Home » Posts tagged 'demons'
Tag Archives: demons
THE DEMONS IN THE BASEMENT
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 24, 2023 – Years ago, when I was much younger and even more foolish than I am today, I used to hitchhike back and forth between Halifax and Vancouver in the summertime. I did it so often, it became like an annual pilgrimage to the west coast. During one of those pilgrimages, I got picked up by a young man, probably in his mid-20s, who took me to his basement apartment just outside Calgary. I spent the night there.
The apartment was filthy and had a strange stench that I could not identify. What looked like leftover meat was rotting on plates here and there around the kitchen and living room. I don’t remember much beyond the filth and mess and strange, strange smell. The place was very dim and the only functioning light was the hall light. Shortly after we arrived, I remember telling the guy I was tired and wanted to get to sleep early so I could leave first thing in the morning and try to make it to Vancouver by nightfall.
The guy led me to a small bedroom with a single bed and left me there alone. I laid down with my clothes still on and fell into a restless sleep that was punctuated every so often by the guy standing at the bedroom door, silhouetted by the hall light, asking if he could come into the room and ‘sleep’ with me (for decorum’s sake, I won’t use his exact words here). Every time he asked, I told him “No”, and he went away. This bizarre ritual went on all night, too many times to count.
At daybreak, groggy but determined to get the heck out of that apartment, I got up and gathered my few things together to leave. The guy was already up and sitting at the kitchen table waiting for me. I think he’d been sitting there all night. Without saying a word to each other, we left the apartment, got into his car, and drove to the closest highway onramp, where he pulled over and let me out.
I thanked him for the lift and for letting me spend the night at his place. He stared straight ahead as if he didn’t hear me and then drove off without saying a word.
I never saw him again.
Years later, for what I thought was the first time in my life, I was exposed to a dead human body that had begun to putrefy. The smell of the rotting corpse immediately took me back to that basement apartment all those years ago and the strange smell that I could not at the time identify. I finally knew what it was.
My hitchhiking as a teenager and young adult had exposed me to many dangerous scenarios that I was too naïve and foolish to understand were dangerous. But that man constantly asking my permission to come into the room to rape me was among the strangest of all the bizarre situations I’d ever found myself in. Until I was born-again, I didn’t understand why he didn’t just come into the bedroom and rape me, why he kept asking my permission to enter the room. Now I understand that he needed me to say “Yes” in order to break through the spiritual safety net that even as an unbeliever was all around me. I didn’t put the net there; God did, on behalf of the few people in my life who were praying for me.
The demons in the guy could not get past that spiritual barrier without my permission, which even in my youthful atheistic foolishness I wasn’t about to give.
I recalled this incident today after reading about a young man in Lethbridge, not far from Calgary, who’d held a woman captive in his basement for days, repeatedly raping her. I thought: There was a woman who had no safety net of prayers around her, not from her own prayers or the prayers of those who love her. I had no idea at the time that I was being protected by the prayers of my loved ones, but I know now that I was. God honored their prayers and protected me, even when I didn’t believe in him, even when I persecuted those who were praying for me.
We need to be reminded every now and then about the power of the prayers of God’s children. These prayers are the most powerful force in the universe because they allow God to directly intervene. I experienced that power as an unbeliever, when I was rescued on umpteen occasions from being raped and abducted or otherwise molested during my hitchhiking days. The strangeness of the protection, at the time, and how I escaped in ways that to me and to those who witnessed it defied logic, puzzled me for years until my rebirth. When I was born-again, I finally understood.
Please pray for those you know who need your prayers. They may not be believers and they may hate your guts but please pray for them. The safety net of my loved one’s prayers played a critical role in keeping me alive long enough to realize the error of my ways and turn back to God. I might not still be here – even worse, I might not be born-again – had it not been for those prayers.
Please pray for your loved ones, especially for the naïve and foolish ones who’ve lost their way. Your prayers may be the only thing standing between them and the demons.
