Woebeit, once again the Almighty gave me a sign I couldn’t ignore, after my eye doctor’s nurse helped me see clearly that the Last Days have come. Okay, play that Twilight Zone theme now, but I ain’t playing. First, I should straight up admit, in 1992 when I was forced to care for my 80-year-old father, who had fallen into deep depression (a year after his wife of 62 years’ death), I was thinking short-term commitment all the way.

Sharing an abode with another person has always been a problem for me. That’s why my 12-year marriage was torturous. Love had nothing to do with it, because we liked each other so much until my ex-wife considered asking me to give her away to her third husband. Needless to say, if I’d rather be alone than enjoy the pleasure of living with a vivacious vixen, you know sharing a house with a toxic, 90-year-old grouch, is my worse nightmare. Especially, one who delights in bedeviling others. It’s like living in hell. You say it can’t be that bad? Well, he’s such a worrisome patient until nurses give hospitals, “He goes, or I go,” ultimatums.

I’m talking major aggravation here. No, let’s make that demon-possession. There’s no way one old man can generate that much negative energy without the devil’s help. Yes, I believe in demon possession, although many of today’s Christians reject that Biblical truth. Then again, I’ve stopped lamenting, because when I tell my church members that their quiet, almost timid Deacon Johnson is demon- possessed, they angrily admonish me. In fact, since most people think I’m crazy any way, they consider the source. However, I was delighted to find Wanda Allen back at her old post when I reported to the eye clinic.

I jokingly told her how aggravating he has become and had stopped attending and/or reading the Bible. “He’s demon possessed. The devil’s got him,” she said without hesitation. Shazam! Hey, I ain’t talking Miss Cleo here. I’m talking a spirit-filled, preacher’s wife who is considered a saint by her patients. They protested mightily when the clinic moved her. It seems that she spent too much time giving depressed patients hugs, even when they didn’t have appointments. But the clincher is, she has a matter-of-fact personality. She simply tells it like it is, because that’s like it is, whether she tells it or not. So can we talk demon possession?

Can we talk Satan’s team giving God’s spirit-filled missionaries hell in the ‘hood, because we refuse to believe our children are demon-possessed? Yeah, intellectually we know there’s a spiritual war going on. We also talk the whole Armour of the Lord. And surely we’ve heard rumors that Satan goes to and fro, looking for whom to devour. Nevertheless, we don’t seem to believe Satan is a predator, that always attacks the weakest in the flock. The lost, the wandering, the youngest and most gullible, or the oldest and most feeble? Perhaps it’s a bit too far into the Outer Limits to talk Last Days, but nobody can be unconscious enough not to realize evil is all around us in 2002 America.

So why can’t you believe that your child is demon-possessed when he blows somebody away without remorse? Why do you blame peer pressure or drugs instead of believing the devil made him or her do it? Why can’t you conclude that your aged parents are demon-possessed, rather than senile, when they do evil things just for the hell of it? Oh? You say that’s a bunch of spiritual mumbo jumbo that a crazy old African warrior is dumb enough to buy into? Okay, I hear you. I know you well educated made in America Africans weren’t around when we had some sho’ nuff “Prayer Warriors.”

Holy water aside, I’m talking about prayer marathons, when those old saints came to a depressed believer’s house and prayed around the clock until Satan sneaked out the back door. If you don’t believe me, mayhaps you’ll believe the mainstream media, which has become your gospel.

An August 14, 2001 article in the New York Times (“Religious worries could harm those who are ill, study finds”) caught my attention because it greatly distresses me that my father has literally turned his back on God, although he has blessed him with health that any 50-year-old would love to have.

The article reveals: “The researchers, who surveyed 596 elderly hospitalized patients in 1996, found that those who said they ‘wondered whether God had abandoned me,’ ‘questioned God’s love fore me’ or ‘decided the devil made this happen,’ were more likely to die two years later than patients who did not endorse such statements.” The study was exclusively Christian, but Dr. Kenneth I. Paragament, the Bowling Green University psychiatry professor who leads the study says, “We know from quite a bit of research that religion can be a potent resource. From Moses to Jesus to Buddha, you see religious figures going through dark nights of the soul and through that process they come out steeled and strengthened.”

Okay let’s get deep here. In the code of canon law, mirrored by the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1673), you’ll find this: “#1172. No one may lawfully exorcise the possessed without the special and express permission of the local Ordinary. This permission is to be granted by the local Ordinary only to a priest who is endowed with piety, knowledge, prudence, and integrity of life.” Translation, if you don’t bring your “A game,” the devil shall devour you. In fact, in 1985, Pope Leo XIII issued an edict that disallowed priests from attempting to exorcise demons because it was too dangerous. However, it takes a devil to know one, therefore I’m able to go one-on-one with my father’s demons 24-7-365. Space precludes expounding on my close encounters of the demonic kind, but my Holy Spirit’s double-edged sword of truth shows no mercy.

Tough love aside, the devil is a liar and the master of confusion, thus it’s difficult to believe that when our kids or aged parents could be demon-possessed when they do evil things just for the hell of it. Being violent, crazy, or even stupid is one thing, but being evil is entirely another.
If there’s a Holy Spirit, there sure as hell an evil spirit too. Unfortunately, our spiritual leaders are preaching prosperity and that God is good all the time. Meanwhile, our seniors are wrestling with demons and our kids are going to hell in a hand basket. I wonder if anybody knows where I’m coming from?