What Are Demons? Part 2

[00:00:00] Cody: Hi, thank you for tuning in to the Logic of God podcast. I'm Cody. 


[00:00:16] Gina: I'm Gina. 


[00:00:17] Cody: And I'm Ben. If you're returning, thank you for coming back. And if you are a new guest, welcome. 


[00:00:35] Gina: Do we want to get into the descriptions in scripture of spirits and demons? 


[00:00:41] Ben: No, we can talk about some of these things. So are there examples outside of the devil himself of demons or spirits like that in the Bible? 


[00:00:50] Gina: There are a couple of different things described. Like, it's hard to know sometimes if they're really demons or not, because there'll be like spirits and then there's different beings that sound like they could be evil but may not be evil. 


[00:01:04] You can find the full version of this podcast on our website at www. thebibleconversation. com. It can be confusing, and if you watch TV shows and movies that kind of explore, like, demons, it makes, it adds, like, a layer that you need to unlearn in order to study these accurately. 


[00:01:21] Ben: I'll be honest, I haven't found many references. 


[00:01:26] There's words that are typically, in Christian tradition, attributed to the devil. So there's Belial, there's, uh, The accuser, there's the devil, there's Satan, all of those seem to refer to the same person in general Christian tradition. Though there are some Christian traditions that treat them as different spirits, but in the end it's all evil. 


[00:01:48] It's all under the same umbrella of dark, evil things you shouldn't be playing with. For myself, I don't really need it to be anything other than that, but I don't know. Cody, you know anything about that? 


[00:01:59] Cody: Besides, like, specific names, like, I think Azazel's the one that they use for, like, the hairy goat. 


[00:02:06] Ben: Yeah. 


[00:02:06] The, the one that consumes the scapegoat that's sent off into the desert, though I don't believe Azazel is actually named in the Bible. 


[00:02:13] Gina: No, it's not. It's Jewish mythology. Yeah. Jewish 


[00:02:16] Ben: mythology. What is in the Bible is the idea of the scapegoat, where all of the sins of Israel would be put on the scapegoat. 


[00:02:22] The goat and it would be sent off to wander into the desert which is typology for christ going off into the desert 


[00:02:29] Gina: So there's a couple of creatures named in scripture There's of course the nephilim and giants and then levi leviathan and behemoth 


[00:02:40] Ben: Those I wouldn't but they're not demonic. 


[00:02:42] Gina: No, they're just creatures that i'm like, I don't know. 


[00:02:45] They're like spiritual Things in the bible i'm just trying to but then there's Beelzebub, which was in Matthew, and there's I 


[00:02:56] Cody: mean, you have the four horsemen are usually depicted as separate entities from the devil, but yeah, those could be something that God commissions as well. 


[00:03:06] Ben: They could be purely symbolic. 


[00:03:08] They could be actual spirits working on behalf of the Lord. The tough thing with talking about the actual naming of anything aside from the devil himself is that we're not really given names for anything. We're given Like the Egyptian gods and that may not be their actual names. So like raw 


[00:03:28] Gina: deities and stuff like that 


[00:03:29] Ben: yeah, so like Dagon and Ball and Ashera Like these are all most likely demons, but one it may not be their actual names and two they're just false gods They're either demons or they're just idols that people worshipped and did terrible things to to honor 


[00:03:47] Cody: Yeah, one of the ones I hear a lot, though, is I think it's Mamum or Mammon. 


[00:03:52] Yeah, the love of money. I don't know exactly how they get that. I know that's used in, I think, Matthew or something. I think it's because the spirit of Mammon or something like that. Yeah. Is that similar to the spirit of Jezebel though? I don't know. Like, what do you guys think? So in 


[00:04:06] Gina: Revelation 18, Babylon is given over to the spirit of Mammon, which translates to money, wealth, and material possessions. 


[00:04:13] Ben: Yeah, I'll be honest. That's weak in terms of saying that this is an actual spirit. Because we talk about spirits of greed, spirit of anger, spirit of 


[00:04:23] Gina: I put, so I put the described spirits from scripture because we have more now. And I wanted to take it back to the roots. So we have seducing spirits in 1st Timothy 4, 1. 


[00:04:36] We have lying spirits in 1st Kings 22 and 2nd Chronicles 18. Foul spirits from Revelation 18. Familiar spirits from Leviticus 19, 20 and Deuteronomy 18. 11 and then 1 Samuel 28 9 evil spirits and judges 9 23 1 Samuel 16 14 through 23 I'm not even going to read the rest and then the prince of the kingdom of Persia in Daniel 10 13. 


[00:05:05] And then there's also spirits like frogs as apocalyptic symbolism that John wrote about. And that's literally it. That's all I could find. 


[00:05:14] Ben: Yeah. And when you compare that to the names of angels, which, again, fairly sparse, you don't get much that's solid. 


[00:05:23] Gina: But at least with angels, there's some descriptions. 


