“Dear Prof, I was removed from my office for no good reason and I frowned at that and, consequently, contacted you for immediate transfer back to my office. Yes, I needed to go back to my former office but did not know how to do it, until I read your column and contacted you. I was instructed to order your oil and pray with it. By the grace of God, I ordered your oil and strictly followed the instructions. Sir, I must confess that, at the end of the prayer, I was reposted and, as a result, got my rightful position. God did it for me through you, sir.”
– Mr. Tony, 08089088140 (This testimony is republished)
“Sir, my mother snatched my husband from me with her demonic powers. I loved my husband but I never knew that he was my mother’s old boyfriend. It happened that my mother came for the usual visit after I had my first son. I noticed certain things around them and confronted both of them; they deceived and confused me. Well, I continued, until one day I caught my mother and my husband red-handed having sex on my matrimonial bed. I shouted and my husband and my mother gave me the beating of my life. The following day, both of them eloped and went to the city of Warri and settled. I started nursing my baby and, for about six months, I did not call them. After months, my mother started appearing in my room mysteriously to kill me. Whenever I shouted, people in the compound would come out and she would disappear. This continued until October last year, when I contacted you and got just a bottle of oil from you. My mother did not just confess after the prayer, rather, my husband’s eyes became open and freed from my mother’s hypnotism. My husband came home crying and confessing and asking me to take him back. Sir, I have reconciled with my husband and he is today living happily with me. My mother has been taken care of too by God in his divine way. I thank you so much and I must conclude that she was truly the one that killed my father as it was rumored then. God bless you. (Names and contact withheld).
Creation has endowed man with unfathomable mysteries. Some of which are explainable, while a few others find their way into religious explanations, which, finally, form or become the credo believed without questioning. One of such phenomena is the concept of demons.
There are various religious, esoteric-cum-philosophical explanations associated with the concept of demons. As a student of sacred mystery, I am interested in seeing things properly explained in the light of reality than watch and sing emotional doxology to a creator who desires to emancipate mankind from the cocoon of ignorance. The creator, through one of his servants, lamented thus: “…my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” Hos. 4:6.
Today, in the light of the unseen forces masquerading as real humans, the need to property reposition our understanding in line with biblical principles-cum-civilization is necessary. Civilization, wars, attacks in the physical world, killing and maiming of all sorts, occult manipulation and much more have made the study of demonology a hot topic. I read the well-researched book of Nick Redferm, titled “Final Events,” which focuses on a possible government cover-up of what the author regarded as “Demonic UFO activity for decades.” But the book did not properly explain the mystery of UFOs and how the same is associated with un-identified flying objects (UFO), though he linked them to diabolic ethereal forces.
Let me at this point emphasize that my prime intention is not to bug my readers with mind-boggling information about psychic entities hitherto referred to as demons, rather, my ultimate intention is to unearth esoteric-cum-psychophilosophical manipulations and how demons truly possess the human mind and thus use it as a total tool of devastation and destruction. The reader shall, therefore, find the explanation to certain things that have bamboozled scholars in philosophy of religion as it relates to psychic entities – demons.
What are demons? How do they become humans? How possible could it be for a demon to put on the human flesh and be born in the sphere of matter, energy, space and time? What actually are their missions on earth? Can UFOs truly be called demons? Can demons possess the human spirit? These and much more shall the reader find answers to.
I shall attempt to look at the topic historically, theologically and practically in all the series that shall feature in my column. Let us at this point X-ray the etymological meaning of the term ‘demon,’ in order to consolidate the historical perspective.
The Hellenistic etymology of the word daimon or demon in antiquity was far different from its conventional meaning today. Its overall meaning, according to its first use in the Homeric Epics, is “a power that accompanies men and dispenses destiny.”
However, Homer, the great philosopher, sees it as an impersonal power or one of a divinity that shares events in individuals’ life.
The term then becomes personified as Hesiod includes demons in his classification of rational beings, in which he categorized them as men who have passed on into an immortal afterlife. Plato later expanded the meaning of the term, demon, in many ways. He called demons the offspring of gods and other beings who became interpreters between man and gods, he also classified them as spirits akin to guardian angels that watch over cities and individuals. Finally, Plato described them as the highest and divine element in man.
It should be noted, however, that Xenocrates, who was one of the students of Plato and other philosophers, helped to expound this concept further by suggesting that there were three classes of demons, those that were eternally disembodied spirits, the disembodied souls of the dead and the souls or sentient force that abides in man.
By the 4th Century, the term became associated with evil or unlucky events and the demons became a kind of escape goat for gods. They became the major source of woe and troubles to the human race. It should not be forgotten here that good and evil demons still remain in the philosophical debate.
Philosophers like Plutarch and Apuleius further developed demonology by stating that humans were constantly surrounded by these unseen forces and they affect them day by day. They developed demonology of the early Christian era, and Plutarch posited that the gods of the polytheists were in fact demonic spirits. It is of note that Judaism in the pre-Christian era had adopted the ideology that demons were evil intermediate beings, and the Apostle Paul in his first letter to the Corinthian Church also attests that pagan gods are in fact demonic entities, as is evident in 1 Cor. 10:10.