Category Archives: Bible

Isn’t the Idea of Demon Possession Outdated?

Dan Vander Lugt
Bible, Paranormal, , , , , , , ,

Demon possession isn’t just a relic of more primitive times. It still exists today.

People unfamiliar with the Scriptures often have the misconception that the New Testament considers all physical and mental illness to be caused by demon possession. Actually, the Gospels distinguish between demon possession and ordinary physical and mental illness ( Matthew 4:24 ; Mark 6:13; 7:32; 16:17-18 ).1

The Bible says that spirit beings exist with powers in many ways superior to humans. Some of these beings—the angels—are servants of God (Daniel 7:10 ; Matthew 26:53 ; Luke 2:13 ). Others are angels who rebelled against their Maker. These are the fallen angels or demons ( 2 Peter 2:4 ; Jude 1:6 ). Scripture indicates that fallen angels are capable—under certain conditions—of controlling the mind and behavior of individual people ( Mark 5:7; 9:25 ; Luke 4:41 ; Revelation 16:13-14 ).

The Bible also teaches that there is a fine line separating the evil for which humans alone are responsible, and the strictly demonic evil that results from an external spiritual force taking control of a human will and mind. A striking example of the human tendency toward evil is the apostle Paul’s description of his own struggle in Romans 7:15-24. He wrote:

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. . . . I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do — this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. . . . When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?2

As the apostle Paul described it, our own sinful nature seems to be independent of our will—to have a “mind of its own.” It is no exaggeration to speak of such a powerful inclination toward evil as “demonic” in a sense. After all, the impulse behind our inner inclination to do evil is connected in Scripture with Satan and the satanic ( John 8:44 ; Ephesians 2:2 ; 1 John 3:10 ).

While all of us harbor this inner inclination toward evil, occasionally a person transcends this and enters into true demonic possession. In such cases these individuals come under the control of an external demonic power—an alien spiritual being. Probably the most dramatic account of demonic possession in Scripture is in the Gospel of Mark:

They went across the lake to the region of the Gerasenes. When Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an evil spirit came from the tombs to meet Him. This man lived in the tombs, and no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain. For he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No-one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones. When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his knees in front of Him. He shouted at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? Swear to God that You won’t torture me!” For Jesus had said to him, “Come out of this man,you evil spirit!” Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” “My name is Legion,” he replied, “for we are many.” And he begged Jesus again and again not to send them out of the area (Mark 5:1-10).

In this case, Jesus commanded the demons to enter a large herd of swine, which stampeded down a steep slope into the sea and drowned.

Most accounts of demonic possession in the New Testament occur prior to the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ ( Matthew 8:16,28; 9:32; 12:22; 15:22 ; Mark 5:15 ; Luke 4:33; 8:27 ).3 Interestingly, the Epistles make no mention of demon possession and give no instructions for exorcism.

Although it doesn’t seem to be as common today, we are convinced that demonic possession still occurs. There are many credible missionary accounts of confrontations with demon possession in pagan cultures. These involve such manifestations as unnatural strength and knowledge of foreign languages not known by the possessed, along with other preternatural knowledge. With the rise of Paganism and occult idolatry in our culture, demon possession is likely to become more common.

The ways that evil manifests itself have always been mysterious. In his book, I Have Lived In The Monster (St. Martin’s Press), expert FBI crime profiler Robert K. Ressler makes this striking observation about the demonic:

Supernatural causes, people felt in the era before Freud, were the only logical explanations for excessively savage murders,blood-draining, and other such monstrous acts. People felt there were demonic elements to such acts — and I cannot say that they were entirely wrong, because even today, when we try to explain to ourselves the acts of a Jeffrey Dahmer, those acts seem satanic, at least in part, because they are in large measure beyond rational understanding. We can attribute them to human behavior, pushed to extremes, but even saying this,and demonstrating how such behaviors can be traced back to childhood and genetic stresses does not completely suffice as explanation. After all, in the Dahmer family, Jeffrey had a younger half-brother who grew up in the same household but did not commit heinous acts.

M. Scott Peck is an example of a person with a thoroughly skeptical, secular outlook who became a believer in demonic possession:

As a hardheaded scientist—which I assume myself to be—I can explain 95 percent of what went on in these cases by traditional psychiatric dynamics . . . . But I am left with a critical 5 percent that I cannot explain in such ways. I am left with the supernatural . . . . (People Of The Lie, pp.195-196).