[00:05:27] It's hard because in the Bible, demons appear to be across the board like mysterious and they might look like people, but they might look like frogs, but they might look like hairy goat dudes or serpents. So it can be really confusing. And I think people get obsessed with wanting to know what they're called and what they look like, because they want to know what to be on their guard against. 


[00:05:49] But I think there's a reason that it's ambiguous and mysterious, because if God wanted us to know what they look like and seek it out, he would have told us to do it, but he's telling us not to. 


[00:06:00] Ben: I think In terms of angels, we're told what they look like. For the times where we see Gabriel, or we see the commander of the armies of the Lord, which could be Michael or it could be Jesus, there are points where we're shown things and said, this is an angel. 


[00:06:14] And either they look like they're human, or they are humanoid, meaning looking similar to humans, but they have certain characteristics other than humans. Like they have Wheels. I'm talking about actual named things. But yeah, they have Skin that's like metal, and they have brilliant shining eyes, and they have wings. 


[00:06:30] So, they look more like glorified versions of us. Which makes sense because, you know, they're spiritual, and they serve God directly. There's, there's a beauty and an honor to them that we don't have yet. When it comes to things like demons, it seems like they're just pathetic. Like, even in the times in the Old Testament, where they're seemingly referenced dark and impure spirits, it's, they're, they're tools that have chosen to rebel against their use. 


[00:07:01] They're things that have rejected their creator. And so they just fall into dishonor, and so you wouldn't really expect them to have that same honorable, glorious form. Even when they talk about the devil, it's, he masquerades as an angel of light. He isn't an angel of light. He has to masquerade as one. He has to disguise himself. 


[00:07:21] And, yeah, I would imagine they don't look like much. They've forsaken what it is God made them to be. And so, they'll look like anything and everything. They're ultimately in rebellion constantly. 


[00:07:34] Gina: It's interesting, too, because there's a lot of animalistic references for demons, like pythons and mermaids and stuff like that in certain translations of the Bible. 


[00:07:48] You don't really hear angels being described as animals, but you do hear demons and evil creatures being referred to as animals. It helps differentiate, I think, like, their value in the spiritual realm. Like, they are, they're not equal to people. They're even as low as an animal. And 


[00:08:08] Ben: when you look at the biblical curse, When you talk about the Garden of Eden, you will crawl along the earth on your belly and you will eat the dust of the earth, and there will be an end between your offspring and hers, and her offspring and yours, and you will snap at his heel and he will crush your head. 


[00:08:29] They get the shaft end of this exchange. You get the feeling from the very beginning, they were doomed to a life of disgrace once they turned their back on God. 


[00:08:39] Gina: We talked a lot about what demons are. I want to ask a question and then I want to ask, or I want to talk about what demons are not. What do ghosts and like, mystical spirits have to do with demons? 


[00:08:54] Cody: I don't know. I don't really believe in the whole supernatural haunted house ghost stuff. Like 


[00:09:01] Gina: what about like a medium who channels the dead? Is that a ghost? Is that a demon? What would you say like your belief is? Because that's to me as somebody who grew up in the occult, that's one of the more common curiosities is like channeling and mediums and stuff like that. 


[00:09:23] So I would really like to know what your perspective is. I know what I believe. And I know that scripture doesn't necessarily. say, but I would like to address it just because that to me, it's not, there's no difference, but what 


[00:09:37] Cody: would you, it's hard because I know we've said on previous podcasts is God wouldn't tell us to do something that's not possible. 


[00:09:43] So contacting the dead and what mediums and sorcerers are about is forbidden. And I think it's logical to believe that it's forbidden because it can happen. Do I think most mediums and fortune tellers of today are contacting spirits? No, maybe some of them. I might give some of them the benefit of the doubt of connecting something. 


[00:10:08] I don't think it's good if they are, but I also think most of them just have a, either a good way about reading people, or usually the people who go to those want something out of it, and they're very forward about what they want out of it, so it's easy to play the psychology game with those people. 


[00:10:27] Ben: Agreed. I think that most of the time There is a natural, reasonable explanation for what a medium or a spiritist does or says. However, just pulling from my own personal experience, and we'll get into that later, I won't go into it now. I would say that yes, it is possible for there to be something like a haunted house or something like a spiritist or a medium actually contacting a spirit. 


[00:10:57] I don't believe you can contact the dead. I don't believe you can contact the ghosts of loved ones reaching into heaven or hell once you're there. And there is some discussion in Christian and Jewish tradition about how long the spirits of the dead hang around the earth. There is no benefit to that discussion whatsoever. 


[00:11:19] None. Because there is no answer. That the Bible gives us at the very least 


[00:11:24] Gina: so would you say then that more than likely it's either a very unkind person or Something demonic that is speaking to or through someone for the purposes of just perpetuation of evil not necessarily actually accomplishing Something honest. 


[00:11:44] Ben: It's either a charlatan or a demon. 


[00:11:46] Gina: Yeah 


[00:11:48] Ben: And that's one of the reasons why I believe the Bible says you should be so careful about getting involved in any of this. Like you said, Cody, it's, the Bible doesn't tell you not to do something when it's impossible. In this particular instance, however, it's not that your reaching out to the dead is wrong because reaching out to the dead is wrong. 


