From Christianity Today:
I Cried Out to the Name Demons Fear Most
I grew up on Long Island, New York, as part of an Italian and culturally Catholic family. Christmas for me was mainly about Santa Claus, antipasto, and pretty lights on houses. I had no faith in Jesus Christ whatsoever, and attending church wasn’t usually on the agenda.
At home, there was lots of conversation about ghosts—how they would play with the lights and knock things off the shelves. My sister told me about the time her pals got together and used an Ouija board, assuming it was an innocent game. The girls asked the board who among them would die first, and they got an answer. Not long after, the girl in question died of suicide.
The door to demons was thrown wide open when, at age 13, I had my first experience with tarot cards: a private 15-minute session with an (allegedly) expert reader and her cardboard cards, full of weird pictures. The reading left me intrigued.
Throughout my teens, I delved into other divination tools like numerology charts, astrology charts, angel cards, and runes.
But the further I went down that road, the more it seemed demons were surrounding me. I felt them touching me, and I could see them manifesting as shadowy figures, animals, and what looked like human beings.
One day, I was sitting at my kitchen table with my head resting down on my arms. I looked up, and standing in the entrance to my bedroom was a demon masquerading as a man, tall and lean. He stood there briefly, giving a dauntingly cold stare, and then he was gone. Another day I was thrown off a chair while sitting in my family’s computer room. My dad was in the next room, and he heard the thump.
In my early 20s, I had my first apparent communication with a dead person. In a dream one night, a young man with blond hair let me know that he died in a car accident.
I went to visit a psychic medium. She told me that I too was a medium and that my gifts came from God for the purpose of helping people connect with departed loved ones.
Often, while driving home from psychic readings, I would see familiar spirits in my rearview mirror and on the highway. One night, while doing an individual reading, I had an alarming experience. I started “channeling” for information about the woman before me, and the demon I channeled was pretending to be her uncle who had shot her and her brother when they were kids. I felt sick, and this woman looked at me with daggers in her eyes, as if I were the uncle myself.
Eventually, I started my own divination group. I taught a variety of New Age techniques like chakra balancing, tarot reading, psychic mediumship, meditation, smudging, and past-life automatic writings. I had my students make vision boards to visualize what they were manifesting.
But I lived in constant fear of bad spirits and what they would do to me. In my mid-30s, at a moment of especially intense fear, I suddenly cried out the name of Jesus Christ. Not my spirit guide or a deceased person or an angel—Jesus!
This began my journey to full Christian faith. I didn’t know I was a sinner in need of a Savior. And I had no idea what the gospel was. But I knew I didn’t want to be a psychic anymore.
https://www.christianitytoday.com/2024/0...um-demons/
I Cried Out to the Name Demons Fear Most
I grew up on Long Island, New York, as part of an Italian and culturally Catholic family. Christmas for me was mainly about Santa Claus, antipasto, and pretty lights on houses. I had no faith in Jesus Christ whatsoever, and attending church wasn’t usually on the agenda.
At home, there was lots of conversation about ghosts—how they would play with the lights and knock things off the shelves. My sister told me about the time her pals got together and used an Ouija board, assuming it was an innocent game. The girls asked the board who among them would die first, and they got an answer. Not long after, the girl in question died of suicide.
The door to demons was thrown wide open when, at age 13, I had my first experience with tarot cards: a private 15-minute session with an (allegedly) expert reader and her cardboard cards, full of weird pictures. The reading left me intrigued.
Throughout my teens, I delved into other divination tools like numerology charts, astrology charts, angel cards, and runes.
But the further I went down that road, the more it seemed demons were surrounding me. I felt them touching me, and I could see them manifesting as shadowy figures, animals, and what looked like human beings.
One day, I was sitting at my kitchen table with my head resting down on my arms. I looked up, and standing in the entrance to my bedroom was a demon masquerading as a man, tall and lean. He stood there briefly, giving a dauntingly cold stare, and then he was gone. Another day I was thrown off a chair while sitting in my family’s computer room. My dad was in the next room, and he heard the thump.
In my early 20s, I had my first apparent communication with a dead person. In a dream one night, a young man with blond hair let me know that he died in a car accident.
I went to visit a psychic medium. She told me that I too was a medium and that my gifts came from God for the purpose of helping people connect with departed loved ones.
Often, while driving home from psychic readings, I would see familiar spirits in my rearview mirror and on the highway. One night, while doing an individual reading, I had an alarming experience. I started “channeling” for information about the woman before me, and the demon I channeled was pretending to be her uncle who had shot her and her brother when they were kids. I felt sick, and this woman looked at me with daggers in her eyes, as if I were the uncle myself.
Eventually, I started my own divination group. I taught a variety of New Age techniques like chakra balancing, tarot reading, psychic mediumship, meditation, smudging, and past-life automatic writings. I had my students make vision boards to visualize what they were manifesting.
But I lived in constant fear of bad spirits and what they would do to me. In my mid-30s, at a moment of especially intense fear, I suddenly cried out the name of Jesus Christ. Not my spirit guide or a deceased person or an angel—Jesus!
This began my journey to full Christian faith. I didn’t know I was a sinner in need of a Savior. And I had no idea what the gospel was. But I knew I didn’t want to be a psychic anymore.
https://www.christianitytoday.com/2024/0...um-demons/
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
