Demons were not fleeing in the name of Jesus

In 1989, I started attending a regular prayer meeting with My Uncle Nelson, my mother’s second youngest brother.

Uncle Nelson turned out to be a real mentor. He was light-hearted, easy going and understanding.

His weekly prayer meeting was his own creation and at first, we had a good group of people coming, including my grandmother. However, the numbers began to drop off (seriously, prayer meetings are boring as Hell) and soon it was just him and me, but we kept it up it every week and I enjoyed the time I spent with him, listening to his wise council and also having plenty of laughs.

Uncle Nelson taught me more about the Holy Spirit and its gifts, especially when it came to spiritual warfare. During one of the earlier prayer meetings a couple of other people and myself prayed over him because he felt that some of the aches and pains he was suffering were as a result of spiritual attacks. We tried to cast out spirits of various types while my Uncle twisted his limbs at weird, angles. His eyes bugged out of his head and he moaned and groaned. Meanwhile one of the other guys read scripture furiously as if it was some magical incantation that could defeat the hundreds of demons Uncle Nelson seemed to have in him.

Of course, just as with Mrs Johnson at Te Aroha, this lot of pesky demons also seemed to have developed an immunity to the name of Jesus Christ and we got absolutely nowhere, even though at the time we believed it did.

I speak of this tongue-n-cheek, but at the time, I took it very seriously, truly believing I was dealing with the supernatural. I wrote these words about it in my 1989 journal:

3 May 1989

It was a gypsy spirit in Uncle Nelson and he was coughing and the demon was making his body twist in weird shapes and several times, I had to look into the demon’s eyes and tell it to leave. They were definitely not Uncle Nelson’s eyes looking at me.

When I read this now, it amazes me that I could be so deluded to think that a person’s eyes could suddenly become the eyes of a demoniac being, but all rational thought goes out the window when you believe in the supernatural.

The thing that bothers me the most about this was all the coughing, moaning, groaning, twisting of limbs and staring with bug eyes. Had Uncle Nelson been putting that on?

No, I cannot believe that. At least not deliberately, after all Uncle Nelson was a very genuine man. A man, who like my parents was, “What you see is what you get” and he would never have tried to con any one. Why would he? What would he have to gain? Having a demon in you is definitely not something a Christian would want to make a big deal of.

I can only presume it was about the power of suggestion.

As with anything, you see in church, you are expected to behave a certain way. When you are being prayed over and “slain in the spirit,” you expect that you’re going to go toppling over backwards (and the shove from the one praying helps with that).

I’ve also been involved in a large prayer group at a Luis Palau crusade, praying for others and those being prayed for were wailing and shuddering with bug eyes as imaginary demons were cast out of them. All around me, this was happening, like a horror movie! Of course, I was one of the warriors for Christ, so it didn’t scare me at all.

These incidents showed me that even though you don’t mean to go along with it you do (like the old elevator test). So perhaps my uncle believing he had spirits binding him subconsciously acted in a way he’d seen done time and time before? Twisting those limbs due to discomfort? Groaning because of the discomfort? Truly believing spirits were causing him pain? 

The fact of the matter is there is a lot of charlatans out there playing games and trying to con people. My uncle as well as many other Christians I knew were just being suckered into it.