Demons here, Demons there...Demons every f*****g where!

Before we get into this, here is a list of some of the names of evil spirits I have heard down the years that have either occupied people or places:

Religious Spirit

Spirit of Death

Spirit of Negative Strength

Familiar Spirit of Warped Love

Spirit of Masturbation

Spirit of Bestiality

Spirit of Ulcer

Spirit of Curse

Spirit of Addiction

Spirit of Homosexuality

Spirit of Jezebel/Witchcraft

Spirit of Fear

Spirit of Poverty and Greed

Spirit of Occult

Lying Spirit

Disruptive Spirit

Anti-Christ Spirit

Spirit of Abortion

Spirit of Gambling

Rebellious Spirit

Spirit of Blasphemy

Spirit of Violence

In the winter 88’ during my short time in my first church, I was in a home group meeting which had been a case of “same old; same old”. It would start at 7pm, hello and tea until 7.30pm and then a 10 minute bible study and 20 minutes for prayer bringing us to bang on 8pm where everyone left. However; this evening there was a change of leader. An ex Exclusive Brethren elder tuned Pentecostal saw his change to bring Pentecost to the meeting and it ended up with a four hour mass exorcism. For some reason these “demons” seemed to submit to me and the success of this night got to my head and I came to the conclusion that I had some level of authority over evil spirits. My first Pastor had a real problem with all this “spiritual warfare” and I would love to of been a fly on the wall the time he found out about this and did his very best to suppress this “new wave” of so called supernatural “power encounters”. The problem was I was now hooked. Both I and my new prayer buddy who kicked off this micro-revival would meet to pray and then we would look suspiciously at the rest of the congregation to see who was demonized and who was not. It got to the point when even the pets were not safe as any strange and untoward behaviour was looked upon suspiciously. It became a very paranoid time.

During this time I was involved with the ministry of exorcism as it appeared to me that I had been given power over these demons, a very grand delusion which in the end bit me on the arse. My first Pastor was against this practice on Christians as he believed that born-again believers cannot be demonized which was strange as most of the congregation of his church seem to behave as if they had a legion in each of them, he included. He tried to get me involved in all sorts of activities to keep me away from this “ministry” but I was firmly set down a path. Every bit of bad fortune was put down to the demonic forces trying to destroy me, before I got to them; such was the arrogance at the time. I was more or less authorized to perform the ritual on “non-believers” which more or less closed the door on my career as an exorcist in my second church. However; in this church the story was different. Pastor B and his wife were very much into this practice and I found myself doing it pretty often in the first year of so of my time there.

I can honestly put my hand on my heart and say out of all the exorcisms I was involved in there was only one that I can say that there was something genuine. It was all hype, as simple as that. It was easy to manipulate these people and in the end you left feeling that you had done something to further your career in the church circles. The formula was simple; teach the people about it and let them know what to expect in the case of demonic manifestation and you can be sure that these people have found a reason for their bad behaviour or addictions, yes, it’s a demon and they would throw themselves about, gnarl, scream and hiss, have a religious experience and then leave only to find the next day the problem is still there. So they came back for more…and more…and more.

Eventually, with a good push from my late mother in law, we, that is my ex wife, my late mother in law and another couple, left my first church and formed our own mini church who met in homes and to be honest did some strange stuff that you now see happening at a lot of the charismatic rallies today. Now I had the freedom to study the subject of demonology and spiritual warfare without all the hassle from pastor A and boy did I study. We took some counsel from the then Assemblies of God Superintendent and it was suggested that we join up with the man who was to become my pastor. At first it seemed to perfect match. Both pastor and his wife were very much into spiritual warfare and as time went by my second church declared war on the evil spirits of the region. This warfare took us to the wildest and noisiest prayer meetings I have ever been to and then came the “prayer walks”, every Friday night spent walking around the entire town praying and declaring victory over the masses of demons.

