June 27, 2016 Show with Robert H. Bennett on “Demon Possession & Spiritual Warfare”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown
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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,
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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.
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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.
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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.
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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.
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Now here's our host, Chris Arnton. Good afternoon,
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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity who are living on the planet
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Earth listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arnton, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you a happy Monday on this 27th day of June 2016, and I know that I always say at the beginning of every program that I'm excited about the program that I'm about to do, but it is,
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I know, getting redundant that I'm saying this, but I am very excited about this program because ever since I launched
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Iron Sharpens Iron in 2006, I have always wanted to conduct a program on demon possession, and a lot of people that I know and a lot of people in the listening audience have asked me to do a program on it because being a
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Reformed Baptist and having most of my close associations in the church being very conservative, theologically
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Reformed Christians who are outside of the Charismatic or Pentecostal movements, and obviously not
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Roman Catholic either. I was raised Roman Catholic, but became a born -again believer in the 1980s and was saved by the providence of God in a theologically
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Reformed church. So I always wanted to do this program, but coming from the perspective of someone who is not either
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Roman Catholic or from a more of a fringe group of Charismatics or Pentecostals, because it seems that they are the only groups that talk about this.
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Now, obviously Roman Catholicism, the exorcisms that take place are very rare these days, and I don't even know if you could call them legitimate, and of course you have some
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Charismatic and Pentecostal churches that have them every single worship service. In fact, their own members often get exorcised of demons, or so they think, on a regular basis every week, maybe multiple times a week.
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So I wanted to get somebody from more of a traditional conservative theological background, and he happens to be
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Lutheran, a Missouri Synod Lutheran, and I'm eagerly looking forward to this program today with Dr.
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Robert H. Bennett. He is the Executive Director of Luther Academy and Adjunct Professor of Missiology and International Missions Specialist at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
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He is dedicated to illuminating the problems of American spirituality through the lens of biblical and confessional theology, and we are discussing two of his books today,
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I Am Not Afraid, Demon Possession and Spiritual Warfare, and Afraid, Demon Possession and Spiritual Warfare in America.
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It's my honor and privilege to welcome you to Iron Sharpens Iron for the very first time, Dr. Robert H.
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Bennett. It's wonderful to be here with you today. And let me on air introduce you to my co -host,
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Reverend Buzz Taylor. Dr. Bennett, very good to meet you. Very nice to meet you as well, Buzz. And let me offer you our email address if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Dr.
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Robert H. Bennett. Our email address here is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.
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That's C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.
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And if you're writing us, please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the
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USA. And you may remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter.
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Perhaps you know of someone that you believe is demon possessed or there's some other reason that you want to remain anonymous.
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In fact, obviously, if you're asking about someone that you do know, we would insist that you remain anonymous because we don't want to identify somebody, especially if we were wrongly identifying somebody as being demon possessed on the air.
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But we look forward to hearing from you and your questions. And before we even go into the subject at hand,
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Dr. Bennett, why don't you tell our listeners about Luther Academy and also about Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana?
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Well, Luther Academy exists to provide theological materials. We've published a number of books related to various areas of systematic theology and other areas for pastors.
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And then we also provide theological education in the form of an intensive class, which is usually a week long, that we do all over the world.
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The focus of those are for Lutheran pastors who have not had a thorough theological education, maybe because they did not have a seminary at the time when they were doing their studies, or maybe the seminary had some shortcomings.
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So we go on behalf of the various church bodies who ask us to come in, and we cover whatever subject they need for their men.
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As a part of that, we also provide all the funding, and many times in the very poor countries, to get all the pastors to one location.
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We provide their food, their shelter, all the costs of the intensive.
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And we do that in Africa and Latin America and Asia and Europe and just about everywhere.
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Great. And Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne? Concordia Theological Seminary is a seminary of the
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Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod. We have a number of programs here. Of course, our MDiv program for our pastors, additional master program in Sacred Theology, and we have a wonderful PhD program here that is mostly made up of non -Lutherans.
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We have people generally from conservative Reformed parts of the world who send their pastors here to work on their
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PhDs. Oh, great. And you are affiliated with the seminary in St.
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Louis? No, this is in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The one in St. Louis, I'm not affiliated with. We have two seminaries in the
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Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod. One would be in St. Louis, the other would be in Fort Wayne. What I meant was that the seminary is affiliated in some way.
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Oh, yes, absolutely. Right. And I think Buzz had a question. Well, yeah, I just wanted to repeat what you specifically teach.
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I teach an area of Missiology, specifically in the PhD program. Well, I'm just thinking of our listeners.
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Missiology. The study of missions, people who are going to be leaders in the area of missions around the world.
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Many times the church bodies will send them here to have an additional instruction in various history of missions, dealing with particular issues like globalization, new trends coming out of Christianity, worldviews, various religions, things like that.
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Yes, Missiology is not the study of southern bells. Yes, I was hoping that would be clarified.
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Thank you. And tell our listeners also something about the
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Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod. I know that many folks within Evangelical Christianity, when
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I mention someone that I might be interviewing who is
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Lutheran, they very quickly jump to the wrong conclusion that this is somebody from ELCA, the
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Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, and they immediately associate that with extreme liberalism, with being in favor of homosexuality, with having women in the pastorate, and so on.
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More things that we could even begin to mention. But obviously the
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Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod is one of the more conservative, Bible -based, and confessional denominations within Lutheranism.
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We are. I think there's a couple of the smaller Lutheran synods in the U .S., but we're the largest confessional, biblically -based synod.
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We have about 2 .1 million members in the United States, and of course have fellowships and connections with churches worldwide.
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Now I have to right away ask you about the two titles that are contradictory.
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You have your first book, I Am Not Afraid, Demon Possession and Spiritual Warfare, and the second book is
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Afraid, Demon Possession and Spiritual Warfare in America. Did you make a mistake the first time and then wind up being afraid, or why the two different titles?
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I did not. The first book originally wasn't even planning to be on demon possession or anything like that.
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I was doing my Ph. studies on the island of Madagascar, which has one of the fastest Lutheran -going churches in the world.
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There's about 5 to 6 million Lutherans on the island of Madagascar. It's a relatively quick -growing church.
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I wanted to see what was happening there, so my focus was conversion. However, as I got there and started to do my research, one of the things that came up over and over again, maybe about 50 % of the time with those who were coming into the church, was related to exorcism.
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They were animistic -type people who followed the traditional religions. As a part of that, they would ask to be possessed by what they thought were earlier spirits of leaders or their own ancestors, which got them in quite a bit of problems.
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So the first title is I Am Not Afraid. That actually came from the interviews. These people who were rescued out of this really pagan religion to finally learn that they no longer had to offer sacrifices and do all these horrendous things in order to appease the spirits, but to find that the
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Lord Jesus Christ had already provided everything for them on the cross and nothing else was required of them for their salvation.
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And so the common refrain there was, I'm not afraid anymore. Where they lived lives of fear in their previous religions, now it's a life, even though it may be more difficult sometimes because of the situation there with their families and so forth, now they're able to live their life free from that fear that they lived in for all their lives before that.
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Well, Dr. Bennett, this must be of great interest to our listeners because I've already got a whole bunch of questions that have come in already.
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So let me go first to John in Justin, Texas. He writes, demonic possession is held by many belief systems as a reality, but the degree of that reality and the many forms it takes on are varied.
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First of all, does your belief system acknowledge the reality of demonic possession? And if so, do you believe that there is a universal spiritual solution that can eradicate all forms of demonic possession irrespective of the origins or degree of its reality?
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Well, a lot of these questions are probably going to be a little bit disappointing in my answers, but the answers are actually pretty simple,
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I think, or at least the way I go at them. Of course, that one common thing that can alleviate this problem is
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Jesus alone. Whenever I give any type of talks on this topic, and I do it quite a bit, one of the first things that comes out of my mouth as I talk to the audience is
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I remind them that there's only one exorcist, only one exists, and that's Jesus. He may use us men to speak on his behalf as messengers, those sent by the king to proclaim the king's message, but as far as the one who can set us free from this, no matter where we are or what our culture or our context is, is
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Jesus. Obviously, I do believe in this, and that's one of the points that maybe we could talk about in the first book, how
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I actually went and showed where we lost this belief practically anyways.
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We never lost it in the Lutheran Church, but we really stopped talking about it, and so it's one of the things that I showed in the first book.
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Yeah, in fact, that's why I opened up the way I did. I'm a Reformed Baptist, and you very rarely ever hear
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Calvinists speaking on the issue, although I do want to. There are a couple of books, one by Banner of Truth, and Dr.
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Joel Beakey has written a book that involves Satan and demonic influence, but I'm not 100 % sure they involve exorcism or demon possession, but I will see if I could get to them on a future date to have those interviews, but before we even go into what you were just describing,
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I just want to go to one more listener question, because it's very relevant to start the program as well.
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This is Jim in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Whenever non -Christians, especially here in America, hear about possessions and demons in any kind of news story, the first response is to blame superstition and or say they are faking it.
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We can see how Satan works in the USA, using subtlety and deception, which causes us
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Americans to dismiss anything involving demons as unscientific.
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But what about in places like Africa? I've heard that the occult and demonic possession is much more open in other countries, and you can see the spiritual warfare happening in black and white, rather than shades of gray, as in the
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U .S. Can you discuss why they are so different, and if I've heard wrong?
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No, that's one of the things I deal with in both of these books as well. When you talk about other cultures, in general we'll call them animistic cultures, so those cultures that have various forms of traditional religion, or the person in the question said occult practices, but these various forms of early animism and likewise, they don't believe that they're being possessed by demons, and many times they don't even believe in demons.
