Judgment after death

[Douglas]

I read a book some years back now called "Blumhardt's Battle a Conflict with Satan", and read it again recently and was wondering about some of the incredible things I read.

One point in particular that makes me ponder how God works things out was the claim that some of the recent dead had "tormented" or "possessed" Gottlieben. Now she was possessed by thousands of demons if I recall the book correctly, and they varied from each other. Some claiming to be recently deceased (like the women in the village that died 2 years prior to the events) and others made no such claim and appeared to want to do nothing more than harm, kill, and destroy, basically the most evil you could think.

My question is, does anyone believe that some of the demons that possessed Gottlieben were actually recently deceased people that were under some "judgment" because of choices they made while alive? Or are they just demons (fallen angels) that are lying about themselves to gain an advantage somehow to whoever is listening to them?

In particular, it seemed to be those who somehow got involved in the occult, had somehow tied themselves to Satan while alive, and when they died, they went into this "state" of judgment or whatever.

Reading the book has woke me up to the reality of the spiritual battle that we are all involved in, and that demons are not just something you read about in the Bible.

I still wonder about those that possessed Gottlieben that claimed to be people who had recently passed away though.... Could it be?

- Douglas

[steve]

Hi Doug,

I first read that book around 1985, and have read it through a couple or more times since then. I have also read other books treating that story, and even have a 400+ page biography of Johann Christoph Blumhardt (by Dieter Ising), which also treats this extended exorcism. Blumhardt and his son became extremely significant voices for the kingdom of God, in Germany, in later years. The exorcism is a remarkable story, and I believe every word of it that is reported by Blumhardt, because of his obvious humility and integrity. However, he could have been fooled by demons in this matter of their identity, of course.

If we take the demons' reports about themselves at face value, we learn things about the spirit world and the spiritual battle which the Bible leaves un addressed (and, thus also, unrefuted and undenied). We do not know that departed spirits, who had bound themselves to Satan in this life, cannot be suffering a bondage to Satan in the afterlife to their own torment. It is certainly different from what my teachers taught me about demons, but they were speaking beyond the scriptural record.

I have always been warned by my teachers that we must not derive any of our understanding of such matters from the testimonies of demons, because of their propensity to deceive. While I see wisdom in this caution, it remains a fact that, as near as I can recall, every utterance of demons during exorcisms, recorded in scripture, seem to have been factually correct. Consider the following:

"I know You, who you are—the Holy One of God!" (Luke 4:34)

"My name is Legion, for we are many." (Mark 5:9)

"Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?" (Acts 19:15)

"And demons also came out of many, crying out and saying, 'You are the Christ, the Son of God!' And He, rebuking them, did not allow them to speak, for they knew that He was the Christ." (Luke 4:41)

This last line suggests that they were prone to tell the truth, and that Jesus did not wish for them to reveal His identity to the crowds.

Even the testimony of the possessed fortune teller, in Philippi, was factually accurate: "These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to us the way of salvation" (Acts 16:17).

While caution should be exercised in determining such things, it is possible that the demons have no particular reason to deceive about their identities, in most cases. Those who identified themselves to Blumhardt as deceased members of the village would seemingly have stood to gain nothing in the contest by thus falsely identifying themselves.

[Singalphile]

I read a book some years back now called "Blumhardt's Battle a Conflict with Satan", ....

My question is, does anyone believe that some of the demons that possessed Gottlieben were actually recently deceased people that were under some "judgment" because of choices they made while alive? Or are they just demons (fallen angels) that are lying about themselves to gain an advantage somehow to whoever is listening to them?

I read part of that account (I stopped b/c I don't like those images/thoughts), and I was also most curious about that question.

Steve showed that demons don't necessarily lie, but I can't see any reason to say that they never lie, and it is seems reasonable that they would lie. Paul talks about "lying spirits and teachings of demons" in 1 Timothy. The devil is called the father of lies who can deceive nations. I think that the "false prophet" in Revelation was (or is or will be) a deceptive demonic entity or an entity animated by deceptive demons. 1 Kings 22 (and Chronicles) has an evidently honest, godly prophet speaking of a heavenly being who would be a lying spirit in the mouths of the prophets.

I find it much harder to believe or allow that disembodied human spirits can somehow wander earth and even possess the body of another human. I wouldn't know what to make of that. What are the implications? The spirit of Samuel (real or spurious) in 1 Sam 28 and the misidentification of Peter's "angel" in Acts 12 are the closest possible sorts of things I can think of in the Bible.

So if you ask me, it seems more likely that they were demons who lied or were misunderstood. Possibly the demons had previously possessed the people who they apparently claimed to be. (Recall, I did not read the whole account, so am I not certain that demons were involved at all.)