Demons

A new study is giving new meaning to the phrase “this city would eat you alive.” Scientists from the University of Miami say sharks are not avoiding the local shoreline. Instead, these predators are spending plenty of time quite close to the sights and sounds of the city.

On a global scale, the world’s coastlines are urbanizing at a rapid rate. So how is that impacting local aquatic life? Researchers decided to investigate by tracking the movements of sharks around the Miami shoreline. Considering the loud noises, chemicals, and bright lights, the research team fully expected the sharks to avoid South Beach like a bad habit. That’s not what they saw.

Researcher Neil Hammerschlag said, “Since other studies have shown that land predators are urban avoiders, we expected sharks to be too. We were surprised to find that the sharks spent so much time near the lights and sounds of the busy city, often close to shore, no matter the time of day.”

Plenty of animals, like pigeons or raccoons, thrive in cities. Meanwhile, “urban adaptors” spend some time in urban areas, but still largely rely on the great outdoors. On the other end of the spectrum, we find most land-based predators like wolves. These animals, called “urban avoiders,” want nothing to do with civilization.

Study authors once thought that sharks are urban avoiders, but ultimately concluded they act much more like urban adaptors. Sharks are closer to the beach than you might think.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Satan, the roaring lion, is also closer than you might think. He constantly prowls looking for the unwary to devour (1 Pet. 5:8) and we need to be aware of his schemes (2 Cor. 2:11).

Heath Adamson shares the story of his deliverance from the occult and addiction in an article in CT magazine. Even as a child, the spiritual world was real to him because of his involvement with the occult. Heath remembers watching a chair slide across the floor and a candle floating off the coffee table. His experiences with the supernatural led him on an all-consuming quest for answers.

Then in eighth grade a female classmate sensed in her heart that God was whispering Heath’s name. The whisper said something to the effect of, “Pray for that young man. You are going to marry him one day.” They struck up a relationship, but when the school year ended, they went their separate ways. She attended church, but Heath had regular encounters with the demonic realm, became addicted to numerous drugs, looked like a human skeleton, and lived life in quiet desperation.

Heath then writes:

In my junior year of high school, I asked my physics partner about religion and he invited me to church. I actually went and one Sunday night, I lay in my bedroom thinking about who God was and what the truth could be. I felt like God himself had come into my room. I remember saying out loud, “Jesus, you are who you say you are.” Deep inside, I believed he loved me the way I was. God’s presence was so real that I could almost feel him breathing in my face.

I told my physics partner I would go back to church with him on a Wednesday night. I said, “Remember when the pastor asked if people wanted to ask Jesus to forgive them. Well, I think I need to do that.” At the end of the service, a volunteer pastor said a prayer and shared the gospel. I was the only one who responded. That night, when I embraced the grace of Jesus, my body was supernaturally and instantaneously healed. My substance addictions vanished.

The very next day, I discovered something incredible in the mailbox. Inside was a handwritten letter from the girl who dared to listen in eighth grade when God touched her heart. It just happened to land in the mailbox the day after I met God. After I married that amazing girl, I found her prayer journals. That’s when I discovered how God used the prayers of her and others, often whispered when no one was watching, to help soften my hardened heart.

Looking back at my salvation, I am the product of a girl who dared to believe when God whispered, an invitation to church, and the power of prayer. And most of all the Savior who stepped into my darkness and, instead of turning away in horror, showed me who he was and who I was created to be.

In June of 1992, Gloria Davey and a few friends were walking in the English countryside. When they stopped for a rest, they discovered a ruined church (from the bombings of World War I). The church had been desecrated by satanic symbols. When she told her husband Bob, a church leader at another nearby church, he was horrified at what he saw. That moment, the recently retired Bob made a decision that would dominate his life for the next 22 years. He would restore St Mary’s Church.

He said, “You couldn’t see the tower, and there was no roof, windows or floor — nothing, really. But I felt it was my duty to save it. This annoyed me intensely. I've been a Christian all my life and wasn't putting up with this on my watch.” He walked inside—the door was long gone—and that afternoon started clearing out 60 years’ worth of rubbish. For 22 years he was at the site early every day “except on days of family christenings and weddings,” says Bob, who has four children, six grandchildren, and a great-grandchild.

