Sermon Tone Analysis

BY PASTOR GLENN PEASE

Gender Dysphoria is the psychiatric term for what is commonly called transsexualism.

This is the obsession that one has been born as the wrong sex.

This is so deep-seated that the only cure is thought to be sex change surgery.

In all the literature there is only one report of a cure by means of months of hard work using behavior modification.

But there is one report also of an instant cure with no medicine, and no psychiatry.

D. Scott Rogo, author of over 25 books, tells of this amazing cure in his book The Infinite Boundary.

The story began when John was born in 1952.

When he was four he started to imitate his mother by putting on makeup, and wearing his sisters clothes.

He became more and more feminine as he grew older, and walked and talked like a girl.

He enjoyed only the feminine things of life.

Eventually he was diagnosed as a transsexual.

And unsuccessful suicide attempt brought him to Dr. David Barlow at the University of Tenn.

Medical School.

He was given a complete psychiatric examination which showed, for all practical purposes, he was a woman trapped in a mans body.

He was advised to have sex-change surgery, and it was scheduled.

It was a long process to prepare for this, and so meanwhile John was living openly as a woman, even going by the name Judy.

By the summer of 1973 he was ready for surgery.

But to the shock of the doctors, Judy came back as John.

He was dressed in a three piece suit, and looked completely masculine.

He explained that he had gone to a Christian doctor who told him his problem was demonic.

He agreed to have the doctor pray with him, and the doctor spent two to three hours praying that the evil spirits in him would leave.

This exorcism worked, and now for the first time in 20 years he felt like a man.

He was instantly cured, and all his feminine behavior vanished.

Dr. Barlow asked him to retake the battery of tests, and all of the results showed he was restored to a totally masculine identity.

The demons that had messed up his life had been cast out.

We think demonism is not for today, because we have been brainwashed by our culture, but the fact is, the New Testament is more relevant than modern psychology in explaining why we live in a society so filled with perversions.

Why are there so many messed up people?

Why are there so many child abusers?

Why are there so many obsessed with all sorts of abnormal behavior?

All this is a boon to talk show hosts, but it is a curse to millions who cannot enjoy a normal life.

The New Testament tells us that much abnormal human behavior is a result of demon possession, or the more modern term, demonization.

Men and women open themselves up to satanic influence, and he takes advantage of it, and sends his troops into their lives and takes control.

After reading widely in theology, medicine, and psychology, I have no doubt that the very thing that we see in the New Testament ministry of Jesus are going on all over the world today.

But equal to the danger of not believing in the reality of demons is the danger of believing in them too much.

The fact is, they are real, but still more rare than some believers like to think.

It is hard to keep a balance on a subject like this.

It is just too easy to go to one extreme or the other.

We want to dismiss the whole bizarre subject as a matter of mental illness, or discover demons behind everything that is abnormal.

Both views are clearly out of touch with the revelation of the Bible, and the realism of history.

The only way to approach a subject like this is to be a believing skeptic.

We must come to it believing there is something to it, but be skeptical about all evidence until it becomes overwhelming.

Catholic and Protestant authorities agree, you should consider every other possibility before you jump to the conclusion that anything is demonic.

Most cases of reported demonism are proved to be something else.

There are even numerous cases of pseudo demonism where clever people rant and rave and foam at the mouth, and scream profanities because they have discovered it is a very effective method for getting attention, and getting their way.

History is filled with the follies of being a demon hunter, but equally foolish is the life lived in utter unawareness of these dark powers.

So let's begin our study of this sober subject by looking at-

I. THE REALITY OF DEMONS.

When Jesus was confronted by a man with a evil spirit in the synagogue, He treated the man, not as a mental case of one going berserk, but as one possessed.

He said with authority, "Come out of him!"

And with a shriek the spirit came out shaking the man violently.

There can be no question that Jesus believed in the reality of demons.

The first miracle of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark is that of casting out an evil spirit in verse 27.

In verse 34 he drove out many demons.

In verse 39 he drove out many more in Galilee.

The evidence is very strong just in this first chapter that one of the major ministries of Jesus was exorcism, the casting out of demons.

Why was this so important?

Jesus tells us in Matt.

12:28, "But if I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you."

One of the major evidences that the kingdom had come was the fact that people in bondage to demons were being set free.

The demonic kingdom could not stand before the kingdom of God, but had to retreat.

Because of this, those nations where the Gospel has gone and converted a large segment of the population, so that it can be called a Christian land, have far less demonization than do those who still live in lands of darkness where Satan has strong control.

Because we have grown up in American, a land where the Gospel has been very powerful, we have come to question the very reality of demons.

Many feel that Jesus was just accommodating Himself to the popular belief in demons, and went along with the belief just to capture people's attention.

This is a very weak argument, for Jesus made a clear distinction between diseased people and demonized people.

He never talked with diseases.

These people were sick with natural causes, and Jesus did not carry on conversations with their bacteria or viruses.

But when He cast out demons, He often talked with them and cast them out as living things.

They often made terrible noises as He did it.

Bacteria and viruses do not have loud voices, nor do they control the voices of their victims.

The demons even talked back to Jesus, and if He was just going along with a popular false belief, He was encouraging superstition, which is totally inconsistent with His claim to be the truth.

There is no escaping the evidence, demons were real, and Jesus fought them as real living enemies.

There is much in the Bible that cannot be understood apart from the reality of demons.

It has always been one of the mysteries in my mind of how the Jews, who saw all of the marvelous miracles of God in the Old Testament, could yet go off to worship idols.

It seems inconceivable to me that any idol could have a greater lure than the God who made the heavens and the earth.

This power of idols over Israel all through the Old Testament can only be comprehended when we see that behind the idols were real gods, that is demons.

The Old Testament does make this clear if you search for it.

Demons and idols are linked as one.

Look at Deut. 32:17.

"They sacrificed to demons, which are not God-god's they had not known, gods that recently appeared, gods your fathers did not fear."

These demons were not God, but they were gods.

The Old Testament is loaded with many gods of the nations round about Israel, and these were real gods, but they were demons.

Ps. 106:36-37 says, "They worship their idols, which became a snare to them.

They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons."

Paul confirms this in I Cor.

10:20, "The sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons."

In the book of Rev. the idols and demons are linked again as it says in Rev. 9:20, "...they did not stop worshiping demons, and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood..."

There is no power in wood, stone, and precious metals, but if there is demonic power behind these things, then idols can actually have obsessive power in peoples lives.

Idols are not merely harmless superstition, but they can be connections to literal demonic power.

It seems so irrelevant for John to say to Christians in I John 5:21, "Little children keep yourself from idols."

Idols are about as irrelevant as demons in our culture.

We dismiss them both as a obsolete ideas.

But the facts of life will not support this conclusion.

Any idol can become an obsession that opens the door to demonic influence in anyone's life.

We still fight those same battles God's people fought in the Old Testament and New Testament days.

We have thought these were cultural ideas no longer fitting for the modern scientific mind, but this is not so.

Demons have not departed to the land of make believe.

They are just as real today as they were in the days of Jesus.

But the question can still be, so what?

The Lock Ness Monster may be real also, and so too the Abominable Snow Man.