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Defeated Enemies
The victory has already been won and the enemy of our souls has been defeated in God's timeless eternity. Corrie shows that we can know this practically in our daily lives.
44 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1962
32 people are currently reading
328 people want to read
About the author
Corrie ten Boom
106 books1,685 followersCorrie ten Boom and her family were Christians who were active in social work in their home town of Haarlem, the Netherlands. During the Nazi occupation, they chose to act out their faith through peaceful resistance to the Nazis by active participation in the Dutch underground. They were hiding, feeding and transporting Jews and underground members hunted by the Gestapo out of the country. It is estimated they were able to save the lives of 800 Jews, in addition to protecting underground workers.
On Feb. 28, 1944, they were betrayed and Corrie and several relatives were arrested. The four Jews and two underground workers in the house at the time of the arrest were not located by the Nazis and were extricated by the underground 47 hours after they fled to the tiny hiding place (located in Corrie's room).
The ten Boom family members were separated and transferred to concentration camps. Corrie was allowed to stay with her precious sister, Betsy. Corrie's father (Casper), her sister (Betsy) and one grandchild (Kik) perished. Corrie was released in December of 1944.
These acts of heroism and sacrifice became the foundation for Corrie ten Boom's global writing and speaking career which began after she was released.
Ten Boom has received numerous awards for her writing and speaking. Notably, she was honored by the State of Israel for her work in aid of the Jewish people by being invited to plant a tree in the famous Avenue of the Righteous Gentiles, at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum, near Jerusalem. She was also knighted by the Queen of the Netherlands in recognition of her work during the war, and a museum in the Dutch city of Haarlem is dedicated to her and her family.
On Feb. 28, 1944, they were betrayed and Corrie and several relatives were arrested. The four Jews and two underground workers in the house at the time of the arrest were not located by the Nazis and were extricated by the underground 47 hours after they fled to the tiny hiding place (located in Corrie's room).
The ten Boom family members were separated and transferred to concentration camps. Corrie was allowed to stay with her precious sister, Betsy. Corrie's father (Casper), her sister (Betsy) and one grandchild (Kik) perished. Corrie was released in December of 1944.
These acts of heroism and sacrifice became the foundation for Corrie ten Boom's global writing and speaking career which began after she was released.
Ten Boom has received numerous awards for her writing and speaking. Notably, she was honored by the State of Israel for her work in aid of the Jewish people by being invited to plant a tree in the famous Avenue of the Righteous Gentiles, at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum, near Jerusalem. She was also knighted by the Queen of the Netherlands in recognition of her work during the war, and a museum in the Dutch city of Haarlem is dedicated to her and her family.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
January 23, 2025
Another must-read for Christians! This is a short book, but packed with wisdom on deliverance of demons, both for yourself and others.
August 2, 2016
I have read many books by this author, but I must say that this little book is now listed in my favorites written by her.
What I Liked: This was a very sobering reminder that the enemy, Satan, is still very much alive and well, doing all he can to cause people to go astray, knowing that his time is short.
As a Christian, I definitely don't believe that I should be scared of the devil and his demons, but I don't need to be totally ignorant of them, either. There is a very fine line. If I go too far and am fearful of him, then that's a victory for him, yet if I am totally ignorant of him, that's also a victory for him, as well.
Corrie, in this book, encourages believers to stay away from all appearance of evil, even those choices to go to fortune tellers and the like "just for fun". I was encouraged by this book in that I need to be SO very careful with the things I watch, read, and listen, to, amongst a majority of other things. I have to be well-guarded with the armor of God so that the enemy can't find any weak spots. Can I be strong by myself? No. But as God's child, I believe that I am covered in the blood of Christ. I am protected and strengthened THROUGH JESUS.
What I Didn't Like: I can't say that there was anything I didn't like about this book.
I give this book 5 stars for a very eye-opening, encouraging, sobering book.
What I Liked: This was a very sobering reminder that the enemy, Satan, is still very much alive and well, doing all he can to cause people to go astray, knowing that his time is short.
As a Christian, I definitely don't believe that I should be scared of the devil and his demons, but I don't need to be totally ignorant of them, either. There is a very fine line. If I go too far and am fearful of him, then that's a victory for him, yet if I am totally ignorant of him, that's also a victory for him, as well.