He added, “I haven’t had a holiday in 22 years, but I haven’t wanted one. Who wants to retire? My advice to others: don’t play golf or buy a Spanish villa when you retire. Find yourself a ruined church to save!” Bob hasn’t just saved the church. He also uncovered a unique set of wall paintings, the earliest in Britain and some of the finest in Europe.

Bob faced stiff resistance. The satanists sent him a message: “If you continue to come here, I’ll kill you.” Bob said he wasn’t frightened. “I’ll come in an electric trolley if I have to.” And until his death in 2021 at the age of 91, that’s exactly what Bob Davey did.

In an issue of CT magazine Nicole Watt shares her journey from spiritism to faith in Christ:

From the time I was a child … I felt I could sense (and at times see) what you could call the unseen or spirit world. Sometimes this world was as sweet as the childlike wonder of knowing where the prize Easter egg was hidden. Other times, an ominous flash of perception would warn me that I was in a home where witchcraft was practiced.

As a teenager, I was curious about the supernatural realm, and I started satisfying that curiosity with books on the occult. I loved God, but I also nursed a disobedient streak. And even though the subject matter was frightening, I found myself gradually lured in. I bought a Ouija board and became interested in clairvoyance.

As the doorway to the demonic realm swung open, terrifying incidents occurred. At one point, I slept with a Bible because I believed I was hearing demons in my room. Another time, I woke up in a cold sweat after feeling a tug at my nightgown and hearing a low, menacing growl in my ear.

Yet the idea of accessing supernatural powers remained appealing …. Looking back, I see how Satan was preparing me to be seduced by one of the greatest dangers of New Age thinking: the false promise of peace through spiritual enlightenment.

In my mid-20s I began studying Reiki, a New Age healing technique that uses different symbols and hand positions to supposedly channel energy from the universe. (The term itself means “universal life energy.”) At the time, I was desperate for peace and longing for spiritual awakening. Wanting to belong, I eagerly accepted the idea that Satan was a manmade myth contrived to keep people in religious bondage.

By the time I became a Reiki master, I was also a mom living on my own. And as so many new parents can attest, the anxious and awestruck feelings of parenthood have a way of awakening interest in religion. Next door to me lived an elderly couple raising their young granddaughter. She invited me to her church, where I finally found a home for my soul … and was baptized.

Now, I was straddling two worlds. On Saturdays I would offer Reiki sessions and teach classes …. But I was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the Reiki world. Every day I felt a greater burden of conviction to tell people that whatever healing they experienced during Reiki sessions was a gift from God, not me. He was the answer to all their questions, problems, and longings.

Soon enough, I came face-t0-face with the foolishness of serving two masters. The crisis point arrived when a friend asked if I would teach Reiki to her and another woman …. The first session went smoothly enough, but that night I had a terrible dream of two witches attacking me. I yelled out the name of Jesus, and immediately they disappeared. I awoke from the dream scared but in awe of a name so powerful that satanic forces fled at its mention.

The next day I informed the women that I wouldn’t teach the class any longer. I said, “You do not need more teaching. You need Jesus.” They erupted in tears and anger, accusing me of arrogance, stupidity, and a lack of empathy …. But I also felt an incredible relief. I ripped up all my Reiki books and asked God to forgive me. That was over 15 years ago, and I haven’t practiced Reiki since.

The New Age is the old Satan playing on our deepest longings for peace, connection, abundance, and immortality. In contrast, the Christian path of obedience, sacrifice, and suffering can seem foolish. That’s why I praise the name of Jesus, who laid down his life not for spiritual masters but for weak and wounded sinners he loved so dearly.

Reiki is a relaxation practice that claims it promotes physical and emotional healing. The International Center for Reiki Training reports that more than four million people have completed their courses. Several major hospitals in the US and Canada offer Reiki to suffering patients. Practitioner uses their hands to either lightly touch or hover over the patient’s body to manipulate its natural flow of energy.

