Saturday, April 26, 2014

Demon Possesion AFTER Salvation

This has always been a terribly discussed subject in that most answers are superficial or out of context, or proposed by exegetes who have almost absolutely NO EXPERIENCE with demons and deliverance.  We will not belabor the point here but just point out how illogical the classical position is on this issue.

In summary, the answer is YES, a Christian CAN BE  demon possessed. This is both a biblical truth and confirmed by lots of experience. Following are the highlights:

  1. A Christian retains his FREE WILL. We have already pointed out that this is the most fundamental mistake of the "once saved, always saved" position. They implicitly or explicitly teach that although man was created with free will, they somehow mysteriously lose free will AFTER salvation. What they seem to say is that redeemed man no longer has the free-will to rebel against God to the point of being finally rejected by God even if the sin they commit was why condemned the world in the first place. We already pointed out how illogical and utterly ridiculous this assumption is and therefore makes the conclusion of "once saved, always saved" doctrinally illogical as we cannot conclude this from any passage of Scripture not can we derive this from just plain common sense for as long as we believe we are autonomous creatures and not robots. Bart Ehrman, Felix Manalo, etc are famous examples to the contrary but from our personal experience, we know of many more who may be in this category. The fact remains that evidences to the contrary of this classical belief are numerous. 
  2. As for my Arminian friends, they are quick to say that one can lose salvation if they willfully renounce God or shame the Name of God, but they continue to refuse to believe that a Christian can be demon-possessed. This makes their position untenable. Being demon-possessed is at worse, temporary and only happens in this world, but losing salvation may be permanent or eternal. So why can they believe that a Christian can lose the most valuable thing in eternity but refuse to concede that they can lose something temporary. Reason, reason, reason. That is why the world sometimes ridicules us, because we are not always logically consistent even behind the fact that we continuously declare that we have the very "mind of Christ" or wisdom of God! But I do understand, because traditional Arminianism is still heavily influenced by classical "Gentile" theology instead of Jewish-based Christian theology. I have to constantly remind my classical-bent friends that whatever St. Paul teaches in the epistles, he is primarily a Jew, in fact a Pharisee, and has to have the mind-set and foundation of a Jew and hence, all his teachings as well as the writings of the apostles have to be interpreted from a viewpoint where heavy Old Testament background influences the interpretation.
  3. "Greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world". The most misused verse of Scripture of all. This verse does NOT mean that once a person becomes a Christian he is invincible from demons or Satan. This is a classical exegetical mistake. Instead, whereas we have already shown or proven that a Christian CAN be possessed because he still retains his free will, this verse applied simply means that we can still claim victory and complete deliverance is GUARANTEED (not just possible) because we can claim or perform deliverance in the name of the One who is "greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world"
I do not feel that there is anything more to discuss unless we want to belabor the points which already stand out and are quite biblically obvious. As usual, we welcome comments.

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