Billy Graham on Spiritual warfare
Through those means, and also by commanding evil spirits to leave, or exorcising them, in Christ's name
"Don't go around using some sort of hocus-pocus and say, 'Be gone in the name of Jesus.' It won't work."
THE POSITION
In a 1974 crusade sermon in Tempe, Arizona, he spoke of exorcism "in the name of Jesus Christ," called Jesus "the greatest of all exorcists," and said, "I personally have had that experience a few times, but very few." He warned against formulas and "hocus-pocus." As the reporter paraphrased him, a Christian can be vexed and harassed by a demon but not possessed.
16 One day as we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl with a spirit of divination, who earned a large income for her masters by fortune-telling. 17 This girl followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation!” 18 She continued this for many days. Eventually Paul grew so aggravated that he turned and said to the spirit, “In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!” And the spirit left her at that very moment.
6 OTHERS HOLD THIS
ABOUT THIS FIGURE
Evangelist of the citywide crusades from 1947 to 2005, ordained a Southern Baptist minister, founder, with L. Nelson Bell, of Christianity Today (1956) and convener of the 1974 Lausanne Congress. He is generally reckoned to have preached in person to more people than anyone before him and was the public face of postwar evangelicalism. This entry rests on sermon texts dated 1951 to 2005 that the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association republishes on the Decision magazine website, his recorded Billy Graham Minutes, his daily devotions, interviews he gave to Time, Christianity Today, Newsweek and Robert Schuller, and the My Answer column that ran under his name. By the standard account the column was written with staff, so cells that rest on it say so.
Cite this page
"Billy Graham on Spiritual warfare", Examined Doctrine, July 2026 edition, https://examineddoctrine.com/position/graham/spiritual-warfare (archived at https://examineddoctrine.com/editions/2026-07/position/graham/spiritual-warfare).