The Church of Jesus Christ

I have a friend, a very good friend. Yesterday, I had to go to the Judicial Annex and, along with two others, help swear out a mental hygiene warrant on him.

Here were the signs:

• Ever growing thirst for the things that pertain to ‘God.’
• The need to be baptized and to continue with the ‘brethren.’
• Constant prayer
• Removing those things out of this life that he considered evil
• Attempting to leave the world system and fully devote himself to the kingdom of Heaven.
• A need to love everyone and a fear for everyone’s soul

And I committed him?

Here are the rest of the signs:

• Seeing that Obama was the one who would bring in the Antichrist.
• Fully convinced that everyone in his life, except for me, was placed by some grand conspiracy to wrap him up in the Obama campaign.
• He saw signs everywhere that Obama’s campaign was out to get him.
• He believed that they were stealing his ideas
• He progressed to believing that the government was out to get him for his ‘knowledge’.
• As he progressed, and in rapid order, he soon became that he was the Son of God.
• He wanted to be with his people, the people that he saw as ghosts in his vision of heaven
• He begin to see people, objects, animals as demons
• He was convinced that God was speaking to him directly, telling him every minute action.

For the past two months, he has increased in ‘religion’ and soon separated from his roommate to be with more ’spiritual people’, but the person that he moved in with, since she was associated with the Obama campaign, was evil and a part of the conspiracy. He called me this past Sunday morning, at 5am to tell me that he had a revelation that he was to leave politics behind because Obama was the antichrist.

His roommate filled me with the rest, saying that about 3am that morning my friend began screaming a fearful scream saying that he was being attacked by 3 demons and that he had to get rid of all Obama related items in his possession. So, some time before he called me, he offered a burnt offering  and said some prayers.

Not knowing what was going on, I invited him to attend Church with me on Sunday night. He seemed more than enthusiastic and desired baptism (which was not given) and accepted everything that everyone said. He needed a place to stay so I offered him to say with me and my family. Come to find out, he had not slept for three weeks, and eaten very little. On Monday, he went to get his stuff from various homes, but decided to forsake everything that he had because it was attached to evil. On Tuesday, he spent over an hour driving around in circles hoping to loose ‘them’. The mythical ‘they’ kept growing and not ‘they’ were following him, but he was going to lay down his life for my and my family. He wanted to protect us from ‘they’.

He had a revelation that he had to change his name, so he did, but you could still speak to the two. On Tuesday afternoon, I spoke with his former roommate who came to my house and we tried to do an intervention. He volunteered to go to the hospital, but would not stay. The social worker that interviewed him knew that he was not stable, but since he had professed not to be suicidal or homicidal then the State could not detain him. So, his roommate took him home.

During the 4 hours at the hospital, when he was alone, he would scream at the walls or the tv stating that they were out to get him. ‘They’ could hear him. ‘They’ would turn everyone of us. ‘They’ had somehow gotten to me and to his roommate. ‘They’ had also gotten to the hospital staff and his counselor.

On his way home, he stopped at Wendy’s but since the cashier greeted them (which alone is unusual) ’she’ was ‘they’. The Chinese food industry was a part of ‘they’ as well. Sometime later that night, he began to accuse the hospital of raping him. He told his roommate to drive him back into town so that he could be with ‘his people’. I was the phone listening and my friend’s rage broke, his sanity a long time in two, and in the most terrible weep and moan that I have heard, accused ‘them’ of raping him, and us (roommate and I) letting them do it. ‘They’ raped him and ‘took his blood, the blood of the son of God’.

We tried to get him to go to a men’s shelter, but he ended up at another of his friend’s house. He steadily got worse there, saying suicidal things, homicidal things. He would not come out of the house because the government was there.

His roommate, his friend, and myself swore out the mental health warrant against him, they had the hearing and they sent him for a 72 hour mental evaluation.

As he progressed, he became more and more hyper, more and more religious, more and more people.

It was the right thing to do, difficult, but still the right thing to do. I begin to wonder about those in the Bible that Christ came upon.

In Mark’s Gospel we read:

And they came over unto the other side of the sea, into the country of the Gadarenes. And when he was come out of the ship, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit, Who had his dwelling among the tombs; and no man could bind him, no, not with chains: Because that he had been often bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been plucked asunder by him, and the fetters broken in pieces: neither could any man tame him. And always, night and day, he was in the mountains, and in the tombs, crying, and cutting himself with stones. But when he saw Jesus afar off, he ran and worshipped him, And cried with a loud voice, and said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the most high God? I adjure thee by God, that thou torment me not. For he said unto him, Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit. And he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name is Legion: for we are many. And he besought him much that he would not send them away out of the country. Now there was there nigh unto the mountains a great herd of swine feeding. And all the devils besought him, saying, Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them. And forthwith Jesus gave them leave. And the unclean spirits went out, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea, (they were about two thousand;) and were choked in the sea.

