Mark 5:9 And he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name is Legion (thousand): for we are many.
Whenever I hear an insane outburst because of someone using incorrect pronouns, ie THEY, I think of this verse immediately. No idea why. A year ago I didn’t even know what a pronoun was. Still not quite clear. As long as I don’t have to go to the states, I don’t have to worry about it though. The word legion is interesting though. It means a thousand.
Satan has a big sin, besides just being a traitor and a liar. He also is a cheap counterfeiter. He has no original ideas. Satan wants to be God. So he is a cheap fake god of those who are going to hell. God has His Holy Spirit living in us as believers. He has his demonic minions living in people that are possessed, I believe. I did not believe in demon possession until I became a missionary in a third world country.
The first time I ever encountered what I believe was a demon possessed person, that’s the word that came to me. ‘Thousand!’ Although I never directly saw or heard anything supernatural in my life, the word thousands came to me, when I met this person I believe to have been possessed, I felt outnumbered and overwhelmed. It was extremely scary, from when I met her, until I mentioned and called on the name of Jesus.
The point is, the ‘gospel’ of Hollywood is not the Gospel. I believe in demon possession because I have seen demon possession. I have an opinion about demon possession because I feel that I am an eye witness of demon possession, up close and personal. I am not an expert on the subject, but this is my opinion, based on my observations. For this same reason I do not have an opinion about Gaza because I have never personally been there, or fought there, so I don’t know. You can’t be an expert about somewhere you’ve never seen or been to. Nor can you believe anything you read, except for the Bible.
The reason I mentioned the Hollywood ‘gospel’ is because most of the world has a theology, world perspective, philosophy and mentality derived for the most part, from watching too much of the boob-tube (appropriately named). Do you know that the average american teen-aged boy is 400% overconfident of his street fighting skills? TV’s the reason.
Hollywood ‘gospel’ makes people overconfident in the important things, and horrified of the absurd. Hollywood has taught a lot of Christians to be afraid of demons. The movie star does something normal, like look in a mirror, stare at an old lady in the eye, or call a wrong phone number, and poof, they’re demon possessed by an enormous demon.
I have seen, what I believe to have been, people demon possessed in Central America and in the Amazons. It was never a big demon the way I perceived it. It was always more like a thousand of little, invisible, insignificant demons.
The people I thought were demon possessed all had one thing in common. I worked in a psyche ward and have had experiences with the mentally ill. What I feel the difference between possessed and the mentally ill was that the supposedly demon possessed person got healed. Mentally ill people unfortunately do not. Mentally ill get relief from their maldad through medicine. Demon possessed do not, unless you give them something that knocks them out.
I’ve noticed that demon possessed people seem to have opened the door in their past to be possessed (through something like sex) and mentally ill people quite often just get sick, through no fault of their own. Sadly, I never saw or heard of a mentally ill person get completely healed except for my friend Mike MacIntosh (read ‘For the love of Mike’).
In my opinion, the people I saw, whom I felt were demon possessed, were all seemingly possessed as a result of a thousand of small, ‘insignificant’, bad choices, just like their invisible little demons opening themselves up to these demons. A thousand of stupid mistakes is not a large number when you consider you have 2.5 BILLION seconds you have in an average life span. In one year alone you have 3 million chances to blow it and give control to a demon, if you are not born again.
DEMON POSSESSION ONLY HAPPENS IF YOU’RE NOT SAVED, SAVED PEOPLE CAN NOT HAVE DEMONS BECAUSE THEY HAVE THE HOLY SPIRIT, THE REAL THING, (NOT A CHEAP COUNTERFEIT LIKE A PATHETIC DEMON) LIVING IN THEM
Interestingly enough, again I am no expert, but it seems most people accumulate demons through sex or unforgiveness, or both. Sex doesn’t have to be with partners. Could be through rape or incest. Child abuse. Thought life, visualization, fantasy, fornication, adultery, dirty books, filthy novels/magazines. One way or another, unforgiveness and sex seem to be the biggest ways for an unsaved person to pick up demons. A great example is Ted Bundy, mass murderer of an untold number of girls, who got started (I think demon possessed) by playboy magazines. A lot of other demon possessed mass murderers were molested as children. (The very same reason that Million Friends exists)
1 Cor 6:18 Every sin, whatever a person commits, is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body
The point is, if the demon possessed person had instead, truly accepted Jesus early in life, rather than living a life collecting thousands of little demons along the way, they wouldn’t be in that mess.
There is still hope, for a demon possessed person, or even a mentally ill person like Mike! One visit from Jesus casts all of them out. A life time of mistakes and bondage, can be gone in an instant. What a joy!! Have you been washed by the blood of the Lamb?? The Samaritan woman at the well, Mary Magdalena, the graveyard dweller named ‘Legions’, all had all their lifetime of errors and demon collecting forgiven in a blink of an eye. They met Jesus. That’s what we do at Million Friends. We introduce people to Jesus, changing their names from crazy, loco, lunatic, prostitute, drunk, addict, impoverished, homeless, ‘they/them’ (Legion) to just a happy Christian.
