1 Sam 16:14 – ‘Now the Spirit of the LORD had turned away from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD tormented him.’
Bergen describes this as a very unusual form of expression: unique, indeed, in the OT.
It could equally be translated, ‘troublesome’ spirit.
It was a condition which (as Bergen notes) Saul himself was unable to deal with. It was his attendants who ‘diagnosed’ it, and they who suggested an effective treatment.
1.…
In Matthew 8:28-34 Jesus casts demons out of a pair of men and into a herd of pigs.
Verses 29-32 are particularly instructive regarding the character of demons:
‘”What do you want with us, Son of God?” they shouted. “Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time?” Some distance from them a large herd of pigs was feeding. The demons begged Jesus, “If you drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs.” …
Preaching recently in Curaçao, Diocese of Venezuela, The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori demonstrated just how far she has travelled from anything resembling a biblical and apostolic faith.
Pushing the familiar agenda of inclusion and diversity (changing attitudes and laws about same-sex relationships remind us that different is not the same as wrong), she informs her hearers of a particular blind spot that Paul had in this regard. Schori refers to the incident involving a slave girl, recorded in Acts 16. …
For those who accept the metaphysical reality of daimons (I’m using a straight transliteration of the Greek, in order to place at a bit of distance the baggage that tends to accompany the word ‘demons’) the conventional idea is that they belong to an order of created, malevolent, non-corporeal beings.
The popular conception a ghost is that it is the spirit of a dead human being.
Peter Bolt has provided solid documentary evidence to show that for many people living at the time of Jesus, ‘daimon’ would have been virtually synonymous with ‘ghost’.…
Text: Mark 9:9-32
It had been a mountain-top experience to top the lot. Right there, in front of three of his disciples, Jesus had experienced a brief but amazing transformation. His face shone; even his clothes became dazzling white. Two godly men from long ago, Moses and Elijah, had put in personal appearances. And God himself had spoken: “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!”
As they come down the mountain, Jesus gave Peter, James and John a solemn instruction, v9: “Don’t tell anyone about what you have just seen until the Son of Man has risen from the dead.”…
Text: Luke 8:26-39
What a day this is turning out to be! That really was the mother of all storms, a hurricane from hell.
The sheer violence of that storm…the way the Master spoke to it…the fact that it completely subsided as soon he did so…It was almost as if something (or someone) didn’t want us to get to the other side of that lake.
Anyway, it’s over now. I just hope the Master lets us turn the boat around, sail back the way we came, and change into some fresh dry clothes.…
It’s a chilling thought, and one to which secular historians would be unlikely to give much credence. But it is probable that Marxism, and certain that Fascism, were deeply involved in occult practices.
Take Marx. In his early teens he was a keen Christian. Although it cannot be proven that he became involved in a Satanist cult, there was certainly one operating near his home, and his early writings give some indication that he was involved with them. …
My present interest in the fascinating and yet sombre subject of demonology is due to the fact that I’m preparing to preach on Luke 8:26-39 – the Gerasene demoniac. That passage (together with the parallel accounts in Matthew and Mark) present the most dramatic case of demonisation in the whole of Scripture, and therefore requires that particular attention to the subject of demons and their activities.
One of the seminal works on demonology is that by John L.…
Calvin took the activities of Satan and his demons very seriously, without falling into the superstitions which sometimes appear in Luther’s writings. Calvin’s teaching was, above all else, scriptural, as the following extract shows.
Institutes, Book I, Ch. 14:13.…
In his preface to The Screwtape Letters C.S. Lewis famously wrote that there are two equal and opposite errors in relation to thinking about demons: disbelieving in their existence altogether, and taking an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. Either way, Satan is delighted – scepticism and fanaticism both serve his purposes very nicely.
The sceptical approach is well represented by the New Testament scholar Rudolph Bultmann: ‘It is impossible to use electric light and the wireless and to avail ourselves of modern medical and scientific discoveries, and at the same time to believe in the New Testament world of daemons and spirits.’…