Barclay, in his Daily Bible Study series comments:

We shall not even begin to understand this story unless we see how serious a case of demon-possession this man was. It is clear that Jesus made more than one attempt to heal him. Mk 5:8 tells us that Jesus had begun by using his usual method–an authoritative order to the demon to come out. On this occasion that was not successful. Next, he demanded what the demon’s name was. It was always supposed in those days that, if a demon’s name could be discovered, it gave a certain power over it. An ancient magical formula says, “I adjure thee, every demonic spirit, Say whatsoever thou art.” The belief was that if the name was known the demon’s power was broken. In this case even that did not prove enough.

Jesus saw that there was only one way to cure this man–and that was to give him unanswerable demonstration that the demons had gone out of him, at least, unanswerable as far as his own mind was concerned. It does not matter whether we believe in demon-possession or not; the man believed in it. Even if it all lay in his disordered mind, the demons were terribly, real to him. Dr. Rendle Short, speaking about the supposed evil influence of the moon (Ps 121:6)  which emerges in the words lunatic and moonstruck, says, “Modern science does not recognize any particular harm as coming from the moon. Yet it is a very widespread belief that the moon does affect people mentally. It is good to know that the Lord can deliver us from imaginary dangers as well as from real ones. Often the imaginary are harder to face.”

Dr. Thomson (“The Land and the Book,” vol. i. p. 213) says respecting this case:

“There are some very similar at the present day – furious and dangerous maniacs, who wander about the mountains, and sleep in tombs and caves. In their worst paroxysms they are quite unmanageable and prodigiously strong.”

In Mark 1:23, Christ ran into another possessed man. We return to Barclay again, who says:

Dr. A. Rendle Short cites a fact which shows the intensity with which the ancient world believed in demons. In many ancient cemeteries skulls were found which had been trepanned. That is to say, a hole had been bored in the skull. In one cemetery, out of one hundred and twenty skulls, six had been trepanned. With the limited surgical technique available that was no small operation. Further, it was clear from the bone growth that the trepanning had been done during life. It was also clear that the hole in the skull was too small to be of any physical or surgical value; and it is known that the removed disc of bone was often worn as an amulet round the neck. The reason for the trepanning was to allow the demon to escape from the body of the man. If primitive surgeons were prepared to undertake that operation, and if men were prepared to undergo it, the belief in demon-possession must have been intensely real.

Where did these demons come from? There were three answers to that question. (i) Some believed that they were as old as creation itself. (ii) Some believed that they were the spirits of wicked men who had died and were still carrying on their malignant work. (iii) Most people connected the demons with the old story in Gen 6:1-8 (compare 2Pet 2:4-5).

….

It does not matter whether or not we believe in all this; whether it is true or not is beside the point. The point is that the people in New Testament times did. We still may use the phrase Poor devil! That is a relic of the old belief. When a man believed himself to be possessed he was “conscious of himself and also of another being who constrains and controls him from within.” That explains why the demon-possessed in Palestine so often cried out when they met Jesus. They knew that Jesus was believed by some at least to be the Messiah; they knew that the reign of the Messiah was the end of the demons; and the man who believed himself to be possessed spoke as a demon when he came into the presence of Jesus

The young man that I knew was one who was intelligent, gifted, articulate and somewhat adjusted. To see him delve into this mindset is something that is a little shaking. I am not sure if I follow the traditional mindset of fundamentalism or something akin to Barclay’s understanding of demonic possession. I do know that what I saw my friend go through began to open my eyes to the reality of mental illness. Is he bi-polar? Is he suffering from paranoid schizophrenia? Or is it a simply case of demonic possession?

I don’t know, but I know that my God is still in the business of casting out demons or ‘demons’. I know that He is bigger than ‘they’. I also know that it has hurt me and the rest of his friends a bit, but I will continue to pray for him.

A doctor said that if he is able to come out, then he could very well not remember any of this. I pray that as well.

Tags: bi-polar, bible, Christ, church, committed, demon, demonic, demonic possession, friend, help, mental illness, Obama, paranoid schizophrenia, possession, prayer