Corrie, in this book, encourages believers to stay away from all appearance of evil, even those choices to go to fortune tellers and the like "just for fun". I was encouraged by this book in that I need to be SO very careful with the things I watch, read, and listen, to, amongst a majority of other things. I have to be well-guarded with the armor of God so that the enemy can't find any weak spots. Can I be strong by myself? No. But as God's child, I believe that I am covered in the blood of Christ. I am protected and strengthened THROUGH JESUS.
What I Didn't Like: I can't say that there was anything I didn't like about this book.
I give this book 5 stars for a very eye-opening, encouraging, sobering book.
June 28, 2017
Here Comes the Boom!
Big things come in small packages, an adage proven true by this deceptively short 30-page booklet by Corrie ten Boom, the grandmotherly author of The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom who herein surprisingly reveals herself to be a pioneering deliverance minister!
I say the booklet is deceptively short because it resisted my attempts to read it in a single sitting. For one thing, the print is very small (at least in my 1975 edition with the hand-lettered red, black, and white cover). But also because Corrie packs a lot of spiritual meat into these pages that a ruminative reader will want to chew on before flipping to the next page. It's a book requiring a thoughtful and prayerful read and even rereading.
Corrie opens with "The Conflict" that details what the Bible says about demons and establishes the basis for spiritual warfare. She includes potent quotes from 19th century Welsh author Jessie Penn-Lewis' War on the Saints, The Full Text, Unabridged Edition and the oft-cited C.S. Lewis classic The Screwtape Letters. Corrie also corrects the common misperception that deliverance ministry is a Pentecostal aberration that arose in the mid-20th century when she describes the deliverance from demonic possession of a young girl by Pastor Blumhardt in 19th century Germany: "One of [Pastor Bumhardt's] faithful parishioners, Gottliebin Dittus, became demon possessed, and a battle started which ended victoriously eighteen months later when the last demon went out of the girl. With a loud voice, heard over the whole town, he shouted. 'Jesus is victor!' After this, God gave great blessings in Mottlingen. The little town became a center where many Christians received special gifts of healing, and of casting out demons (see I Cor. 12:28)!" Wow! Corrie's account could upend the accepted origin of Pentecostalism beginning at Charles Parham's Bible school in 1901 Topeka, Kansas.
Readers of Corrie ten Boom's books A Prisoner and Yet, Amazing Love: True Stories of the Power of Forgiveness, and Not Good If Detached will experience deja vu all over again as Corrie includes excerpts addressing deliverance from those earlier works. The excerpts were all intriguing and have me wanting to track down those lesser-known books. Before Defeated Enemies I only knew Corrie from The Hiding Place, but she left us an impressive and wide-ranging body of work.
Corrie makes clear she never sought out deliverance ministry, but was obedient to step into the gap when called upon. Once in South Africa she was summoned to help a demon-possessed girl. "I was not happy. I have no special gift to cast out demons, nevertheless I believe that we must never refuse when God calls us! If we don't cast out demons, who must do it?" (28) That was a convicting question!
Later deliverance books like Neil Anderson's The Bondage Breaker and Neal Lozano's Unbound: A Practical Guide to Deliverance from Evil Spirits have made their peace with and incorporate a lot of popular psychology, but Corrie ten Boom was reluctant to cross that Rubicon into modernism: "Psychology is profitable, even necessary, but not enough"(15). Corrie asks a pastor steeped in psychology for help casting out a demon. "The pastor answered me with a discourse on the defense mechanism of the subconscious. That was no help to me! How dangerous to try to solve great problems with small answers" (15). She reiterates this point later, "What do people do with a person who is obsessed or possessed? They go to a psychiatrist who gives shocks! That means solving a great problem in a small way, and that is always dangerous!" (28).
Corrie also takes the axe to the ivory tower of Christian seminaries: "A theological professor was asked, 'Do you teach your students to cast out demons?'
'Hardly,' was the answer. 'I can't do that myself.'
'But you dare to send your students to congregations that are filled with sorcery? Do you think their knowledge of the Jahwist and the Elohist manuscripts of Genesis will help them when they are struggling with the demons that have entered so many people of our day?'" (15). Ouch! But a necessary rebuke to Bible colleges and seminaries that fail to recognize and thus fail to train and equip their students for spiritual warfare.
