#339 The Dark Side of Deliverance: Pagan Roots and Spiritual Abuse, with Anna Kitko
The Alisa Childers Podcast
Alisa Childers
4.9 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 30 October 2025
⏱️ 64 minutes
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Summary
In today's conversation, Alisa Childers is joined by Anna Kitko—a researcher and clinical expert on spiritual abuse—to unpack the historical, biblical, and psychological roots of deliverance ministry. Together they explore how many of today’s practices trace back not to Scripture, but to ancient pagan rituals, and how that can lead to deep spiritual and emotional harm for sincere Christians seeking help.
Drawing from her research into ancient Akkadian medicine, Second Temple Judaism, and modern charismatic movements, Anna explains that Jesus’ exorcisms were unique precisely because only Yahweh Himself could command evil spirits.
Alisa and Anna also discuss:
The four ancient categories of “demons” and what they reveal about how we understand possession
Why much of deliverance ministry functions like spiritualized mental-health care—without accountability or clinical ethics
The concept of iatrogenic harm (when “healing” practices actually wound people)
How Bethlehem’s “SOZO” prayer model parallels ancient pagan rituals and can lead to spiritual abuse
What true, biblical deliverance and spiritual warfare look like—prayer, truth, and faithfulness under Christ’s authority alone
This episode is a sober but deeply encouraging reminder: Christians are delivered when they trust in Christ and are delivered from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of God.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The problem with modern deliverance ministries is that they are taking for themselves Christ's job. |
| 0:07.8 | They are actively making idols of themselves by behaving like they can do what only Christ can do. |
| 0:15.5 | We do not take on Christ's mantle and say I ever. So we beseech Christ and we do not address any |
| 0:26.4 | demonic entity, fourth party, or above, without Christ being the person in control. |
| 0:32.6 | You would never say I. That's why it makes it, it makes my skin crawl every time I see it. |
| 0:36.6 | It's like, and they're like, |
| 0:37.8 | in Jesus's name, I command you. Like, no, never. |
| 0:51.4 | Well, hey, everyone. Welcome to the Elisa Childers podcast. It's always my goal here to help equip Christians to identify the core beliefs of historic Christianity, discern its counterfeits, and proclaim the gospel with clarity, kindness, and with truth. And today's episode, you guys, it really blew my mind. I'm very excited to bring you this conversation I had with Anna Kitko, |
| 1:12.9 | who is so incredibly smart, so incredibly knowledgeable. And this is actually going to be |
| 1:19.4 | most likely the final installment in our Deliverance Ministry series. We'll probably continue |
| 1:25.4 | to do episodes here and there about deliverance ministry, |
| 1:28.1 | but for anybody who hasn't been following along so far, let me give you a little bit of context. |
| 1:32.9 | So I grew up in a church that did deliverance ministry. It's kind of been a part of circles |
| 1:37.8 | I've been adjacent to my whole life. And so we throughout the course of this series have just |
| 1:43.3 | been thinking through the particular |
| 1:45.5 | teachings and claims of deliverance ministry in general. |
| 1:49.7 | Now, I don't think you have to catch up with all the episodes. |
| 1:53.1 | I think there's like six or seven maybe so far. |
| 1:55.8 | You don't have to watch all of those for this episode today to be relevant to you. |
| 2:00.5 | Today we're going to be talking |
| 2:01.6 | about it more from a clinical perspective, the actual damage that can be done to people when some |
| 2:07.4 | of the unbiblical practices of deliverance ministry are done. And I really want to ask you to keep |
... |
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