Anne Bokma, in her book My Year of Living Spiritually, investigated a wide variety of alternative spiritual practices, one of which was Reiki. Most “Reiki Masters” invoke spirit guides. At the start of one session Bokma was told: “The room is filling up with beautiful divine beings.” Through the Master the divine being said: “What a delicious feeling it is that you can sense me with your physical form.” And “You can communicate with us and ask us for guidance and clarity any time.” Another Master invoked the Archangel Michael, who is wielding the “sword of truth” to break Bokma’s chains.

A Reiki Master Teacher Training director writes:

If I need guidance, I find it works best for me to stop whatever I am doing, take a deep breath, say a prayer, invoke the distant healing symbol, and ask that the Reiki energy help connect me with my guides. When I feel the energy flowing, I will ask a specific question, stay very quiet and pay attention to what I hear. Now I don't usually audibly hear voices, but I FEEL them. For example, I knew I was to move to a new home in Colorado, however I wasn't sure where. To discern this, I asked my guides to tell me where my next home was to be. Then I just felt a warm glowing sensation in my heart and had an idea of a place that I had never been, but was feeling very curious about. I immediately went to this area, and within two hours had found my new home.

While the United States is gradually becoming more spiritual and less religious, polls show that belief in the paranormal is on the rise. Polls conducted in recent decades by Gallup and the data firm YouGov suggest that roughly half of Americans believe demonic possession is real. The percentage who believe in the devil is even higher, and in fact has been growing: Gallup polls show that the number rose from 55 percent in 1990 to 70 percent in 2007.

But why is belief in demons on the rise when belief in Christian faith is declining? It seems that people seek spiritual fulfillment through the occult. Carlos Eire, a historian at Yale said, “As people’s participation in orthodox Christianity declines, there’s always been a surge in interest in the occult and the demonic. Today we’re seeing a hunger for contact with the supernatural.”

Adam Jortner, an expert on American history at Auburn University, agrees, “When the influence of the major institutional Churches is curbed, people begin to look for their own answers. ... At the same time that there has been a rebirth in magical thinking, American culture has become steeped in movies, TV shows, and other media about demons and demonic possession.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

This situation could actually lead many back to the church. As secularization creates a gap where people begin to seek out the demonic, more and more are returning to the church seeking freedom from demonic oppression in the form of exorcism.

A news story reported on an Irish priest and exorcist who is asking his superiors for help after noticing a dramatic increase in demonic activity. Fr. Pat Collins said he has been overwhelmed with the number of requests for exorcisms in Ireland. In an open letter, he urged his bishops to train more priests to deal with the demand. Collins said that it's "only in recent years that the demand has risen exponentially."

Collins' comments are on par with those of other exorcists throughout the world, including the International Association of Exorcists (IAE), a group of 400 Catholic leaders and priests, which has reported a dramatic increase in demonic activity in recent years. The IAE said the levels of demonic activity throughout the world had reached what they considered a "pastoral emergency."

Collins said that anyone who doesn't see the need for more exorcists is "out of touch with reality." He added,

What I'm finding out desperately, is people who in their own minds believe—rightly or wrongly—that they're afflicted by an evil spirit … [And] when they turn to the Church, the Church doesn't know what to do with them and they refer them on either to a psychologist [or another church leader] … and they do fall between the cracks and often are not helped.

In his book No Country for Old Men, award-winning author Cormac McCarthy has one of his characters, Sheriff Val, explain why he returned to his childhood belief in a real devil. The Sheriff said:

I think if you were Satan and you were sitting around trying to think up something that would just bring the human race to its knees what you would probably come up with is narcotics. Maybe he did. I told that to somebody at breakfast the other morning and they asked me if I believe in Satan. I said well that ain't the point. And they said I know but do you? I had to think about that. I guess as a boy I did. Come the middle years my belief I reckon had waned somewhat. Now I'm starting to lean back the other way. Satan explains a lot of things that otherwise don't have no explanation. We're not to me they don't.

Editor's Note: No Country for Old Men is also a movie, but this quote was taken from the book, not the film.

