Month: November 2013

Demons are in the Bible. Everywhere. Especially in the New Testament: the Gospels; the Book of Acts: the epistles of Paul Peter, James, John; the Revelation. The subject is inescapable. Still Christian critics of deliverance argue such miracles have ceased. Other critics don’t even believe the record of Scripture. Let’s deal with that last criticism. Think back on your own life. How accurate is your memory going back 20-30 years? Probably pretty good. In your 30s you can recall a lot in detail about your childhood. In your 40s and 50s you still have vivid recollections about your adolescent and teenage years. Even into your sixties you can likely remember situations with accuracy (even years and dates and particulars) when you were in your 20s and 30s. My point? This is exactly what the new testament writers were doing, especially Matthew, Mark, and Luke who chronicle the life and deeds of Christ with regards to casting out demons.

Consider this time line. We know that Peter and Paul were martyred in 65 A.D.  The Acts of the Apostles, authored by Luke, was written after his Gospel. (See Acts 1:1 where Luke refers to his Gospel.) Now, if indeed Luke’s Gospel was based in part on the accounts of Mark and Matthew, the three synoptic Gospels, and Acts, had to be written BEFORE 65 A.D. Otherwise, the deaths of Peter and Paul would have been mentioned, at least in Luke and Acts. One more thing. Jesus was crucified in 33 A.D.  Therefore Acts, all Paul’s epistles, and all the Gospels except John were written within a time period of no more than 32 years after the events in the life of Christ. Get my point? How Jesus faced demons and how he exorcised them was a relatively recent memory to these Gospel writers. We all can think back about the content of casual conversations many years ago. How much more our accurate our recollection would be if we were recalling the words, deeds, and miracles of God Incarnate. The synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke contain at least two dozen examples of Christ’s power over Satan’s kingdom. We can trust these accounts to be accurate, reliable, trustworthy, and a genuine display of His authority directed toward demons. Believe the Bible and get on with the job of DOING WHAT JESUS DID!

I live in a state that doesn’t have a helmet law. Every time I drive down the freeway and see some biker pass me going 90 M.P.H., not wearing a helmet, I cringe.  I also may mutter something under my breath about how dumb he is. I’m right. In Michigan, for example, after they repealed a helmet law, biker deaths rose 18%. And get this. Bikers who have an accident resulting in head trauma, a common occurrence in such tragedies, require on average $1.3 million in medical care to recover. And 63% of that, according to the Centers for Disease Control, is paid for by you and me the taxpayers. Sure you look cool with the wind in your hair. But while you’re celebrating your Easy Rider freedoms, the rest of us are picking up the bill for your indiscretion. Plus, your families will suffer the emotional trauma you inflicted on you own head.

But this blog isn’t a polemic against bikers “born to be wild.” There is a far more serious head trauma to be endured if you omit one other kind of helmet — the helmet of salvation, one of the five defensive aspects of spiritual armor recorded in Ephesians chapter six. It accompanies the “belt of truth” the “breastplate of righteousness,” the “gospel of peace” on your feet, and the “shield of faith.” Each, along with the offensive weapon of the “sword of the Spirit,” is vital, but the helmet of salvation is indispensable.  Without being saved, there is nothing to defend. It is your relationship with Christ that is foremost.  Just as it is unwise for a Harley dude to “head out on the highway” (trivia-which rock band said that?) without protective covering, so it is for you to travel the highway of life without the helmet of salvation. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast,” Ephesians 2:8-9 declares. Trust in Jesus. Get on your spiritual headgear and get ready to live, and die.

“Every step you take, every move you make, I’ll be watching you.” Perhaps Sting, who was singing those lyrics while still with The Police, should license his song to our government’s National Security Agency, which we now know has been snooping illegally on the lives of private citizens. Worried Americans have been bombarding the NSA with an increase of 888% of “open-records” requests to find out what the NSA knows that it shouldn’t.  In case you aren’t aware, the people you pay to protect you have been snooping without consent into your emails, phone records, and whatever they could get their hands on in the name of “national security” to supposedly fight terrorism.  But the erosion of privacy goes further than that. Police are starting to wear video cameras on their uniforms. Drones are taking photographs overhead of whatever they want to, so be careful sun-bathing in your back yard. Wearable cameras are being embedded in clothes for surreptitious surveillance. The new Google Glass will allow anyone walking down the street to gaze on you and, by voice command without your knowing it, instantly identify you by accessing algorithms in a universal data base.  We are nearing a world where your every movement could be tracked all the time.

Even the most casual of Bible readers knows that the reign of the Anti-Christ will be achieved by intrusive surveillance of humanity. His control over the population will meticulously monitor the movements of every citizen. How else could he determine who has the right to engage in commerce of any kind (Revelation 13:17)? We are now told that these advances in snooping technology will make the world safer, help catch criminals, assist with Amber Alerts, and aid with medical science. Sure, there are benefits any time privacy is surrendered, but the help that these tactics provide also takes away our liberties. We all need to speak up before the concept of “personal space” is a thing of the past. From a biblical standpoint we can’t permanently stop the march toward Armageddon, but we can slow it. We are to “occupy” until the Lord comes (Luke 19:13). I believe that means fighting every unreasonable erosion of our privacy.

Our neighbors in Canada have lately been giving us some valuable lessons on what leadership isn’t, how not to run a city, and who not to vote for. Normally, news from up north gets buried behind the obituaries, unless they are having an Olympics or sending a Polar Express storm our way. But most cable news networks in the U.S. haven’t been able to resist beaming live feeds from the chambers of Toronto, Ontario’s City Council chambers. That’s where an unsightly saga has been playing out, a real-life melodrama featuring that city’s disgraced mayor, Rob Ford. After consistently denying moral lapses for years, Ford has now openly admitted to driving while drunk, buying illegal drugs, and smoking crack. He’s been actually caught on camera hanging with gang members, threatening to murder a man, speaking salaciously about his private sexual activities, and engaging in alcohol-fueled rampages of profanities. Other council members have voted by a wide margin to all but fire him, yet Ford says he’s staying on the job no matter what. What’s really embarrassing is that Ford is a fiscal conservative that a Tea Party member could love. Morals aside, he’d vote with Republicans any day, were he an American. Meanwhile, he makes Bill Clinton look like an altar boy.

Scripture has much to say about leaders like this. Proverbs 17:7 warns, “Arrogant lips are unsuited to a fool–how much worse lying lips to a ruler!” “By justice a king gives a country stability,” adds Proverbs 29:4. The good people of Toronto would do well to head the wisdom of a leader named Solomon, the smartest man who ever lived, who also wrote, “Through the blessing of the upright a city is exalted, but by the mouth of the wicked it is destroyed”(Proverbs 11:11). There is more at stake here than the embarrassment of a metropolis or a nation. A leader should exemplify the best of what the citizenry ought to strive for, not lower the barrier of political expectations. Ford says he’s doing his job and deserves to stay on the job. But the “bully pulpit” of leadership is as much about how those in power live as it is what they do politically. Their lives need to preach a message of sobriety and decency for the next generation to admire. Leadership is about more than a job description. It’s also about obeying the same laws a leader is sworn to uphold.

Take that Tina Turner line, “What’s love got to do with it?” shift it a little and you’ve got “What’s luck got to do with it?” That’s a question that more and more scientists are asking. We now know that the entire universe looks like either a grand design or a very, very lucky accident. In article in aeon Magazine, writer Tim Maudlin notes, “Theories now suggest that the most general structural elements of the universe – the stars and planets, and the galaxies that contain them – are the products of finely calibrated laws and conditions that seem too good to be true. What if our most fundamental questions . . . have no more satisfying answer than an exasperated shrug and a meekly muttered ‘Things just seem to have turned out that way’?”

Maudlin’s observations are based on a lot of what ifs that populate our lives. What about the confluence of your parents, the egg and sperm they contributed to make you? Did that just happen? Science says the chance for you to exist at all has a factor of 10 to the 27th power, an unimaginable number. In short, you were very unlikely to be born, statistically speaking.  If one throws out the idea of creation, that you and I are the real reason the universe exists, you are left with the idea that mere chance caused the nuclear reactions of the stars to bring about life. Even if you accept that an accidental cause resulted in human existence, you then have to explain what was behind the carefully calibrated coincidences that made it all happen. The evolutionist is left to define life as a fortuitous circumstance. A wondrous accident, but a capricious product of arbitrary conditions of the universe. As Maudlin, who doesn’t believe in a Divine origin of man puts it, the Big Bang theory of energy density requires that if you “pack the energy too densely . . . the universe will eventually re-contract into a big crunch; spread it out too thin and the universe will expand forever, with the matter diluting so rapidly that stars and galaxies cannot form. Between these two extremes lies a highly specialized history in which the universe never re-contracts and the rate of expansion eventually slows to zero. In order for the standard Big Bang model to yield a universe even vaguely like ours now, this particular initial condition had to be just right at the beginning.”

