Demon Possessed Surveys

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Welcome to No Compromise. Radio, radio-free Europe.

Pastor Steve Cooley. It is totally free, and I'm just happy to be here along with my sidekick, Father Guido Sarducci.

Baseball has been very good to me.

No, that's the wrong guy. But you know, right show.

Garrett Morris. Steve and I, for years, we've known each other for over 20 years. We always laugh about bad Playhouse on the original Saturday Night Live. Extremely bad. Quite bad. We see some dopey thing going on in evangelicalism.

Quite bad. Excessively bad. Steve, anything new with your life that, you know, this is kind of like a family. We get to know each other, and we feel like we're part of a family together, and you're up to what, 17 grandkids now?

I thought you were going to say you're up to what, 1 ,700 pounds?

17 kilo weight gain. No.

No, just, you know, four grandkids. I did post a very entertaining video. I want you to see, of Autumn chug-a-lugging a Frappuccino. It's pretty, I mean, she is not going to let go of that straw, and it's just like, can she really do that?

She's just over a year, and boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

Steve, you know exactly what I'm going to say now. Burbank, California, brand new Starbucks, 21 years ago or so, 2019. Take Haley over there, my firstborn. And it was, to us, I know Starbucks were, you know, they opened earlier than that, but this was the first one around LA.

There's one over on Ventura Boulevard, I think, in Pasadena, but this is the first one close to me. We went, we got the Frappuccinos. Haley just starts guzzling it, same thing like Autumn, I'm sure, and then she can't even talk, really, and she just smiles, and I yike Frappuccinos.

I yike them. I like them.

You have $5 drinks? Who wouldn't? Sure. Just chock full of sugar and good stuff.

Satan, Demon Possession, and a Survey of American Belief

Steve, I saw an article by Joe Carter, and he talks about a survey. Joe Carter, I think he was a wide receiver for the Minnesota Vikings.

No, he played outfield for the Minnesota, or the Montreal Expos. Oh, did he? Yeah, Joe Carter. Was he good? Power hitter, yeah. I think he also maybe Cleveland Indians. Yeah, he was very good.

Majority of Americans believe in the existence of Satan and demon possession. And so today we're going to talk about Americans' belief in Satan and demon possession. I think it's kind of a spicy topic, don't you?

Perfect for No Compromise. Very spicy. Okay, so it says here, the story, there's a new survey that they've done. The latest YouGov research, Y-O-U-G-O-V, I think if you type in Y-O-U in your internet search bar, you're going to get YouTube probably.

I would be fairly certain.

But YouGov is a government by the people, for the people, and for you. It's an army of one. Sure it is. Yes. YouGov research has found that more than half of Americans, that is 57%, believe in the existence of a devil, and a slight majority, 51%, believe in possession by evil spirits.

What do you think's up with that? Is it the supernatural? Is it all the Conjurer kind of movies and Freddy Krueger's or something? And zombies.

I mean, I think there's a certain desire for that, but I think also that people just want to believe that they know that evil exists, and I think they want to blame it on somebody else. I think that's why they want to do it, you know?

Steve, I'm sure you watched, probably with your family, at least if you were like me, you did. We grew up the same time, we're the same age. Flip Wilson. The devil made me do it. My folks loved it. The devil made me buy that dress.

Yeah, they loved Flip Wilson. How was it that I was, you know, eight years old or something, and I can remember Flip Wilson and him dressing up in drag? Geraldine. Yeah. Yeah. Now what was that all about?

I think that brought in the demise of America morality on television. I don't think so. You don't think so? No, I don't think it was Flip.

I don't think it was Flip. Maybe it was Rowan and Martin's laugh-in? I don't know. You know, could have been all in the family, could have been Maud, could have been a lot of things.

It says here, regardless of religious identity, levels of belief top 50 except for Jews who theologically reject the idea of a sentient Satan.

That doesn't really surprise me either. I mean, I find most Jews are not, I've known many Jews, most of them are not religious at all.

Steve, I'd say a lot of Jews that I know don't believe in a supernatural being. That's right.

Yeah, that's what I mean by they're not religious at all. And I think that's kind of, a lot of it has to do with the Holocaust and other things. You know, how could God let that happen and whatnot? Right.

Speaking of which, because I just was watching some of the Nuremberg trial stuff on video, Steve, I always found it fascinating that when I read Elie Wiesel's book, Night, about his time in the concentration camps and just his despair and his, how could God exist and who is God?

And I have to reject the idea of God because I know he, if he was alive, could control everything. To read Elie Wiesel's book, Night, and then I read Corrie Ten Boom's Hiding Place. And the same horrible things happened to her, but she believes in this God who, yet he slays me.