Having recently read a pile of deliverance ministry books, I'm learning the authors each have their individual and arguably eccentric obsessions. Rebecca Brown, for example, gives disproportionate emphasis to covens of Satan-worshipping witches in her book He Came To Set The Captives Free, Freemasonry is the villain of the piece for Pat Legako and Cyndi Gribble in Deliverance: Rescuing God's People, and for Corrie ten Boom it's fortune telling. Fortune telling?? My mind immediately envisioned Cher warbling "Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves" among wooden wagons in dark European forests. But Corrie is writing about Europe after World War II when many grieving families consulted gypsy fortune tellers to determine the whereabouts of their lost soldier boys. And while wizened women in bandanas and hoop earrings gazing into crystal balls seems quaint, fortune telling is still with us in modern dress like the Psychic Friends Network. Corrie contends dabbling in such things, even for fun, opens a door to the demonic best left closed.
Something new to me was the good-luck charm known as a Letter from Heaven: "As I said before there is much witchcraft in Germany. One of the forms with which I came in contact was 'the letter from Heaven.' This contains strange words and sentences, preceded by an introduction that says that the letter comes straight from the Lord Jesus Himself. It promises good luck and protection from danger" (20-21). It's sad the superstitions man will grasp at and cling to during distressing times instead of turning to Christ who promised to take our burdens upon himself.
Later in that same story Corrie praises a young Navigator woman who was able to apply the fruits of Scripture Memorization during a deliverance: "[She] knew immediately how to handle the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God. I saw again how useful it is to know Scripture by heart, thus being prepared for the warfare with Satan!" (21). This passage motivated me to set to work honing the edge of my sword by hiding in my heart God's precious word.
One possible point of contention amongst deliverance ministers is the necessity to bind or forbid the expelled demon from going into another person. Corrie reports a demon did just that after it was cast out (29), but Don Basham in his 1972 book Deliver Us from Evil: A Pastor's Reluctant Encounters with the Powers of Darkness found no biblical evidence backing the belief that demons can hop from person to person. On whether deliverance ministers should command the expelled demons to go to hell, she cites another missionary as saying only the Lord can do that (based on Jude 9). How we need wisdom! she cries, quoting James 1:5. Amen.
Defeated Enemies is a mere 30 pages long, but it's savory meat with all the fat trimmed. It recounts numerous stories of deliverance with helpful counsel. I was impressed and admittedly a little overwhelmed by Corrie's harrowing experiences and stirring testimonies. I wish this work were better known and celebrated, or at least cited in later deliverance books (I haven't seen it referenced in any as of yet). I stand with Corrie when she declares, "I am well aware I do not possess any special gift for casting out demons, but in times of emergency we must dare lay hold on the promise of Mark 16:17, 'In my name shall they cast out devils" (14).
Big things come in small packages, an adage proven true by this deceptively short 30-page booklet by Corrie ten Boom, the grandmotherly author of The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom who herein surprisingly reveals herself to be a pioneering deliverance minister!
I say the booklet is deceptively short because it resisted my attempts to read it in a single sitting. For one thing, the print is very small (at least in my 1975 edition with the hand-lettered red, black, and white cover). But also because Corrie packs a lot of spiritual meat into these pages that a ruminative reader will want to chew on before flipping to the next page. It's a book requiring a thoughtful and prayerful read and even rereading.
Corrie opens with "The Conflict" that details what the Bible says about demons and establishes the basis for spiritual warfare. She includes potent quotes from 19th century Welsh author Jessie Penn-Lewis' War on the Saints, The Full Text, Unabridged Edition and the oft-cited C.S. Lewis classic The Screwtape Letters. Corrie also corrects the common misperception that deliverance ministry is a Pentecostal aberration that arose in the mid-20th century when she describes the deliverance from demonic possession of a young girl by Pastor Blumhardt in 19th century Germany: "One of [Pastor Bumhardt's] faithful parishioners, Gottliebin Dittus, became demon possessed, and a battle started which ended victoriously eighteen months later when the last demon went out of the girl. With a loud voice, heard over the whole town, he shouted. 'Jesus is victor!' After this, God gave great blessings in Mottlingen. The little town became a center where many Christians received special gifts of healing, and of casting out demons (see I Cor. 12:28)!" Wow! Corrie's account could upend the accepted origin of Pentecostalism beginning at Charles Parham's Bible school in 1901 Topeka, Kansas.