HEALING THROUGH EXORCISM
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 4, 2023 – We are allegedly in the midst of a mental health crisis. This is how the mainstream media is labeling it – a “mental health crisis”. Having collectively turned their backs on God, most people living in former Christendom have no concept of demons or what spiritual oppression looks like. So those in positions of authority call it a mental health crisis and try to shock, counsel, incarcerate, or drug the demon-oppressed person into some semblance of health. Of course, these approaches don’t work, because the more you try to suppress a demon, the more it will call for back-up, which means the oppressed person will get worse and worse until finally succumbing to full possession or suicide.
The book of Revelation tells us of the time when Hell will empty out and every disembodied fallen spirit ever created will roam the earth, looking for a body to possess. It also says that no matter how bad things get at that time, people will still refuse to repent and will continue with the same sinful behavior that got them into their spiritual mess and vulnerability to demons in the first place.
We’re not at that point in Revelation yet (thank God), but we’re getting closer every day. Demons are gaining an upper hand in the lives of more and more people. Yet these same people, these demon-oppressed and occasionally possessed people, are our neighbours, our family members, or even our friends, and they need our help. They don’t know the kind of help they need – some don’t know they need help at all – but spiritual help is the only thing that can heal them.
How do you get people to ask for the kind of help that they don’t even know they need?
Jesus, during his ministry years, spent most of his time healing sick people, and the majority of those who were sick were demon-oppressed or possessed. There was an understanding among the general public at that time that demons were at the root of most health problems, so people actively sought out Jesus and his disciples, begging to be healed.
Spiritual rebirth is an exorcism. During the rebirth process, the spirits of the world (that is, demons) are expelled and God’s Holy Spirit enters in. No demon can share a soul with God’s Spirit; a soul can house only holy or unholy, not both types of spirit simultaneously. This process of exorcism happened to me and was confirmed by God to have happened, when later that same day, after reading the verse about seven devils being driven out of Mary Magdalene, I was told by God that he’d done the same to me, only there were a lot more than seven.
Exorcism nowadays has devolved into the stuff of horror movies or the confessions of renegade priests on YouTube looking for attention (and donations). But Jesus cast out demons as a matter of course, all in a day’s work AND WITHOUT PAY, and so did his disciples. Exorcism was part of their job description. People came to them specifically requesting that type of healing.
Fast-forward to today, and we see in Canada that it’s now illegal (as of 2022) to perform an exorcism under what the federal government calls “conversion therapy”. This should not be surprising, considering that Canada has become a posterchild for how fast a former Christian nation can devolve into godlessness. Canada is now officially a secular (atheist) nation, with more unbelievers than believers. Back when I was seven years old and started calling myself an atheist, I was in a very very tiny minority in Canada.
How fast we’ve fallen as a nation.
Exorcism heals. I know that, because it healed me at my rebirth 24 years ago. All the pain I’d accumulated since I was a child disappeared in an instant and has not come back. Exorcism is a casting out of demons from a soul, to be replaced by God’s Holy Spirit. God himself had to perform the exorcism on me, since no-one else offered to do it. In my pain, I cried out for help from the depths of my soul, but God was the only one who heard.
We, as born-again believers, who ourselves have been exorcised of the spirits of the world (or else wouldn’t be born-again), need to hear the cries of the demon-oppressed calling out for help. We need to hear them, and we need to help them. These people are everywhere, all around us. And like Jesus, we need to let them know we’re here and that we can help them. People traveled vast distances to get to Jesus for healing because they’d heard he could help them. They had faith in him that he could help them. We need to build that same faith in people today that they can come to us for healing. And we need to be ready and able to help them when they do.
I believe that demons are at the root of most people’s problems. We’re not in a mental health crisis, we’re in a spiritual health crisis. Sin opens the door to demons, and they let themselves in and make themselves at home. Once in a soul, the only way that demons will leave is either through the death of the host or exorcism.
Most people didn’t initially come to Jesus to hear the Gospel: They came to be healed. Then, after they were healed, they were open to receiving the Gospel. This is not surprising to me, since the first thing I did after God exorcised me was to reach for a Bible and read the four gospels for the first time in my life. I read them all in one sitting, and I haven’t stop reading them since.