I'm still going to trust in him. What a dramatic difference to read those two books, one denying God and the other affirming him, even though she's getting the...

Similar experience. I think we call that juxtaposition, you know.

You should see Steve's face right now and his arm movements.

Compare and contrast, you know, Elie Wiesel with Corrie Ten Boom.

Born-again Christians are the most likely to believe in both the devil 86 and possession 72%. So how do we get born-again Christians who believe in less than, you know, less than a hundred percent than Satan?

Well, look, I mean, when you start talking to born-again Christians or these surveys and you say, well, what percentage of born-again Christians believe the Bible? You won't even get 86%, you know? I mean, it's going to be like, most of them believe it.

They think it's a good book for guidance or whatever, but they don't really believe it's the literal word of God. Because people don't even understand what born-again means.

When he came to the other side, into the country of the Gerardines, two men who were demon-possessed met him as they were coming out of the tombs. They were extremely violent, so much so that no one could pass by that way.

And they cried out, what business do we have with each other, son of God? I think I probably believe in...

I probably believe in that too. But I was having a discussion with somebody, and I don't want to go deep into this, but I was having a discussion with somebody on Facebook. And whenever I said, this person is of another religion, but whenever I explained a verse in context, their response was basically, well, that's not what I believe.

And so I think you could even look at something like that and people, the 14%, was it, who don't believe it, would just go, well, that's not what I believe. And for them, it's perfectly consistent to be a born-again Christian and yet not believe.

Big parts of the Bible. That's just fine. And so we're back to, I don't know if it's Christian Smith, the sociologist, now Roman Catholic, came up with Sheila-ism, you know, the lady Sheila, she just picks and chooses whatever she wants.

And that's how people, you know, the Bible is a nice guide and it's good when I agree with it. And when I don't, well, I just kind of ignore it. It's not really bad. It's just not for me. It's, you know, if you just think of the Bible as like a really, a pretty good smorgasbord, what is it, smorgasbord, you know, where you like some of the food and some of it you look at it and you just go, oh, that's been there a long time.

That's kind of nasty looking. I don't want any of that. So, you know, that's out of date.

Steve, do you think that most evangelicals consider, the ones that believe in Satan, I guess we have to say that too, out of the 86 of the people who are born again, according to the YouGov research, have to be precise now.

Do you think they believe that Satan is perfectly opposite of God? So God is perfectly holy, Satan is perfectly evil, God is perfectly, you know, patient and Satan is perfectly ferocious, you know, he's so fierce.

He's impatient. Yeah, I know.

They think he's omnipresent, too. They think he's all-powerful. Yeah, I think their view would be more, you know, the yin and the yang, what's the religion over there? Taoism. Yeah, the exact opposite.

I mean, you could almost think of it as a Star Wars theology, you know, there's the force and it needs to be brought into balance.

Now according to this research here, Steve, Republicans are more likely to believe in the devil than are Democrats, 65 to 55.

That doesn't surprise me at all, because we have Democrats in power right now. Oh, sorry. You know, those numbers were exactly the opposite, though, when George W. Bush was president.

And you should have seen the numbers while Ronald Reagan was the president. Oh, yeah.

Eighty percent of Democrats thought there was a devil and only 14 percent of...

Jesus Confronts Unbelief and Demonic Accusations

They answered and said to Jesus, Abraham is our father. Jesus said to them, if you're Abraham's children, do the deeds of Abraham. John chapter 8. You are doing the deeds, Jesus said, of your father, the devil.

They said to him, we were not born of fornication like you, Jesus. We have one father, God. And then the words of Jesus. Don't you love how Jesus responds to some of these guys?

In love, you know, and just in peace and just... He's just wanting to diffuse the whole situation.

What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?

As I walk on through troubled times.

Jesus said to them, if God were your father, you would love me, for I proceeded forth and have come from God, for I have not even come on my own initiative, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I'm saying?

It is because you cannot hear my word. You are of your father, the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there's no truth in him.

And then doesn't say, now come and follow me.

Oh, come on. Well, after he gets done saying a few of these things, the Jews answered and said to him. Now, see, they believe in possession. These Jews do. Not modern-day Jews because they're just more secular.

It's more an ethnic deal than religious. Do we not say rightly that you are a Samaritan and have a demon? Jesus, you're demon-possessed. Jesus then goes on to say, I don't seek my own glory. If you keep my word, you'll never see death.

Now we know you have a demon.

They were so loving towards him, you know.

I didn't know if they were saying you have a demon or you have edema. No. Subdural hematoma. Okay. Next. Black, 72%, and Hispanic, 60%, Americans. I'm reading exactly here. That's just not the right way to read it, but that's what they wrote.

Are more likely than whites, 54%, to believe Satan is real?

