Jesus could heal the sick and drive out demons by the power of the Holy Spirit.
It’s the ‘in’ thing to do. Most of those who dabble in it are in such spiritual poverty that they haven’t a clue as to what they are doing. It’s really sad.
LOL.
No thanks, I used to be a member of those forums and I’m not about to step foot in those forums again. I know what Pagans, witches, and Wiccans are really like and yes, they can be friendly people but they can also be not so good too. Plus, most of them have a pretty… oh what can I say… deficient moral system.
Read your bible, esp. Mt 7.I don’t understand your last sentence. Could you please explain?
I truly don’t see what TRUE, peaceful pagan religions are doing to Christianity. If a Christian converted to Islam or Judaism, is that so bad? Why should it be horribly awful if an unsure, under-confident teen seeks a path that advertises just as much as every other religion does. It’s okay, really.
]QUOTE]
It’s not a matter of what pagan religions are ‘doing’ to Christianity. They aren’t doing ‘anything’ to Christianity. This is with regard to those teens who have been baptized and received the sacraments of the Church, who have turned away and become apostate. This is a serious matter, as their salvation is at stake. Being ‘peaceful’ wiccans or whatever has nothing to do with those who have fallen away because they are gullible.
I suspect you are referring to this verse:
Emphasis mine.
Not at all.
Oh ok. Thank you for clearing that up. Well, I see their fruit and their fruit is often times demonic possession, demonic harassment, demonic oppression, and hauntings. I also see the fruit of immorality in general. Of course you will disagree at least with the demonic stuff because you are an Atheist but it is the truth. Wicca and witchcraft leads to demonic problems.
Anyway, I am pretty sure what Jesus meant here is that we should judge people, i.e. thinking of them being good or evil, not by what they say, or believe, or by what they are possed, but by what they do. What people do has good or evil outcome, that’s the fruit, not their motives, not their faith, not their demons.
Well, I will be honest with you. I don’t know how to respond to this so I will leave it up to someone else to respond to your post.
Now I am puzzled. Shouldn’t those demonic problems lead to all kinds of evil actions? Or do those demons trouble only the so possessed like a mental illness?
If you think about what the focus of demonic attacks are - to seperate us from God, then no, demonic problems shouldn’t necessarily lead to evil actions. Most often, demonic attacks lead more toward indifference, to a sense of superiority, or to a “creeping common sense” that kills the souls ability to respond to God. Sometimes a demonic attack can reach a point where it is noticable in “evil actions”, possession, criminal activity, and the like, but those sorts of attacks are rarer, because the idea is not to create a spectacle - which may have the effect of driving frightened people back to God - but to bring the person to a place where he chooses to seperate himself from God. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?
Yes, if demons would act “The Exorcist”-style, people get so frightened that they turn back to God. Subtle, clever lads those demons!
It isn’t a contradiction, primarily because demons do not possess minds, they possess bodies. Most people are not possessed, even if they are very, very deep into the occult. Maybe I wasn’t as clear as I should have been above. While demons do direct and encourage people to distance themselves from God, they are not possessing such people. When you meet a possessed person, the presence of something “odd” in the person is obvious. It is not always as obvious - at first - whether the person is possessed or just severly mentally ill, but truly possessed people are terrifying, because the mind of the person is in the background, and the mind of the demon is what you are meeting with.
) But demonic possession generally can’t occur unless we allow it to occur, or in some extreme cases will it to occur.That’s kind of a red herring, isn’t it? The doctrine of free will says mainly that God won’t compell mortals to love him or worship him properly, or protect us from the consequences of our misjudgements, and affirms precisely that free will allows us to be led astray. We can be misguided by evil humans, or evil spirits, but even if we end up posessed it’s free will that lets the nasties in to begin with.
Actually it adds to the theodicy problem. An omnibenevolent and omnipotent god in a world of grief maybe explained away with free will, but why such a god should allow powerful evil spirits to roam the Earth freely and haunt, harrass, and harm people, instead of locking them safely away in some godforsaken (haha) place (like, oops, Hell), is beyond me.
Excellent point! It is also one of the reasons why I became an Agnostic Atheist recently.