[00:12:08] It's, reaching out to the dead is wrong because you can't, and instead you'll find yourself in contact with something infinitely worse. 


[00:12:15] Cody: Correct. We're trying to play in a realm that we know nothing about. Yeah. Like, how do we verify it's our loved one that has moved on? 


[00:12:26] Ben: Mm hmm. And, this is one of those areas where it's just, if someone is trying to convince you to go in and do a spiritual reading or something like that, don't entertain it. 


[00:12:36] Just don't. It doesn't matter if it's a charlatan, it doesn't matter how badly you want to hear from a loved one, it doesn't matter what it is you're struggling with, just please don't do it. 


[00:12:46] Gina: There's a lot more healing available with God than there is with something else. And more hope. And I think as Christians, Keeping in mind our duty to share the gospel, like, you don't want to have those regrets where you feel like you need to contact them after the fact. 


[00:13:06] If you share the gospel with people and are confident that they've received it from you, Like it's not your job to save them, but at least you have the confidence that you did what you needed to do. You said what you needed to say while they were here, and you know where you're gonna see them again. 


[00:13:24] Ben: Now, I think one of the largest concerns that a lot of spiritual teachers have when reaching this subject is the very real concern that people will try to dive too deep And be drawn in to try to reach out in an unhealthy way to either angels or demons and effectively end up doing something dark, doing something stupid. 


[00:13:46] Gina: And there are valid emotions that lead people down that path, like grief and loss and destitution and desperation, but it doesn't make it valid that you're turning in that direction. 


[00:13:59] Cody: Now, and some people enter in with the right, the right intentions, like understandable intentions. Yeah. I've been personally at a point reading the supernatural events in the Bible. 


[00:14:14] You hear more about the demonic stuff nowadays than you do any of this spiritual gifts, so to speak. And if my mental process through that was if I could prove that there's demons, then obviously there's God on the other side of that. So if I see a demon, then I'll know there's a God. And it came out of an unhealthy place of questioning faith. 


[00:14:42] Gina: Like wanting to hear that voice and have that tangible experience. 


[00:14:47] Cody: Yeah, because I would, I would tell myself that, okay, I'm not hearing from God how I want to, so the alternative would be encountering a demon. Not that I wanted to do anything with it or learn from it, but if that is true, then God is also true. 


[00:15:04] You can't have spiritual possession and there not be. God on the other end of it. 


[00:15:10] Ben: Yeah, it's a reasonable thought, and I have known of a lot of Christians who feel like, because they haven't interacted with negative spiritual things in any meaningful way, or at least they don't think they have, that somehow there's something wrong. 


[00:15:26] That they really should be driving out an evil spirit or something. And in some ways it's going to be a confirmation. Because we all have doubts. No matter what. No matter how many things that we see. No matter what miracles God works in our lives. There's always an element of doubt. The Apostle Paul himself said, If we're wrong about this, we are the most to be pitied. 


[00:15:46] Even he had doubts. John the Baptist had doubts, and he literally did backflips in his mom's womb when he came close to Christ. So, we should expect to have our own doubts, and we need to be able to deal with them. And it is unfortunate that there are a lot of people who feel like the best way to confirm is to have some kind of interaction with true spiritual evil. 


[00:16:06] And, from the bottom of my heart, don't. Don't seek it out. Do not do it. 


[00:16:13] Gina: You're gonna hear some stories tonight. You don't know what you're biting off 


[00:16:17] Cody: and I think a lot of Christians go in with the mindset that oh, I've got the Holy Spirit I'm untouchable type of thing and I do think that's true to a certain extent But that is a terrible mindset to have I do feel like that is Putting the Lord your God to the test at that point and we're told not to do that 


[00:16:40] Ben: God is not an everything proof shield. 


[00:16:42] He's not going to protect you from every bad thing in the world. I do think that he will protect you from being possessed. I do think you actually have to actively seek that evil in order to be possessed by it. However, that kind of evil can cling to you. You guys had talked about some struggles that you had just a few weeks ago, and we can go into that later if you guys want. 


[00:17:05] I know you have other stories. But as for myself, This isn't a story I've shared on this podcast before, because I find that it's tough to believe if you've never encountered this kind of thing before. Cody and Gina have heard this story before, but for those of you who haven't One of the earliest memories that I have is I was back when I was a kid and I was living in Wisconsin. 


[00:17:28] I was probably about four years old. I was sleeping in my brother's bed and I don't know why I was there, but I was laying in that bed and I rolled over on my side and in front of me was a man without a face. It was just a dark silhouette, a man without a face made of pure darkness. And I looked at him and I thought, since I was a really little kid, I thought it was my brother because I was in his room and I was sleeping in his bed. 