Demons became a part of life during the time in this church. They caused illness, poverty, break ups in relationships, accidents, the misbehavior of children, the attitudes of other churches towards us (as we were the “special ones”), crimes in the area…in fact…everything bad was given a “demonic” brand.

The problem was that my entire world view was affected by this supernatural, invisible war that was waging all around me. I was becoming paranoid about everything. I even blamed the loss of a job on demons when it was the fact that I was crap at my job. Even after the destruction of my second church. The fear of the demonic and the paranoia was keeping me with one foot still in the faith even though my heart of hearts was telling me to get the hell out of the movement and never return. It was the events in between the second church and third church known to me as the “dark years” that kept my mind stuck in this spiritual nightmare.

During the period 1994 to 1997 we spent away from being connected to a church, we moved around, trying different churches but not fitting in as we deep down thought we were a special breed, seen too much, been through too much, a bit like the special forces of the church. There were problems with our daughter which now looking back was something that was not demonic as we had thought but a little girl struggling with life and getting very little support from her school and certain so called specialists.

We eventually drifted into my third church in the summer on 97’. As far as I was concerned this was a church that needed my help. How wrong I was. They were a church that had four elders, all from different church backgrounds and I, even though I did not want to be a part of a church was quite happy to impart my “special knowledge” to these people. My attempts to indoctrinate them into the madness I had been subjected to thankfully failed and even though after leaving under a cloud after only 2 years and incorrect rumours about attempts to take over the church, I am thankfully to them for their patience and also for their hlp when we needed it. One of the elders I was particularly hard on and to this day I am sorry for that.

In late 2000 we were invited to visit a church that was situated in a village virtually next door to our home town. It had many of the old faces from church 1 there and was run by a husband and wife team who had built a successful church in South Africa. We all, as a family went along and after the meeting was told by the woman pastor that we would be back again and yes, we were. I made the big mistake of telling them I was a drummer and there was some bongo drums waiting for me at the front for me to play. The church eventually the church moved back to our home town and we had gone full circle and with spiritual warfare we had gone full circle too. Mad prayer sessions and references to demons were always coming from the lips of the woman pastor. The extremes of the late mother in law had returned in a new form and this time…more extreme!

Once again we were in the middle of a so called spiritual war with the entire region up for grabs. By now though I had stopped believing all this, I was just playing out the game and nobody, not even my wife at the time knew it. Not only did I doubt the reality of the spiritual warfare that I had been fighting for years but also the very existence of the God of this Pentecostal belief system. Yes, I had seen so much but I began to weigh it up the same way I weigh all things up now, by its fruit. I went through all this battling and for what? Nothing at all. However consciously I had stopped believing in demons, unconsciously I had not.

For at least two years after leaving the church now and again I would find myself putting an event against the potential activity of a biblical demon until I finally got it into my head that it was just life.

The problem with the whole demon thing I have found is that is takes the responsibility away from people. It is like the classic line “The devil made me do it”, hell knows I have tried that one. Within the movement a demon has been created to become to excuse for just about every “sin” in the church (see above list for just a few examples). What I also found hard to take in is how the people, even when they had their exorcism, still had the problem, still acknowledged that it was not their fault, it was the demon making them behave that way. The reality is much different. Here we have God knows how many people trying to live up to a standard they simply can’t, feeling the guilt of their failures they can only offload by handing over the blame for their “sins” to the devil and his demons.

You may want to know if I still believe in demons. Well in some cases I believe that dark entities exist, beings that exist out of our audio and visual frequency range who feed off negative energy we put out. A lot of ancient texts speak of such creatures but the concept of this legion of demons under the control of Satan is now just rubbish to me. In fact in the good book itself the whole concept is very, very flaky but the idea of the devil and his legion of demons and evil spirit to torment to sinful and disobedient and then torment them in hell is a well contrived superstition to keep the followers of the religion under control. As long as there is a “boogeyman” the fear of such a thing keeps people under control.