I'm wondering what the Christian perspective is on all this. Is something like schizophrenia always caused by demons, or is it also a legitimate medical problem? I'm weary of what most psychiatrists and psychologists say and don't know what to make of this. Do any of you know of any articles or sermons on this subject?
I suffered from mental illness before I got saved. A team prayed over me and at least 5 demons left me with shrieking. I had been into all sorts of wrong thing that got me into bondage. I got filled with the Holy Spirit sooon after and stayed free for over 20 years.
I do not want to generalize anything, or develop doctrines but I believe that in times of the NT there was no such condition known as mental illness, just demon possession.
Would Jesus deny deliverance from this horrible condition to anyone who sincerely repents and desires freedom?
narrowpath
Mental illness occurs when we are overwhelmed by
our emotions {doubt, guilt, fear, etc.} and not
governed by the Spirit of God. For God has not
given us a spirit of fear; but of power, love,
and a sound mind!!
I second Narrowpath's post and agree.
I believe schitzophrenia is ALWAYS demonic. Many times, however, the demons tormenting such a soul will actually prevent them from understanding or responding to the Gospel and need to be driven out before they even have a fighting chance. And this "mental disease" is never just a single demon, it's the result of many demons. Many times is a result of both generational curse and fear/bitterness (initially as the root), sometimes triggered by a traumatic event through which the demons gain access.
here's a quote from a medical journal.
"A sibling or a parent with schizophrenia increases the likelihood that a person will have the disease."
so, then, demonic possession can be inherited??
bub
There is a genetic component in schizophrenia, but, that doesn't mean it cannot be healed.
I agree there is very likely to be a spiritual component, but I believe that trauma can cause a person's psyche to become fragmented, and these separations between parts, create vulnerability to spiritual interference. It's not just one single cause and effect.
Further, if the causes of the splitting are understood, the remedies can be more specifically applied - and they are not the same for everyone.
And, although Jesus could heal every schizophrenic that ever lived, only a few want to receive from Him.
For those of you who believe it to be demons, what would you say of a Christian with a mental illness? (Don't want to start a debate or anything, I'm just in the need of some answers.) Would the person then need deliverance and how would it be carried out?
And again, does anybody know of any articles or sermons on the subject?
when you ask if it is medical or demonic, understand that in Jesus's time most things were demonically explained, but now most things are medically explained. Soon, even more unknowns will be explained in a scientific way, so we need to look at the role of demons in affecting our mental or bodily makeup, because there are going to be physical explanations for everything.
Read the book called Pigs in the parlor...
Dont remember who wrote it but was very interesting.
Of course as everything said in the book is not what I would call biblical, it seems that everyone tends to build doctrine around experience and not solely on scripture, but you will have to as you read the book realise that something is going on in the spritual and needs to be taken care of.
For instance my wife was suffering from a disorder and causing her to have panic attacks and it was causing problems in our relationship, ultimately she went on medication, causing other problems..
The Holy Spirit speaking to me, was dealing with me and how I needed to get right with God and my wife needed to feel secure in our relationship and with the Lord.
I got right,,, Repented and Prayed over my wife and she was healed...
my wife had one relapse over 5 years later...
Why? again my prayer life faltered and I prayed for her. And I must as the spiritual head have to maintain a prayerful relationship with the Lord and with my family in obedience to Christ.
Spiritual warefare is very real and has to be dealt with in Repentance and prayer.
we fight not flesh and blood, but with princapalities and powers in high places.
my 2 cents anyway.
Schizophrenia is demonic as is many other things that are classified "as a disorder" Devils oppress the body, and the soul. Many things are not hereditary but a devil that has been working in someones family line for many years.
Now I may be wrong on this but here are some thoughts.
Is the question Is Schizophrenia AND any kind of mental Illness demonic? I see some as Mental issues and others as Emotional issues. And we know the emotions can affect the mental state of a person, and the mental can affect the emotional state of a person.
My understanding is that Schizophrenia, able to be controlled by medication was declassified as a mental illness but a physical one, therefore dismissing Schizophrenic people from hospitals. Many many homeless people who have Schizophrenia are helpless in this system.