[00:17:54] And so I reached out and I just slapped the side of my bed because it was annoying. It's like, I'm trying to sleep and this faceless dude who I guess is my brother, I can't see too well, is here. And then he just, Flip back and disappeared over the side of the bed and I quickly got up and looked over the side of the bed and it was gone and I thought that was weird. 


[00:18:12] I saw him. I know I saw him. He was right there. I found out later just talking to my parents and some of my brothers and sisters. I kept this memory with me forever. But it was when I was still fairly young but heard the other stories. But I found out I wasn't the only person who saw stuff in that house. 


[00:18:32] My mom one night was just sitting in the kitchen, and a black cat just walked into the kitchen and then walked out. And my mom was sitting there thinking, Huh, that's weird. Wait, we don't have a cat. And she jumped up and she ran over to look where the cat was, and the cat had disappeared. There was another night where my mom and dad were trying to sleep, and then they looked up and there was a faceless man crawling around on the ceiling. 


[00:18:55] Gina: It's so weird. I'm sorry to laugh. It's because Cody's had dreams like that. 


[00:19:00] Ben: Yeah, it's weird the commonalities that you find when you stop being ashamed of these stories and actually start talking to people about it. My sister Jessie talked about how she was going to sleep one night, the door was open and there was a light on and so it was a bit illuminated and then there was a woman in the doorway. 


[00:19:17] And she looked up and she thought it was mom and this shadowy woman, just a completely dark silhouette walked toward her and she looked up and reached out and said, I love you mom. And the shadow bent over to kiss her head and then disappeared. There's a lot of dark, creepy, weird stuff that happened in that house. 


[00:19:34] There was actually an angel that showed up to my father, apparently. We don't think it was actually an angel. But it told him it was his time to die. 


[00:19:41] Gina: Oh, my. 


[00:19:43] Ben: And he said, I can't die. I got family here. There were so many dark, weird, twisted, creepy things that happened in that house. And it wasn't right. And that followed me, legitimately, until a few years ago. 


[00:19:58] I slept with the covers over my head until I was about 16 years old. I was terrified to sleep anywhere that was dark. It didn't matter if there were people in the room with me or not. The second everyone else was asleep, I was still awake because I was terrified I would see something. Eventually I was okay with that, as long as there was someone else in the room. 


[00:20:16] Still slept with the covers over my head. Eventually I could sleep without the covers over my head as long as there was someone else in the room. Then it was, I was okay as long as there was someone else in the house. And then eventually it was, okay, now I gotta live on my own. And that sucked. That was horrible. 


[00:20:31] And it felt like there was this thing following me everywhere. It kept me from sleeping. It kept I I didn't get more than maybe five, six hours of sleep any night. For most of my life. There were a handful of days where, if there was a day off, like over the summer Summer was great for me. I loved summers more than most anyone else because I could finally sleep. 


[00:20:50] Yeah, I could sleep in as late as I wanted. My thought, my parents thought it was funny how late I was sleeping. They didn't know what was going on. They know now and they feel really sad about it. But how could they possibly know? But eventually, through a period of fasting and prayer, I was finally able to get rid of that. 


[00:21:07] But it all culminated in a night just a couple years ago. It was a few months, I think maybe a half a year after I'd bought my house. But I was feeling horrible every night. It was like there was something. evil in my room, something that was evil and angry that hated me, and I couldn't sleep, and I couldn't close my eyes, I couldn't feel comfortable, and I went through a period of fasting and prayer with the church during the Daniel fast that we were doing, and suddenly it all culminated one night where I felt something just out of place. 


[00:21:35] Hovering over my bed. I didn't open my eyes. I was terrified to and it felt like it was just hovering inches from me like it was just about ready to open its mouth and say something horrible. And then suddenly it felt like there was a light that built up inside of me and just like it. It's weird because like, how do you describe it? 


[00:21:52] It's it felt like there was literally a light from God that built up inside of me and flashed and banished it and it was like, I had never felt peace like this being alone in a room ever. Yeah. I finally felt like I was actually alone in a room. And I've slept perfectly fine pretty much every night since then. 


[00:22:10] There's been one or two nights where it's felt wrong. But I think that's the Lord using that. Letting me know when something's wrong. But all of that is to say, I didn't ask for that. That didn't happen because I was searching for something. That's something that followed me for most of my life and that I had to deal with, and I had to deal with it through fasting and prayer. 


[00:22:29] You don't want to deal with this. I promise you that. If you go looking for this stuff just to satisfy your own curiosities, just to try to prove to yourself that God exists, I promise you there are better ways to do it than that. 


[00:22:43] Gina: It's the path to destruction. 


[00:22:44] Ben: It is. 


[00:22:45] Gina: Of your mental health, of your life, of your relationship with God, so many things. 


[00:22:50] Ben: And you're assuming that God is just gonna protect you from everything. He's not. He's not. If you didn't protect me, strictly speaking, from this when I was young, and he had his reasons for letting this happen, but if he didn't protect me from this, and I didn't ask for it, and I didn't do anything wrong, you, when you're looking for it, You're looking for trouble. 