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I'm not talking about the Christians, I'm talking about the animists. What they believe is there's a vast central tier of spirits, they're not able to access
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God, and so there's a central tier of spirits they feel that they have to commune with, connect with, offer sacrifice to, worship and venerate, in order to get various blessings here on earth.
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And so one of the aspects of that is they actually seek to be possessed by those spirits that they think are their ancestors, or other type of spirits, they don't necessarily call them demonic.
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Indeed, many times they don't even have an understanding of a good spirit or an evil spirit, it just depends on how you are reacting with that spirit, how that spirit might feel towards you.
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So many times they don't even have this understanding of a good spirit or an evil spirit. So it's very common in other cultures, and that's why we see the occurrence of exorcism so prevalent in some of these other cultures, is in the
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West, generally we're not saying, you know, devil or demons, please possess me, but in these other cultures you are saying, you know, please come to me, the spirit of Trumba, for instance, from Madagascar, that I might have additional ability to maybe know the future, or to speak to the dead, or, you know, have the right understanding of various leaves and things like that for healing.
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So it's a completely different way of looking at the world, and so they're very easy access for Satan and his demons to come in and pretend to be these other various spirits.
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That's one thing that Satan does all of the time, and I'm actually working on a third book right now on this topic, but Satan is, he always comes in and he's very willing to accept and to take on any persona that that particular culture will allow him to do.
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And so if you're an animist and you're looking towards the spirit world, well he'll come and pretend he's your, you know, your father who's passed away, or whatever the case is.
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That actually happens in the U .S. too, by the way. In the West, however, he actually works in a generally very different way.
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The title of the next book will be Fear and Lies Unmasking the Devil, and the point of that book will be this, that the devil always works with fear and lies, always those two tied together, especially when we talk with how he deals with Christians.
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And if he can make us believe something that's not true, he can control us by that, and if he can make us afraid, he can control us by fear.
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And so the next book, I'll actually be looking at all different societies and cultures and showing how he either uses primarily fear or primarily lies.
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In the West, I would say he's generally primarily lies with fear, and animistic cultures is primarily fear with lies.
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Well, I already know that I'm inviting you back on the show to discuss that third book.
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Next year. Yes. And, well, you said that you wanted to go into the first book, the genesis of it.
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Well, if you can let me, I didn't finish answering your question on the titles, I never got to the second one. Oh, yeah, right, right, that's right.
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I forgot about that. The book Afraid was written, really, because after writing the first book,
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I was really surprised, because we hadn't talked about this stuff in more than probably 60 years in the
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Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, and I was getting surprised about the number of pastors who were contacting me weekly.
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It was getting to the point where I had emails and phone calls within our own denomination saying, I've got this problem in my congregation, or with this person, what do
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I do? And so I wrote the second book for those pastors, and for lay people as well, to have actual case studies of how particular problems were dealt with, and the result of dealing with these problems in a biblical way.
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The title is Afraid because, once again, many of the stories that are in the book are people who were in deep fear, and many times couldn't even find pastors to help them, until finally they did find the right pastors to come in, and eventually the lives were taken away through catechesis, and finally exorcisms of them, or their homes, or whatever the case is.
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And so you were studying the Malagasy culture, and weren't even expecting or intending to write a book on demonic possession or exorcism, and so tell us more about how that whole developed, and also what seems to be some kind of an ignoring of this issue by the
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Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, and obviously also a lot of the heirs of the
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Reformation, the other Reformed branches of the Reformation today, you don't hear a lot about this subject either, but if you could, tell us about this in the first book, how this all came about.
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Sure, as I wanted to do my research on just the topic of conversion, one of the first things that I ran into is they were having this large outdoor gathering, it had about 12 -15 ,000 people at it, they have these through the summer months in various places in Madagascar, long story, but I'll cut to the chase there, and what happened there is, in Madagascar, because of this animistic society, the
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Lutheran Church doesn't believe, of course, in ancestors and spirits and things like that, they just believe in God and the devil and demons.
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So what they do is they do an exorcism of place before they ever have a service, especially if they're having some type of gathering outside, outside of the church and things like that, these large gatherings.
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So they do an exorcism of place, which is really just some hymn singing, some scriptural texts, some prayers, and the words be gone in the name of Jesus, and their mind is just to clear out any of the animistic things that are going on there, and the devil who's so prominent there in their culture, because people are engaging in these things.
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As a result of that, no one actually responded, of all the thousands of people who were there for that, they were just Christians there, it was just a normal process of clearing the area, they would say.
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But someone who was watching from the sidelines, actually, when she heard the words be gone in the name of Jesus, she started convulsing and screaming out, and it was interesting, because all the pastors and the lay people there, they knew exactly what it was, it wasn't alarming to them, they came to the side of the woman, many of the women were there, it helped just to make sure that she wasn't exposed or anything like that, and they did an exorcism right there of her, and I've got copies, you can find that exorcism on YouTube, or you can find it more specifically on my web page,
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Afraid Book, I think it's book .com, it could be books, and there's actually a video there of that particular exorcism.
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It's hard for us to understand, because it's in Malagasy, but really the words that are being spoken over and over again are be gone in the name of Jesus.
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So it's quite an interesting topic in itself, but just related to the book and the questions you asked me, so I noticed this thing, and it was quite odd to me, and first I thought it was somebody trying to pull a scam on me, and I was very critical as well,
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I've never had dealt with anything like this, but then as I learned more, and I started to learn more about the
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Church, I found out this is actually a pretty common occurrence, and actually people would never want to pretend in this sense, because it shows your connection to the animistic worship, the secretive nature of what you're doing, and so it's a big shame, it's an unashamed culture, a big shame at that point to be one who's found to be possessed.
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So that's how I walked into the topic, and I decided to do interviews of people who were new to the
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Church, I think we have about 130 interviews, what I did is I had the seminary students take these forms out and do interviews all over the country, so all over the island, and we came up with some very common themes, there's stories, the book is filled with individual stories, focusing on before they were
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Christian, when they came to the Christian Church, and now their life in the Church, kind of looking at all three aspects of their lives.
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So that was the first part of that first book, I Am Not Afraid, but then after writing it,
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I was wondering, okay, well, what about our Lutheran Church? Because when I went to seminary,
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I know I asked this question, I know some of my fellow students asked the question about demonic possession, spiritual warfare, and we got no response from any of our professors.
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They all agreed that yes, these things are real, but other than that, really no word on what to do or how to handle these circumstances if you come upon them.
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So then what I did in the book is I actually said, okay, where did we lose this? Was it a part of our
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Lutheran understanding? Where did we lose it? What happened in the process?
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And so then the second part of the book, and I'll stop so you can ask me some more questions, actually looks at that whole process.
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Where was it prominent? When did we lose it? And those type of questions. Great. Well, I will pursue those questions, but I do want to get to some more of our listener questions as well.
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Tom in West Islip, Long Island, New York. This is likely a very common question asked, but what is done to discern between mentally ill -driven behavior and a true possession?
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In addition, when viewing subject matter on this topic, it appears it is important for the demon to state its name.
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Is that true, and if so, why? All right, we'll go to the name first, and then we'll go back to the mental illness question.
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I know it's very prominent within Roman Catholic theology and even some Pentecostal theology that the name has to be spoken.
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That generally refers back, people get that mostly from Jesus dealing with the Gerasene demoniacs.
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I don't find that to be a necessity. In the research that I did dealing with pastors that are engaged in this all the time in Madagascar, it was never a requirement.
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If we look at Paul, for instance, in Acts 16, I believe, and as he's dealing with the woman who has the spirit who is the medium, he simply says,
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Be gone in the name of Jesus. Then there's a whole exegetical section in that first book,
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I Am Not Afraid As Well, that actually takes you through all the occurrences as Jesus is dealing with these demons and so forth, and how
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Jesus deals with them as well. So this understanding of the name only really shows up in that one occurrence with Jesus, and other occurrences that we have from Scripture and later historical circumstances don't show that that's necessary.
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I actually even think it's quite problematic for those who are trying to do exorcisms to establish these type of questions.
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One thing that we'll hopefully get into more is I make a point in these books that when dealing with the demonic, you can't be at all individually, it can't be about you facing the demonic.
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I think that's where Roman Catholicism goes wrong so badly, is it's always portrayed as the will of the priest against the will of the demon.
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And my thought on that is, if it's my will against the demon, I'm in real trouble, to the point that Jesus is the only exorcist.
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Well, that was like the primary focus of the movie The Exorcist, I believe. Right, absolutely. And of course, that comes from real events out of a situation in St.
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Louis. So I don't think the necessity of the name is needed at all, and I actually think it's problematic whenever we start to engage a demon as an individual.
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Our engagement of the demon should always be one of proclamation of the Word of God, not of our own curiosity.
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When did you enter into this person? What is your name? Why are you there? I think at that point, you're becoming an individual who's connecting with the devil, rather than one who's simply standing there and proclaiming instead of Christ.
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And when we return from the break, we'll have you comment more on the discernment on mental illness versus genuine demonic possession, as our listener in West Islip had asked.
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And we're going to a break right now. And by the way, I've got a surprise for all of you. You're all, all of you folks who have written in with questions, you're all getting a free copy of one of the two books that we are giving away today.
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So make sure that we have your full mailing addresses so we can mail you out these books, compliments of Concordia House Publishing.