Also, I find it interesting many people with extremely high IQ's have Schizophrenia or by-polar disorders.
We don't always call other physical illnesses demon possession. Yet our brain is a physical organ in our body, and anything less then normal we want to call demonic.
There are more and more children today with Hyper Activity Disorder. Although many are really mis-diagnosed, there are those who really have something going on there. I do know years and years ago working in the Mothers Morning Out if kids were given Kool-Aid...cherry flavor, the red dye in that Kool-Aid had these kids bouncing off the walls.
Babies born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome have mental issues.
Children born to crack head parents have real mental issues. Is this demonic or brain damage, or maybe both?
Many people who are artistic, use the right side of their brain..the non verbal side, who are not academic in school, get into trouble, many don't finish school. Many have learning disabilities ...although very intelligent and High IQ's drop out. Believe it or not, many people in prison are those who have learning disabilities. So is our society today and our educational system somewhat at fault for some of these mental and emotional issues?
But with that, regardless of where one stands on the subject, we can agree that God is capable of bringing chaos into order, and healing our minds, emotions and our heart. With a “New Heart” He has Given in the New Birth, our emotions and minds are renewed In Him.
Katy
Added: Question... If Schizophrenia is demon possession, why do these demons wait until a person is in their teens twenties and thirties to show up?
Who Gets Schizophrenia?
Anyone can get schizophrenia. It is diagnosed all over the world and in all races and cultures. While it can occur at any age, schizophrenia typically first appears in the teenage years or 20s. The disorder affects men and women equally, although symptoms generally appear earlier in men (in their teens or 20s) than in women (in their 20s or early 30s). Children over the age of 5 can develop schizophrenia, but it is very rare before adolescence.
Are the SI moderators tolerant of posts that characterize people suffering from mental illness as being posessed by demons? don't these people have enough problems?
pray for the afflicted all that you can, i encourage this, as it will definately do some good.
but how about praying that their doctors and the medical world discovers what genes are causing this terrible, debilitating disease and that they devise the best remedy possible???? God gave us the gifts of observation and discovery, of scientific curiosity, of logic. we are supposed to use these gifts. if we don't, why should God answer our prayers???
bub
Hi Isaiah64...
A study of the brain shows that schizophrenia is a physical problem -- not merely an emotional problem.I'm wondering what the Christian perspective is on all this. Is something like schizophrenia always caused by demons, or is it also a legitimate medical problem?
This is a physical disease that has been illustrated through cross examination of brain scans (to explain the differences between individuals with and without the disease). This is why medicine is so successful in treatment of schizophrenia (or should we assume that demons are bound by medicine?). While the cause of the disease is not currently known, most scientists agree that there is some sort of organic foundation for this form of mental illness. However, there are some scientists who have thought that extreme [u]overuse
Most believe that it is not a progressively debilitative mental illness (like Alzheimer’s disease) but can be cured. Scientists, therefore, are currently searching for an organic, physical cause in order to determine possible cures or better treatments. They already understand the link between genetics and schizophrenia. The link between drug use and the disease is also readily established. Scientists have also observed the development of the disease resulting from physical brain injury. However, they are trying to discover how psychological or other external causes could trigger the onset of the disease.
I think that it would be disingenuous to blame the disease on a demon. While we know that disease is a product of sin in this world, we are careful not to place the blame for the common cold (like the rhinovirus) or the flu squarely upon the shoulders of a demon. While I agree that it is possible that some appearances of behavior or mental illness could be blamed on demonic activity, we need to be careful about doing so. We need to know that we are stating a TRUTH and not a LIE when we attempt to diagnose someone as being “afflicted by a devil.” There is a danger in this sort of charismatic diagnosis.