[00:23:07] You're going to find it. I pray you don't find it. I pray you fail miserably because that's the best thing that could happen to you. 


[00:23:14] Gina: I really appreciate you sharing that. I know it's not easy, but it is going to help people. And I think that's part of God's plan is to build your testimony. And I hate that you had to live like that for so long, but. 


[00:23:26] I'm really glad that you can talk about it now and that you have freedom from it and that you have clear instructions that are biblically oriented that helped you get rid of it. 


[00:23:38] Ben: And it's made me not, since I have had success in fighting it back by the grace of God through fasting and prayer, now I have an understanding, a sympathy of other people who are struggling with it and I can help to an extent. 


[00:23:51] I can't provide. Explanations for everybody, but at the very least for the people who know what I've been through They don't they're not afraid to talk to me about this stuff for the stuff that you guys have been through You're not afraid to talk to me about it. You know, I'm not gonna look at you as crazy 


[00:24:07] Gina: But some people don't understand and that's good I don't want people to understand the types of things that I've seen I'm gonna share them tonight because I feel like I need to and part of My commitment to God this year is to use my voice and my testimony to help others and to grow their faith, but I'm telling you, it doesn't matter if you signed up for it or not. 


[00:24:30] Other people's influence over you has a big deal to how the demonic and how the spiritual world interacts with you. And God doesn't tell us not to do something because it's impossible. if consulting with the dead and alchemy and witchcraft wasn't possible, God wouldn't warn against it and he wouldn't have punishments outlined for it. 


[00:24:54] Cody: I think that's a good point to make and a lot of people skate over those verses in Deuteronomy's Deuteronomy, where God lists the different spiritual activities that we shouldn't involve ourselves in and just. brush it off, but God isn't going to tell you not to do something that you can't do. Like it, it's makes no sense to do that. 


[00:25:21] It's illogical. We serve a logical God. He's not going to tell you not to do something, have punishments for doing it, but it's not really anything. Establishing that and moving from that point, I think is good. 


[00:25:35] Gina: I was raised in a culturally Italian home, and I was adopted out of foster care as a baby, so I am not actually culturally Italian. 


[00:25:46] However, the environment that I was raised in was. So there was an element of kind of cultural pride at being Italian. And if you are Italian, then you understand. It's just, that's just, it's a unique breed. My grandparents immigrated from Italy and they were staunch Catholics. They weren't practicing Catholics, but they loved the fact that they were Catholics. 


[00:26:12] And that seems to be like a common thread in Italian American culture. And so growing up, I knew that my family identified as Catholic. We didn't actually go to the Catholic church very often. I was brought up Going at like Easter and Christmas and there were some seasons where my mom would take us on a regular basis But mostly we didn't go to church and I call myself a first generation Christian Because my family does not understand the personal relationship with Jesus Christ So just to give you some context my mom and my dad divorced when I was two My adoptive parents and my mom really started going down a dark path and I don't know at that point in my life where it started for her. 


[00:27:02] It could have been well before I was born. She went to college during the seventies when everything was free sex and love and experimentation and who knows what she learned back then, but she became very involved in occult activities from a very young age for me. Um, and. I didn't understand that it wasn't normal and it wasn't right until I got older. 


[00:27:28] I took on a caretaker role with my mom really young. I remember my parents divorcing and then being about six and my grandma dying. My mom's mom died. And I remember her Laying on the floor often in the middle of the night and hearing her like screaming and crying and coming to find her and she would be like crying and weeping and sad and she had every right to be sad and grieving, but she would say things that were really confusing to me. 


[00:27:59] And maybe I should just slip my wrists and I say all of this because and it sounds crazy, but it. At six years old, learning about what slitting your wrists is, what suicide is, it inflicted some things on me that I acted on at a very young age while living in a home that was heavily influenced by the occult. 


[00:28:22] Now that I am an adult, I look back and I think, I wonder if what she was doing was more like a blood sacrifice for me. Because I remember sitting in my room cutting myself in elementary school and being in like a trance and not even being able to stop. And feeling this oppression in my home, like hearing lies that were like, nobody loves you, nobody wants you, you don't belong here, your birth family didn't want you. 


[00:28:56] Growing up in that environment, a lot of it probably was my mom's own mental illness. But, as an adult, I've been able to look at the books that she owns, and study the people she's studied, and look up the conferences that she's gone to. And now that I know what she's really following, I know what she did to me as a child was satanic and demonic. 


[00:29:24] And, It is really weird because now that I know, I don't want to be connected with her at all. She stole from me for my whole life. And there were times when we went no contact while I was an adult where she would go to mediums and astrologers. And I remember one time she texted me and she was like, what time of day were you born at? 


[00:29:49] And this was during a season when we weren't speaking at all. And it just came out of nowhere after months of no contact. And I was like, okay, I know what you're doing, which was consulting astrologers and mediums, trying to get them to give her information on me, sort of weaponizing the situation. Cause she wanted to be in contact with me and I did not want to be in contact with her. 