Well, you know, I think it gets back to that whole, if you're an unbeliever, because I think there are a larger percentage of people in, for example, the African-American community that would consider themselves Christians than even in the white community.

I mean, I could be wrong. I don't know if they break it down along those lines. But, and, you know, certainly Roman Catholics, a high percentage of Latinos, Hispanics, would be Roman Catholic. And so I think they're more prone to believe in not only God, not only in Jesus Christ, but also in Satan.

It says here, Steve, I don't know if this is related. It says the college educated. I went to college. For a long time. Like for decades. Yeah, let's see. I went to University of Nebraska, Cal State Long Beach.

I bet you didn't know that, did you? No. Just for like two semesters. You're a 49er. You've got that right. But I never graduated. And, let's see, Master's Seminary and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

The Southern Baptist.

Well, I mean, it only took me, let's see, how long to get my college degree? I guess that would be 20 when I carry the three. Carry the three.

If you knew what a three factorial was, you'd probably add that in, too. Yes, I would. Well, actually, that would be six. Yeah. You know that. Okay. College educated, and those with less than a high school education, are least likely to believe 48 and 49 percent, while high school grads, those with some college, and post-graduates are most likely to believe 63, 58, 51.

And so, here's something that's an honest question, Steve, and I have some insight, but I want to get yours first. To me, the dumbing down of Christianity from the pulpits is directly related to, well, if you've got a higher education, you are more likely to believe in science versus the Bible.

In other words, the more educated a person is, they seem to be less interested in who God is, but I think it's because they've got a, well, of course, sin, but I think some of it is they have a bad education of Christianity.

It's a watered-down Christianity that cannot withstand the attacks of evolution, psychology, science, rationale, the Enlightenment, or anything else.

So what you're saying, let me see if I have it right. Then, you're saying that there's kind of a presumption that if you're a Christian, you're stupid? Is that what you're saying?

Well, yeah, I think that's the inference here. If you're stupid, you're more likely to believe. It's a blind jump of faith.

You know what I always love about that? I'm going, oh, yeah, you know, Christians are stupid. And all these questions that you're bringing up, no one's ever thought about it. I mean, it's not like we, I guess I'll have to go consult the imbeciles of the past.

Oh, I don't know. B .B. Warfield, Jonathan Edwards. I mean, all these guys who are intellectual lightweights, I'm sure you're very familiar with their writings, and you could just flay them wide open because they're so foolish.

Steve, it, of course, if you are more educated, you probably have been exposed to more lies, so you can assuage your conscience at nighttime and during the day with, I don't know, Hitchens-like mentality, right?

If you're just a junior high school student, you don't really know how to do that. And I understand how sin invades and pervades throughout the system and the mind and everything. But intellectually, I'm after a Christianity that can withstand these attacks.

What Spurgeon say about, you know, defend the Bible, I just as soon defend a lion.

Right, and why not just let the lion out of the cage and he can defend himself, which is true, right? The Word of God is able to defend itself, no matter what the so-called intellectuals of our day may think.

I think when Paul goes to Athens, he begins to talk about who God is, and contrary to the belief of some, I don't think it was an error of Paul in how he evangelized. I thought when he talks about sin and judgment and Jesus, he's not ashamed of that.

I think it's probably easy to be ashamed of Christianity these days, but I think the Bible is powerful. I'll never forget the time MacArthur, I picked him up at the airport here in Boston, and he asked me if I would be willing to take over Grace Community Church Senior Pastor.

Just kidding. I picked him up at the airport, and I was telling him about how tough New England is. Pastors' graveyard, not many evangelical churches, and so I was just trying to pour my heart out to John.

My father's died a long time ago. Yeah, we call that whining. Yeah, and John looked at me and said, Mike, do you think the gospel's powerful enough to save people in New England?

Now, wait a second. You're interrupting my wine streak here. I know.

And then he said, could you take me to a CVS? I've got a headache. I need to get some Tylenol, and maybe those two are related. See, it's taken me 20 years to figure out that the reason why I'm—. The connection.

Uh-huh, 14 years ago. Took him to that CVS. When the CVS closed, that's a sign, I think.

You know, going back to Paul and Morris Hill, when he got up there, didn't he try to disprove all the idols and gods that they had in Athens? Wasn't that his first move? Let me tell you what's wrong with all these deities you worship.

Is that what he did? I think he complimented them and said, you're very religious. Yeah. Allegedly. Few Americans believe, according to the YouGov study, that possession occurs very frequently. 6 are frequently 9%.

The exception is Muslim Americans, 60 of whom believe demon possession occurs frequently. So what about today? Probably in Christians, they believe that. Yeah, probably. That's exactly right. Steve, what about New Testament possession?

