The Road Less Traveled

I promised to speak about demon possession. Permit me to focus on one question in particular. Can a person ever be possessed by a fallen angel, a demon? What is the Biblical teaching on this matter and how does one go about dealing with it?

As noted in my previous post the New Testament also recounts many instances of demonic possession, mainly in the synoptic Gospel accounts of Jesus' ministry. Jesus encounters persons possessed by demons who have take them captive and who cause physical and mental affliction. For example consider the story of two demonized men in the country of the Gadarenes.

And when he came to the other side, to the country of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men met him, coming out of the tombs, so fierce that no one could pass that way. And behold, they cried out, "What have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?" 

Now a herd of many pigs was feeding at some distance from them. And the demons begged him, saying, "If you cast us out, send us away into the herd of pigs." 

And he said to them, "Go." 

So they came out and went into the pigs, and behold, the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the waters. The herdsmen fled, and going into the city they told everything, especially what had happened to the demon-possessed men. And behold, all the city came out to meet Jesus, and when they saw him, they begged him to leave their region. - Mat 8:28-34 ESV

Here we see the Lord exercising total power over  demons by driving them out and into a herd of unclean pigs. Such an exorcism was a sign that the Kingdom of God had come (Matt. 12:22-23). Jesus has come to rescue us all from the dominion of darkness and has brought us into the Kingdom of God's Son (Col. 1:13). 

The devil made me do it 

That was then, but what about demonic possession today? Does it still happen? A Texas jury found that Andrea Yates was insane when she drowned her five children in a bathtub five years ago. A friend asked if this is an example of demonic possession? Is insanity the modern day example of demon possession?

To answer his important query I turn to a famous and oft cited nineteenth century biography of a German Lutheran pastor. The story is recorded in the landmark biography of Pastor Christoph Blumhard (1805-1880),  The Awakening: One Man's Battle With Darkness by Friedrich Bluendel. This free e-book was published by www.Plough.com and the Bruderhoff Communities of the U.K. The book is introduced as follows: 

When Blumhardt, a 19th-century pastor from the Black Forest, agreed to counsel a tormented woman in his parish, all hell broke loose—literally. But that was only the beginning of the drama that ensued. Zuendel's account, available here in English for the first time, provides a rare glimpse into how the eternal fight between the forces of good and evil plays itself out in the lives of the most ordinary men and women. More than that, it reminds us that those forces still surround us today, whether we are awake to them or not.

Blumhardt served as pastor of a Lutheran church in Moettlingen, a parish at the northern end of the Black Forest, numbering 874 souls and encompassing two villages. The youngest of three orphaned girls, Gottlieben Dittus, had many demons cast out from her through the prayerful ministrations of Pastor Blumhardt. So wondrous and awesome were these events that Pastor Blumhardt was immediately catapulted to nationwide notoriety. People by the hundreds flocked to him for healing. When criticized for using his pastoral office as an instrument for healing, Blumhardt replied,

"According to the New Testament, God wants to offer his gifts through human instruments. The gospel is to be proclaimed by servants of God, ambassadors for Christ, and these messengers are to bear spiritual gifts and powers for the church. That is why the apostles were endowed with exceptional power, both to preach and to heal.

"Christianity knows absolutely nothing of this anymore. Hence all the despair in face of misery, and the devious means many try. Hence, too, the plight medical science finds itself in: it is expected to replace by its skills what the servants of the gospel ought to provide, but have long ago forfeited. In this case, medical science is to be commended for having labored far more faithfully than the servants of the gospel, in spite of the unbelief it professes as a body" (p. 117).

What about today?

Most modern psychiatrists would mock at such an approach to insanity as primitive, simplistic and thoroughly unscientific. To be sure, not all mental illness is caused by demonic possession. However, toward the end of the twentieth century along came a psychiatrist by the name of M. Scott Peck to publish his now famous book, The Road Less Traveled (1978). I commend that book and others by the same author to you as well. Peck draws from his own practice of psychiatry to point out that not every aberrant behavior can be explained as simply another form of mental illness.

Peck says medical scientists and the churches have not been talking together as much as we might about such things as spontaneous remissions of cancer and psychic healings. The attitude of many in the medical professions is that miracle cures are nonexistent. Too many Christians feel the same way, suggesting that such things only happened back in the days of the early church. Peck says he and many other physicians have now changed their minds. Miracles do happen. He also emphasizes that demonic possession is real.