[00:30:11] And she was looking for ways to gain information because I wasn't providing information. And so having, I withheld that information from her, but, and also the time of day and stuff, but I do know that people do consult, my mom consults with that, and puts my name on the ears of whoever she's talking to, whether they're demons or charlatans, who knows. 


[00:30:37] But I personally know I won't go near it with a 10 foot pole. So I know that was heavy, but it's just, that's how I was raised. That was normal. And I was like that until I became a mom myself. So the influence that she had me under had me in a fog and that was my experience with the demonic It's so much deeper than that. 


[00:31:02] There's so much more. There's been so many attacks on our family Cody is somebody who doesn't normally believe in demonic activity and he has had so many dreams and weird encounters that We just couldn't ignore it, and we've had to study it to protect ourselves. I don't know what you want to edit out, but I didn't know where else to start. 


[00:31:25] Cody: Why would I edit anything out? 


[00:31:27] Gina: Because it's deep and dark, and I've never shared that before. 


[00:31:31] Cody: Thank you for sharing, seriously. 


[00:31:32] Gina: Yeah. It, it's, you don't want to play with it. 


[00:31:36] Cody: No. It's hard because I knew my previous position, and if I didn't know you two, like, I'd say, oh, that's a hard situation, but not really believe you guys, and being on the other side of that, and it's not like my eyes being opened and 99. 


[00:31:54] 9%, like, if I didn't know you guys, I'd probably still feel that way, even going through what I've gone through, and most stuff I hear, I still don't. Hold any weight to so talking about this stuff is difficult for me because I know how I receive that stuff But yeah, like with your mom asking for your birth Minute like two days before that I had back to back oppressive dreams and I'm very confident in my consciousness 


[00:32:27] Gina: when you're awake, 


[00:32:28] Cody: when I'm awake and not awake. 


[00:32:29] And I had these dreams where there, there'd be different interactions. And then all of a sudden, like a demonic person would pop up in my dreams and then I would wake up, but I would still have this floating dark presence, like the faceless man almost. And. I know I was awake. I wasn't thinking I was awake. 


[00:32:52] I wasn't dreaming that I was awake. And I literally had to call out to Jesus before I could move because I was also sleep paralysis. And I've had sleep paralysis before in my life growing up. I was a very vivid dreamer. And It wasn't like this, like, it wasn't like calling out to Jesus, like the sleep paralysis that I had before was completely different and yeah, but again, I know how people like me take these types of situations, but 


[00:33:25] Gina: It's not, I'm not trying to sensationalize it. 


[00:33:27] In fact, I'm like humiliated by some of the stuff that I've lived through. There's so much, but I can't like the attacks that you and I have had since trying to escape it. Honestly, I feel like I've fled a war zone and we've had search parties looking for us and we've had to be very cautious what we've shared about the kids and who we've shared it to and where we're going and what we're doing and what we believe in. 


[00:33:58] Because. It gets weaponized by demonic forces and it gets confusing very fast. 


[00:34:04] Ben: And in truth, Cody, your approach is not a bad one. There are so many people who take their own personal negative emotions, their own personal evil and apply spirit to it. Just give it a spiritual tinge because it's easier than accepting the fact that you might be a bit messed up. 


[00:34:24] Cody: Yeah. Yeah. The devil made me do it mentality. 


[00:34:27] Ben: Yes. And the truth is that a lot of times, it really is just you. And you better hope it's just you, because that's an easy fix. Not easy, but simple. It's you, there's something in your life that's causing suffering. Find a way to address it. There are people in this world who are very good at helping other people suffering in that way. 


[00:34:50] Find what's causing the issue, and helping you to get rid of it. This is something that Dr. Jordan Peterson does all the time. And he's got so many stories about people who, if you saw them, you would think, Oh my goodness, this is a poor shell of a human being. They are struggling with horrendous personal demons. 


[00:35:06] And he helps them through very slow, incremental manageable steps to become better people, to become brave and to face the dark things in their life. And that's an important lesson here too. Not every single negative thing that happens to you is because of a demon, 


[00:35:19] Gina: right? 


[00:35:20] Ben: Not all of it's because of a spirit. 


[00:35:21] I would say even most things are probably you. And even if there is some kind of demon or spirit trying to whisper some evil into you, the fact of the matter is, most of the time, it's like what the Screwtape Letters approach is. It's just an idea. It's just a thought. And it's you that takes that seed of a thought and plants it and nurtures it and cultures it. 


[00:35:43] Cody: I agree and I honestly think C. S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters is a good fiction place to start for reading about the demonic if you want to get the interaction. If you try to read these biographies or Um, Gina and I are currently reading a deliverance book written by, um, 


[00:36:05] Gina: a Nigerian pastor, 


[00:36:06] Cody: a Nigerian pastor, highly recommended by some people that we know and, you know, reading it, it's, you know, it sounds great, but. 


[00:36:14] There's a lot of red flags, and there's not a lot of Bible in it. There, there's, and he, he puts a lot of Bible in it, but there's not Bible backing that up. You, you gotta be careful with what you consume on the oppression. 