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And also, they're being shipped out to you, compliments of our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com,
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cvbbs .com, Cumberland County Bible Book Service, who mail out all of our author books at no expense to Iron Sharpens Iron, and we thank them for that.
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And I misspoke, it's Concordia Publishing House, not Concordia House Publishing.
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My apologies to Concordia Publishing House for inverting the name there.
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But we are going to be returning any moment now after this break, so don't go away.
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Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Welcome back, this is
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Chris Zarnes, and if you've just tuned us in, our guest today is Dr. Robert Bennett. Our ad went out of control there.
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Our guest today is Dr. Robert H. Bennett, and he is going to be on for both hours today discussing his two books,
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I Am Not Afraid, Demon Possession and Spiritual Warfare, and his more recent book,
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Afraid, Demon Possession and Spiritual Warfare in America. If you would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,
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that's C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com, and Dr.
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Robert Bennett is dedicated to studying Malagasy culture and the evangelism methods employed by the
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Malagasy Lutheran Church. He is Administrative Pastor at Trinity Lutheran Church and School in Reese, Michigan, and Adjunct Professor of Missions at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and this topic has been something
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I've been longing to do for quite some time, although I've touched on it in other broadcasts,
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I've never dedicated a full hour or full two hours just to the one subject of demon possession and exorcism, so I'm hoping you're being blessed by this as much as I am, and before the break, one of the questions that Tom in West Islip, Long Island, New York asked you was how to discern between that which is a mental phenomenon coming from mental illness of some kind and that which is truly demon possession.
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Sure, and one thing just to clarify before we move forward, I think you read the information on the back of the first book,
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I'm no longer at Trinity Lutheran Church. I'm Executive Director at Luther Academy and Professor at Concordia Theological Seminary.
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Yeah, that's the way I introduced you the first time. Right, right. I want to clarify. I appreciate that.
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Back to the topic of mental illness, a big topic. We'll talk about it for a while and you can ask some additional questions.
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One thing I think we also need to get out on the table before we talk more about the topic of exorcism,
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I think we're conditioned to think about exorcism differently than we should be because of Hollywood and other more dramatic tales that are out there.
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The word exorcism, of course, in the Greek simply means to cast off, to push away, to remove.
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It's just this understanding of pushing something away, getting rid of something, and I think we really need to look at it when we're dealing with the topic here today.
35:52
It doesn't mean specifically going through a particular ritual to deal with someone who has a demon located within them, physically controlling their bodies.
36:04
It actually has a very wide scope, the topic does. And so when we talk about this wide scope, individual possession is still,
36:14
I think, really very rare in our time. I think it's becoming, it's increasing as our society continues to lose connection with the word of God, as more and more spiritualism is increasing, and as people are falling away from the faith.
36:34
But we really talk about two areas when we talk about exorcism in this general way, and that's the way
36:39
I deal with it in both of the books. This understanding that you have physical possession that could be intermittent, probably most of the time is of a physical possession, or it could be full -on, all -the -time possession, or the majority of the cases
36:54
I think that we'll run across and we'll deal with are more of understandings of being tormented by the devil in various ways.
37:03
You call it oppression, you can go through the various terms that are out there, but maybe tormented is one of the better ways that kind of captures the entire process.
37:14
So with that out there, now let's take a look at the situation within mental health. I think that we need to be very cautious when we're dealing with this topic, especially with trying to discern which is which.
37:28
One of the things that the devil is very commonly doing is seeking those who are in a weakened position.
37:37
So I think we can establish that mental illness is something that is related to most of the time chemistry within the brain, and it can be treated with various medications and so forth.
37:53
Sometimes not, but many times it can be. And God has provided means in this world.
38:02
So as the Church, when we look at whether it's a physical illness or a mental illness, we recognize that God has provided, through these means, doctors and healthcare professionals, and those who make prescription medicines, and likewise.
38:20
So I think we need to have all that kind of on the table as we talk about this particular problem. Sorry to be talking about all this right now, but I think it really needs to be out there.
38:29
Oh yeah, I want you, by the way, Dr. Bennett, I want you, when you answer questions, to just be as thorough as you feel led to be.
38:39
You don't have to think that you have to be enslaved to some kind of formula on my end. I want you to answer to the fullest expression that you care to.
38:50
Absolutely. So going to mental illness, I do teach in the
38:56
MDiv program here on this topic in the pastoral theology classes. I don't teach the full class, usually
39:03
I'm on the road, but the professors who do teach that now actually have me come in and teach the men who are becoming pastors on this topic.
39:12
This is, of course, a common question that we get from these seminary students, and also pastors and lay people alike, very common question.
39:21
One thing I tell them is, we don't necessarily have to discern. Now we would like to, obviously, and if there's some very, very outward signs, of course, that would make that much easier.
39:35
If you had some of the more extraordinary things happening, like a person levitating or speaking in strange languages, or some of the more common stuff that we're used to hearing on the
39:44
TV shows, that makes it a little bit easier to deal with, obviously. But most of the time, that's not going to be the case.
39:52
The devil, especially in our society, likes to hide himself. He doesn't necessarily want us to know that he's there.
40:00
And so when you talk about these cases of mental illness, while there can be some rare cases of full possession behind them, and who knows how many of those are,
40:10
I don't think there's any way we can get a handle on that, but most of the time, it seems to be in that category of torment, where you have this person who is weakened physically and mentally by whatever the case is that caused the chemistry to go wrong in the brain, or the influences they have on their lives, or whatever the case is.
40:35
And those are the ones that many times Satan also comes along and causes additional problems to.
40:42
I know with the topic of depression, for instance, we know that there are many medications that, for most people, can find help through doctors, through medication, and through therapy, to kind of realize how to deal with these things and thoughts and stuff when they come to their minds.
41:00
But at the same time, the devil loves to torment these individuals. So looking at this from a pastoral perspective,
41:09
I'm still a pastor in the Lutheran Church, Missouri City, even though I'm not serving a church right now, but I had served for many years.
41:16
Looking at this from a very pastoral understanding, we have to go at these problems, really like all the problems, we've got to stop compartmentalizing how we deal with these issues.
41:28
So if I have somebody who has a mental health issue, I'm going to recognize that there could be a legitimate mental health issue there as well.
41:37
But I'm also going to recognize that Satan loves to take advantage of those who are weak. And so as a part of that,
41:44
I'm also going to be using, I think we'll talk about more because we'd really have to get into this to discuss this, but more this understanding of prayer that has an exorcistic function in the midst of praying for that person.
42:00
It's very simple for any of us as we're praying for someone else, that we might, that we think there might be something going on there.
42:09
As a part of that prayer that we're praying for their health and their well -being and all the other things we're praying for, just simply say something in the prayer and if there's any evil, if the devil or his demons are here causing any problems, be gone in the name of Jesus Christ, this person is a child of God.
42:29
And so you can work that into a very minimal degree or a stronger degree, depending on the circumstance that you're dealing with.
42:36
And really that is exorcism. Remember, we take exorcism down to its fundamental point. It's simply that, be gone in the name of Jesus.
42:45
With the understanding it's not a magical word that we're speaking, simply by casting these words we're going to cast out the devil or something.
42:52
But understanding that in the midst of that we are trusting Christ there who is speaking to us as we're speaking his word, who has the ability to cast, to move away, to remove, the right understanding of the word exorcism of these particular individuals.
43:13
So that's still the short version, but I think that answers the question. Yeah, and I do still want to go to the departure from the discussion of demon possession and things like that, that took place not only in Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, perhaps
43:34
Lutheranism in general, but the other branches of the Reformation whose heirs rarely discuss this.
43:43
So I do want to get back to that, but we have so many listener questions, I do want to at least get one more, especially since this one is a colleague in the
43:53
Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod ministry of yours. I'm not saying that he knows you personally, but he is an ordained
44:02
Lutheran Missouri Synod pastor. This is
44:07
Pastor David Anglin of the St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Amityville, Long Island, New York.
44:16
When I was attending Concordia Seminary in St. Louis in the late 1970s, there was a lively oral tradition that the seminary had been heavily involved in the original case on which the exorcist was based.
44:30
Basically, the contention was that the seminary, like the family's pastor in suburban D .C.,
44:37
had failed in driving out the demon, so the Jesuits were called in and succeeded.
44:45
However, in none of the books, documentaries, and websites devoted to the case in Concordia St.
44:51
Louis is Concordia St.
45:00
Louis ever mentioned. Does Dr. Bennett have any information on involvement of Concordia St. Louis in the original case from the 1940s,
45:09
I believe? Blessings be with you, cordially, Pastor David Anglin, Amityville, New York.
45:16
I do, actually. There was a book written at the time by a seminarian at Concordia Seminary in St.
45:24
Louis who wanted to know that very question, and it was written a number of years ago.
45:31
I don't remember the exact date. It's not in print anymore, but I do have a way to get my hands on a
45:39
PDF if that pastor wants to contact me. I'll give it to him. I'm not in the distribution mode for everybody here.
45:47
I don't have any rights to be distributing for it, but from just a pastoral use, that pastor can contact me and he knows how to find me.
45:57
But yes, there was a book titled The House Swept Clean that tried to deal with this issue, once again, because really nothing was written on it.
46:05
This particular student was somewhat dismayed that there was nothing on this topic and he'd heard these stories, and so he had to write a book on the topic.
46:18
He actually does name some names and give the history of this particular instance as it took place.
