Catholics join up with other denominations to battle Satan – Independent.ie

Source: Catholics join up with other denominations to battle Satan | Nick Squires | Independent.ie May 9 2019

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It sounds like the start of a joke – a Catholic, a Lutheran and a Protestant walk into a room to talk about the devil – but a conference on exorcisms this week in Rome will be no laughing matter.

For the first time, representatives of the main Christian faiths will come together to trade tips on casting out demons and combating the malign influence of Satan.

The meeting will be the culmination of a week-long training course for exorcists which began on Monday at a Vatican-affiliated university, the Ateneo Pontificio Regina Apostolorum.

The dark art of performing exorcisms may seem archaic, even absurd, to non-believers, but the Catholic Church insists that the presence of the devil is growing all the time, due to the increasing secularisation of society, loss of faith in God and the easy access provided by the internet to black magic and the occult.

The meeting will bring together clergy from the Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, Greek Orthodox and Pentecostal churches.”

This is the first time that different denominations have come together to compare their experiences on exorcisms,” said Pedro Barrajon, a Spanish priest and professor of theology who is one of the meeting’s organisers.”

The idea is to… establish best practices, if you will. The Catholic Church is most associated with exorcisms because of films like ‘The Exorcist’ and ‘The Rite’, but we are not the only church that performs them. Expelling the devil goes back to the earliest origins of the Christian church.”

When it comes to battling Beelzebub, there are key differences of approach between the denominations.”

The Catholic rite is very structured, whereas some of the other churches are more creative,” said Fr Barrajon (61), who claims to have witnessed several exorcisms

.Benjamin McEntire, a Protestant priest from Alaska, was one of the 240 clergy from five continents attending the conference.”I’m here to understand the Catholic perspective. We are fighting the same enemy in the name of the Lord,” he said.

Atheists and agnostics may scoff at the idea of people being possessed by demons, but the Catholic organisers of the conference insist the phenomenon is real.

Continue reading the remainder of this important article at: Catholics join up with other denominations to battle Satan – Independent.ie

Why a Christian Can Have a Demon — Charisma News

Excerpted from: Why a Christian Can Have a Demon | JOHN ECKHARDT | Charisma News 5/9/2019

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There was a time when we taught in our church that Christians could not have demons. I preached long sermons stating that Christians could be oppressed, regressed, digressed, obsessed and suppressed, but never possessed. We believed that a demon could be outside a Christian oppressing him but that it could not be inside him. The reasoning I used to defend this position was that Jesus and the Holy Spirit could not live inside the same body in which demons reside.

The problem was, our experience did not match our theology. When we ministered deliverance, we frequently prayed for people we knew were born-again, Spirit-filled believers—and they manifested demons! We had to face the fact that either our experience was wrong or our doctrine was wrong.

We couldn’t question our experience because we knew what we were seeing. So we began to question our theology.

In our search for truth, we realized that in the Bible, Jesus tells us to cast devils out, not to cast devils off. Obviously, for something to come out, it must be in. We finally came to the conclusion that our interpretation of the Bible had been wrong.

Now I am convinced not only that a Christian can have demons but also that there are demons that operate in the realm of theology, encouraging us to argue and debate endlessly over doctrine rather than meeting the needs of people who are hurting. Demons actually help promote the teaching that a Christian cannot have a demon, because they gain strength from staying hidden. They can operate in their destructive ways without being challenged!

Some may argue that a believer cannot be possessed. But the dismaying fact remains that born-again Christians, including leaders, are experiencing difficulties that can find no solution in natural infirmities or the endless conflict between the flesh and the Spirit.

It’s time to acknowledge that we are dealing with real people who have real problems and that God did not save and commission us so we could argue over doctrine. He called us into ministry so we can help people who are hurting, wounded and bruised.

When you come into contact with someone who is controlled by demons, the answer is to cast the devils out, not to argue about whether or not the person is a Christian. The answer is to bring help to that person.

Continue reading this important editorial at: Why a Christian Can Have a Demon — Charisma News