My family left fairly soon afterward, but the loss of community and feelings of disillusionment were heart-rending. It must be horrific for people like Moore to see a gang of snake oil-selling magicians gain so much influence among his peers. But this a concern for all of us, not just the faithful. Like their mostly secular equivalent QAnon, which sometimes crosses over with believers in spiritual warfare, neo-charismatic leaders are promoting Trump as a champion of the people struggling against hidden enemies who are conveniently drawn primarily from progressives and minorities.
But unlike QAnon believers, who have to settle for the occasional retweet, neo-charismatics have the direct ear of a sympathetic president and act as his spiritual advisor.
People who believe in demonic conspiracies are well positioned to transition into secular conspiracy theories, including QAnon, Pizzagate, and classic anti-Semitism. If Trump is defeated, and prophecy once again fails, the danger they pose will be more than spiritual. But he was a victim of forces much larger than him.
Shusha was the key to the recent war between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Now Baku wants to turn the fabled fortress town into a resort. Argument An expert's point of view on a current event.
By Emily Brumfield-Hessen. June 10, , PM. Tags: Donald Trump , United States. Argument Emily Brumfield-Hessen. Brochure 18 Revised Frequent terms Christians use. Supernatural-themed television TV shows are enjoying a larger fan base. One of the attractions of late has been live exorcisms and the casting out of devils or demons from controlled persons.
The subject matter and the theatrics of such things have brought some confusion among professing Christians, and have raised questions and concerns within the true church in the area of demon possession.
Many have wondered about the status of believers in relation to such claims. Can a Christian be demon-possessed? A look at accounts of persons in the Bible being possessed by a devil or demon gives us some helpful insights into the matter.
To start off with, it is always an unbeliever that is the possessed individual. No where in the Old or New Testament is there even one clear, uncontested example of a true believer who is demon possessed. There are only four out of the total fifteen examples that could even remotely lead to the conclusion that a Christian can be indwelt by demons. We will briefly look at these four examples. The first three examples pertain to Saul, the first king of Israel, in 1 Samuel.
If the New Testament is any indication, that portal is never completely closed Eph. Our world has far more spirits involved in its affairs than we realize. Not exactly. Quite the contrary: As C.
Lewis pointed out in Screwtape Letters , most Westerners are so spiritually deadened that a direct attack would only serve to wake them up. Make no mistake: Forces of darkness are at work in this world.
The Bible calls them among other things spirits, demons, or powers Eph. The names vary, but the reality is all throughout Scripture. But Scripture seems to indicate that dark spirits can work big as well as small 1 Cor. They seem just as eager to animate an entire nation as they are to possess an individual Dan. There may be no better explanation for some of the more heinous chapters in human history. Something more than human sin was involved in the practice of chattel slavery in the United States, in the dehumanizing punishment of the Soviet gulags, and in the frighteningly efficient mass murder of Nazi death camps.
Most of us, for instance, have had the experience of encountering an institution that is rather corrupt but noting that the individuals within the institution do not seem to be the corrupting factor. In fact, the individuals involved often sense the distortion but feel powerless to change it. The whole is not merely the sum of its parts. Something bigger seems to be at work. Something bigger is at work.
The powers Paul talks about are not merely individual demons making individual people do terrible things. He is looking at something more systemic, beyond both the emperor and the empire. The spirits against whom we battle may be individual. But they may also be found in our ideologies, our institutions, or our political tribes.
In fact, the most devious powers at work today are probably not the ones that possess people, but the ones that animate and control power structures like governments, schools, or economies. It can gain us an audience, a revenue stream, and a lot of praise.
What else do we know about the role that they play and maybe their unique position in heaven? Graham Cole I think we can say—and scholars help us here—that seraphim, those bright shining ones, are really throne angels that are in the immediate presence of God, from where they can come to earth, as in the experience of Isaiah in Isaiah 6, where seraphim brought coals to his lips so he could be purified.
We do know something about cherubim and when we think about cherubim we particularly think of the earthly, because if you read Genesis 3 we find that after the defection from God of Adam and Eve, the cherubim are there to guard any kind of reentry into the Paradise Garden of God. So we do know some things about some of the angels like that. So these are some of the things we indeed know.
And in particular, when did it happen? And do we know any of the details surrounding that? Graham Cole I think we know some things for sure. We know that Scripture identifies the serpent of Genesis 3 with Satan. Revelation 20 does just that. We know that the serpent comes from the outside, from the world of wildness, and we know that the serpent comes to be deceptive and to trick Eve in the first instance into disobeying God.
And as the great deceiver, the serpent questions the character of God, the motives of God, the goodness of God. Out to spoil relationships, out to spoil our relationship to God, our relationship to one another. We see that consistently in the biblical testimony from Genesis 3. As for why Satan did that, the traditional answer is pride.
And in great Old Testament passages like Isaiah 28 and Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28, we may see something of that. So I think that traditional answer about pride is probably correct, especially when Paul warns about falling into the condemnation of the devil, which seems again to be about pride on human beings path.
And there may be another clue to this, Matt. To give Satan the deference that belongs to God alone. Satan wants to be God. Biblical Truth. Does anything come to mind along those lines? Graham Cole A few things do, Matt. There is the belief that every person has a guardian angel. Especially when you find that some leading Roman Catholic philosophers speculate therefore that you can calculate how many angels there are dealing with earthly creatures like us at any one time by just adding up the human population.
Well, where on earth does that come from? The idea that angels look like cute little babies with wings? There are so many ideas. Now we just need to be disciplined by what God makes known and be careful in speculating about what he has not made known.
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