Remember A.A. Allen? He was a charismatic/neo-Pentecostal healing evangelist who would go around telling sick people that they had demons in them. He had been a licensed minister for the Assemblies of God, but was defrocked after his arrest for drunk driving. Allen used to bring “bottled demons” to his tent meetings that he claimed were taken when demons left sick people. He had bottles of “cancer demons,” “epileptic demons,” “STD demons” and even “poverty demons.” He was extremely popular and would attract many individuals suffering from terminal illness. Allen used to sell “prayer cloths” to the diligent masses (starting price: $100). Allen died of an apparent heart attack at the age of 59 in a hotel room that police described as filled with empty liquor and pill bottles. Some members of his staff eventually admitted that his bottled “demons” were simply internal organs taken from cows and pigs.
Several famous TV and radio evangelists emerged from Allen’s “ministry,” including Don Stewart and R. W. Schambach. These ministers were not nearly as blatantly radical as A. A. Allen, focusing more on the charismatic doctrine of healing and the health/wealth message. Schambach is a well-known prosperity preacher who often tells stories about people healed because they “sowed a seed faith gift” to his ministry. He also offered “prayer cloths” for a “generous love offering” so that people could receive their healings. He used to tell a story about how one schizophrenic was miraculously healed by M&Ms that he kept in his suit pocket. Like other healing and prosperity evangelists, many people flocked to Schambach’s meetings.
I have often wondered why supposedly gifted men like Benny Hinn and R. W. Schambach (who claim the power to heal anyone with their touch) did not simply flock to hospitals and nursing homes? Why don’t they visit AIDS hospices? Why don’t they mail boxes of “prayer cloths” to rehabilitation centers free of charge? More likely than not, they know that they aren’t quite a “gifted” as they would have us believe. I know a guy whose mother passed away after being told that she was healed of a disease at a Benny Hinn meeting. She stopped taking her medication (as a “step of faith”), and was seemingly fine for about six months. Her sudden death devastated her husband (a Presbyterian minister) and son. Subsequently, both of them were completely “turned off” to the Pentecostal experience because of this experiment with “charismania.”
I still know people who blame the devil for their stumped toes. Some of them believe that there is a spiritual cause for every physical effect. Sick with the cold? Need reading glasses? Cancer? Lay off from work? A dent on your fender? According to these people, the devil did it all!
While I am also weary of some things that are stated by sociologists, psychologists and psychiatrists – not everything they say is “crazy” (pardon my pun). Remember, psychiatrists are actually MEDICAL DOCTORS. They are simply diagnosticians who are supposedly qualified to differentiate between real mental illness and simple depression. Sociologists and psychologists often rely on behavior statistics and observations to make evaluations or recommendations. While I can’t speak for all of these professions, I imagine that some good can come from them.
While in junior high school, my uncle and his wife were visiting our home. I knew that my uncle’s wife had been diagnosed with schizophrenia as a result of her past drug use. One night, she had a “vision” in our living room that was almost frightening. She literally “saw” someone (a deceased loved one) and was having a conversation with him. It was disturbing (to say the least), and almost seemed “spiritual.” I wasn’t a Christian at the time, but even I prayed for her! Needless to say, she was back to “normal” (at least “normal” for her condition) after she took her medication. Oddly enough, she has been prayed for by MANY, MANY preachers – most of whom tried to exercise the “demon” out of her. I’ve often wondered how helpful it would be if these well-meaning believers could take her to the doctor since their prayers don’t seem to work. I suppose that it is much easier to blame the devil for everything.
This being said, I must express that I do believe in healing. I believe that God still heals – even mental illnesses like schizophrenia. The guy who was the best man at my wedding was a friend from college. He was the president of our local Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship. He had been diagnosed with epilepsy as a child. Little by little, his seizures grew worse. He told me stories about how he had a seizure while playing in the junior high school band. He “blacked out” while playing the trumpet – and continued to play while the band had stopped. He told me that his fellow band-mates were urging him to stop playing – unaware that he was having a seizure. Eventually, he began having a seizure much more frequently (I think at least once a week). One day during high school, he had a seizure while walking home. He blacked out but “woke up” while ringing the doorbell of some random house. After he told his parents about it, they immediately took them to their pastor (Pastor Don Leavell of Corpus Christi Christian Fellowship in Corpus Christi, Texas). My friend and his parents were desperate. They prayed for a complete healing – that his brain would be made “whole.” He never had a seizure again. In fact, he began to participate in sports – and even became the starting tight end at our nationally ranked football team. He also graduated with honors with a degree in Mechanical Engineering.