[00:36:30] Gina: Yeah, people are so voracious for information. There are some podcasters that I follow. 


[00:36:36] On social media that live near us, and one of them used to be very into the occult and witchcraft, and she has started drawing pictures of demons, which, like, they look like Pokemon, they're well drawn, and amusing to look at, but as somebody who has Lived through demonic oppression like I can tell you I didn't have Goober Pokemon looking people creatures running around my home That's not that that we have realms unseen and scripture talks about that these things are not just like little things to be joked about and trifled with and If you're describing your demonic history for views and likes, like, you haven't left that lifestyle. 


[00:37:27] I'm sorry. 


[00:37:28] Ben: No, literally the only reason we're talking about our own experience in this is for instructional purposes. I hope we never have to bring this stuff up 


[00:37:36] Gina: again, 


[00:37:37] Ben: but it's important for us to talk about our own experiences here. One, because Cody's position is actually very valuable as more of a quasi outsider. 


[00:37:45] Where you've come into this stuff, and it's like the Catholic Church's position of bringing in atheists who don't believe in demonic possession, who are psychologists, to assess people who are possessed to see if they're possessed. Because if an atheist psychologist says you're possessed, you're probably possessed. 


[00:38:01] Gina: Mm, yes. 


[00:38:02] Ben: Makes a lot of sense. And so the outsider perspective is very valuable, but for Gina and me, Like, honestly, you had it much worse than I did. Mine was literally just one encounter when I was very young that just stuck with me. 


[00:38:14] Gina: Mine was constant. 


[00:38:15] Ben: Yeah. 


[00:38:16] Gina: For 25 years. 


[00:38:17] Ben: And it's one that's still not letting you go, whereas mine has. 


[00:38:21] Gina: It is very hard to disentangle yourself from somebody when you have been their sole source of food for your entire existence. And that is not just referring to the demonic, it's referring to my mother. She has a personality disorder and when you have mental health tied into the demonic, it can be very challenging to identify which is which. 


[00:38:43] And that's why we have issues in churches where it's, is it a spirit of fear or is it a spirit of anxiety or is it a demon? We don't know. 


[00:38:51] Cody: I want to specify though, she doesn't have clinical diagnosed mental disorder. She has a lot of Narcissistic personality traits, like textbook narcissist, and that's what you mean by mental disorder. 


[00:39:07] Gina: Yeah, she's so crafty that she's never been diagnosed. 


[00:39:11] Cody: Yeah. 


[00:39:12] Gina: And she's been able to talk doctors into taking her side and her word at face value my entire life. So, of course, she hasn't been diagnosed. Look at what she's tied up in. But. She uses the same psychological tactics, and that's something I learned through seeing a psychologist myself. 


[00:39:33] So it's not my assessment, it is my psychologist's assessment. And that's a whole other layer of the trauma of my upbringing. 


[00:39:42] Cody: I want to differentiate between that because the Bible does this as well. There's a difference between disease and demonic oppression possession. Like the Bible clearly lists sickness and disease in a completely different category as, uh, any kind of demonic encounter. 


[00:40:04] Demonic encounter, um, diseases, you can be epileptic and you can have certain other, um, 


[00:40:13] Gina: You can be mute and blind. Illnesses that's 


[00:40:15] Cody: not caused by demons, and the Bible identifies that. And then there's stuff caused by demons that can also present itself as an illness, but is demonic, according to the Bible. 


[00:40:33] Ben: And I do think, once again, there are two different camps here. There are people who try to ascribe spirit to literally everything. I remember there was one story that a pastor of my old Pentecostal church told me. where there was a man and a wife who were having an argument, and she was rebuking his spirit of disobedience and resistance in the name of Jesus. 


[00:40:53] Then he was rebuking her in the name of Jesus, and they were just going back and forth, rebuking each other in the name of Jesus. Both of them were just terrible people, and they needed to learn to be good. But yeah, they're, they're people who just take everything as spirit, and they just rebuke everything in the name of Jesus. 


[00:41:10] Every bad thing is a demon. They're always being oppressed. And they need deliverance. Hallelujah, Lord. On the other side, there are a lot of people who say, No, literally everything is not spirit. That's ridiculous. That's superstition. That's stupid. You're being illogical. That position is every bit as illogical as saying that literally everything is spirit. 


[00:41:33] Not everything is physical. Not everything is material. And not everything is spirit. 


[00:41:38] Gina: There are examples in scripture of spirits that are specified for a certain purpose or described as doing a certain thing. But that's not the same as what we're talking about here. 


[00:41:54] Ben: And if you go through life. I've known a surprising number of Christians who have taken the position of, well, there's no spirit at all, there's no possession, there's no oppression, it's just you. 


[00:42:04] You're just screwed up, you've got a mental illness, you need to take some lithium, you'll be fine. 


