Hostage to the Devil

by refiners fire 8 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  refiners fire

  "Hostage to the devil", written by Catholic priest Malachi Martin, and available in print, is unquestionably the most disturbing book I have ever read.

  Father Martin, himself an exorcist, interviewed 5 priests who had performed exorcisms (all in America) and also interviewed the possessed victims these priests exorcized. His aim was to establish the states of mind of the victims, and how they came to be possessed, and also to establish the psychological effects upon the priests who performed the expulsion. The result is truly frightening and incredibly disturbing.

  Among other things, Father Martin establishes that an exorcism follows a progression, that is always the same. It is in 6 stages. These are:

  Presence. Pretense. Breakpoint. Voice. Clash and Expulsion

  The Presence phase commences immediately the exorcist enters the room to commence. All assistants and medical doctors present testify to a change in the atmosphere as soon as the exorcist enters. An alien, malevolent presence fills the whole room.The overriding danger thruout the exorcism is that this presence is within the very mind of every person in attendance. Assistants are directed not to directly address the alien being. But it is the priest performing the ritual who is in most danger, for, as I understand it, the demon enters into his own mind in the clash phase and a battle of wills takes place which the exorcist MUST win, or he is doomed.

  During the pretense phase the demon seeks to hide behind the personality of the possessed person, using their mannerisms, voice, etc.The demon will cry piteously, and emotionally manipulate to get out of admitting that its is a seperate identity. The priest must make it come out from behind the victims personality so he can confront it directly.Often, during this phase, intimate and embarrassing details of those present in the room will be exposed. If one is a secret thief, or child molester, it will be yelled out by the demon in lurid detail.The beast has access to the minds and thoughts and imaginings of those present.The priests fondest memories will he handled and examined by the hands of ultimate filth. His every bad action will be yelled out, and will resurface in his mind in lurid detail. If the priest is drawn in by this, and becomes embarrassed, upset, angry, or ,worst of all, if he is drawn into argument , or rationalization with the demon, He is in big trouble, and may never be rid of the beast thruout his life.

  If the priest gets thru this phase, The pretense phase will collapse into Breakpoint . At breakpoint the senses of all present will be turned inside out to confuse them. Martin says: "his ears seem to smell foul words, His eyes seem to hear offensive sounds, His nose seems to taste a deafening cacophany" . Every person present must weather this psychic assault or flee. But the breakpoint has been reached and the demon will come out from behind its pretense. The next thing that happens is voice.

  The voice is a babel. It fills the room, but is also within each individual mind. Bellowing cattle, screams, whispers and multiple voices saying the same things but out of sinc with each other occur. Sentences are also spoken backwards.A lot of people, according to Martin cannot cope with this, because they become drawn into trying to understand what the voice is saying. Somehow the priest must silence the voice and he resorts, (or is meant to resort) to ritual utterances, a bit hard when your internal language is being turned inside out.

  If he gets thru this the ultimate phase of the exorcism will be reached. The clash....

  At clash the demon will enter the priests own mind and seek to take it over,his every thought and feeling will be probed for a weak spot, his guilts analized and discussed by the demon in his own head, his failings jeered at, the priest can feel the alien presence filling his body and seeping in thru every orifice.tendrils will wrap around his guts and probe and explore every nook and cranny. This struggle is intenal and is a pure battle of wills. Any weakness will be exploited, tiredness, a moment of doubt, weakness in his faith,guilt, these are deathtraps. If the demon wins the priest will never be free of the beast playing upon his mind. many priests are never fully free of the creature anyway. A number of exorcists die during clash. If the priest wins the struggle, he must get the demon to reveal as much detail about itself as possible, this is needed for the expulsion phase.

  Pretty amazing stuff eh?
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  refiners fire

  Here is an excerpt from the book.....