Was the cause of my friend’s problem [i]spiritual
:-(
And what do you guys/girls think about panic attacks?
I suffer them myself once in a while and I'm curious how you think about this. On the area of emotions, brains and demonic.
Anyone want to react?
Shalom
Are the SI moderators tolerant of posts that characterize people suffering from mental illness as being posessed by demons? don't these people have enough problems?
Your carnal, unscriptural, and worldly view points... like on another thread telling someone who is unsure of their salvation to see a shrink.. have been tolerated.
-Jim
read the post again, i suggested he see a doctor, not a "shrink". depression very often results from a physical problem.
bub
For those who are saying, "This is proven in the medical industry to be a physical disease, not a mental one, therefore it can't be demonic", this is faulty logic. Cancer is a physical disease, but is almost always demonic. It's a living evil spirit that destroys the body through physical affliction. Smith Wigglesworth would agree with this, that's why he would ALWAYS treat it as a demon and curse it and command it out, and people would always get healed. Demons cause physical affliction as well as mental, and they can physically affect portions of the brain as well. I've seen a man's hands shrink dramatically in seconds when a demon of arthritus was rebuked. The woman who Jesus healed in the synogogue (Luk 13:16) was bound by the DEVIL and needed deliverence from INFIRMITY, that was causing her physical affliction.
A failure to recognize these demonic bondages for what they are results inevitably in a failure to apply the right cure and see such tormented people are properly healed. Science and medicine will never cure this demonic bondage, just suppress it. JESUS is still in the business of making the insane whole!
For those of you who believe it to be demons, what would you say of a Christian with a mental illness? (Don't want to start a debate or anything, I'm just in the need of some answers.) Would the person then need deliverance and how would it be carried out?
Mental illness is demonic more times than not, for sure. Such a person should be taken throught the scriptures, prayed with, and a strong beleiver take such a one through deliverence and drive out demons. Or the individual himself has authority to deliver himself in the name of Jesus.
What do you imagine Christianity to be?
Of course we will be attacked mentally, spiritually and physically. Anyone thinks that we will not is smoking something.
Some of us will be depressed, others oppressed, but not demon possessed, unless you completely deny the LORD that bought you and call all that you have been redeemed from accursed.
Christians should never go and see a doctor/shrink for something that the LORD is putting you through. Yes, thats right I said the LORD is putting you through it because He said these words through Paul saying,
Within this trial of your faith your swimming in a world of doubt and unbelief and the temptation is to sin, the temptation is to abandon the LORD, the temptation is to run.1 Corinthians 10:13 There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.
We call them depressions because they are depressing, we call them oppressing because they are oppressive. It's wicked spirits that are bombarding our mind and souls to get us off the track that the LORD has placed us on. It's no different then our LORD in the wilderness being tempted by the devil. He being the Word knew the word, He knew what to say to that devil.
We on the other hand do not know what to say until we know it in our spirits of who we are, who the word is and who God is. Thus the reason for the depression, it's a depression based upon a lack of knowledge. It's like when someone dies, and you don't have the answers. But when you begin to see clearly those answers the sadness lifts and joy is in it's place.
I see the need for believers to go through such experiences, we are coming into a major recession that will effect everyone on this planet. Many will enter a world of depression and there needs to be those who can give these people answers, both Christian and unbeliever alike because everyone will be affected.
Bubbaguy offers shallow advice, thinking only that the real solution is seeing an unregenerate man telling us how to overcome something that he doesn't believe in, that we have a spirit. The solution is to,
Are we not commanded to endure to the end? The end is not the end of the world because we don't know when that will ever be. But it's referring to the end of your trial, the end of your life on this earth, the end of your faith, etc..James 4:7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
Endure the trial, endure the depression, endure endure endure until we are delivered. Endure the temptation from men who say, "You need to see a shrink". Stay on the cross don't listen to the temptation of men saying, "come down off the cross and we'll believe".