David Fitch shares how the prayers of a church vanquished Satan's grip on a neighborhood:

In 2010 a group of eight people from two churches felt called to the Detroit Boulevard neighborhood of Sacramento. It was known as one of the most notorious crime-ridden neighborhoods in all of Sacramento. Each house in that neighborhood was a place of danger. Nonetheless this group of eight decided to walk through the neighborhood praying over each home and praying for the presence of Christ to reign over violence, addiction, and satanic oppression. They began walking through the neighborhood, praying over each home and rebuking the demonic strongholds of addiction and violence.

One of the eight, former Sacramento police officer and gang detective Michael Xiong, reported that "each time we prayed over the houses, we felt the weight of oppression becoming lighter." A woman from one of the houses confronted them. When she discovered they were praying for the community, she asked for healing, and God healed her.

The group soon physically moved into the neighborhood and started what they called Detroit Life Church. A couple years later a local newspaper, the Sacramento Bee, reported that there were no homicides, robberies, or sex crimes, and only one assault in Detroit Boulevard between 2013 and 2014. Detroit Boulevard had been transformed by a small group of people who began their ministry in the neighborhood by praying around houses, streets, and parks for the power of Satan to be vanquished. Kingdom prayer in body is what it means to be faithfully present to his presence in the world.

When farmer Bruce Grubb saw what he perceived to be a potential threat to the people and animals on his farm, he acted decisively. Only in hindsight did he realize his fears were unfounded.

Police in the area received a frantic call from Grubbs, explaining that there was a tiger on the loose on his property, which he noticed on his way to check on his pregnant cows. "I got the fright of my life," Bruce Grubb said, adding later: "I was worried it was going to eat all my cows before police managed to shoot it."

Grubbs call prompted authorities to send armed officers, also checking in with a local wildlife agency to ensure there had been no recent tiger escapes. After a 45-minute standoff, officers realized that the life-size tiger was, in fact, stuffed. They later returned with the tiger in tow, to be used as a workplace mascot.

Besides enduring some teasing on social media, the farmer took the episode in stride. "I drove up to it with my truck, and that's when I knew it was a toy," said Grubbs. "I feel a bit silly for calling the police, but I thought it was a real emergency."

Police inspector George Gordiner gave a gracious final word: "Our ultimate aim is to protect the public and keep our officers safe when faced with uncertain situations. Until you know exactly what you are dealing with, every option has to be considered … we appreciate that it was a false call made with genuine good intent."

Potential Preaching Angles: Don't be fooled about who or what your true enemy is. The enemy of our souls has no power over us. Don't be fooled by false teachers with illusions of authority.

Watching YouTube videos can teach you a lot of things. For British doctor Charlie Fry, it taught him how to survive a life-threatening shark attack. A beginner surfer, Fry found himself blindsided by a shark on a vacation to Australia and did exactly what he saw pro surfer Mick Fanning teach in a YouTube video-punch the shark square on the nose. "I thought it was a friend goofing around. I turned and I saw this shark come out of the water and breach its head," he said. "So I just punched it in the face with my left hand and then managed to scramble back on my board, shout at my friends and luckily a wave came, so I just sort of surfed the wave in."

Fry said afterwards that he didn't even notice until he got to shore that his arm was punctured and bleeding. "I didn't really notice it at the time because when you're surfing, all I'm thinking was: 'I'm about to die. I'm literally about to die,'" he said. Luckily, thanks to quick thinking and a productive YouTube search, the new surfer's injuries were not serious and he'll live to surf another wave.

Potential Preaching Angles: James 4:7 says, "Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." 1 Peter 5:8 says that "Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour." Imagining Satan as a lion (or shark) to be avoided might be easy, but we must also view our daily temptations on equal ground: flee from them, before they devour you.

NPR (National Public Radio) journalist Scott Simon has always avoided using the word "evil" when covering terrible events around the globe. He claims he was "of a generation educated to believe that 'evil' was a cartoonish moral concept." But then he watched, with his daughters, some of the sickening images from the chemical weapons attack in Syria in April 2017 that killed scores of people, many of them children. Simon writes:

We watched in silence. I've covered a lot of wars, but could think of nothing to say to make any sense. Finally, one of our daughters asked, "Why would anyone do that?" I still avoid saying "evil" as a reporter. But as a parent, I've grown to feel it may be important to tell children about evil, as we struggle to explain cruel and incomprehensible behavior they may see not just in history. … but in our own times.

