Redacted - by David M Miller (Paperback)

About the Book

Redacted traces the riveting journey of exorcism from the Gospels to the modern era, unveiling the lost link between revival and deliverance that the world needs today.

Book Synopsis

Redacted examines the evolution of the ministry of deliverance, tracing its roots from the Gospels to the twentieth century.

This in-depth exploration reveals the contours of Jesus' and the apostles' ministry, and how their practices influenced the fervent exorcisms of the pre-Nicene Church, igniting widespread revival. From there, Redacted follows the decline of exorcism from the fourth to the eleventh centuries, where it almost entirely disappears. When it is brought back during the High Middle Ages, the practice takes on a highly ritualized form that departs from the Apostolic model. The Reformation saw exorcism's contentious duality between charismatic and ritual forms, before they were both entirely snuffed out with Protestantism. Yet, the twentieth century witnessed its resurgence, beginning at Azusa St. and growing within the Charismatic movement. Redacted identifies the historical connection between deliverance and revival and makes the case that deliverance ministry is essential for revival today.

Review Quotes

"In recent years, there has been an important emphasis and resurgence of deliverance ministry and related teaching materials. Some have been extremely helpful and others are either too vague or have no real connection to the Biblical ministry of Jesus. However, when I read "Redacted" I was immediately struck with not only a depth for Scriptural accuracy, I was shocked and amazed at how historically sound this book is laid out. It's a masterpiece of a work and there is little room for argument once you realize how well articulated and accurately explained the issues really are. Not only is deliverance ministry here to stay. This book will prove to you that it has been here the entire time but the church simply chose to ignore and bury the facts. This book is a Bravo on this vital subject."-Greg Locke

"David Miller has written a much-needed book about the neglected topic of deliverance and exorcism. His historical perspective is crucial to understanding the essentiality of incorporating spiritual warfare into church life. I have heavily marked and underlined my copy of Miller's book because of the crucial information it contains. Readers will especially find interesting his detailing of exorcism in the Pre-Nicene and Nicene periods of church history. His is the best treatment I have read about exorcism as it relates to Reformation and Post-Reformation theological challenges. Of course, I was especially interested in the section regarding our ministry, about which Miller showed incisive understanding. Every Christian needs this book, both laity and clergy. I look forward to Miller's future books. If they are as comprehensive and astute as this volume, the Christian community will be profoundly affected."-Bob Larson, D.Div. Author and exorcist

"I'll be honest -- I picked this up skeptical. Not of David, but of whether anyone could actually pull off what the title implies: a serious, honest walk through twenty centuries of exorcism history without either sensationalizing it or sanitizing it. David Miller does both things I didn't expect -- he keeps it grounded, and he doesn't flinch. The reality is that Christians have been casting out demons, debating whether Christians can have demons, watching that ministry get suppressed, and then rediscovering it from scratch -- over and over again. David documents that cycle with enough historical detail that you can't just wave it away. The pattern is too consistent to be coincidence.

We don't need to start at ground zero every twenty years. There's real wisdom in the people who came before us -- people who made mistakes, yes, but also people who figured some things out. Eat the meat, spit out the bones. That's always been how this works. But you can't eat what you don't know exists, and for most Western Christians, this history has effectively been buried. While I may moderately disagree with minor nuances here and there, his major premise -- that the history of deliverance ministry has been consistently redacted with prejudice, and that the Church is worse off for it -- I think he's right, and he makes that case well. This is the kind of book that earns its conclusions, and that's increasingly rare. I'm glad David wrote it."-Joshua Lewis, Remnant Radio

Redacted: The Secret History of Exorcism traces something I've long suspected but never seen documented with this much rigor: the Church's discomfort with deliverance isn't ancient orthodoxy -- it's a repeating pattern of loss. David M. Miller shows how the Reformers, in their rightful zeal to strip away Catholic magic, overcorrected and reasoned deliverance itself out of the Protestant Church. From there the pattern repeats with almost eerie consistency -- Fox, Wesley, and Mather all practiced deliverance and paid for it in their lifetimes, only to have their own successors bury the evidence once they were gone. Centuries later, Pentecostalism inherited the same instinct: deliverance was rejected in the fallout of the Azusa Street controversy, the revival collapsed shortly after, and the movement grew broadly suspicious of the very ministry that helped birth it -- resurfacing only in brief windows like the Voice of Healing and the charismatic renewal, before being resisted back into the margins again.

What makes this book more than a lament is how Miller honors the men who kept deliverance alive in spite of that resistance. He walks through the twentieth-century "old guard" -- Wigglesworth, who treated healing and exorcism as nearly inseparable; John G. Lake, whose willingness to confront African spiritual realities head-on (rather than dismiss them) fueled Pentecostalism's explosive growth there; A.A. Allen, who took real institutional and cultural heat for pushing further into direct confrontation; Sumrall, Prince, Hammond, and Larson, each widening or refining the framework in ways that still shape deliverance ministry today. Miller doesn't treat these men as fringe outliers. He treats them as a scattered but continuous tradition -- men who kept recovering a piece of something the institutional Church kept discarding.

This is careful, well-documented history, not sensationalism, and it lands with real weight: the anomaly in Church history isn't the presence of deliverance ministry -- it's the silence around it. Pastors and leaders serious about the full weight of the gospel need to sit with this book.

-- Pastor Vlad Savchuk

Senior Pastor, HungryGen Church

Author of "Make the Devil Homeless: A Biblical Guide to Deliverance from Demons."