Revival will put to rest all these petty arguments, it will put to rest the debates of Calvinism and Arminism, it will put to rest all that we think about what we think is right and true. When all this dissipates, when the Law and the Prophets disappear, the only one standing is Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
We have a plastic shallow outlook at what we are as Christians and how we are supposed to act towards one another and it's sickening. We can't be real at all, we expect things to be a certain way, we are no different than the Catholic Church with their daily rituals.
Be Blessed.
For those who are saying, "This is proven in the medical industry to be a physical disease, not a mental one, therefore it can't be demonic", this is faulty logic. Cancer is a physical disease, but is almost always demonic. It's a living evil spirit that destroys the body through physical affliction. Smith Wigglesworth would agree with this, that's why he would ALWAYS treat it as a demon and curse it and command it out, and people would always get healed.
Smith Wigglesworth is upheld as one of the great Pentecostal prophets and faith healers. he taught that God promises perfect physical wholeness, that the Christian has the power to command things into being, and that the Christian can operate in the same sign gifts that Christ exhibited. Even so, very few of those who sought Wigglesworth's healing ministrations were ever healed. His own wife died six years after he became a Pentecostal, and his son died two years after that. His daughter, who assisted in his meetings, was never healed of her deafness. For three years he himself suffered with gallstones. We who understand that physical healing is not PROMISED for this present time know that such things are part of God's sovereign plan and we are not confused by these events. God often heals in answer to prayer, but He does not always heal. According to the doctrine that physical healing is guaranteed in the atonement and is a part of the Gospel, though, such things should not occur. Those who hold this doctrine tell us that sickness is never a blessing of God, that it is of the devil, that it has been defeated on the cross. According to his own doctrine, Wigglesworth's daughter should have been healed of her deafness and he should have been healed of his own sicknesses. His wife should have been healed of the sickness that took her life when she was but a young woman, and his son should have been healed of the sickness that took him away in childhood.
Not everyone agrees with Wigglesworth and his teaching.
My Nephew died of Cancer 3 years ago......having nothing to do with demons but living on military bases now closed due to contamination. Interestingly, families who have known each other for years and lived on these same bases all had similar experiences of a high rate of cancer in their family members. Many many children and families are and have had family members die of cancer who are near contamination areas. One being in the Northwest....Hanford Atomic Energy.....now closed.
A dear friend many years ago...a Christian, died of liver cancer. She use to do arts and crafts in her basement, using acrylic sprays etc that caused her cancer. She became pregnant before she knew she had cancer, and carried her baby to full term NOT taking any medication of any kind for her pain etc. She died the same day her baby was born...a miracle! The baby was 100% healthy, while her mother was then 85 lbs.
It is so dangerous to tell people THEIR FAITH wasn't enough to save or heal them. That's a works kind of thing......putting all the responsibility on us. Many wonderful Christian have died of cancer/or illnesses.....and you want to say all Christians who have died of cancer or some kind of illness were demon possessed?
Were Wigglesworth's family members demon possessed?
Katy
If the team that prayed for me would not have had the discernment to see that I was demonized but instead would have sent me back to a psychatrics I probably would not be alive today.
The demons would have driven me into suicide sooner or later.
I understand that the Christian may go through mood swings in the process of mortification and sanctification. I still have them but the Lord always delivers me from these when I start praising him regardless.
It would be equally devastating to call someone who has some mental issues but truely saved demonized. Yes there are organic mental conditions such as authism, mongolism etc.
Psychatry in my eyes has probably done more damage than good. Sigmund Freud and his companions has lead scores of people to hell by telling than that they are victim to their upbringing and environment rather than a sinner in need of a saviour. If the patient would know that he has to stop sinning or doubting and get right with God, we could empty at least half of the mental wards.
Now we have a name for everything. Manic depressive, ADF, hyperactive, transsexuell, hysteric, narcistic etc. are excusable conditions and often seen as a license for some sort of behavior.
This calls for discernment and spriritual discernment is rare nowadays.
narrowpath
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