MEMO COMMANDING SILENCE?
Who wrote the memo telling us that we are to remain silent about Satan and demons? Jesus evidently didn’t get that memo. Who do you think wrote it? (HINT: Satan delights in working undercover.)
It is undeniably clear that 1/3 of the chapters in the Synoptic Gospels shows Jesus speaking of the demonic and interacting with them. He did this in every village he visited. Jesus also had 42 teams of disciples going from village to village doing the same.
Yet today there is an unspoken rule, and it is that we are to stay silent about that topic.
WHY THE UNSPOKEN RULE IN PLACE?
- Secular Pressure: Some want a scientifically respectable religion, one that won’t label them as superstitious or uneducated. They want acceptance in the community, in business, among peers, etc. That means they fear what others will say about them if they express their faith in God and the Bible.
- Fifty percent of those who say they are Christian do not believe the Bible. Only 37% of the ministers believe and teach that the Bible is true. These people do not believe there is a literal Satan and demon. They say Satan is only a symbol of evil. That is in direct opposition to Jesus who acknowledged their reality.
- Some say they don’t want to give Satan any credit, so they choose never to mention him. Can you imagine fighting a war but never mention or talk about your enemy or their strategies?
- Some don’t want to scare members of the congregation, so they allow them to stay in ignorance about the existence of demons and pretend like they don’t exist. Then when there are demonic manifestations in the home or clear evidence of demonic oppression, congregational members are given a referral to a psychologist who treats the spiritual condition by labeling the person mentally ill and prescribing medications. They try to remedy a spiritual condition with a human-based scientific approach.
- The Bible colleges and seminaries do not train ministers how to address demonization, so to cover their lack of education and experience, ministers often defer to the secular realm. And we know that a secular approach to a spiritual condition will never work.