These observers intimate what most of us sense: Although a scientific understanding of human motivation and genetic predisposition provides a degree of insight into human destructiveness, human evil has aspects that are (and probably always will be) as paradoxical and impenetrable to human logic as are other essential elements of human experience — such as the relationship between free will and environmental/genetic predetermination.4

  1. We should not equate mental illness with demon possession, as some did in the past and still do today. Malachi Martin warns:

    Many people suffering from illnesses and diseases well known to us today such as paranoia, Huntington’s chorea, dyslexia,Parkinson’s disease, or even mere skin diseases (psoriasis and herpes I, for instance) were treated as people “possessed” or at least as “touched” by the devil (Hostage To The Devil, p.11). Back To Article

  2. A sampling of other passages that refer to the natural, inborn propensity of mankind to sin are Genesis 8:21 , Job 14:4 , Psalm 51:5 , Isaiah 64:6 , Mark 7:21-23 , Ephesians 2:1. Back To Article
  3. The large number of miracles during Christ’s ministry was a special “sign” of His divine authority. It may be that Christ’s authority over evil was expressed through a greater amount of demonic activity and more overt confrontations with demonic power. In the book of Acts,there are only a few accounts of possession, and they generally take place in the early stages of Christian penetration into pagan areas. Peter cast out demons while in Jerusalem ( Acts 5:16 ). Philip did so in Samaria ( Acts 8:7 ). Paul delivered a young woman from a fortunetelling demon at Philippi ( Acts 16:16-18 ) and cast out indwelling demons at Ephesus ( Acts 19:11-12 ). None of these cases involved a demon-possessed believer. Back To Article
  4. “When speaking of emotional conflicts one is attempting to designate certain processes of an ill-defined nature which operate deep within the uncharted recesses of the subconscious mind, and which are thus not readily amenable to detailed clinical delineation. It is known, however, that the vital forces of the human personality function within this area of the mind, and that there is always a significant emotional or psychic element in most diseases, and not least in idiopathic mental afflictions. If such states are to be seen in terms of the evil, destructive powers found in the subconscious mind gaining the ascendancy over the positive forces for good in the human personality, it is possible to think of all mental disorders as being to some limited extent at least the result of temporary possession of the human mind by demonic influences, a situation which could conceivably become permanent. Because modern psychosomatic medical research has shown that attestable clinical disease can result from such metaphysical entities as suggestion, emotional conflicts, fear, and the like, it is no longer possible to dismiss as implausible the noxious effects which the various forms of evil, working through the personality of fallen man, can have upon individual and mental well-being” (Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia Of The Bible). Back To Article
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Do Their Miracles Imply The Gospels Are Legendary?

Dan Vander Lugt
Bible, Christianity, , , , , , , , ,

When, as the story goes, Isaac Newton was sitting under an apple tree and saw an apple fall, he already believed that God was ultimately responsible both for the apple’s existence and its fall from the tree. Newton discovered the principles of classical physics because he wanted to know the means by which God made apples fall.

Science assumes that all natural phenomena have natural causes that can be discovered if we look for them. This assumption is called methodological naturalism. There is no inherent contradiction between the use of methodological naturalism and belief in miracles and the supernatural. Isaac Newton formulated the laws of classical physics while holding passionate faith in Jesus Christ and the authority of the Bible. Many scientists share Newton’s Christian worldview.

Unfortunately, some people have been so deeply impressed with the power of science that they make methodological naturalism the standard for judging all truth and value. This misapplication of methodological naturalism results in the dogmatic rejection of miracles. Most people today have a sense of the importance of methodological naturalism for science. But they also know that science has little bearing on their most important decisions. No one depends on science to choose a spouse or select a career. (See the ATQ articles, Why Believe in God’s Existence, When It Can’t Be Proven Scientifically? and How Can I Prove to Someone that God Exists?) Trying to do so would be like an orchestra replacing a concert pianist with a piano repairman.

Different subjects call for different evidence. If we want to examine historical events, we need more tools than the scientific method can provide. A murder trial, for example, attempts to reconstruct historical events. Every murder is unique, involving specific people and circumstances that can’t be reproduced. Science may be used in the process of clarifying and presenting evidence, but no murder can be repeated and scientifically tested so that guilt can be established with absolute certainty. A judgment of (legal) guilt or innocence is reached on the basis of cumulative evidence, including circumstantial evidence and subjective factors like motive.

Historical evidence, like the evidence in a trial, is not strictly “scientific.” Nevertheless it requires rational standards for analysis and verification. A juror who ignores a vast array of evidence for guilt, because he assumes from the start that the defendant is innocent, violates standards of truth just as much as a scientist who ignores evidence that doesn’t support his hypothesis.

The New Testament skeptic has to account for the sudden rise of a group of believers who centered their lives and hopes in a man they proclaimed was raised from the dead, the Son of God, worthy of worship.

What is the sufficient historical explanation for how a band of first-century Palestinian (predominantly Galilean) Jews came to abandon some of their most deeply held religious convictions—indeed, the central tenet of their traditional faith—and worshipped a Jewish contemporary of theirs as, in some sense, “Yahweh embodied”? Of course, one explanation—the traditional Christian explanation—begins by appreciating how extraordinary the Jesus event must have been to inspire such a radical shift in the faith in his followers. If Jesus made the claims, lived the life, and performed the miracles the Gospels attribute to him, and if Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead as the Gospels claim, and if his earliest Jewish followers personally experienced these momentous events—particularly the resurrected Jesus—then the radical worldview reorientation these followers experienced begins to make sense.” (Eddy and Boyd, The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Tradition, p. 99.)