Readers of Corrie ten Boom's books A Prisoner and Yet, Amazing Love: True Stories of the Power of Forgiveness, and Not Good If Detached will experience deja vu all over again as Corrie includes excerpts addressing deliverance from those earlier works. The excerpts were all intriguing and have me wanting to track down those lesser-known books. Before Defeated Enemies I only knew Corrie from The Hiding Place, but she left us an impressive and wide-ranging body of work.
Corrie makes clear she never sought out deliverance ministry, but was obedient to step into the gap when called upon. Once in South Africa she was summoned to help a demon-possessed girl. "I was not happy. I have no special gift to cast out demons, nevertheless I believe that we must never refuse when God calls us! If we don't cast out demons, who must do it?" (28) That was a convicting question!
Later deliverance books like Neil Anderson's The Bondage Breaker and Neal Lozano's Unbound: A Practical Guide to Deliverance from Evil Spirits have made their peace with and incorporate a lot of popular psychology, but Corrie ten Boom was reluctant to cross that Rubicon into modernism: "Psychology is profitable, even necessary, but not enough"(15). Corrie asks a pastor steeped in psychology for help casting out a demon. "The pastor answered me with a discourse on the defense mechanism of the subconscious. That was no help to me! How dangerous to try to solve great problems with small answers" (15). She reiterates this point later, "What do people do with a person who is obsessed or possessed? They go to a psychiatrist who gives shocks! That means solving a great problem in a small way, and that is always dangerous!" (28).
Corrie also takes the axe to the ivory tower of Christian seminaries: "A theological professor was asked, 'Do you teach your students to cast out demons?'
'Hardly,' was the answer. 'I can't do that myself.'
'But you dare to send your students to congregations that are filled with sorcery? Do you think their knowledge of the Jahwist and the Elohist manuscripts of Genesis will help them when they are struggling with the demons that have entered so many people of our day?'" (15). Ouch! But a necessary rebuke to Bible colleges and seminaries that fail to recognize and thus fail to train and equip their students for spiritual warfare.
Having recently read a pile of deliverance ministry books, I'm learning the authors each have their individual and arguably eccentric obsessions. Rebecca Brown, for example, gives disproportionate emphasis to covens of Satan-worshipping witches in her book He Came To Set The Captives Free, Freemasonry is the villain of the piece for Pat Legako and Cyndi Gribble in Deliverance: Rescuing God's People, and for Corrie ten Boom it's fortune telling. Fortune telling?? My mind immediately envisioned Cher warbling "Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves" among wooden wagons in dark European forests. But Corrie is writing about Europe after World War II when many grieving families consulted gypsy fortune tellers to determine the whereabouts of their lost soldier boys. And while wizened women in bandanas and hoop earrings gazing into crystal balls seems quaint, fortune telling is still with us in modern dress like the Psychic Friends Network. Corrie contends dabbling in such things, even for fun, opens a door to the demonic best left closed.
Something new to me was the good-luck charm known as a Letter from Heaven: "As I said before there is much witchcraft in Germany. One of the forms with which I came in contact was 'the letter from Heaven.' This contains strange words and sentences, preceded by an introduction that says that the letter comes straight from the Lord Jesus Himself. It promises good luck and protection from danger" (20-21). It's sad the superstitions man will grasp at and cling to during distressing times instead of turning to Christ who promised to take our burdens upon himself.
Later in that same story Corrie praises a young Navigator woman who was able to apply the fruits of Scripture Memorization during a deliverance: "[She] knew immediately how to handle the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God. I saw again how useful it is to know Scripture by heart, thus being prepared for the warfare with Satan!" (21). This passage motivated me to set to work honing the edge of my sword by hiding in my heart God's precious word.
One possible point of contention amongst deliverance ministers is the necessity to bind or forbid the expelled demon from going into another person. Corrie reports a demon did just that after it was cast out (29), but Don Basham in his 1972 book Deliver Us from Evil: A Pastor's Reluctant Encounters with the Powers of Darkness found no biblical evidence backing the belief that demons can hop from person to person. On whether deliverance ministers should command the expelled demons to go to hell, she cites another missionary as saying only the Lord can do that (based on Jude 9). How we need wisdom! she cries, quoting James 1:5. Amen.