Too much about the negative stuff, let’s move on shall we?
James 4:7 Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
Instead of caving into the devil one thousand times, why not resist him one thousand times by surrendering to Jesus? Satan will permit 1000 demons to do his dirty work. Jesus can bring down more than 12 legions 12000 angels in an instant. One angel killed 270,000 soldiers of King David. Now that is scary!
Matthew 26.53 Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?
Although you can not be demon possessed as a believer, you can be oppressed. I have a dear friend in the ICU down here with high blood pressure. I found a blood pressure machine and took my blood pressure. I’m 20 years older than him so I thought it would be a good thing to check. I felt great, no reason to do so, but I checked it prompted by the Holy Spirit. 167 over 110! I had high blood pressure for the first time in my life. It hit me like a ton of bricks. I never believed much in health insurance because I never needed it. Since I went on medicare a little over a year ago I got cancer, back problems, presugar, ankle problems, knee problems, arthritis, my first boil and now hypertension. The high bp threw me for a loop, the boil was a close second. I worried instead of prayed. Worrying is praying to self, and to Satan. I doubted for that moment. Therefore I had a crack in my armor, and Satan got to get inside and oppress me. I spent the past two days crushed spiritually. Praise God I am better now, but he got in through that little crack and wore me out. However I usually personally resist Satan by being in prayer and positively proactive.
Instead of spending hours watching the news (which is brought to you by the father of lies, 100% lies, 100% of the time) spend hours praying, being still and knowing He is God, working out, evangelizing, reading the Bible, writing.
Instead of gossiping, lift up others.
Instead of worrying, pray.
Instead of sitting around, move around.
Anything you can do by walking, do! It adds up.
Instead of dwelling on the past, dwell on God and His glory, in the present and the future.
Think only of good things not bad things.
Philippians 4:8 Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things.
There are thousands of ways to attract demons. There are also thousands of ways to attract others to know Christ.
1. The first step is in accepting Christ as your personal Saviour. Personally, I do it every day. I ask Him to forgive me for my sins, every time I talk to Him. Haji’s praying 5 times a day, I try to pray 10 times at least and Yup! I sin! Probably sinned somehow since I started writing this ‘spiritual’ missive. I invite the Holy Spirit every time I think of Him, at least several times a day. I want Him to permeate my being. Why? When Jesus is in you, you are attractive to others. They will want what you have. You will eagerly spend time alone with Him, IF you truly know Him. You’ll want to commune with Him. You will do this thousands of times a year. I tell people I get saved (born-again) and filled with the Holy Spirit every day. Theologians will disagree but it keeps me going, however you want to phrase it, Jesus is alive in me. Spend time with Jesus and everyone notices the change.
People will know you’ve been with Jesus, and that’s a good thing if you want others to know Him. If you don’t care, you’re probably not saved.
Acts 4:13 Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus
2. The second step is to ‘do’. One time, as a young Christian, we were asked to evangelize a Mardi Gras type event that started at 4 am. The organizer had us all meet at her house. Then she said ‘go evangelize, I’m going to stay here and pray for you’. What? How weird. I was so disenchanted!! Haha.
Even if you pray and read the Word of God thousands of times, it only works if you do what you hear in prayer and from the Word. If you don’t, what do you pray and read for? If you read and pray only to read and pray, that is only religion. The only people Jesus yelled at were the religious.
James 1:22 But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. 23 For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: 24 For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.
3. The third way is helping others. I evangelize everyone every chance I get. But this is different than normal evangelizing. Sometimes, however, you have to help others without worrying about getting another brownie point notch in your Bible. Sometimes you help others, or a stranded animal, just cause you’re a loving human being. One time, just after a terrorist attack, I was in an airport. I observed two buffoons who were absolutely terrorizing a young Muslim family. They started to rough up the poor husband. I gleefully jumped into the mix and showed the knuckleheads a whole other side of ‘Pastor Dean’ that my co-travelers never saw before. Sometimes you do what you gotta do. Show them you care is always more important than showing them how many books you read. Birthday cakes to street children, unchurched street beggars, homeless drunks, crack/meth addicts and prostitutes (male and female) that have become friends with me over the decades is my favorite thing though. They all know who I am and what I am. I just buy them a cake and say a little prayer for them for their birthday, wishing them many more. No big deal, but that 5-8 dollars does a lot more for their relationship with the Lord than 50 hours on an uncomfortable plastic church chair any day.
God knows your heart. The person you help probably knows you are a Christian, but it doesn’t really matter. Sometimes you just need to help, lend a hand, no questions asked. People like that we helped Roger with the prosthetic eye. No offense to Roger, but we’ve helped thousands like him, literally. We avoid exploitation and chest pounding as much as we can, but sometimes, as in Roger’s case with the eye, it’s a recurring necessity.
Galatians 6:9 And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.