Eclectic Christian

My previous post followed up on a discussion that Michael Spencer had been having about mental illness and demon possesion.  I gave an example from personal experiene about mental illness where I felt that it could be shown that there was no spiritual component.  Now I want to give an example of my first hand experience with demon possession.

Just to set the record straight, in 46 years in the church I have had just one experience with the demonic.  Only one.  I am not the type to see a demon behind every bush.  But I have had one experience that I think can help us understand how Jesus knew when people needed healing or needed a demon cast out of them.

I was attending seminary, just a few blocks from one of the poorest neighborhoods in Canada.  My good friend Mitch, a fellow seminarian, and friend for many years, invited me to visit the church that he was attending.  It was located right in the middle of this poor neighborhood.

We went to visit the following Sunday.  What followed was one of the strangest things that has ever happened to me.   As I sat down in my seat, I began to feel this overwhelming sense of evil in the church, like nothing I had ever felt before.  I said to myself, “What is going on here?  What am I responding to here?  Is it the music?  Is it the atmosphere?  What is causing me to sense this evil here?”

As much as I tried I could not figure it out.  But I knew that something was definitely wrong.  So I asked my friend Mitch to come outside with me for a bit.  Once we were outside I told his what was going on.  We prayed and asked God to protect the church from whatever was disturbing the service.  When we went back in, the sense of evil was gone.

After the service, Mitch said that we really needed to talk to Pastor about the issue.  I was quite resistant.  “What is the Pastor going to think when someone walks into his church and tells him, Hey Pastor, I know you don’t know me, but I felt an overwhelming sense of evil during the service?”  Mitch assured me that this was a Pastor who was quite knowledgeble in this area, and that he would vouch for me.

So we went in to see the Pastor, and after introductions I told him the story of what had happened.   Immediately after I finished, the Pastor turned to Mitch and asked.  “How far was Mike sitting from J. T. [not the real initials]?”  Mitch said, “He was one row behind us, and three seats over.”

I was flabbergasted, not only was the Pastor not surprised at what I had told him, but he was able to immediatly identify the probable source of what I was experiencing!  The Pastor then thanked me for drawing this to his attention.  According to the Pastor, J.T. had been dabbling in the occult, and the Pastor was afraid that he had brought a demonic influence with him into the church.  The Pastor then went on to tell me that he believed that God had given me the gift of discernment, and he encouraged me to look for a church where this gift could be utilized.  This was my first real experience of a charismatic church, and I was a bit uncomfortable with the whole idea, so rightly or wrongly, I never followed up on his suggestion.

Two weeks later I was told, J.T. manifested a demon during the morning service.  He was taken out to another room, where he was prayed for and the demon was dealt with.

One incident in forty-six years.  It hardly makes me an expert on the subject does it?  Yet here is the lesson I was able to take from the situation.  A spiritual issue is discerned spiritually. I have been in many other situations where people have not been in their “right mind”, yet this was the only time were there seemed to be a demonic link.  Yet the discernment that I had in this situation could not even come close to compare to the discernment that Jesus had when he walked this earth, and spoke directly to the situations that people were facing.

But what if we are not gifted with that discernment.  Petra had an interesting comment in the previous post:

<i>I think this is a topic where great care and distinction are important. We have to distinguish between conditions that are a) medical/chemical b) psychological c) demonic in origin. Some conditions may be a mixed bag, but first you have to try to treat them according to a) and b), before you can conclude that it may be c), after all.</i>

Later in his comment he adds a fourth category:  spiritual but not demonic.

Is he correct in his conclusions?  Do we need to treat for the non-demonic potential causes before we look at demonic causes?  Or are there times, like my story above, where the demonic needs to be dealt with first?  I will throw in another thought as well.  For those of us who believe that God heals people, could items a, b, and c all be dealt with spiritually?

I would be interested in reading your responses.