I've interviewed Romeo Dallaire, commanded U.N. peacekeeping forces in Rwanda in 1993 and 1994 when more than 800,000 Tutsi Rwandans were then slaughtered over three months. Dallaire said that what happened made him believe in evil, and even a force he called the devil. "I've negotiated with him," he told us, "shaken his hand. Yes. There is no doubt in my mind ... and the expression of evil to me is through the devil and the devil at work and possessing human beings and turning them into machines of destruction. ... And one of the evenings in my office, I was looking out the window and my senses felt that something was there with me that shifted me. I think that evil and good are playing themselves out and God is monitoring and looking at how we respond to it."

William Friedkin directed the 1973 movie The Exorcist. It became one of the highest-grossing films in history, was a major pop culture influence, and was labeled by critics and voters as one of the scariest movies of all time. But in an issue of Vanity Fair, Friedkin admitted that he had never witnessed an actual exorcism. So Friedkin, who considers himself an agnostic, traveled to Italy and watched a real exorcism. When he returned to the U.S. he showed the video to two of the world's leading neurosurgeons and researchers in California and to a group of prominent psychiatrists in New York.

After watching the video, Dr. Neil Martin, chief of neurosurgery at the UCLA Medical Center, said:

There's a major force at work within her somehow. I don't know the underlying origin of it … This doesn't seem to be hallucinations … It doesn't look like schizophrenia or epilepsy … I've done thousands of surgeries, on brain tumors, traumatic brain injuries, [etc.] … and I haven't seen this kind of consequence from any of those disorders. This goes beyond anything I've ever experienced—that's for certain.

Dr. Itzhak Fried, a neurosurgeon and clinical specialist in epilepsy surgery, seizure disorder :

It looks like something authentic. She is like a caged animal. I don't think there's a loss of consciousness or contact … I believe everything originates in the brain. So which part of the brain could serve this type of behavior? … [But] can I characterize it? Maybe. Can I treat it? No.

Friedkin was surprised by the neurosurgeons' response:

They wouldn't come out and say, "Of course this woman is possessed by Satan," but they seemed baffled as to how to define her ailment … I went to these doctors to try to get a rational, scientific explanation for what I had experienced. I thought they'd say, 'This is some sort of psychosomatic disorder having nothing to do with possession.' That's not what I came away with. Forty-five years after I directed The Exorcist, there's more acceptance of the possibility of possession than there was when I made the film.

The Washington Post ran a controversial op-ed piece titled, "As a psychiatrist, I diagnose mental illness. Also, I help spot demonic possession." The subtitle read, "How a scientist learned to work with exorcists." The author, Richard Gallagher, is a board-certified psychiatrist and a professor of clinical psychiatry at New York Medical College. Dr. Gallagher wrote:

For the past two-and-a-half decades and over several hundred consultations, I've helped clergy from multiple denominations and faiths to filter episodes of mental illness—which represent the overwhelming majority of cases—from, literally, the devil's work. It's an unlikely role for an academic physician, but I don't see these two aspects of my career in conflict. The same habits that shape what I do as a professor and psychiatrist—open-mindedness, respect for evidence and compassion for suffering people—led me to aid in the work of discerning attacks by what I believe are evil spirits and, just as critically, differentiating these extremely rare events from medical conditions.

Is it possible to be a sophisticated psychiatrist and believe that evil spirits are, however seldom, assailing humans? Most of my scientific colleagues and friends say no, because of their frequent contact with patients who are deluded about demons, their general skepticism of the supernatural, and their commitment to employ only standard, peer-reviewed treatments that do not potentially mislead (a definite risk) or harm vulnerable patients. But careful observation of the evidence presented to me in my career has led me to believe that certain extremely uncommon cases can be explained no other way.

So far the article has generated nearly 3,000 comments, mostly from people whose worldview does not permit the reality of demon possession or even the existence of demons.

In an interview with New York magazine, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia explained his beliefs about the reality of the Devil. After mentioning his belief in a real heaven and hell he interjected, "I even believe in the Devil." The interview continued (with interviewer in bold):

You do?

