I'm reading Craig Blomberg on heresy this morning (HT - City of God) and am only on the second or third page of the article, but wanted to stop and take a break to quote something that I find of interest.
It's not uncommon, or at least it hasn't been in the circles I have run in to hear people saying that certain things are of the devil. Blomberg offers a pretty good warning/caution about such declarations here:
Portraying perhaps the harshest interchange between Jesus and the Jewish leaders in all the Synoptics, Mark 3:22–30 and parallels depict cer- tain scribes who accuse Jesus of exorcising by the power of the devil. After pointing out how self-defeating this would be, Jesus in turn implies that his accusers come perilously close to committing an unforgivable sin—blas- pheming against the Holy Spirit. The context enables us to define this sin fairly precisely as being so out of touch with the true God of the universe as to attribute patently obviously divine manifestations to the power of God’s arch-enemy. This exchange should make us extraordinarily cautious about using the language of diabolical influence on a fellow Christian, since to do so mistakenly places us in the identical position of those Jesus warned against unforgivable blasphemy (Italics mine).
This is not to say that the devil has no influence in the world today, it's just a fair caution not to play fast and loose with our rhetoric.
This is a great insight and a good reminder for all of us engaged in vigorous debate with other Christians (and non-Christians) over essential matters of truth, doctrine, and belief. The Pharisees Jesus encountered in Mark 3 fell prey to a temptation common to many of us today--demonizing our opponent in order to scare, confuse, and diminish them in the eyes of the crowd, and to elevate ourselves to a position of power, control, and advantage. As you stated, this is not to say that the devil does not have influence in our world today, but word care, discernment, and due caution is certainly in order.
Posted by: Ben Simpson | October 01, 2009 at 11:46 AM
Coming from charismatic circles I've heard that alot although I have seen only 3 (IMO) real demonic manifestations in 30 years of following Christ. Interestingly all three were christians and all three had drug and alcohol pasts.All three presented like they were having seizures and all three were confronted by no-nonsense evangelists. One from Liberia and the other two at a well know non-denom in NYC area. Living a life of prayer and fasting is important in these areas. We have three enemies the world the flesh and the devil. Most of our problems are the first two. To actually know when Lucifer or a 1/3 of his legions are at work is not always easy to identify IMO.
Posted by: Robert | October 03, 2009 at 02:15 AM
And FOF about 4 months ago had a interesting segment on christian radio. They interviewed a missionary family member that lead a former chiefton that came from the tribe that killed Jim Elliot. It was fasinating. Through a interpreter he explained how when this young missionary came to speak to him he knew ahead of time of who Jesus was because the demon he had told him about the heavenly city and the river of life flowing from the throne of God. Very cool. And why not? This demon saw it because he was there before he was cast out of heaven.
We rejoice that our names are written in the book of life but we do have power to confront them when needed.
Posted by: Robert | October 03, 2009 at 02:25 AM