At once, a man from the tombs who had an unclean spirit met him. The man had been dwelling among the tombs, and no one could restrain him any longer, even with a chain. In fact, he had frequently been bound with shackles and chains, but the chains had been pulled apart by him and the shackles smashed, and no one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the hillsides he was always crying out and bruising himself with stones. (Mark 5: 2-5)
Nobody ever reads this part of the Gospel and says, “That guy! I want to be like that guy!”
Yet there I was. Stark naked on a stranger’s front lawn in the middle the night. Pounding my head into the ground to wake up Mother Earth, just like the voices told me. Thankfully, a quieter voice told me to do it on the grass instead of in the middle of the street so I wouldn’t hurt my forehead.
After I finished sucking the evil magic off my fiancé’s diamond engagement ring, I planted it in the ground, believing that an enormous bush covered with beautiful engagement rings would sprout from the spot. The quiet voice suggested that I put my clothes back on before I returned to my apartment.
Does this sound crazy? My fiancé thought so, too. When I woke her up to tell her that I had planted her ring as a seed of our love and she could find it if she followed the yellow brick road, she was not amused. She broke up with me via a restraining order.
I ended up in the hospital, and the doctors put me on sedatives that knocked me out for three days. They hoped to undo some of the damage that nine days without sleep had done to my mind, but despaired of my recovery. They thought my mind would never recover from a psychotic break so severe. Minds that broken don’t, and they were experts.
They were also wrong. Medical science couldn’t cure me because I had a problem that it doesn’t admit exists. I was not simply a madman. I was a demoniac.
You see, my fiancé dabbled in witchcraft and the occult. Tarot cards, crystals, books on witchcraft and new age spirituality littered our apartment, which, since I was an atheist, made no difference to me so long as we continued our mutual interests in sex and marijuana. I didn’t realize that my soul was slowly filling with legions of demons.
I know. I never would have believed it either. When I experienced a demon leaving my body with a wave of projectile vomiting and a sensation like being electrocuted, I was astonished.
Most scientists -- let’s face it, most people -- say that belief in demons is a relic of the dark ages. They don’t say this because they have proof that demons don’t exist. They say this because they just can’t find them. Demons are not something that you can measure with a ruler or thermometer. They don’t follow predictable rules like those in chemistry and physics, where Fe2 O3 = rust and E=mC2. Demons are immaterial creatures, with a tendency to be uncooperative, if not downright. . . diabolical. When confronted with the question of demons, honest scientists will usually throw up their hands and say, “Umm, we really don’t know, but quite frankly the idea freaks us out, so we’d rather not talk about it.”
Don’t get me wrong. Science is great for understanding the physical universe, but it is illogical to claim that nothing exists except that which can be examined by current scientific tools. It’s kind of like saying that bacteria didn’t exist before scientists created the microscope. “We can’t find them” is not the same as saying, “They don’t exist.”
In my case, my problems weren’t simply biological, so I didn’t just need a doctor. I needed a Savior. A Deliverer.
Catching sight of Jesus from a distance, he ran up and prostrated himself before him, crying out in a loud voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me!” (He had been saying to him, “Unclean spirit, come out of the man!”) He asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “Legion is my name. There are many of us.” (Mark 5: 6-9)
I grew up Catholic, but I always put the stories from the Bible and the lives of the saints on roughly the same level as the science fiction and fantasy that I loved. Catholicism struck me as little more than a set of rules that I (kind of) believed and that kept me from doing a lot of the fun things that I saw my friends doing. Never did I imagine that it was all true and that God could speak. Then He spoke . . . to me.
I can almost hear you thinking, “This crazy guy wants me to believe that one of the voices in his head is God?” It’s hard to describe the difference between the voices I heard driving me to destruction in the depths of madness and the voice of God. Imagine the demonic as a loud, raunchy heavy metal concert chanting a litany of self-destruction. The voice of God is more like the sound of your dad whispering to you as you awaken from a horrible nightmare. It’s a voice that you recognize in the very depth of your being, even though you can’t remember ever hearing it before.
The diabolical choirs brought untold misery and destruction into my life. The voice of God brought peace, healing, and deliverance. He gave me hope, which had vanished in the whirlwind of insanity.
. . . the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine. The herd of about two thousand rushed down a steep bank into the sea, where they were drowned . . . (Mark 5: 13)
I wish my recovery had been this easy, but Jesus did not choose to cast out all the demons at once. Maybe there weren’t any pigs nearby. Or maybe He knew I wouldn’t have learned an essential lesson. It’s one thing to cast a demon out. It’s an entirely different thing to keep it out.
Instead of casting the legion into the swine, God threw me into the coliseum to do battle with one demon at a time. But He empowered me with His Holy Spirit and armed me with the name of Jesus. He gave me a love of prayer and Eucharistic adoration. He brought wise counselors to aid me in the fight. He raised me from the dead in the sacrament of confession, and gave me the infinite blessing of communion with Him in the Most Blessed Sacrament.
After God spoke to me in the middle of the night, I started a twelve-year war with the devil, during which I would cast out one demon only to have him return with back up, and the fight would get harder.
My whole life had to change. If I wanted to be free of the evil one, I had to learn to live a life of virtue. I became a professional beggar, raising money to feed the hungry. I married a woman who had spent three years in a convent. I joined a Christian community. I reconquered my soul from the devil’s control one demon, one vice, at a time. This battle will continue until the day I finally face my Savior, my Judge, my Redeemer.
. . . As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed pleaded to remain with him. But he would not permit him but told him instead, “Go home to your family and announce to them all that the Lord in his pity has done for you.” Then the man went off and began to proclaim in the Decapolis what Jesus had done for him; and all were amazed. (Mark 5: 18-20)
I’m alive today because of Jesus Christ. I am sane because His power is real. My healing was not simply a miracle. It was a succession of extraordinary miracles too numerous to count. I will share some of those stories with you, and I think you will be amazed. You might be skeptical. I’m pretty sure you’ll be entertained. I hope that what I have learned during my combat with the evil one will help you fight your spiritual battles. Learning to recognize the attacks of the evil one against you and how to respond using divine weapons might change your life.
This is the first chapter of Demoniac, the story of how Jesus snatched me out of the darkness and saved me from complete madness. If you want to hear more of that very true story, you can buy it in digital or paperback form on Amazon.
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Glory to God! 🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻 Thank you for saving Nathan and giving him to us! 😄
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