[00:42:08] Gina: Or there might be some secret sin that you're holding on to. People have said that to me about 


[00:42:18] Cody: It's funny because I find it, and maybe it's just the type of people that I interact with, but it tends to be Christians who deny the existence of God. any kind of demonic oppression rather than atheists or the modern culture now accepts spiritualism more than most church folk. 


[00:42:43] Gina: Spiritualism is all about, right now, what's popular is channeling, meditation, yoga, crystals, manifestation, energy exchange, like those are all things that are tied up in that spirituality. 


[00:42:58] It's like mystical and woo. And people are so attracted to it because it's like, it's self care and it builds you and it edifies you and it makes me stronger. And this crystal is going to help me make friends and people aren't going to hate me anymore. It's like. 


[00:43:16] Cody: Yeah, I want to read this quote in relation to Christians who fall down that line real quick, though. 


[00:43:33] In opposition to the explicit statements of the Bible, which cannot be rejected without rejecting the authority of scripture altogether, or adopting such principles of interpretation as to destroy the value as rule of faith. And that's from Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology. And I agree with that, like, you can't reject angels and demons without rejecting the authority of scripture. 


[00:44:03] Ben: Yes, it literally outlines multiple times Christ cast out demons. He cast out impure spirits. He healed the sick. There is spiritual stuff that we have to deal with as a church, and I do think a lot of this kind of general spiritualism has been a response to the church's general move to move away from the supernatural, oddly enough. 


[00:44:24] The modern culture, for a while, was everything is physical, everything is scientific, everything is observable and understandable. Thus, we have to interpret all of the Bible through that lens of materialism. And if you don't, you're stupid. And if you don't, you're ignorant. And if you don't, you're superstitious. 


[00:44:43] And so there was a really big push by a lot of very prominent spiritual leaders to try to filter, The Bible through the lens of science. Everything that happens in the Bible can be explained. Everything that happens in the Bible can be understood. Everything that happens in the Bible is physical. Jesus said that he was going to send his advocate. 


[00:45:03] He said he was going to send his spirit. Does the spirit literally only help us with physical things? Do all we have to lean on is this idea that the spirit shows up and then makes you feel better? Or does he do things that we are a little uncomfortable with? Can he do supernatural things? The church in many ways moved away from that, and then there was still this hunger for so many people throughout the world. 


[00:45:26] As this massive push of atheistic materialism came in, there were so many people who were hungry. They knew that there's this innate sense that we have that there has to be something more. And what we've seen now is the church has been edged out and this new age spiritualism has taken its place because people rightly assume there has to be more. 


[00:45:45] And the church hasn't been providing that food for them. They look for that food somewhere else. 


[00:45:50] Gina: And for people like me, who have a very intense spiritual past, it is overwhelming for pastors who have no knowledge or training because that knowledge and training doesn't exist. in the Western culture. So many pastors I've met with and tried to explain what has happened and what I'm trying to get away from and what I have gotten away from in a lot of ways. 


[00:46:16] And they're like, have you considered counseling? Cause they don't know what to say or do. And it's a, yeah, of course I've been to counseling. I did like decades of counseling. I've been in counseling since before I left my mother's home. So counseling isn't the answer. Jesus is the answer. God is the answer. 


[00:46:35] And I've figured it out myself with Cody because I haven't had a support system. If the church was equipped to deal with actual demons, We would live in a totally different world. 


[00:46:46] Ben: Yeah, and you'll note that the Solution that's being presented to you by the church is the physical material one and it's 


[00:46:54] Gina: secular. 


[00:46:54] Ben: Yes. It's the secular explanation It's okay. It has to be some kind of issue that you can resolve by therapy that you can resolve by talking things through It's not spirit. It's not Something that the power of the holy spirit needs to work in any more than he just helps you with your general life 


[00:47:12] Gina: And if you evaluate like just for a second because i've had a lot of people dismiss me because they think that it's like sensationalized or Just not true or like i'm perceiving it as being demonic, but it may not really be demonic Maybe I was just abused if the if you look at the fruits of god in my life and my children and my marriage deliverance You can't not see deliverance because I am fully transformed. 


[00:47:41] I am not the girl that I was. And there is evidence of the Holy Spirit in our lives. And if you got to know us, you would see that. But to the people who hear these types of stories and they're like, Oh, you're crazy. What are you talking about? It's not a fair assessment, especially when there's fruit from God. 


[00:48:03] It's scary to talk about, but when you see fruits from the Lord, when you see evidence of the Holy Spirit, when you know that person has changed and is in their word and they're not pursuing those things, but those things are pursuing them, there needs to be more than just, Hey, go to therapy or let's just not talk about it. 


[00:48:25] I want to be your friend and I like where you are right now, but don't tell me about back then. It, it's real. We have to acknowledge that. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to our podcast today. If you liked what you heard, please feel free to subscribe and share and leave a positive review. 


[00:48:44] And if you would like to connect with us on social media, you can do so on Instagram and Facebook at the Logic of God. You can also send us an email at main dot the Logic of god@gmail.com. Thanks again for listening. We hope you have a great day.