Saturday, October 15, 2005

Exorcise or be exorcised???

Well here's a little exercise. This is an excerpt from a Reuters news article dated 10-13-05 on a Vatican sponsored class on exorcism:

One is Father Gabriele Nanni, who attended Thursday's opening class and spoke to Reuters during a break."First thing is the priest has to know if the devil is at work in a person or if the problem is somewhere else," he said.Nanni said there are four sure signs that pointed to demonic possession rather than psychological problems.He listed them as:"When someone speaks or understands languages they normally do not; when their physical strength is disproportionate to their body size or age; when they are suddenly knowledgeable about occult practices; when they have a physical aversion to sacred things, such as the communion host or prayers".

After attending several catholic weddings, I could envision this:
There was a time when very few of the catholic priests understood or could speak Latin; that wasn't a requirement for priesthood. Many priests came from poor uneducated backgrounds and were simply taught to pronounce the words to give mass, speaking a language they normally do not. Regarding strength in proportion to body size, I've seen catholic priests who were very big and whose lack of strength was very disproportionate to their body size. Occult practices are manmade, satan doesn't have an instruction book, all one needs to do is consult his fleshly mind and no doubt could conjure up any number of things satan would approve of. And then, finally, at these catholic weddings, I've seen a priest who had a terrible aversion to other members of the body of Christ who happend not to belong to the catholic church, but who God still considers sanctified in Christ, and would not allow them to take part in the Christian fellowship of communion or prayers. Showing an aversion to sacred things himself. Is this priest then, a person with psychological problems, or is satan in him (he seems to share the four sure signs of demonic possession as described by the Vatican), or is he just a victim of himself? Or maybe a victim of bad bible teaching?

But getting back to the class on exorcism. "Speaks or understands languages they normally do not."??? Could this be a Vatican sponsored plan to systematically rid the world of present day "speakers of tongues"? Or will the so-called tongues speakers be saved by the fact that they don't actually speak the intelligable tongues of other nations, as the tongues speakers of the early forming Christian Church were gifted with to prepare them to go out to other lands?

It certainly is hard to remain serious in the face of all of this.

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