  The following five case histories are true....
  Each case presented here includes as an important element some basic attitude or attitudes popular in our own society. In the possessed person, it is pushed to a narrow and frightening extreme.
  In the first case, Zio's Friend and the Smiler, the insistence is that there is no essential difference between good and evil and ultimately no difference between being and nonbeing; that all values are subject only to one's personal preferences.
  In Father Bones and Mister Natch, the compelling idea that was seized by Evil Spirit seemed to be that all mysteries can and are resolved in "natural" (i.e., rational or scientific or quantifiable explanations; that there can be no relevance for the modern person in anything that there can be no relevance for the modern person in anything that cannot be rationally understood; and that there can be no truth important to man beyond what is rational.
  In The Virgin and the Girl-Fixer, the battle concerned some of the great, deep, and mysterious "givens" of our very nature and our society --in this case, gender and human love. The priest in this case said to me a few months before he died, in one of the most profound conversations of my life: "A bird doesn't fly because it has wings. It has wings because it flies." We will ignore that mysterious truth in its applications to our sexuality and our gender only at our great peril, I believe.
  In Uncle Ponto and the Mushroom-Souper, we have an example of what may be happening to many in our modern society--without their realizing it and without those around them taking cognizance of it. For it seems that there is an individualism, a purely personalistic interpretation of human life abroad today, which exceeds by far the bounds of what used to be known as selfishness and egotism. It has produced in thousands of people an aberrant and idiosyncratic behavior which is truly destructive.
  In The Rooster and the Tortoise, the fatal confusion (and in this case it was literally almost fatal) was between spirit and psyche; between those parts and attributes of ours that are quantifiable, and yet through which spirit most easily makes itself known. If everything we have
  taken to be of spirit can be made to seem a product merely of the human psyche, with no meaning or significance beyond its factualness, then love can be made to seem only a chemical interraction, and love's paradigm is killed.
  In each case, one basic note of possession is confusion. Sex is confused with gender. Spirit is confused with psyche. Moral value is confused with absence of any value. Mystery is confused with untruth. And, in every case, rational argument is used, not to clarify, but as a traps, to foster confusion and to nurture it as a major weapon against the exorcist. Confusion, it would seem, is a prime weapon of evil. (pp. 24-25)

  The overriding feeling from the book is that the persons became possessed thru thinking too much, and to deeply, and confusedly, on certain subjects until they became totally psychologically exposed. Another aspect of "mind" then appeared within them, reasoning with them as a seperate voice which eventually reasoned them, or trapped them thru 'logical' thinking,and arguementation, into a position where they submitted themselves to IT. A moment arrives where the victim either freely submits to what he knows is an alien identity or he is "reasoned" into a corner of his mind where he is defeated in arguement and admits that the demon has taken over his/her mind and he submits that way. Scary thought.

  It turns out that those who get exorcized have some saving grace about them, but there are others, those who are the "Perfectly Possessed" who integrate their mind with the demon mind until they are indistinguishable. The demon experiences every debauch and desire thru their flesh. Revelling in physicality .

  Edited by - refiners fire on 22 July 2002 22:48:52

  Edited by - refiners fire on 22 July 2002 22:50:33

  Edited by - refiners fire on 22 July 2002 23:2:11
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  Satanus

  Interesting. Do you think that much of the resistances come from the priests own problems?

  Two hypnotherapists who do exorcisms are william baldwin and edith fiore. They don't take an adversarial approch to it, although they use defences. They claim that the 'demons' are really spirits of deceased ones which got lost or had strong reasons to stay on this plane. They use explanation and persuasion rather than force to release attatched spirits. See their books @ http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-form/ref=s_sf_b_as/102-4494757-2940137 The unquiet dead and spirit releasement are probably the best of them all.

  SS
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  MegaDude

  An interesting book. It even inspired M. Scott Peck (The Road Less Traveled) to write about it in his book "People of the Lie."

  But I wonder how you could prove that anything in the book is even remotely true. In televised exorcisms, I never saw anything remotely supernatural happen. They all seem like mentally unstable people who are suffering from their condition. The idea that it takes a Catholic priest to rid a person of a supernatural entity is laughable. I'm sure every demon-believing religious denomination makes that claim, whether in the jungles of Africa or at your local Catholic church.