If your notion of exorcism is still based on Hollywood’s version, you need to read and reread the gospels. And then you need to ask God to help you heal the spiritually sick the way that Jesus and his first disciples did.
For us born-again believers, exorcism is part of our job description.
UNHOLY CURIOSITY: VIDEOS ABOUT DEMONS
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, August 6, 2022 – Based on my online activity, YouTube algorithms routinely “recommend” videos by allegedly Christian pastors. I don’t watch the recommended videos, but I can’t avoid reading the titles as I scan through the AI-generated offerings. What I’ve noticed is that videos about demons have far more views than videos about, for instance, entering at the strait gait or living the sober Christian life. Significantly more. One series of videos by the same author consistently shows views of around 16,000 for non-demon-themed videos, while postings about demons generate 64,000+ views. This is not an insignificant difference. I see the same trend in videos by other pastors.
What is the draw to videos about demons? Why are so many Christians more likely to click on a video when fallen beings are the theme?
The answer is: unholy curiosity, which reveals a chink in the armor of faith. Jesus spent very little time preaching on fallen beings, and that for a reason. We don’t need to know about them, beyond knowing they exist and that we should have nothing to do with them other than to cast them out as God guides and enables us to do. Wanting to know more about them is spiritually unhealthy and even dangerous. It is a form of spiritual adultery; a man may at first be drawn to look at a woman who is not his wife, then to speak to the woman, then to fantasize about the woman, then to be drawn into a physical relationship with her, all the while knowing what he is doing is wrong but somehow unable to stop himself. One step almost inevitably leads to the next. The same happens with spiritual adultery: demonic oppression can be gate-wayed by something as seemingly innocuous as clicking on a “Christian video” about demons.
Do not click on those videos. Do not be curious as to what the pastor has to say. Do not be drawn into the study of fallen beings. Do not be lured, tempted, or seduced by pastors who do not have your best interests at heart. No-one sent by God will post a video about demons, unless it is to warn you against watching such videos.
Similarly, do not be drawn into “comparative religion” studies where you are tasked with reading the so-called holy books of other belief systems. Refuse to have anything to do with those books. Treat them, as the Old Testament prophets would say, as a “menstruous cloth” – unclean spiritual disease vectors that are to be given a wide berth. To do otherwise may lead you into spiritual adultery.
God hates spiritual adultery. It is more repugnant to him than physical adultery. All our love, as born-again believers, should be for God and God alone. That is the Commandment. If our love for God wavers for whatever reason, our attention will be drawn to other spiritual beings. This is a sign of faith that has been weakened by unrepented sin. If you find yourself drawn to spiritual entities other than God (even just through curiosity about them), you need IMMEDIATELY to repent and get back 100% with God.
What is the draw to a menstruous cloth? It is a filthy thing teeming with bacteria and potentially with disease. It holds spent blood that has no value. Only the spiritually unwell would be drawn to such a thing; only the spiritually unwell would hold it out for you to touch and feel and smell.
Do not be curious about the fallen beings. Let them alone. Never invite them in, even through allegedly Christian videos. Shun any pastor who tries to lead you down the path of spiritual adultery.
The Way is narrow for a reason. We need to set tight boundaries for ourselves. Temptation is everywhere, all the time, even through AI-generated viewing recommendations. If we don’t set and adhere to tight boundaries as we walk along the narrow Way, we will not survive spiritually. A click is not just a click if it opens the door to damnation.
FEAR NOT! A Hallowe’en reminder
We know, because God tells us in his Word, that people – not places – are haunted.
Again – there are no haunted places, just haunted people (and some haunted animals).
Jesus never cast a demon out of any place. He did cast demons out of many people and once cast demons out of a person and into a herd of pigs, but there are no instances of Jesus casting out demons from a place or sending demons into a house or the wilderness or any other Earthly habitation.
If places could be haunted, don’t you think Jesus would have gone there to cast out a few demons, and don’t you think this would have been recorded in scripture? (more…)
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 