Of course! Yeah, he's a real person ….

Have you seen evidence of the Devil lately?

You know, it is curious. In the Gospels, the Devil is doing all sorts of things. He's making pigs run off cliffs, he's possessing people and whatnot. And that doesn't happen very much anymore … It's because he's smart.

So what's he doing now?

What he's doing now is getting people not to believe in him or in God. He's much more successful that way … I mean, c'mon, that's the explanation for why there's not demonic possession all over the place. That always puzzled me. What happened to the Devil, you know? He used to be all over the place. He used to be all over the New Testament. What happened to him? He got wilier.

Isn't it terribly frightening to believe in the Devil?

You're looking at me as though I'm weird. My God! Are you so out of touch with most of America, most of which believes in the Devil? I mean, Jesus Christ believed in the Devil! It's in the Gospels! You travel in circles that are so, so removed from mainstream America that you are appalled that anybody would believe in the Devil! Most of mankind has believed in the Devil, for all of history. Many more intelligent people than you or me have believed in the Devil.

NPR's popular radio show This American Life featured an episode titled "The Devil Inside Me." The show asked various people if they ever felt like they were under the spell of an "inner voice" that held them in bondage to unwanted thoughts. According to the show's host, "It was like people had been waiting all their lives for somebody to ask them this question."

Here were some of the responses from the interviews:

• A man says, "I certainly know the voice you're talking about."
• Another man says, "The voice is irresistible, always. I'm in the thrall of that voice."
• A woman says, "Totally out of control. It's got this life of its own, and I can't tame it anymore."
• A woman says, "I actually have a name for the voice. I call it Stan. Stan is the guy who tells me to have the extra glass of wine. Stan is the guy who tells me to smoke."
• A man says, "I remember somehow realizing just how finely calibrated the voice was to every nuance, every part of my feelings, including the feeling that I didn't want to smoke cigarettes. And it's like, '[You] might as well have another cigarette, because this is it.'"
• A woman who just got engaged hears her Voice say: "You better try your hardest to make sure he doesn't take [the ring] away, because he's going to find out the truth about you and how much you suck. So you better distract him with a really thin body."

At the end of the episode the host asks someone, "Do you feel like the voice is winning?" A woman replies, "Right now, yeah. I think I'm in some serious trouble, to be honest."

Possible Preaching Angles: The "Voice" could represent Satan, our own fallen or fleshly nature, our unhealed wounds, or all three. It certainly shows our need to have our mind and heart renewed by Scripture and to find our true identity in Christ.

Erwin Lutzer wrote in "A Contested Universe”:

Recently I watched a program on the Animal Channel that showed a herd of buffalo and six lions. The lions were plotting to have a buffalo for dinner. Well, they found one buffalo that had strayed from the herd, maybe a couple hundred yards, and they went after that buffalo. So how do a few lions stop a buffalo? One lion grabbed the heel of one back leg of the buffalo, the other on the other back leg. And they just hung on until that buffalo slowed to a stop. Then one lion hopped on his back, another went after his stomach. And from there on you can just visualize what happened. It was gruesome.

But here's what shocked me. There were perhaps 100 buffalo, if not more, all standing and staring and watching this go down. I don't know if buffalo can think. But if buffalo could think, you know what they're thinking? Boy, am I ever glad that's not happening to me! Imagine if this herd had decided we're not going to let those lions get away with anything, and together they ran thundering in that direction with their horns down. Those lions would have scurried away immediately. The lions would never have a buffalo for lunch, if the buffalo stuck together.

There's a lesson for us there. First of all, Satan separates somebody from the herd. He makes them mad at the church and Christians, or angry because of some other reason. Once they're away from the herd, he intensifies his attack. And then when we hear of the spiritual/demonic struggles that a person faces we say to ourselves, Boy, am I ever glad that's not me! What we have to do as a congregation is to hang together. We have to close in and say we will not allow the devil to do this to our people.

I think God wants us to humble ourselves, not just before him, but before others. Many people have been delivered from strongholds when they begin to share, and other people intercede for them. It's in community that God grants victory. The spiritual resources are ours; we just have to use them.