind. There was a time when Jesus looked at someone who had died and said, “The child is not dead, but sleeping”—and then He raised that person up. That scene came to his mind, so young Ki-Dong Kim went into the room where the body had been laid out and pulled back the sheet. Standing in front of the body, he shouted, “By the word of Jesus—you are not dead, you are only sleeping! Get up!”—and as he said this, he slapped the corpse across the cheek.

Why did he hit it? He just did—he hit it, that’s all. And the moment he did, the body that had been struck sat straight up at a ninety-degree angle. Then it screamed, “Aaaahh!” Everyone was terrified, of course—who wouldn’t be, seeing a body that had been dead for days suddenly sit up? Everyone there was shocked. There was an old saying that “if a dead person sits up, you must strike them down immediately, or the person standing in front of them will die.” So out of pure fear, he punched the young woman who had just sat up, hitting her hard. She cried out in pain, and he asked, “Who in the world are you?” And the voice answered, “Who do you think I am? I’m a demon! I’m so-and-so Choi, who died nearby after spraying pesticide!” Everyone there knew exactly who that person was, and they all reacted with shock—”What? That Mr. Choi went into her?” From that moment on, young Ki-Dong Kim realized, “The demons the Bible talks about are real!” So from then on, he just kept slapping her, shouting, “Demon, come out! Demon, come out!” He hit her so many times that he eventually couldn’t keep going alone, so he called another young man to help, and together they kept at it for almost two or three days straight. By the end, the woman’s face was swollen all over. It nearly became a case of “beat the corpse and end up with a murder”—if you bring someone back from the dead and then end up killing them in the process, what would that even look like?

So he started thinking, “How do I actually get this demon to leave?” and turned to think about what the Bible says. Then he remembered: Jesus cast out demons with His word. So right away he went back into the room, sent away the young men who had been hitting her, and said to the demon, “I command you in the name of Jesus—come out of this person!” The moment he said this, the woman cried out, “Ah!” and collapsed—and then she came back to life, completely restored. The demon had been fully separated from her and had left. From that point on, the woman lived a perfectly normal life. One day, while Pastor Ki-Dong Kim was teaching at the Berea Academy, that very woman came to greet him, and he introduced her to everyone there. That whole event is recorded on video.

After that experience, Pastor Ki-Dong Kim came to realize, “This casting out of demons that the Bible promises isn’t a parable, and it isn’t just a story—it’s real!” And so he began a ministry of casting out demons, and as he actually cast demons out of people, he began to see the illnesses inside them being healed as well. When the demon causing cancer left, the cancer disappeared. When the demon causing pneumonia left, the pneumoniadisappeared. When the demon that had bent someone’s back left, that person’s back straightened out. Through all of this, he came to understand that many illnesses—illnesses that human ability alone could never solve—could be resolved by casting out the demon behind them. And he found in the Bible the reason this is possible: it’s because Jesus Christ has already judged and dealt with all of these things. So when this teaching from the Bible was shared with people all around the world, they began experiencing the very same things.

Now, what did that demon testify earlier? It said, “I know who You are—the Holy One of God!” People may not recognize Jesus, but demons do. Jesus is the Son of God. Jesus is the Christ, sent by God to do the work of God. You need to meet Him for yourselves. If you go through this life without meeting Jesus, without receiving forgiveness for your sins, then when your spirit dies, it will die under a curse—and that’s exactly what a demon is. Where demons go and where saved souls go are two completely different places. Right now, we are still alive, but we have been united with Jesus and we live in the authority that comes from that union. That’s why, just as Jesus cast out demons, we who believe in Jesus also cast out demons—because those who believe in Jesus have the authority of being children of God.

So, my prayer for you, in the name of Jesus, is this: don’t become a demon, don’t live oppressed by demons, but live as children of God, walking in this power.

God our Father, we truly thank You for sending us Jesus Christ, so that we may live in the authority of being children of God. Help everyone gathered here to experience the spiritual victory that Jesus has already accomplished. And so, in every problem, every difficulty, and every issue that is too hard to solve by human strength, may each person overcome and resolve it, so that they may know that God is truly alive. In the name of Jesus Christ we pray, Amen.