The Devil’s Work
Tomorrow night I’m resuming a sermon series we’ve been doing on Revelation, picking up at chapter 8. So far, so straightforward, but next week it is chapter 9, and here we get into the whole area of devils and demons.
Now I’ve never had any trouble believing in the Devil, nor do I have any trouble with the idea of demons generally. In fact, on one or two occasions in my mininstry, I’ve found myself in situations where it has been reasonable to suppose that some kind of ‘personal’, but malevolent, spiritual influence has been at work.
My question, in the light of Revelation 9, is not “Do the Devil and demons exist?” Rather, it is, “What influence should we ascribe to them, and how should this enter into our thinking about mission and ministry?”
I am reminded of the two cautions given by CS Lewis in The Screwtape Letters, one that we should make too much of the devil, the other that we should make too little. Some time ago, I think I was really falling into the first error. Tonight, I find myself wondering if I, along with most of my Christian brothers and sisters, have been making far too little.
This was prompted partly by reading an online article by Matthew Parris, extolling the virtues of suicide, partly by reading and reflecting on the ‘Christian’ blogs. To take the latter first, I put the word ‘Christian’ in inverted commas, because the content and tone of many of these blogs would suggest to the outsider that Christianity is a fervent belief that other Christians have got something wrong and should be cast into the blogosphere equivalent of outer darkness.
All the dominical and apostolic warnings about judgement and urgings to love one another seem to be forgotten. And I would add that this is as true for so-called ‘Liberals’ as it is for Conservatives and Traditionalists. The sheer ‘unhealth’ of the Anglican church at present is so astonishing that I begin to wonder if the best term for it is ‘demonic’. Read more
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