46:26
I haven't read the book a number of years now, but I do remember that. However, the book actually wasn't a very good source on the rest of the topic, because the seminary student who tried to do this, he really didn't look deep enough to find the
46:40
Lutheran sources, and he really focused on some of the more extravagant sources related to Malachi Martin and also some of the spiritualist movement with the
46:49
Warrens and things like that. So he tried to put a good spin on it, but his sources are kind of questionable.
46:56
Okay, well we were trying to eventually get to your thoughts on why the
47:03
Lutheran Church and obviously other more conservative traditional reserved types of churches have really, it seems that they have become embarrassed, disinterested, or perhaps even frightened,
47:24
I don't know, but to delve into the area of the demonic realm, demonic possession, exorcism, why do you think that this occurred?
47:33
Especially, obviously, your main experience is with the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, so if you could explain that.
47:41
Sure, and while of course my situation is the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, I think we can agree that it really has happened in all of our conservative denominations.
47:52
Even fundamentalist Baptists and other groups like that? Sure. Well, you know, it's interesting, in my research here,
48:00
I found this one particular theologian by the name of Helmut Teelick, he had some
48:07
Lutheran connections but also Reform connections, it kind of went back and forth between the two during his time.
48:13
But he identified three problems or causes, and I think he's right on here.
48:20
The first one he said was that we had a fear of being perceived by simpletons, by our academic peers.
48:30
As seminaries and institutions related to the Church started to want more of an academic standing in the world, it became kind of difficult to talk about demonic possession and demons and things like that.
48:44
And we see it in our own society today, and just think of how rarely now people are expressing their own religious beliefs to their friends at work and in school and otherwise, simply because they don't want to be perceived as a simpleton or somebody to that understanding.
49:07
You can put your own word in there. So I think that's one of the major reasons that we have lost this kind of across our spectrum of Christianity within the more conservative churches.
49:19
His second point was that the demonic cannot really be placed into scientific categories, and since this was the age of modernism when we lost this understanding, we didn't know what to do with it.
49:34
It isn't something that you can necessarily do a scientific experiment on.
49:40
So it just became very difficult to talk about it. But his third point
49:45
I loved, and remember he's writing this before political correctness ever existed, so it might be offensive to some, but I think he's right on.
49:53
He says this, evil cannot be seen by evil just as stupidity cannot be perceived by the stupid.
50:00
Yeah, thank you for answering that question. But I think he's right on all these points.
50:08
Within our churches, it just became, as rationalism and secularism started to have its effects upon us, even in our more confessional, conservative churches, it really was something that was lost.
50:21
For instance, in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, I actually followed it back to where we lost it. You know, at the very beginning of our
50:27
Synod here, as the Germans came here and started in St. Louis and likewise in Fort Wayne, it was actually a part of the pastoral theologies.
50:37
There was a man, C .F .W. Walter, who was the first president of our Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and also a professor at St.
50:43
Louis. He actually wrote in his pastoral theology, as he talked to his students, he would tell them, besides the normal things that you'll have to deal with in a congregation as pastors, you'll have to go deal with those who have some other type of problems you're dealing with.
51:00
For instance, you'll have to go to prison and visit those who are imprisoned and those who are being led away by false religions.
51:10
And he listed a number of things, and in the midst of the list, he also says, and those who are dealing with demonic possession.
51:17
Kind of like, it was a no big deal. This is what you should expect to do as a pastor.
51:23
It's just one of those roles like doing your shut -in visits or hospital visits or prison visits.
51:29
And then it started to change. In about the 50s, we have one of our pastoral theologies, no sense getting the names, this is really for our purposes here, but the second pastoral theology that was being used still talked about it as being a possibility, but it was a little bit apologetic on that topic.
51:47
Like, you know these things will happen, and I know you guys here have a hard time understanding that, but it's still a reality.
51:54
And then from there, it disappears. It disappears from the 50s and no longer exists in any of our pastoral theology books until just recently.
52:03
Now do you think some of this, there is a fear,
52:08
I know at least amongst Calvinists, Calvinists, my fellow Calvinists, so I want my listeners to be clear,
52:13
I'm not insulting anybody that is not from a background that I also possess, but Calvinists have a dreaded fear of guilt by association.
52:25
And they, you know, sometimes people may even start to get heart palpitations and grow faint if somebody's raising their hands in the congregation because they don't want to be associated with the charismatic movement or the
52:40
Pentecostal movement. And then of course, you also have those that don't want to be associated with the superstitions of Rome.
52:48
Now, do you think that has something to do with the more conservative Protestant groups wanting to just totally leave this on a back shelf somewhere because they just don't want to be associated with things that appear to be superstitious, anti -intellectual, and filled with charlatanry?
53:09
And I think you touched right on exactly where we're at right now. I was giving you more of the historical sense, when people did believe in these things, and they were recognizable.
53:20
But I think you described very well the circumstances that we find ourselves in now, even within our
53:26
Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, which is a very conservative, confessional church body. And of course, and I think it still goes under that simpleton thing, not necessarily as a simpleton, the first point that Hewlecky makes, but it still goes under the understanding that we don't want to be perceived in a particular way.
53:46
We don't want our theology to be perceived following one of these other areas of theology that we would find problems with.
53:55
And so we really kind of don't want to know too much about this, deal too much with this, because of that very reason that you put forth.
54:03
However, I must say that in my research here in the United States, I ran across a number of instances where people actually sought out help from their local pastors.
54:18
And because of some of these things, their pastors simply told them, you know, hey, I don't know anything about this, go see the
54:26
Roman Catholic priest, which is ridiculous, rather than simply dealing with their members as God has provided for them to do.
54:34
Or just wrote them off as, you know, you're telling me a lie, these things don't really exist, and kind of sent them away with no help at all.
54:45
So that's what happens when we turn this subject over to the more fringe theologies, and no longer speak on the subject.
54:53
Now we're not properly caring for the flock that God puts before us.
54:59
You know, you can't deny these topics and still hold to a biblical faith.
55:05
This is a very clear understanding of the
55:10
Gospels, of the epistles as well. And that's why in my book, the first book,
55:16
I'm Not Afraid, I actually make a point of going outside of the Gospels to the book of Acts. You know, you have
55:22
Paul dealing with his situation in the book of Acts in both 16 and 19, after Christ's crucifixion, after his resurrection, after his ascension, after Pentecost.
55:34
This is still something that they're dealing with. And it's something that you'll find in the history of the churches, whether it's
55:41
Reformed or Lutheran or whatever the case, you'll find these stories if you go back far enough and look at the church.
55:47
So what we've done is we've turned this over because of that misunderstanding or that fear that you did a nice job describing there.
55:57
And so we've left this whole area of theology kind of out there in the wind. And if you go to the bookstore and you try to find some books on this topic, that's all you're going to find.
56:08
You know, I think we got to strike up a little bit of balance here because, well,
56:14
I'll give you an example. And I think the word that we're not using here, and I think believers should not think of this stuff as being spooky, you know, in that regard.
56:24
I'm not sure why not. Well, because we are believers and we understand the nature.
56:32
Well, I want to get more into the biblical text later on, but my point is this, you know, there are those who won't want to have anything to do with it because they feel it's spooky or something.
56:39
I just don't want to be anything around the other. Oh, I see what you're saying. The other is, well, unfortunately, we had an interview on a local
56:48
Christian station that where some ladies were exorcists.
56:53
This was not my program. No, no, no. This was Radio Waves. But they were talking very light about it, like, well, you know, everybody has back problems and, you know, some people regularly go to a chiropractor and, you know, sometimes we have demon problems too.
57:14
And so, you know, you should go to your exorcist on a regular basis and get, you know, de -demonized or whatever.
57:20
You know, that's such a cavalier attitude towards it. Well, if it's something that's, like, saturating their typical worship experience, like with the deliverance ministries, you can understand that.
57:31
But if you want to comment on that, Dr. Bennett? Sure, and I'll go back to the quote
57:37
I used earlier from that earlier Lutheran theologian. To him, it was just one additional aspect amongst many aspects.
57:47
And I think you're right, I think it was Buzz that made that point, it could have been Chris, that... If he was right, it was me.
57:54
Okay. When this becomes your primary theology, or becomes that which your worship services are based on, you're really missing the point of the rest of the gospel.
58:10
This is just one area in which the Lord is there and caring for us.
58:16
Now, the topic of exorcism, once again, we generally think of as this very narrow topic, but maybe
58:23
I'll hold off on it. You can ask me some questions later. This understanding that I make a strong point of in the second book, of exorcism really is more of catechesis, of teaching, and exorcism combined more than it is anything else.
58:40
And that comes out of my Lutheran understanding, of course, is I have an understanding of presence.
58:48
And I know, depending on who you talk to, there's various understandings of this in the Reformed world, but this understanding where Christ's Word is preached, there
58:58
He is. And I also include that because the sacraments are attached to His Word as well, that there's an exorcistic nature, not exorcism with the big
59:09
E like you see on TV, but there's an exorcistic nature already in the things that we do on a very common daily basis within the
59:18
Church. Not that we call it the exorcism, we have exorcisms in our service, but in essence, by the
59:26
Word being there, by the Word, Jesus, being there, there's already an exorcistic function taking place.
59:36
Thank you for sharing that. And, Buzz, if you have a question you could ask, and we come back from the break because we've got to go to a break right now.
59:43
If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,
59:50
chrisarnsen at gmail .com, and we do already have still quite a number of people anxiously and patiently,
59:58
I guess that's a contradiction in terms, patiently waiting to have their questions...
01:00:04
We hope patiently, anyway. Yeah, well, nobody's calling me up and yelling at me or anything, so they're patiently waiting to have their questions asked and answered, and we will get to you,
01:00:13
God willing, one by one before the two hours is up, and if we don't, we'll have to have our guest
01:00:21
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01:04:29
Iron Shop and Zion Radio. Welcome back, this is Chris Arnzen, if you just tuned us in, we have already had for one hour a fascinating conversation today with Dr.
01:04:41
Robert Bennett, who is the author of two books that are our topics today. One is,
01:04:48
I Am Not Afraid, and the one is Afraid, and this is all about the demon realm, demonic possession, and it has truly been a fascinating subject, and we are going to continue that for the next hour to come.
01:05:03
We would probably never run out of steam, even if we did this for eight, ten hours more, but we are allotted two hours today, so that's what we're going to deal with, and if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Dr.
01:05:18
Bennett, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.
01:05:25
Before I go to another listener question, Reverend Buzz, did you have a question? Well, actually, I do want to spend more time yielding to the listener questions, if there's that many waiting out there, because I want to make sure their questions are answered, but I just wanted to specify a little bit more about what
01:05:40
I was referring to when I said spooky. I think we have a tendency, because maybe it's the unfamiliarity with these things that we tend to be freaked out by it, and you know,
01:05:51
I remember, I like what you said, Dr. Bennett, about, you know, there can be oppression without, not necessarily possession, because, you know,
01:06:01
I've even, like, we lost a child years ago, and back in, this is back in actually 1987, and there were some weird things happening around our house at that time, and weird things like, you know, a faucet coming on when nobody was in the bathroom, and kind of stuff, and I like the way my wife dealt with that.
01:06:21
She just kind of looked at it like, is that it? And she went and turned it off, you know, it's not something that we have to be scared of, because in Christ we have authority.
01:06:31
Now, of course, Buzz leaves the water running every time he uses the bathroom here in the studio. Now, Chris is going to be telling all these secrets now, but anyway, could you explain a little bit about, well, first of all,
01:06:42
I'd like to hear a little bit more about our authority as believers. I understand what you said at the beginning, that it's really
01:06:48
Christ who's doing the exorcism, but yet, as his ambassadors, as his spokesmen in this world, he does use us.
01:06:56
So, uh, as we submit to his authority, we do exercise some degree of authority here on earth, and I would also like to hear a little bit more about some of the biblical texts dealing with this subject, because I'm sure they're of concern to a lot of our listeners also.
01:07:15
Sure, as far as the spookiness goes, and sometimes these things are pretty spooky. Maybe the water being left on isn't that big of a deal for us, but some people, of course, experience things that are far, far worse.
01:07:30
The second book has a number of real -life stories of the problems that people were dealing with, and some of them are quite drastic situations, but the truth is that we don't need to be afraid.
01:07:46
The devil is very good, though, at using the lies and the fear to control us, to prevent us from doing things that we know that we should be doing, and so this is a very common situation.
01:08:00
As believers, the authority that you would say we have, I would maybe even back off of that authority a little bit, and I don't think
01:08:08
I'm misunderstanding you. I think what you said is okay. I just want to kind of change the understanding just a little bit there, that rather than an authority recognizing who we are, that we are those who
01:08:24
Christ has called, who has justified by his blood, who has covered us in his righteousness.
01:08:34
You know, I spent a lot of time in the book talking about the understanding of baptism, of course, within our
01:08:40
Lutheran Church. We have this understanding that it's God who's actually doing the baptism.
01:08:46
Sure, the pastor speaks the words, but it's actually Jesus who's actually present and active there, and I spent a lot of time in that second book kind of helping people see that it's because of who they are that they don't need to fear these things, because they are in Jesus.
01:09:03
And so they can go to the devil, and one of my favorite Luther quotes of all time dealing with this particular topic is this.
01:09:11
Luther, he describes how Satan was coming to him and harassing him at the point of death, and he's telling
01:09:18
Luther, Luther, look what you've done to the church. You're destroying the church, speaking of the Roman Catholic Church.
01:09:25
You're a sinner. Look at all these horrible sins that you've done and spoken and fought in your life.
01:09:31
And Luther's response should be our response. His response is simply this. Devil, if it's true that I've committed more sins than a thousand worlds, so let it be.
01:09:44
I am baptized. Christ's death is far greater. Go bother somebody else.
01:09:50
And I think that's a little bit better than understanding my authority. It's more of an understanding of who
01:09:57
I am, what Christ has done, and as a result of that, anything you have to say is really meaningless.
01:10:04
Yeah, I want to pick up after I read a listener question about the spookiness aspect as well, but we have a listener who actually was a guest of mine perhaps eight months ago.
01:10:18
I'm not sure exactly how long ago it was, but by the way, folks, for those of you who don't know,
01:10:23
Iron Sharpens Iron is now this month celebrating its first anniversary on the air as far as our relaunching from Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
01:10:32
We started in 2006, but as far as here in Pennsylvania, June of 2015 was the relaunch date after a four -year absence from the airwaves when we left
01:10:46
New York. So just wanted to let you folks know that, and we thank
01:10:51
God that you are out there listening and helping us celebrate this first year anniversary just by letting us know that you love the program and that you're submitting questions regularly, and we thank
01:11:02
God for that. But as I was saying, this listener was a former guest. Her name is
01:11:07
Jennifer Nizza Holfacker, and I'm sure she doesn't mind me saying her full name because she was a guest and identified herself by name fully, and here is her question.
01:11:20
I was a psychic medium and have accepted Jesus as Lord of my life and follow
01:11:26
God in every way. Why do the entities that once bothered me on a regular basis still try to scare me from time to time?
01:11:37
That's a pretty frightening and spooky question there, Dr. Bennett. I think it's actually a pretty common question, not just dealing specifically with those who were mediums in the past, but those who were tormented in various ways or engaged in occult practices in the past.
01:11:57
Once again, I think we go back to that weakness point. The devil is always actively seeking to destroy those things of God, and so even for us as Christians, when we have times of weakness or at other times, sometimes we may not even recognize it's a time of weakness, but they do, and they come back and they pull their old games again.
01:12:21
One of the main points is that when those things return to us are simply to fall back once again and use words like I showed
01:12:29
Luther use, or simply be gone in the name of Jesus. You have no authority to be here.
01:12:36
I am a child of God. You have no say. Go bother somebody else, and this is actually quite helpful for many people who have these reoccurring things, and sometimes when they show up, every few years they'll have some instance occur, but the devil is always seeking to take advantage of us, always seeking to regain us if possible, and I think we just need to deal with them without fear and recognizing who we are and what that means in view of Christ, and these are some things that maybe there's no getting away with.
01:13:11
Maybe this is something that you'll face for many, many years in the future, but if you understand it properly, you understand that the devil may come back and attack you because of what you've done in the past.
01:13:25
One other point that I make, a strong point of dealing with our Lutheran theology, which actually this would have actually, or the
01:13:32
Lutheran theology is this understanding of absolution, this understanding that hearing that these particular sins have been covered over in the blood of Jesus, that they are forgiven in Jesus' name, and so when the devil comes back and plays these games, it's very good to say, you know, no, devil, these sins no longer exist.
01:13:56
Christ has covered them. Go bother somebody else once again. Now, returning to the spooky aspect, isn't it, obviously we don't want this to be so frightening and spooky a subject that we ignore it, but shouldn't it maintain in our minds a spookiness to keep us from dabbling in it, even in a playful way, the whole occultic realm, the whole, you know, concept of Ouija boards and, you know, seances that some professing
01:14:27
Christians might be involved as entertainment, not taking it seriously? Oh, absolutely.
01:14:34
You know, this is something that we don't want to be involved in at all, but we don't want to understand it as, we don't want to be fearful of this, because we want to have our strength in Jesus.
01:14:44
That's very different than dealing with the circumstance that just comes up in our lives, for who knows what reason, than it is for somebody who's actually involved in these things that are clearly condemned, especially whatever you're talking about, mediumship or Ouija boards and all that is a form of divination, trying to speak to the dead, and likewise, which are quite severely condemned by our
01:15:11
Lord. So these are things that we don't want to involve ourselves in, and indeed they are things that do open up that door again for Satan and his demons to return and to harass us and to cause these problems.
01:15:26
It's one thing to say, you have nothing more to do with me because I'm in Christ. It's another thing to say, come talk to me and let's work this out until I get afraid, and then
01:15:35
I'm going to try something else. Two completely different circumstances. Before I forget, before I move on to a listener question again,
01:15:45
I wanted to ask you, the story of Luther throwing the inkwell, the bottle of ink at Satan, is this folklore?
01:15:57
Is it apocryphal? And if he did do that, what do you think was actually occurring there?
01:16:04
Well, of course, if he did or didn't, there's a number of varying understandings about that, and I'll leave that to the
01:16:10
Luther scholars to determine. But what was he accomplishing if it was happening?
01:16:17
I think the Luther was doing what Luther always talked about doing when the devil or the demons were involved.
01:16:24
He was ridiculing the devil. Now, we've got to be careful when we talk about ridicule. Whenever Luther is talking about ridiculing the devil, he means in view of what
01:16:34
Jesus has done, not as an individual, you know, saying, haha, devil, or something like that. And so one thing you could take from the throwing of the ink,
01:16:42
I mean, what was Luther in the process of doing when he was throwing that ink? He was translating the
01:16:47
New Testament scriptures into the language of the Germans to have.
01:16:54
And so you can almost kind of, and I'm just talking here, but we'll leave it to the scholars to determine this for sure, but you can almost hear
01:17:01
Luther saying, okay, here, take this, take some of this ink that I'm using to write the word of God in that's going to destroy your kingdom here in Germany.
01:17:11
Yeah, amen. And we do have David in Ada, Ohio, or Ada, Ohio.
01:17:17
I don't know how to pronounce it. It's A -D -A. But David says, I remember a passage in Second Chronicles chapter 18, 19 through 22, the
01:17:29
Lord asked, who will deceive King Ahab of Israel so that he will attack and be killed at Ramoth in Gilead?
01:17:38
Some answered one way while others were saying something else. Then the spirit stepped forward, stood in front of the
01:17:46
Lord and said, I will deceive him. How? The Lord asked. The spirit answered,
01:17:52
I will go out and be a spirit that tells lies through the mouths of all of Ahab's prophets.
01:17:58
The Lord said, you will succeed in deceiving him. Go and do it. So the
01:18:04
Lord has put into the mouths of these prophets of yours, a spirit that makes them tell lies.
01:18:13
The Lord has spoken evil about you. How do we know the difference, or is there a difference, because God is in control of all, between demon possession of and or just a lying pastor, i .e.
01:18:29
the word of faith teachers and preachers? Yeah, that's one of those really difficult questions that, of course, to get into a deep understanding of this is really hidden in the
01:18:40
Word of God. We don't have a clear understanding. Luther gets into some of the understanding of the
01:18:48
Ascandio Dei, that hiddenness of God and the bondage of the will. And we're not talking about this particular topic, but talking about questions that haven't been answered by Scripture.
01:18:58
You know, he warns us that instead of coming up and making answers where Scripture is silent, just because they seem to be a rational answer based on the circumstances or something like that is something we should avoid.
01:19:13
It's okay to live with the paradoxes. But at the same time, Luther is very clearly understanding that if God is truly
01:19:22
God, nothing can happen apart from his...this
01:19:27
is where it gets difficult, the word you use here. It can be misunderstood, too.
01:19:33
But nothing happens apart from God and his sovereignty. Otherwise, he's not God.
01:19:39
We could just as well look at the book of Job, as the devil is causing all the havoc in Job's life, and yet the
01:19:48
Lord is allowing it. Why does the Lord allow these things? We don't know. I think that, once again, referring to Luther, because that's where my study has been on this topic of how he dealt with it within the
01:20:00
Lutheran background, is Luther's point on this is that the devil is
01:20:07
God's devil. In a sense, the devil is operating pure evil, not taking his orders from God in any way.
01:20:18
But nevertheless, the devil is God's devil to bring torment upon the thieves.
01:20:24
He writes in the Catechism, the large Catechism, how many times thieves are dealt with by other thieves, and things like that.
01:20:33
So this is kind of in that hiddenness of God. We've got a few glimpses into it, but we have to be very cautious that we don't start equating
01:20:42
God with this evil that we see in the world. It's much like Romans 8, this understanding that while there's many things that occur in this world, nevertheless,
01:20:53
God works to move them to his own cause. So while somebody else may intend evil by something, the
01:21:01
Lord knows how to use that for his own benefits. We have Jeff in Clinton Township, Michigan.
01:21:11
And I can tell you that half of Jeff's town, Clinton, is evil.
01:21:19
Jeff from Clinton Township, Michigan. My apologies to everybody in Clinton Township, Michigan.
01:21:27
I'm from Michigan, so my apologies too. Let's see, how does one in church leadership determine whether a professing believer is, we already went through the mentally ill aspect,
01:21:42
Jeff, so the last two that he mentions are demonically oppressed versus demonically possessed.
01:21:51
And if determined to be possessed by a demon, what steps are taken by the leadership?
01:21:59
Yeah, I touched on this earlier. I'll go back and try to be a little clearer related to it.
01:22:05
The difficult answer is, many times, you simply are unable to know.
01:22:12
We want nice, clean categories. We want to say, well, obviously this is demon possession, or this is only demon oppression, or whatever the case is.
01:22:22
I think the way we handle these circumstances, unless it becomes very obvious after that, is we handle them in the same way.
01:22:31
We didn't spend too much time on the second book yet of how we actually get into how particular cases were dealt with, but the book
01:22:41
Afraid actually has many cases where it actually gets into quite fine details of how pastors and the church have dealt specifically with individuals and how their life has turned around as a result.
01:22:54
Well, I'm on Monday through Friday, two hours a day, so you've got plenty of opportunities to come back. But just to the point,
01:23:03
I think that we have to stop compartmentalizing things. I mean, this is a point
01:23:08
I haven't made yet, but it's probably worth making. The one thing we have to recognize is that everything that occurs to us, whether it's mental or physical, if we stub our toes, it's simply a symptom.
01:23:24
It's a symptom of sin. Because of sin, there's death, and we're all going to die, and as a result of sin, everything is a spiritual condition.
01:23:35
But at the same time, the Lord provides means to deal with these conditions.
01:23:41
So it's not just, we'll pray and everything will be fine. The Lord provides doctors and nurses and mental health facilities, and the list goes on and on and on.
01:23:49
You know, police, military, all these things are to deal with these spiritual circumstances that are related to sin.
01:23:57
We divide them up into physical and mental and spiritual, but at the base of it all, it's all a spiritual thing.
01:24:05
So when we have somebody who's suffering from mental illness, or maybe is hearing things in their home, or maybe even more severe circumstances, we need to deal with them in the sense that the
01:24:19
Lord is here providing for them. We need to spend a long time, many times the problem is simply sitting down with them and unraveling the lies that they tell themselves and the lies that the devil has told them, and then getting them to the point where they recognize who they are, and then the simple words will be gone in the name of Jesus.
01:24:40
In my book, I recognize a number of hymns that are exorcistic in nature.
01:24:46
We already touched on the fact that the worship service is exorcistic in nature, but even for somebody who we identify as demon -possessed, it really doesn't change too much at that point.
01:24:59
Really, then it's more of a focus, rather than being focused on a home or something like that.
01:25:06
It becomes very focused on the individual. But those are, once again, really rare circumstances.
01:25:11
Most of the time, it's going to be some type of oppression that we see.
01:25:17
And I'll let Jeff ask one more question here. He says, Is there one common occurrence that has manifested in all demon -possessed people?
01:25:28
If there is, I don't think I could put my finger on it, once again.
01:25:33
Maybe you wouldn't want to put your finger on it. That's true, too. Once again, I think that we need to be more aware of the spiritual realities that face us.
01:25:44
For instance, Paul in Ephesians 6, he tells us that the struggle isn't against flesh and blood.
01:25:52
Paul is very clear in his epistle there, that there is this evil force that's out there and causing all these problems in the world.
01:26:03
And so I think, simply, if the Church begins to recognize, once again, that which we already knew, that which we've lost in the last 50 to 100 years, we simply start to recognize this again and teach people, not all the time, but when a particular evangelical lectionary or a particular gospel reading comes up and it deals with this topic, deal with it as if it's a reality, rather than picking something else in the text so we don't have to talk about that.
01:26:31
If we start doing those things, I think that a lot of these problems will simply go away.
01:26:37
Most of the problem is we haven't been taught, we haven't been catechized on these positions by the
01:26:42
Church, and so people in our society go out looking for the answers in all the wrong places.
01:26:48
And I think that's something we have to be very cautious about. You know, I want to also announce to our listeners that our guest,
01:26:55
Dr. Robert Bennett, revealed in the course of this interview that he is a prophet because, unbeknownst to him, my co -host,
01:27:04
Rev. Buzz Taylor, just yesterday, stubbed his toe and very seriously stubbed his toe to the point where he's got to go to a doctor.
01:27:16
Well, I don't think it's that bad today. Buzz, it's just a symptom that you're going to die someday. Well, I love that I have another opportunity to point out it's because of his sin.
01:27:27
That's what I like. That was the big shock to me, was that original sin, not actual sin. The sin was
01:27:34
I wasn't looking where I was going. And let's see, we have
01:27:40
Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York. Do you think that false teachers in the
01:27:46
Charismatic and Word of Faith movements are responsible for some of these demonic manifestations?
01:27:54
You know, that's a very interesting question because let me ask you something in regard to that very question.
01:28:01
Years ago, I got a call from a general manager of the
01:28:06
Christian station I worked at in the 90s, and he said,
01:28:12
Chris, Rodney Howard Brown is coming to Long Island to preach at a church that's near where you live, and they want to spend a lot of money on advertising on this station.
01:28:29
I want to go see him with my own eyes and hear him with my own ears because I want to separate the rumor from fact.
01:28:37
So he said, will you come with me? And I went to this Pentecostal church or Charismatic church.
01:28:43
There's probably a better way to define it because I don't think it's in a mainline Pentecostal denomination.
01:28:49
And Rodney Howard Brown did something very interesting. He kept telling people that they, and he was speaking to a room filled with probably a thousand people, not knowing, obviously, whether or not every person in that room was a
01:29:09
Christian. He couldn't have known that, obviously. And he is speaking to everybody. He's just saying, stop being afraid of demons.
01:29:18
And interestingly, as a Charismatic, he was making fun of other
01:29:23
Charismatics being demon -phobic. And he said, I was preaching at a church one day, and the elders gathered around me before I went out to the pulpit to preach, and they were praying the demons out of the church building.
01:29:39
And I said, what are you doing that for? I just walk into the room, and the demons scatter. I don't need any prayer for demons to leave any place.
01:29:47
And he was putting everybody or attempting to put everybody at ease before this bizarre manifestation of laughter started to erupt in him and the band and the church and all these people in the audience.
01:30:05
And to me, it was like he was either consciously or unconsciously being used of Satan to put people at ease to open themselves up to demonic activity.
01:30:18
Because obviously, in a place that large, which also has a really false and heretical gospel being taught there, there's going to be many non -believers, unregenerate people in that room.
01:30:32
Am I of place thinking that, or what are your thoughts on that? No, I think you're right on dealing with just the topic of false theology, not related to any particular denomination, just dealing with it across the board, wherever it's coming from.
01:30:47
False theology is always of the devil. It robs people of faith. It takes that promise that Christ has provided on the cross in his resurrection, and it robs it from the people.
01:31:01
And it puts various hindrances before them, or it leads them in many ways that you're not even really able to recognize at first, but it leads you into positions that are anti -Christian.
01:31:14
And for instance, the example that you have, the mere fact that the man would walk in, and when I'm here, the demons run, he's really putting himself in the place of Christ at that point.
01:31:23
Remember the point we made that Christ is the only exorcist? At that point, he's made himself Christ, you know, that he has this power.
01:31:31
And of course, anyone who's going to claim that, especially coming out of any type of a Christian background, or any background for that member, that member, that matter, matter, sorry, easy for you to say,
01:31:43
I had a half a cough going there. Anybody who puts himself in that position is already against Christ, already has robbed those who are listening to them of the pure gospel, of the pure faith that can be counted on, because it's been revealed by our
01:32:00
Lord. And so any false theology, anything that's going to mislead is always going to be satanic in nature.
01:32:07
While it may not be the aim of the person with the theology, maybe they're just wrong in their theology, you know, just because they haven't learned properly, or maybe they're purposely doing it.
01:32:17
Nevertheless, wherever we find falsehood, wherever we find lies, there we find
01:32:22
Satan. Yeah. So I'm assuming your answer then to Tyler is yes, you do think that false teachers and the charismatic and word of faith movements are responsible for some of these demonic manifestations.
01:32:33
And obviously, I don't believe Tyler was trying to broad brush with all charismatics, because some of my some of my dearest friends are charismatic, and they've been on this program.
01:32:43
And some of her some of them even share my reformed theological background. But yeah,
01:32:48
I know some as well, and I would agree with you there. That's why we have to be cautious. Right. I think he did. He did that by putting that psalm in there.
01:32:56
And that's why I want to kind of take it out in a little broader stream. Anyone who's teaching false theology, whether in the most conservative church or whatever variety of church you might find them in, false theology robs people of faith, it robs them of the gospel.
01:33:13
All right, we have to go to our final break. And this is your last opportunity to send us an email if you'd like to ask a question of our guest,
01:33:20
Dr. Robert Bennett. Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.
01:33:27
Don't go away. We'll be right back with our discussion on demon possession. I'm James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries.
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01:37:21
Welcome back, this is Chris Arnzin, and if you've been listening or you just tuned us in, actually we have been interviewing for the last 90 minutes our guest
01:37:29
Dr. Robert Bennett, and we've been talking about the demonic realm. He has two books on this subject right now, with a third to be expected in a year or so.
01:37:40
The first is I Am Not Afraid, Demon Possession, and Spiritual Warfare. The second is Afraid, Demon Possession and Spiritual Warfare in America.
01:37:50
If you'd like to join us on the air, we've got about 25 minutes left to the program, so you can email us at chrisarnzin at gmail .com,
01:37:58
chrisarnzin at gmail .com. And by the way, everybody up till now who has written with a question is receiving a free copy of one of those two books, and if we run out of those copies today, we will send you a
01:38:13
New American Standard Bible compliments of the publishers of the NASB who sponsor this program.
01:38:19
We do have Susan in Newville, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, is it true that some demoniacs or people who have been possessed by demons have supernatural strength?
01:38:36
And if so, is this proof that there is something supernatural going on when a young, slightly built woman, for instance, has the strength of ten men and is tossing adults around a room?
01:38:49
Does this really occur, and what's your explanation? I've not seen it personally, but I've talked to many people who have.
01:38:58
I think that would be one of the obvious traditional signs that have been attributed to demon possession over the years, and so I wouldn't say you could just say as a matter of fact, yes, that is, but if that's occurring,
01:39:13
I think that's a pretty good indication. You know, one person's idea of super strength and another's might be very different, but if it's, you know, able to throw ten men around and stuff, obviously there's something going on there, and that would fit with the traditional understanding of possession.
01:39:30
Yeah, that would be beyond adrenaline if you're having a very tiny girl doing that,
01:39:35
I would assume. Right. And that leads me to a couple of other questions of my own in that regard.
01:39:43
Is it just Hollywood, or do we have people who are demon -possessed speaking languages that they had never known before, never were taught, and so on?
01:39:55
I'm assuming that if these are real entities inhabiting a person, that that would be quite a logical thing that could happen.
01:40:05
Yeah, once again, I've not seen that particular thing occur in my own research.
01:40:12
However, once again, it is something that I think we could take as a pretty strong understanding of how this has progressed through the years, through various traditions along the way.
01:40:27
I've heard of this many times. I would expect, once again, if the person is doing anything that they're really incapable of doing, that it should be suspect.
01:40:40
And one of the things that I thought of asking you while Buzz was bringing up the faucets being turned on and so on, this would not be involving demoniacs or demon -possessed people, but demons.
01:40:53
Can demons move physical objects? Can they, as in The Exorcist, move a bed up and down?
01:41:00
And the demons that were roaming around Buzz's house, were they turning on faucets? Can they do that?
01:41:05
They actually can. A number of cases I've been involved with, it's been reported by people that are trustworthy that these things have occurred.
01:41:17
And so yes, it's possible, but it's actually one of the things that if it's occurring in someone's home, they should be speaking to their pastors about, or the leaders in their church about.
01:41:27
One point on that, of course whenever I have interviews on this topic, I get a lot of correspondence and stuff from individuals.
01:41:36
I only deal with pastors who are inquiring about questions, most of the time
01:41:43
I'm out of the country and traveling, so I don't spend time on individual cases unrelated to those that I would be attached to as part of being a pastor and the flock that the
01:41:53
Lord has provided. But I do help pastors out quite a bit who are having issues and they want to ask questions and stuff.
01:42:00
So the reports that we sometimes hear, I'm from Amityville, Long Island, by the way, just like Rev.
01:42:08
David Anglin of St. Paul's Lutheran Church, who had the question earlier, where the infamous
01:42:15
Amityville Horror House is. The family that was murdered there included a very close friend of mine from the earlier grades of grammar school,
01:42:27
Mark DeFeo, his oldest brother murdered his parents and all his siblings in that house.
01:42:34
Then you had George Lutz and his wife moved in and wrote the best -selling book,
01:42:41
The Amityville Horror, that became probably, I don't know, 25 movies by now. I don't know how many
01:42:46
Amityville Horror sequels. And I remember dismissing it initially as just a hoax because people have lived in that house ever since the
01:42:57
Lutzes moved out without any consequence. But when I was watching a documentary not long ago with the stepson of George Lutz, who claims that he always hated his stepfather, who's now deceased, he never liked him, and he stayed in the shadows all of these years, never agreed to an interview until very recently, he said that his stepfather was involved in the occult.
01:43:32
And so what you just said about objects moving and so on,
01:43:38
I guess what you're saying is there's a possibility that it wasn't because of the house being possessed in any way, but Mr.
01:43:46
Lutz and his involvement with the occult could have had weird things happening and objects moving around,
01:43:53
I'm assuming. Yeah, the topic of haunted houses is somewhat difficult to me. Why would a demon hang out in a house and things like that?
01:44:01
I think it's more accustomed to the devil comes in and provides answers when we're looking for them.
01:44:10
And so, for instance, in my book I have a occurrence of a particular house where the family thinks there's two children, ghosts, running around the house and it led them down a very bad path.
01:44:23
But the reason I thought that is two children had died and a house had burned down on the property beforehand. Now, were the ghosts of those children causing them problems?
01:44:33
No, they weren't. But nevertheless, because there was this history, the devil was able to kind of take off on this point and lead them down the road of a lie.
01:44:45
But nevertheless, you know, I don't believe in ghosts. That's one thing I haven't stated here clearly. I do not believe in ghosts.
01:44:51
These things, when they occur, are really of three categories for me. They're mental illness, they are imagination, or they're demonic.
01:45:03
But I don't believe in ghosts or spirits or anything like that. I think Scripture is pretty clear on that point.
01:45:10
It pointed once for a man to die, then the judgment, and likewise. So when we talk about haunted houses, I wouldn't say that there are no such things.
01:45:17
However, there are houses where the devil or the demons are causing oppression and difficulties for those living there.
01:45:25
Are you using the word ghost strictly in reference to the specter of the departed?
01:45:32
Right. That one has died and now is continuing to function here on this earth.
01:45:39
Right, okay. And I know a demon who inhabits my house for about two hours every day, his name is
01:45:45
Reverend Buzz Taylor. Here we go again. Well, actually, we do have another listener here.
01:45:55
We have Harrison in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. He asks, could you even attribute some of these
01:46:05
Marian apparitions that some superstitious Roman Catholics clamor after as being a demonic manifestation?
01:46:16
Even many traditionalist Roman Catholics condemn the apparition at Magigoria while affirming in their minds
01:46:24
Fatima to be real. Do you have any opinion on this? I would think that could easily be a demonic manifestation, but what's your thoughts on that?
01:46:35
No, in line with you there, I would expect that most of the time they would be. These are difficult subjects to talk about with our
01:46:43
Catholic brothers and sisters. I just gave a long talk in Spain on the topic of the cult of the saints and kind of the history of where it came from and its roots that are tied to traditional religions and animism and so forth.
01:46:59
I think the test that we always have, of course, in these circumstances, we can't say that it's not a possibility, but we have to ask why it's occurring.
01:47:08
And if that which is occurring as result of it is leading to another gospel, something that Scripture is very clear to us, the angel is always, or the devil likes to impersonate an angel of light and so do his followers do so.
01:47:24
So I think we really have to question any of these extra appearances, whether it be
01:47:29
Mary or the saints or those who believe their dead husband is coming to talk to them in the evenings.
01:47:36
I think we have to be very, very cautious. Any of these things be very, very discerning about what is being said.
01:47:44
And I tell people who are having the things with family members coming to us, something like that, it's very difficult for them to sometimes recognize that this might be demonic.
01:47:55
I tell them, well, talk to them about Jesus and see how it goes. And generally things don't go so well when they do that.
01:48:02
Yeah. Great, great, great. What about people, and of course I realize the area of deception, and as you said also, they may be deceived themselves or imagination, but you also hear stories about, well,
01:48:16
Jesus comes to me every morning while I'm shaving and talks to me about the events of the day and things like that.
01:48:23
What about those kinds of things? Well, I think once again, we have to be very cautious there.
01:48:29
We know that our Lord has revealed that which is necessary already for us in the
01:48:35
Word. And whenever we're looking for extra -biblical proof, we're already at that point moving past where the
01:48:43
Lord would want us to be. And so once again, we can't say that the
01:48:48
Lord wanted to show himself to someone, like for instance, within Islam in the
01:48:55
Middle East, you have stories of a divine Jesus -like figure who comes to them in their dream, but the point is, he's always pointing them to the
01:49:04
Church. He isn't giving them new revelations, he's not talking to them about shaving. He's saying, that's where the truth is, go there.
01:49:12
And so I think we need to be really cautious about these things, and the Lord is the
01:49:18
Lord of all of creation, and I wouldn't expect him to be there for that, and at that point we're probably dealing with something that's not
01:49:28
Christian. But didn't the Apostle Paul say that Christ appeared to him last of all?
01:49:34
I mean, wouldn't that kind of settle the issue, that he's not appearing on an ongoing basis to people?
01:49:41
Oh sure, you know, there's a couple ways to take that, obviously. Last of all, or does that mean the last time ever, ever?
01:49:48
Well he's returning, we know that. Right, absolutely. But what I'm saying is, we have to be cautious with this, and I would not generally accept any appearance that we would have in this life.
01:50:01
I think this would be a very, very strange thing, except for his final appearance at the last day.
01:50:07
But like I said, we just have to be cautious, because we have these stories coming out of Islamic countries, and things like that, where it appears to be not a physical presence, but more of this dream of go to the
01:50:20
Church type of thing, and so we just have to watch with that. But generally myself, I wouldn't accept these stories as being legitimate stories.
01:50:28
If anything, I would accept them under the three points I made earlier, imagination, mental illness, or demonic.
01:50:34
You know, we definitely have to have you back on to discuss this, because we're running out of time. I'm going to let,
01:50:40
I'm going to read just one more question, that actually two different people asked in slightly different ways.
01:50:49
But Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, and Tyler again in Mastic Beach, Long Island, in reference to the
01:50:57
Deliverance Ministries, charismatic and Pentecostal groups that have exorcisms, some of them every time they meet, even with people that are apparently members in good standing of the
01:51:12
Church. Have you ever heard of a saying that there is a spirit of anger and fear, and you could go on and on with every different mood or sin, that people will blame a specific demon for each and every thing that they may have that is a sinful attribute?
01:51:38
Yeah, you know, that's one thing we haven't really talked much about is how these things function. And one of, you know, two of the major reasons behind most of the problems we face aren't really the devil.
01:51:50
These may be the underlying case. We still have the world, the sinfulness of the world, the problems of the world, most specifically our own flesh.
01:51:58
Even if the devil's not there, we can do the most horrific things just as a result of that original sin that clings to us in this life.
01:52:09
As far as the Deliverance Ministries go, of all these various spirits, while maybe it's possible that a devil would focus on one or two areas of a particular person's sin,
01:52:22
I think that's very different than saying somebody has a sin, a spirit of anger, or a spirit of drunkenness, or whatever the case is.
01:52:32
So I think just kind of categorizing the devil in that way is really not helpful.
01:52:39
Now, can he exaggerate some of the tendencies we have?
01:52:45
Sure. Exacerbate? Is that the word? Yeah, a friend of mine once referred to, he believes there's a demon of smoking, and I thought,
01:52:52
I wonder what that demon did all those thousands of years before smoking was invented? Making sausages.
01:53:00
Well, I want you, since we only have six minutes left, I want you to unburden your heart, to leave our listeners with what you most want etched in their hearts and minds before they leave the program today, and I certainly want you to come back as soon as you can to continue this discussion as well as other discussions that we had scheduled you for already in the future.
01:53:23
Sure, and maybe some of this is just going back to the points that I've made. We who are in Christ are just that.
01:53:32
We are in Christ. The devil can do everything he can to cause us to fear, to tell us lies that are not true, and we simply need to go back to the
01:53:42
Word of God and look for the real answers. There are many answers in this world that are appealing to us in our sinful condition, but there's only the answer we have from the revealed
01:53:53
Word of God as found in the Holy Scriptures that we can point to, and when we have these problems, we simply are to call upon the one who is the only exorcist, the one who has the power over all things, and the one who can remove the devil with a simple word rather than investigating and carrying out practices that we really shouldn't be involved in.
01:54:14
Amen, and I want to make sure I give your website out before we run out of time. It's drrobertbennettphd .com.
01:54:24
That's D -R -R -O -B -E -N -N -T, and there's two T's at the end of Bennett, P -H -D,
01:54:31
P as in Peter, H as in Harry, D as in David, dot com, and we also want to thank so much our friends at Concordia House Publishing for providing these books, or Concordia Publishing House.
01:54:47
Did I mess it up again? I think I did. Concordia Publishing House, and their website is
01:54:54
C -P -H -dot -O -R -G, C -P -H -dot -O -R -G for Concordia Publishing House.
01:55:02
That's why it's important to say it in the right order, C -P -H -dot -O -R -G. I want to also thank our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service in Carlisle, Pennsylvania for shipping out all of these books to our winners, and as I said, each and every one of you that sent in questions today are getting a free copy of one of these books, and Pastor David Anglin in Amityville, Long Island emailed me wanting to make sure he is getting one.
01:55:32
Yes, you are, brother. You'll be getting one of these books, and I will, in fact,
01:55:38
I think our guest even said that I can pass on his contact information to Pastor Anglin, correct?
01:55:45
That's correct. One additional thing, to shortcut the website, you can also just go www .afraidbook
01:55:53
.com. That's a short way in. Oh yeah, that's a lot easier to remember. Afraidbook .com.
01:56:00
Both books are also available on Amazon. Great.
01:56:06
Well, since we do have three minutes left, we have a question from B .B.
01:56:15
in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. B .B. wants to know, do you believe that any truly regenerate born -again believer can be demon -possessed?
01:56:26
That's not a three -minute question. Well, a
01:56:33
Calvinist would say that they could not be possessed, they could be oppressed.
01:56:40
I think there's a good biblical exegetical argument to be made for that point. However, I would worry about making it a very dogmatic way, because what does that say of a confessing
01:56:52
Christian who we find in this particular position? Does that mean we have to deny that they have any faith?
01:57:00
I know in the history, at least within the Lutheran Church, we have Martin Luther describing what he understands to be confessing
01:57:08
Christians dealing with this issue, and sometimes who knows if it's possession or oppression. So I think generally that's a safe statement that we should not expect it, but I wouldn't want to be too dogmatic on it, because we do have to account if we do have somebody who's a confessing
01:57:24
Christian dealing with this issue, that we just don't write them off as a unbeliever or a heathen or something like that.
01:57:30
Yes, but obviously I think you would agree it's much more important that a person becomes a
01:57:36
Christian now, regardless of what they thought they were in the past. Absolutely.
01:57:42
The only safety is in Jesus. Amen. And salvation is not just a past experience, it's a present reality.
01:57:51
Absolutely. And an eternal one at that. And we have another quick question from Bob in White Plains, New York, who wants to know if Luther thought he was demon -possessed during those initial years before starting the
01:58:07
Reformation because he was tormented so much. No, I have no indication of that whatsoever.
01:58:13
Of course, he writes many times about how the devil harassed him and things like that, some of those examples
01:58:19
I used earlier, but there's no account at all that Luther ever considered himself to be possessed. Well, once again,
01:58:26
I just want to thank you so much for being a guest. This was a joy, this was fascinating.
01:58:32
It's been two hours already. Yeah, I can't believe it. And we may have come close to either breaking a record or matching it as far as the number of listeners who have written, because we still have more that we could not get to, unfortunately, but we will,
01:58:48
God willing, the next time we have Dr. Robert Bennett on the program. So just remember,
01:58:55
AfraidBook .com, AfraidBook .com, and Dr.
01:59:02
Robert Bennett with two Ts, Phd .com, Dr. Robert Bennett with two
01:59:08
Ts, Phd .com. Thank you so much. I want to thank everybody for listening, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far, far greater
01:59:21
Savior than you are a sinner. We look forward to hearing from you and your questions for our guests tomorrow on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.