We would believe that there are people who are possessed by demons in the New Testament. We just read a couple. But what about today? Demons don't get annihilated, so demons are alive today. Some are in the pit.

Some are where?

What's going on? Well, I think that demonic activity, by and large, is probably harder to detect because it's not like we don't have miracles and all those kind of things going on right now. Why? Because we don't have messengers who need to be authenticated.

So I think in terms of spiritual warfare, I think it's kind of more behind the scenes and stuff like that.

Steve, isn't that interesting? You have God's messengers who are authenticated by the Spirit's power and working, authenticating the message and the messenger. Simultaneously, you have tons of satanic de-authentication, un-ministry going on.

Sure. It's proportionate. So now we don't have a lot of—well, we have no signs and wonders and miracles and healings through gifts of healing given to men, although God can still do miraculous, supernatural things.

And so there seems like when Jesus and his apostles are not on the earth physically, it seems like satanic demonstrations are not as easily as detected.

Well, here's an analogy I would use. It's like the Cold War, okay? Both sides were active and did different things, but it wasn't a war where the Soviets and the United States faced off, you know, directly.

And I think in the same way, it's kind of like, well, right now there's just a little bit of a spiritual Cold War. It's still going on. It's just not as evident to us as it would have been during the days of Jesus.

So we believe in demon possession, although we are very much against blaming our personal sin on God, James 1 .13, or on anyone else because it says each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust.

So if I struggle with something in life—righteousness, self-righteousness, pride—I don't have the demon of pride. I don't have the demon of self-righteousness. I just am self-righteous.

And I don't have the demon of the papacy. But I digress.

I always like MacArthur. You have the demon of post-nasal drip.

I just think, you know, here's a question for you, though. I mean, we see people, we saw the shooting in the naval shipyard here not too long ago, and, you know, different things going on like that. And, you know, some people wonder, well, was that person demon-possessed or not?

And here's the truth. We don't really know. I mean, it is difficult to know. I mean, we don't have people walking into our church today and saying, I am Legion. You know, we don't have that kind of thing happening.

Isn't that a Helen Reddy song, I am Legion?

I am Legion, hear me roar in numbers too big to ignore. Oh, that would be a—we should do that remake, you know.

The spiritual warfare remix. If you think you have the demon of lust, the demon of pornography, the demon of drink, the demon of rum, you don't have any of those demons. You have a sin problem and maybe exacerbated by some small-ranking, screw-tape-letter demon.

But I think Satan and his higher-ranking de-officials are swirling around the Mormon church in Utah, around the Watchtower Society, that kind of stuff.

Around the Vatican. But, you know, here's the thing. People will say, oh, Satan was attacking me. How do you know? How do you know? How do you know it just wasn't your own sinfulness, your own bad thinking, your own unbiblical thinking?

You know, and who are you with no offense intended? I mean, who am I that Satan would attack me? But who is the person who shows up once a month to church and then says, well, the other three weeks I couldn't make it due to Satan's attacks?

Satan is finite. He's not omnipresent, but he's going to pick on you. Your flesh takes care of you. He doesn't need to be there. We do acknowledge that in Ephesians 6, there is a spiritual warfare going on.

We have to acknowledge that our real struggle isn't against flesh and blood, but against rulers and all kinds of other ranks. So we have to have the full armor of God for these things. But we don't need to know, oh, I've got to know which demons, how many, put a hedge around here.

Let's do the territorial demon walk. We don't need to know any of that.

Well, think about it. Just if you were, you know, just for a moment, let's just put you in the headquarters of Satan and company. You know, you're in Satan's army here. Where would you launch your attacks?

Mr. 57B back there in the back pew? Or would you look at government officials? Would you look at places where you could actually kill babies in abortion clinics and stuff like that? Wouldn't you want to just kind of in your face, God, try to stop us from doing this and doing that and all these?

That's the thing that you would be focused on. Not stopping, you know, somebody from starting their car on a given Sunday morning. Let's think of a number.

How about 10 ,000? If there's been 10 ,000 years of Satan watching humans fail, succeed, walk according to the spirit, walk according to flesh, I think he knows the proper spiritual beachhead. And you're right.

It's not going to be Joe Schmo in the back pew who doesn't even, who can't articulate the deity of Christ on a good day. He's going to be in upper echelons.

Yep. He's going to be going after the big shots. You know, people with radio shows, stuff like that.

Maybe Satan got us off WVNE and prohibited that donate button from existing on No Compromise site.

Yeah, we tried to put one that no matter where you put it on the page.

Satanic warfare. We can't get one thin dime sent in. Not one. No Compromise Radio.

Pastor Steve, Pastor Mike. We'd love to answer your emails. Info at NoCompromiseRadio .com. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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