Back to the phone lines, we'll talk to Kelly in Charlotte, North Carolina,
listening on the web. Hi Kelly.
- Hi. I have a question,
um it's about the Scriptures about the second letter of Peter chapter 2, talking
about the false prophets, and I'm having trouble. I was raised a Protestant and
when I was around a teenager I stopped going to church but I always believed in
God, and loved God and then
I got a demon by doing Transcendental Meditation.
I wasn't doing for idol worship even though it is idol worship, I was doing it
because of like all that yoga thing that's happening with people, and that
was part of it and I wanted to relax because I couldn't sleep because my
sister was sick and I was so scared, and so I got a demon, because it's still as
idol worship. And I hear a voice talking to me for about five years and it said
his name is Satan. And so I went back to church and I joined a Catholic Church
because it was close in my neighborhood and I figured they would know what to do
about it, and they were really kind and good to
me and then I kept going to church and reading my Bible and I gave my life to
Christ with the priest back then, and I'm going now to a Catholic Church and to a
Baptist Church and doing Bible studies and stuff, but I'm still struggling with
these voices because I'm having all these dreams, and I know that Jesus said
that if everyone who believe that Jesus is the Christ is a child of God,
and that if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart
God raised him from the dead you will be saved and whoever confesses
that Jesus is the Son of God abides in him, and him and God. But I struggle with
these spirits constantly--
- Well Kelly here's the here's the deal. I think one of the
things we have to get beyond is the idea that Christianity is just transactional.
And if you are sincerely a part of a healthy well-balanced church, you
can't receive within the context of the churches that are healthy and
well-balanced the graces by which you can become by grace what God is by
nature. Doesn't mean that you can become God as God is in the Godhead, but you can
be a partaker of the divine nature as Peter puts it. So you a quote Peter in
2nd Peter, but Peter makes this very, very plain - we are therefore partakers or
participants in the design nature, and the way that that works again is not
transactional, but it's transformational. In other words, as Vladimir Lossky said,
the whole history after the fall of Christianity is the history of a great
shipwreck awaiting rescue. But the port of salvation is not the goal; it is the
possibility for the shipwrecked to go on to the sole goal of union with God. In
other words, life in the Trinity. And if you pursue that through the graces
available to us within the ground and pillar of the truth, as Paul calls it, in
1 Timothy 3:15, then you can live the overcomer's life. Then the voice of Satan
will be replaced by the voice of God. Then truth will replace falsity.
Righteousness, unrighteousness. Then you can take up the shield of faith
to extinguish the flaming arrows of the evil one. But again, this does not happen
as though there's some kind of a spiritual elixir or magic bullet. To
solve the problem, it means that you are integrated into the life of a healthy,
well-balanced Church. For it is in community, not in isolation but in
community that we receive the overcoming graces. And there are many. It's not only,
although primarily, the Eucharist, or communion, but there are many graces. It
is the Word. It is prayer. It is giving alms. It is being in the spiritual
gymnasium, where you do repetitions just as you would in a physical gymnasium. And
as I said to a caller, I think it was in the second segment of the broadcast
today, I wrote a book on this very thing - it's called The Covering: God's Plan to
Protect You From Evil. And the reason I wrote that book is there is so much
nonsense floating around even in the Christian world, with respect to demon
possession. And the reality is quite simple. If Christ is within you, that
temple - your temple, in this case - will not be shared by a demon.