Defeated Enemies is a mere 30 pages long, but it's savory meat with all the fat trimmed. It recounts numerous stories of deliverance with helpful counsel. I was impressed and admittedly a little overwhelmed by Corrie's harrowing experiences and stirring testimonies. I wish this work were better known and celebrated, or at least cited in later deliverance books (I haven't seen it referenced in any as of yet). I stand with Corrie when she declares, "I am well aware I do not possess any special gift for casting out demons, but in times of emergency we must dare lay hold on the promise of Mark 16:17, 'In my name shall they cast out devils" (14).
November 30, 2021
Книга, която е както за вярващи, така и за не съвсем такива. Можеш много да научиш за себе си и за другите, за силата, която имаме в Исус и за това как можем да си служим с нея, когато се налага.
December 14, 2017
Corrie ten Boom never disappoints me, this book while short addresses spiritual warfare while on the battlefield of life. It is practical and direct giving the reader encouragement in the trials of life and direction to Jesus who is always with us and fighting on our behalf. Great book by an amazing lady.
September 20, 2018
This is a very powerful little book. I read The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom so I knew that she had great faith. Reading what she said, and because she was a trusted source, it really gave her points a lot of weight. I definitely recommend this to all believers in Jesus. I will be referring back to it for sure.
August 23, 2020
Needed
This is a book that is needed by so many these days. There is so much that entraps and deceives. Thank you for a book that makes the way clear to total deliverance from darkness. Highly recommend it.
This is a book that is needed by so many these days. There is so much that entraps and deceives. Thank you for a book that makes the way clear to total deliverance from darkness. Highly recommend it.
October 25, 2023
Originally written for missionaries as an introductory guide to spiritual warfare, Corrie shares her experiences with the spiritual realm and reminds us through her stories of the power and victory we have access to from God our Father through Jesus Christ our Lord.
September 30, 2019
Good
A short book but informative. Corrie Ten Boom shares some of her experiences ministering to others. Interesting toward the last part where she faces demon possessed people.
A short book but informative. Corrie Ten Boom shares some of her experiences ministering to others. Interesting toward the last part where she faces demon possessed people.
January 9, 2020
Excellent study
If a Christian needs preparation to deal with evil, this is an excellent book for reference and study. One needs to understand the enemy and how to deal with it.
If a Christian needs preparation to deal with evil, this is an excellent book for reference and study. One needs to understand the enemy and how to deal with it.
July 15, 2023
This was a great and powerful book.
June 21, 2024
Tiny but mighty ~
February 24, 2025
Wow, this book was amazing! I think it would be very beneficial for every christian to read it. It is 100% clean, but to reap its full benefit, I would recommend it to older teens.
January 29, 2026
Interesting.
December 20, 2024
A short and concise, Biblical and practical guide to engaging demonic activity and casting out demons.
November 1, 2010
This is a tiny little book - only 32 pages - and yet it packs in a lot of information. Corrie talks here about demons, who they are and what they can and can't do, and what we as Christians can and can't do against them.
Even more important, she remains more focused on Jesus, and even discusses the error of spending too much time or effort on anything demonic, instead of keeping our eyes on Jesus alone.
One thing to note is that Corrie lived in a time when people didn't have to have everything in Powerpoint or said in the fastest outline possible before they were too bored to care any longer. So she does wander a little here and there -- but nothing bad or that takes away from what she's saying or what you can learn from this great sister / elder.
Even more important, she remains more focused on Jesus, and even discusses the error of spending too much time or effort on anything demonic, instead of keeping our eyes on Jesus alone.
One thing to note is that Corrie lived in a time when people didn't have to have everything in Powerpoint or said in the fastest outline possible before they were too bored to care any longer. So she does wander a little here and there -- but nothing bad or that takes away from what she's saying or what you can learn from this great sister / elder.
January 25, 2016
This is a booklet instead of a full book but Corrie ten Boom is one of the best Christian authors that lived and in this booklet she shares many experiences that most authors wouldn't be brave enough to discuss.
April 28, 2024
Powerful. Excellent resource for anyone wanting to learn more about spiritual warfare and the battle that actually goes on in the heavenlies.
June 9, 2022
A quick easy, encouraging read of Christ's victorious power over the darkness!
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews