* Yesterday a man in North Carolina went on a killing spree at a nursing home.
* Last week another man went on a murder rampage in Alabama.
* A man in Austria imprisons his own daughter in his basement for 24 years, raping her repeatedly and fathering 7 children over that time (His wife claims she knew nothing).
* A 17 year old boy guns down his former classmates at a school in Germany . . .
* A student kills over 30 at Virginia Tech . . .
* A mother drowns her 4 children in the bathtub . . .
* A man enters an Amish school in Pennsylvania and murders 5 little girls . . .
What kind of people do these things? What could possibly be going on inside of their heads to think that doing things like this makes any sort of sense?
The Book of Mark is the shortest – and probably the least “popular” – of the four Gospels. It contains only 16 chapters. That’s not a lot of real estate to write down everything you would want future generations to know about the life of Jesus.
So it’s interesting to me that the author would devote fully one half of one of those precious 16 chapters to relate a story about an encounter that Jesus had with a man possessed by a group of demons that called themselves “Legion”.
Why devote so much space to this single encounter with this one particular demoniac? I have to believe the author did it because the encounter left such a profound impact on those who witnessed it. Could we, for instance, describe 9/11 in one or two sentences? Probably not. We would devote some additional time to relate what happened on that particular day.
I think that’s what happened with Legion. Although the Bible is full of demons and demon possessions, the magnitude of the encounter with Legion apparently stood well apart from the rest.
We don’t believe in demons anymore, do we? Even Christians don’t really take them seriously. We still use some of the catch-phrases that have been handed down to us through the years. We say things like “He's struggling with his demons” when we talk about addictions & vices, and we frequently still wonder “What possessed you to do such a thing?”. But let’s face it, nobody saying those things is seriously talking about demons or possession. We don’t believe in those things anymore.
Why not?
Because our modern world has explained those things away. People are not possessed by demons; that’s silly. We know now that they have “chemical imbalances” and are “mentally disturbed”. Scientists have researched these things for us.
We have psychopaths, sociopaths, psychotics, and neurotics. People suffer from anger complexes and bi-polar disorders and chronic depression and suicidal tendencies. We have split-personalities, multiple personalities, full-blown schizophrenics and the terminally insane.
Not a demon in the bunch!
Funny that we should believe what these scientists tell us without a second thought, because these are also the same people who tell us that there is no God either. The logic is easy to see. I mean, if God doesn’t exists, you certainly can’t have a bunch of demons running around. That would be kind of like telling people that automobiles don’t exist and then having to try and explain what all of the gas stations are for.
Curious too that although our venerable scientific community has now “explained away” all of these conditions with fancy names & diagnoses, they still have no idea why any of them occur in the first place, why they affect some people but not others, what is really going on inside of these people’s heads, or how to cure any of them.
Does that really sound any less ridiculous than the thought of demons?
Maybe that’s the real issue here; that we just don’t like the thought of demons, so we are more than ready to accept any other explanation that appears to put a sense of control in our hands. After all, an unseen, malevolent demon that can possess our minds and manipulate our actions is a whole lot scarier to think about than a sterile, clinical diagnosis.
I don’t know much, but I know this: Ignoring something because we don’t want it to be true doesn’t make it go away. Maybe we shouldn’t be quite so quick to relegate demons to the rubbish pile of myth and superstition. Maybe, just maybe, we should give them a little more thought.
Meanwhile . . .
* Yesterday in Massachusetts, a man stabbed his 17 year old sister to death and then decapitated his 5 year old sister before being shot to death by police . . .
* A Kansas man binds, tortures, and kills 10 people over a twenty year period . . .
* A sleeping passenger on a bus in Canada is stabbed to death, beheaded, and partially consumed . . .
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5 comments:
Another national news story just down the road from me.
You have voiced some of the same things that I have said in the past. How is it that Jesus was able to heal the mind of the demoniac, but today we need pills? Demons are most assuredly real. Sadly, I have experience with them through terrible choices I made as a "teen." I became very involved with occultic things, to the point that I even considered myself a witch. Believe me, demons are real. The next time a "Christian" tells you there is nothing wrong with reading books that are occultic (Harry Potter, Twilight, etc) - the whole reason I even traveled down that road, was because of the books I read for entertainment. I was a huge Ann Rice fan. That led to "mental issues", and I was labeled manic-depressive, and told I would have to be on drugs the rest of my life or I would kill myself. Now, I have that as part of my testimony, of where God has brought me from. We have a God who still sets the captive free....from sin and their demons.
Your post echoes my concerns, especially in recent weeks. So much killing.....
quote from the movie 'the usual suspects' (1995)
Verbal: Who is Keyser Soze? He is supposed to be Turkish. Some say his father was German. Nobody believed he was real. Nobody ever saw him or knew anybody that ever worked directly for him, but to hear Kobayashi tell it, anybody could have worked for Soze. You never knew. That was his power. The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. And like that, poof. He's gone.
Thank you for your courage to say the truth even though it is no longer popular to say these things within even Christian circles. It is troubling that people can not somehow bring themselves to call evil what it is~ EVIL. They want to deny that there is a war between good and evil, yet they have no qualms about calling evil things good. All these things are recounted in the Bible.
In this world, drugging people is good. Abortion is good. Homosexuality is good. Unmarried sexuality is good.
Large families are bad. Children are a burden. Teaching religious values and morals to children is wrong and limiting. Proper discipline is "abuse."
They are closing churches because attendance is so low. Charitable giving is down far enough that food pantries and many ministries are unable to provide services to the ever growing population of needy. Violence is common to the point that it is old news in a day or two, surpassed often by another story that is more horrific. People ENJOY reading about the gore and say "What is this world coming to?" but they don't say that Satan and his minions are walking amidst us. They are so blind they have lost the discernment that what this present world is coming to is.....AN END.
I look forward to new beginnings.
Again, thank you for having the guts to tell the truth. I always have appreciated that about both you and Mrs. Cat.
Mrs. Kimber D
Mama Hen,
I also want to thank you for telling your personal experience with the occult. There was a woman in our homeschooling group who was trying to tell the other mothers of her experiences with demons and mental unrest that she attributed to occult activities done within her home and all the women shut her down. They were uncomfortable hearing about it and they quickly changed the subject. After that she was often excluded from situations where there might be discussion. Meanwhile, these mothers were talking about how letting children read and watch the Harry Potter movies was harmless. One of the women used a name from the series for her newborn daughter and spoke of what good literature is being put out these days, citing the potter series as part of that. :(
We have been having a hard time finding a family friendly church in our area that actually preaches what is in the Bible. I've become wary of having my children in programs of these churches because they seem to be under influence of liberal ideas and implementing programs that are quite similar to programs within the public school system. The youth ministers are taking the children to movies that in my view are calling evil good and promoting things like Harry Potter as acceptable reading as well as any of the popular items among the youth. The youth in the churches here are virtually the same as the youth in the world. It breaks my heart.
We haven't home schooled our children and faithfully guarded what they read, watch, hear, only to have that guardianship threatened in church services - particularly the youth services. There are things running amok even within the church that we have to be wary of.
Oh that we have been kept back for times such as these! It is truly an interesting time to live in history, but I'm finding it exhausting!
BTW ~ out of curiosity I looked up the work amok after using it in a paragraph above. It means "a psychic disturbance characterized by depression followed by a manic urge to murder." Hmm. Sounds like demonic influence to me.
I'm always thankful when Christians are brave enough to tell the truth about topics such as what happens when the occult is dabbled with. There is nothing that can bring ridicule or shunning faster in Christian circles than telling this particular truth. Mama Hen...thank you again for your courage and transparency.
Kimber D.
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