Although skeptics have dedicated themselves to finding an explanation, they have failed. (See the ATQ article, What Are Some Arguments Used to Downplay the Significance of the Gospels?)

In fact, their attempts to account for the evidence have often deteriorated into self-deception and transparently weak arguments. (See the ATQ article, Why Do Many Western People Doubt the Accuracy of the Gospels?)

The vast majority of Western people have never stopped believing in miracles.1 The paradigm of metaphysical naturalism is weakening, and there is growing pressure on scholars to look at the actual historical evidence rather than making metaphysical assumptions about what can or cannot happen. As decades pass and evidence accumulates, it becomes more and more clear that the most reasonable conclusion is that miracles actually occurred in connection with Jesus and His ministry, and that the historical tradition contained in the Gospels is reliable.

  1. For example, in 1989, George Gallup Jr. reported that 82 percent of the American populace affirmed that, “even today, miracles are performed by the power of God.” So too, a 1998 Southern Focus Poll found that 83.1 percent of its respondents believed that “God answers prayers,” with 33.6 percent reporting that they had personally experienced having “an illness cured by prayer.” Not only this, but it is undeniable that Western culture at the present time is experiencing a significant surge of people publicly reporting experiences of healings, angelic or demonic encounters, and so on. Whatever else one makes of this, at the very least it suggests that the “modern, Western worldview” is not nearly as committed to naturalism as scholars such as Bultmann, Harvey, Funk, and others have suggested.
    The stark clash between what naturalistic scholars say the Western worldview should entail, on the one hand, and what the majority of Western people in fact believe and experience, on the other, suggests that when scholars proclaim that the Western worldview is incurably naturalistic, their intent is not so much to describe what the Western worldview is as it is to prescribe what the Western worldview should be. (The Jesus Legend, p. 74)  Back To Article
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Is There a State of Existence Between Death and Resurrection?

Dan Vander Lugt
Bible, Christianity, , , ,

The New Testament doesn’t give a detailed description of what has been called “the intermediate state” of those who die as Christians. The focus of the apostle Paul is on the wonder and joy of the resurrection ( Romans 8:18-23; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 ). However, he said that to die is gain because it is to “be with Christ” ( Philippians 1:21-23 ), and that to be away from the earthly body is to be “at home with the Lord” ( 2 Corinthians 5:6-8 ). Another significant passage is Jesus’ promise to the thief on the cross that when he died he would be with Him in “paradise” ( Luke 23:43 ).

It’s likely that even in the intermediate state we will have some kind of body. Paul said that at death “we have a building from God” ( 2 Corinthians 5:1 ). Man was created to be whole only as a being with a body.

These strong assurances that death brings us into the immediate presence of God are comforting. They clearly imply that Christians who have passed on are enjoying a conscious state of blessedness in God’s presence.

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How Can a Decomposed Body Be Resurrected?

Dan Vander Lugt
Bible, Christianity, , , ,

A body buried in a wooden casket would normally be entirely decomposed after a few hundred years, depending upon the conditions of the soil. Similarly, a seaman buried at sea would leave no traces. (Not a trace seems to remain of all of those who went down with the Titanic, for instance.)

The apostle Paul made it clear that our new body, though possessing some identity with our mortal body, will be a new “spiritual body” ( 1 Corinthians 15:35-44 ). God will not need to gather up the scattered molecules of our earthly bodies. (Remember that the bodies of many Christians have already decomposed, been completely destroyed by fire, or have been devoured by animals.) Therefore, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 doesn’t refer to a bizarre scene in which the ashes in funerary urns or decayed bodies in earthly graves are suddenly reconstituted. Rather, the resurrection is the wonderful occasion in which believers who have died will again be granted full bodily form, this time in a glorified heavenly body that can never again die or experience decay.

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How Were Documents Selected For The Biblical Canon?

Dan Vander Lugt
Bible, Christianity, , ,

To gain canonical recognition, a book was expected to pass two basic tests. First, it had to have a history of “continuous and widespread approval amongst Christians” (J. W. Wenham, Christ And The Bible). Second, it was expected to demonstrate that it had either been written by an apostle or specifically approved by the apostles.

The fact that the Muratorian Canon (approximately AD 170) listed all of the books presently in the New Testament except for Hebrews, James, and the two epistles of Peter, is another demonstration of the early, broad-based support for the Canon.

Another example (and many others could be given) is provided by the brilliant theologian Irenaeus who also wrote in the second century. He quoted the four Gospels extensively and included quotations from all of the New Testament books except Philemon and 3 John. Actually,the fact that a few books were received officially by the church at a later date is more a demonstration of the church’s discretion and caution than it is an indication that these books are in some way unreliable.

A well-known theologian once said that the church no more created the New Testament Canon than Newton created the basic principles of physics. The earliest writings of the church fathers demonstrate their confidence in the authority of the New Testament Scriptures.

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