  That aside, "Hostage to the Devil" is well written and the author is obviously intelligent. Probably the most intellectually deep book on the topic of demonic possession ever written.
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  refiners fire

  Mega: It is interesting. Malachi Martins interviwees claim that chairs threw themselves around the room, doors slammed and opened uncontrollably and drawers and tables moved around. Also the possesssed were seen to levitate. A bit of a problem there for me. If those things DID happen, then how is it explained? If the "possessed" were Mentally Ill , it still shows a hiodden dimension to existance and spirit that we dont yet understand. IF those things happened of course, and were not merely delusions on the part of the assistants and doctors present.

  SS: I'll surely have a look into those books you mentioned.
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  Prisca

  Interesting post on an interesting subject.
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  MegaDude

  Scott Peck's book "People of the Lie" is an interesting book on evil, evil in people, families, group dynamics, and the spiritual world. It's definitely worth reading.

  I don't believe Malachi Martin witnessed any levitation of objects or people but this was related to him. If this is a common occurence, why hasn't it ever been videotaped?

  Also, if you are raised to believe your problems are demonic in origin, your brain will most certainly assign demons as your problem. That doesn't make it true.

  I have a standing invitation to participate in an excorcism. I am told if I do participate that I will most assuredly come out of the experience believing in the invisible demonic world. I am told by the person who has particpated, that the "proof" is that possessed person will speak about specific things you have never told anybody, your most personal secrets. Sometime this year I plan to take him up on his offer as part of simply gathering data.
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  The Alchemist

  I read this book last September. I thought it as very interesting. There is a statement in the book about the spirit world that I thought interesting. The book said that it is wrong to think of a demon as a personality like a human and limited to one place. Rather it is a collection of personaities (Many demons working together) that can be identified as an evil or dysfuntional order. That they can and do spread out and harass and influence many different people and...organizations. It was my thought that maybe this is the chief reason why the WTBS is so evil, full of lies, deception, hypocracy and has such a hold on it's followers...Yes a Watchtower demon! Something you can catch at your "friendly" local Kingdom Hall !!!... BTW the word "Kingdom" seems to be a demonic favorite. It is mentioned often by the demon via possessed person.... There is the power of the Spirit of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit that can counter and defeat this demonic presence. So to those who feel threatened and harassed by the Watchtower demon do the following; 1) Get out of the demon infested Kingdom Halls and Assemblies 2) Keep you distace from the demon infested "Kingdom followers" 3) Ask for forgiveness for any of your demon inspired Watchtower sins 4) Ask God for help in understanding real truth and to acheive a sense or spirit of peace. Or ignor all of this and suffer what we all suffer. As for me, and I will be honest, I have done the first 3 but I have not fully put my life in order or is it a fear of becoming a truely spiritual person and ending what I think is the self that I like? Perhaps I am in danger as I am thinking too much! Dave
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  refiners fire

  MEGA.

  If you do go and witness it, I hope youll give us a report!! I have attended an exorcism myself but it was a bunch of nutty pentecostals purging a "demon of gambling" out of a woman at a home church meeting. I saw nothing supernatural at all. Id be very interested in hearing or seeing anything from a genuine full on Catholic ritual.

  here is an interesting thought:

  ..."The book said that it is wrong to think of a demon as a personality like a human and limited to one place. Rather it is a collection of personaities (Many demons working together) that can be identified as an evil or dysfuntional order"....

  almost as though a collection of entity minds are locked together into a mass and cannot escape each other. The thing I found disturbing about the book was the recollections of the possessed persons post the fact. They percieved that their possession came about, not thru a single incident, but thru a sequence of mental alterations over many years. Many of the mental "leaps" or "growths" in thinking that they took ,that culminated in possession, seemed very innocuous and innocent. They seemed to involve obsession with a particular line of thought, leading to mental confusion, total lack of answers on the question, and eventually, a voice, commencing as a part of their own mind,discoursing with them on the subject and offering solutions, which they pursued.

  It made me wonder... hell! ANYONE could be possessed.