All this is another way of saying, “In the beginning God . . . ” Someone had to be there, some power outside the hydrogen and helium was present guiding the process. Why then is it so hard for scientist to accept a Creator? They already have faith in capricious processes. Should it be so hard to have faith in Intelligent Design?

Perverse. Sinister. Cruel. Even diabolical. Descriptions of the devil usually emphasize his evil nature, but the Wicked One and his minions are seldom seen as ingenious. And adaptable. But as I was thinking back over some of the evil spirits I’ve encountered in recent weeks I was struck by how clever the devil was to have embedded in unique aspects of an individual’s ancestry, hiding in strange and undetected places.  Consider these cases as examples of demonic ingenuity:

LILITH – The Jewish demon, which I describe as “Jezebel on steroids,” causing relationship difficulties that few would see as demonic in origin.

INSANITY – Mental illness caused by an evil spirit destroying the entrepreneurial enthusiasm of a man slowly going insane while masking it with alcohol addiction.

KING OF BABYLON – A 200 generation spirit rooted in ancient human sacrifice to an earthly king, inhibiting the life of a woman from succeeding in relationships.

MILITARY – The name taken by a demon causing strife and anger, passed on by a long history of family members proudly choosing military service but who ended up killing for personal bloodlust.

PISCES – A demon of astrology cleverly invested in a Christian woman’s fascination with her zodiac sign, even though she didn’t “really believe” in astrological predictions and knew it was unbiblical.

Of course, with my busy schedule of almost daily Personal Encounter sessions with troubled souls, I could give hundreds, if not thousands, more examples. But these few, culled from recent exorcisms, provides some insights into the unusual and crafty ways that Satan operates through possession. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour, 1 Peter 5:8 warns. Forget the horrible Hollywood images of the devil, stalking his victims with bloody fangs and clawed appendages. Satan’s schemes are more varied than most ever imagine. His ability to find ways to corrupt almost any situation is indeed legion. How can you fight back? Break every generational curse in your life. (CLICK HERE to order my book CURSE BREAKING.) Purge every sin by confession and repentance. “Do not give the devil a foothold,” Ephesians 4:27 says (NIV). Seek deliverance prayers. Schedule a Personal Encounter with me. DO SOMETHING proactive to uncover whatever demonic ingenuity might be operating undetected in your life!

A new, controversial book, explores the  oddity of famous rock stars all dying at the age of 27, some by their own hands (Curt Cobain) and the latest, Amy Winehouse, found dead in 2011 surrounded by vodka bottles. The mystery, if there is one, regarding why they all died at the same age has inspired theories of conspiracy and mysticism. Is it a matter of coincidence or numerology? Does the fact that drug and alcohol abuse was involved signify self-destructive impulses of too much fame too young to handle? What is the dark secret behind such tragedies?

Some things are known. Curt Cobain of Nirvana had two uncles and a great uncle who committed suicide. In spiritual warfare terms that clearly points to a generational curse of death and possible demonic possession. Amy Winehouse was a cutter and, in my experience, such self-inflicted mutilation almost always involves demons. (I understand the psychological aspects of such self-injury, but the satanic aspects can’t be ignored just because there are behavioral factors.) Jim Morrison was into the occult and satanic blood-sharing sex rituals. I suspect that if the truth were known, each or most had some kind of curse in their background. Whether that malediction was triggered to the age of 27 isn’t important. My spiritual hunch is that each had a demonic, genetic propensity toward self-destruction and the fact that they were celebrities merely makes the matter more interesting. What’s important is that Satan targets the young, the talented, the vulnerable; anyone with promise to make a difference in the world. What if any of these artists had become Christians? What if, out of their despair, they had turned to God and shared that witness with their fans? Satan had to get them before that possibility. Imagine Jimi Hendrix accompanying a gospel choir? Amy Winehouse singing “Amazing Grace?” It’s not so far-fetched, but it didn’t happen. If you’re a fan of Miley or Gaga or Jay-Z, pray for them that they will find Jesus and put their time and talents to work for God.