In later writings, Peck documents his own work with truly evil people and the exorcising of demons. See People of the Lie (1998) and Glimpses of the Devil : A Psychiatrist's Personal Accounts of Possession, Exorcism, and Redemption (2005).

Why should we Christians be surprised by this? That is, after all, what our Bible says. Why do we Christians doubt it, whether it has to do with the healing of the body or the casting out of demons? There is a whole lot more to this world than we thought we knew about. To deny this is to fail to unify all knowledge and experience into our current understanding of human life and activity.

Here is where I stop. I am not intimate with the Andrea Yates case. I have personally had but limited experience with exorcisms. But is there still such a thing as demon possession? Yes indeed. And does Jesus still cast them out? Oh yes! And, further, do miracles of healing still happen? Most certainly! But at the same time shall we throw away all that modern medicine brings? By no means. Let us rather make sure we get into that dialog Peck points to and travel together down that road less traveled.

Demonic Oppression

"I don't know what's gotten into her!" Ever hear that phrase? Its the complaint of a mom about her disobedient daughter. But the mom probably doesn't mean what another mom of long ago meant when she cried to Jesus, "Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely oppressed by a demon" (Matt. 15:22).

Oppressed by a demon? What does that mean? Is there actually such a thing as a demon? The original text actually reads like this: "my daughter is miserably demonized." In other words, we're dealing with a verb (daimonizomai), not a noun. Some being she called a daimon was doing bad things to her daughter. We can be fairly certain that she was not well informed by the Hebrew Scriptures, but rather had picked up ideas from the Greek culture that pervaded her country—and maybe some ideas from her Jewish neighbors. After all, she did know about Jesus. She called him Lord, Son of David.

At any rate according to Greek thinking there are a variety of beings between God and man called daimons. Supposedly some were capable of good and others of evil. They seem to be the same as the messengers (mal'akim) we read about in the Old Testament (angels in the Greek translation). For the moment I shall ignore the many passages that speak about the angel of the LORD, whom many interpreters, myself included, believe refers to the pre-incarnate Christ (1 Cor. 10:1-9; Exod. 3:2, 14:9, 20:16; Judg. 2:1-4, etc.) But other than the many angel of the LORD references we read of other angels.

• And he (Elijah) lay down and slept under a broom tree. And behold, an angel touched him and said to him, "Arise and eat." - 1Ki 19:5 ESV

• Nebuchadnezzar answered and said, "Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who has sent his angel and delivered his servants, who trusted in him, and set aside the king's command, and yielded up their bodies rather than serve and worship any god except their own God. - Dan 3:28 ESV

I will not offer here an entire teaching about angels and demons. Suffice it to say that some of the angelic beings have rebelled (Jude 6). They remain in darkness about the LORD's plans and ways. They are led by a chief variously known as Satan or Azazel, etc. It was this powerful being that tempted Jesus at the outset of his public ministry. My previous blogs referred to this three-fold temptation (Matt. 4:1-11). Besides being attacked indirectly by Satan all through his ministry, Jesus came across many others who are demonized, as was this woman's daughter. We're not told in any detail what this demon had done to her. We know from other accounts what demons did to others, e.g.

• And when he came to the other side, to the country of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men met him, coming out of the tombs, so fierce that no one could pass that way. - Mat 8:28 ESV
• As they were going away, behold, a demon-oppressed man who was mute was brought to him. - Mat 9:32 ESV
• Then a demon-oppressed man who was blind and mute was brought to him, and he healed him, so that the man spoke and saw. - Mat 12:22 ESV
• And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and the boy was healed instantly. - Mat 17:18 ESV

The goal of these evil forces is to bring suffering and pain and eternal bondage to evil. We saw how Satan worked to lead Jesus down this path. Based upon these passages we may expect demon oppression to come in the form of

• physical illness, such as blindness, self-mutilation, addictions and a variety of other illnesses. 

• spiritual rebellion, hatred and anger toward God, embracing false religions, the rejection of common morality, leading to such things as lying, cheating and murder. 

• emotional upheaval and confusion, such as outbursts of anger, depression and hopelessness.

Of course we must be very cautious about labeling every physical illness or emotional problem as demonic oppression. Jesus did not, nor should we. However, we must acknowledge the presence of these beings and be prepared to call upon our Lord in prayer to drive them out.

In my next post I will say more about the difference between demonic oppression and being actually possessed by a demon.