Demon Run

I don’t know why it is, but I received another call today from someone wanting help with evil spirits.  The man on the phone was apparently going through the phone book, calling churches and asking if there was anyone there who could come out and help him with some evil spirits.

I began with asking questions.  He described a visual and aural experience, small bluish spherical things that flew through his window and into his apartment, moving to various places.  The heater vent.  The bathroom.  The closet.  Back to the heater vent.  Out the window again and then back in again.

The voices talked amongst themselves as well as to him.  They wanted to stay.  They wanted him to leave.  He told them he wouldn’t.

I asked if he felt any sense of threat or danger from these entities, and he said he didn’t.  He described multiple occurrences of both the visual and aural experiences over the course of a day or so.  They caused him no trouble at night and he was able to sleep fine.

He claimed to be a Christian, but acknowledged he hadn’t been to church in over a decade.  He was an artist, and basically just quit going.  Not through a lack of faith or belief necessarily, but, you know.  Life.

I asked him about drug and alcohol usage, and he claims that he was not under the influence of anything when these events started happening.  He indicated that he took blood pressure medication but nothing else.  He claimed no history of mental illness.

I presume that what he described was real.  It would be easy to just shrug it off, to claim that he really was under the influence, or that there was some other matter at play but that doesn’t seem necessary.  So I talked to him about what I thought his best course of action would be.

He called presuming that somebody could come out and just take care of the problem – drive the evil spirits off.  But I told him that demons aren’t  the same thing as termites.  You don’t just call up an exorcist like you do a pest  control company.  It isn’t a matter of spiritually tenting your home and then the  problem is gone – at least  for any predictable amount of time.  Hollywood and popular imagination has done a good job of assuming that evil spirits work like this.  Misreading the Bible can leave one with that impression as well.  Jesus casts out demons with authority but then again, He’s the Son of God.  While his followers are said to cast out demons their track record is decidedly more spotty.  Jesus himself in Matthew 12:43-45 indicates that evil spirits can return.

So I talked with him about going back to church.  A Roman Catholic one since that would be most familiar to him, though I also invited him to come to our worship as well.  But that he needed to start bringing himself back into line with his perceived identity as a follower of Christ.  To begin to be and do the things that Christians do – worship, pray, sing, read Scripture.  Doing this would transform him, and in transforming him would also transform his environment from one that was neutral at best into one that was filled with the Holy Spirit’s presence.  The evil spirits would leave in time because it would no longer be a comfortable place to be, filled as it would be with God’s presence and Word.

I talked for a while. He listened, and claimed to understand.  Whether he did or not I can’t tell.  I could have gone out and visited his apartment and prayed over it.  Perhaps that would have helped.  Well, perhaps it would have driven away the evil spirits for a time.  But the more important issue was not the evil spirits but this man and his relationship to his creator and redeemer.  I pray he takes my advice, and the changes that come about far exceed removing voices and visions and bring him more  firmly into the arms of his Savior, a comfort that will sustain him in all times and all situations.