Demonic Opression/Harassment

[psalm110]

Has anyone experienced any demonic oppression or harassment when embarking the journey towards God ?.  We read about how monks are harassed by demons trying to trick them and tempt with with thoughts of worldly passions i.e: riches, power, lustful desires..etc just to simply distract them from God.

Has anyone here experienced the oppression/harassment from demons because you renounce your sinful ways and try to walk towards God?. Have you ever felt like that in at church or at your home when praying ?.

Looking forward in hearing your experience,

Thanks

[Kerdy]

I am interested in how many believe demons and stories of demons are just parables to teach us a lesson.

Personally, I have not come in contact with anything abrupt or blatantly obvious in my life, but I know several people who have dealt with demons “face to face”.  Their stories make your hair stand on end.

What I have dealt with is the same struggle as most people suffer in this sinful flesh when trying to live a life pleasing unto God.  Some days it’s just not easy, then other days it gets tough.

[Ashman618]

Twice I have had some type of horrid sensation throughout my entire body in the middle of the night...... And one time I felt a deeply fearful presance pass from one end of the room to the other, and it seemed to pass through me physically, while in prayer. But I have never bad any type of vision, direct temptation or anything.

[Shiny]

Demons became more apparent to me right at the start of being a catechumen. A few personal experiences I've had have me convinced they are real. It's hard to describe it, but most of the time it was on the way to Divine Liturgy.

Do I believe people can be possessed by demons, absolutely. Remember the the Gerasene demoniac?

[psalm110]

I am interested in how many believe demons and stories of demons are just parables to teach us a lesson.

Personally, I have not come in contact with anything abrupt or blatantly obvious in my life, but I know several people who have dealt with demons “face to face”.  Their stories make your hair stand on end.

What I have dealt with is the same struggle as most people suffer in this sinful flesh when trying to live a life pleasing unto God.  Some days it’s just not easy, then other days it gets tough.

Thanks for your post, yes we do have our fallen human nature to stray away from God we struggle alot with that, but once we are able to manage that and we start walking towards God following his commandments and living how Our Lord Jesus lived, a Demon comes to make us sin to bring us back to what we use to do in our sinful past. 1 Peter 5:8 Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.
There number one aim is to make us sin, if we sin we break God's law and we become guilty before God. If we are constantly living a sinful life they won't come and harass us with sinful thoughts as we are already living in sin. So then when we embark on a journey towards God following his commandments renouncing our sinful past and overcoming our fallen human nature with God’s help, then they come and try to stray us away from the true path.

From my experience when I tried to walk towards God with all my heart, I did battle with my human fallen nature, but this one time when I was in Church I felt something which I have never felt before I felt a burning feeling come onto me just like a gash of hot wind tingly my skin and face I felt the burning desire for lust and pornography my blood was boiling within me on how I was feeling. I did not know what to do as I felt choked with that burning desires and felt ashamed all I did was I said the Lord’s Prayer and it went away. To this day I still think about it, I was in Church and I don’t go to church to think of sinful things nobody does, also  let alone I’ve never felt like that when I am in a shopping mall, all I was doing was focusing on God and the Church service that day in Church.

I’ve read the story of St Cyprian and St Justina , how a young man visited Cyprian when Cyprian was a pagan and had the help of demons fulfilling his wishes. I read how that young man wanted Justina cause of her beauty, but, she refused because she chose to give her life to Christ and Cyprian commanded demons to tempt her to have a burning for that young that wanted her. When that happened to her the strange phenomenon of her having burning desires she realised it was a demon, she felt ashamed and prayed for help and it went away. The demon went back with disappointment to Cyprian.

I am only telling my experience because I want to tell use what I experience when embarking on the TRUE PATH, I always had faith in God that he existed and the demons, my experience reassured me how he created everything including these angels who were once holy.

[stavros_388]

Many, many years ago, I was involved in some pretty heavy New Age stuff. Then I began what turned out to be my Christian conversion following an experience I had. Anyway, the more I read the Bible, the more convinced I became that Christ really was the Truth. I went and threw out these particular New Age books I had been exploring. I began to pray to be led to the "True Church". Well, about a day or two later I met this lady on the bus who was reading the Bible and asked her if I could come to her church. She seemed at first suspicious, but then agreed. I went regularly for about 3 weeks. It was called the International Church of Christ, and is well known to be a spiritually abusive and manipulative cult. I didn't know this at the time, of course! Anyway, the whole while I attended, the "disciplers" were trying to break up my relationship with my then girlfriend (now my wife), and pull me further under their influence, all in a very sneaky and contrived manner. They had a teaching program that involved using the Bible and twisting the words out of context to get church noobs like me under their spell. It all seemed a bit weird to me after a while, but I was "on fire for the Lord" and felt that God must have led me here. I also had no church experience to compare this to. One night, I had this really lucid dream that I was in the church with some of the parishioners, and they started pulling the communion wine out of the cupboards in big jugs and guzzling it, and began turning into wolves and urinating all over the church. Right around that time, my wife (who is very intuitive... maybe a little psychic) had seen on separate occasions a large black wolf at the end of our bed, as well as a shadowy human figure. She still insists to this day that this occurred. Other weird stuff happened surrounding my experience with this church. Fortunately, one day I snapped to my senses, prayed for guidance, and went and researched the ICOC, uncovering what they were up to (which was no good). That same day I received a call from one of the parishioners asking me how my day was, and sounding suspicious that I had done something wrong. Later that week, parishioners baked a cake and left it at my doorstep. We threw it out. I suspect there was something demonic going on there. I still get the chills.

When I first began exploring the Orthodox Church through books, I was also foolishly exploring all kinds of other esoteric lore, including western occult books. I had a huge pdf collection. One day, I opened this pdf file about Enochian magic. The opening page showed a picture of Christ crucified upside down. I looked at the blasphemous image for a few seconds and felt like it was raping my eyes, pounding my psyche or something. I felt horrible. I immediately closed the book, fell on my knees, and made the sign of the cross. It is hard to explain, but I could physically feel something happen to my body, as if the sign of the cross itself was getting between myself and some other kind of unwanted energy. There was a palpable tingling experience. I am ashamed to say that I put myself into a lot of danger of this kind when I was younger.

One more... oddly, the morning I was baptized in the Orthodox Church (or maybe the night before), I received an email from a representative of the Raelians. You know... the Raelians! The people from Quebec who claimed to have cloned a human and whose leader claims to have an open communication with aliens. They're like eccentric atheist futurists, or something. A year or two before, out of curiosity, I had perused the weirdness of their website and maybe even downloaded a free e-book (too much curiosity can be dangerous!). So this unsolicited email I get on the morning of my Baptism is from a Raelian, and it is very personable. He tells me about how great of an adventure it is to be a Raelian, and how much this person's life has been transformed because of his involvement with this group. If I am interested in communicating or if I have any questions, he'd be happy to tell me all about it. The timing and out-of-the-blueness of it made me suspicious that it was a last temptation or attack.

I don't know if any of these experiences were demonic or not, for sure. I'm a bit more skeptical these days. For a long time, I was rather convinced that they were.

Worth mentioning: I also have unusually heightened temptations for some reason the day or so after I take communion. I have always found this strange.

[JamesR]

Depends, how do you define demonic oppression and harassment? And how do we know when/if a demon is oppressing or harassing us? I oftentimes find it very dangerous to assume that demons are 'making you do it' or that you are 'oppressed by demons' because it becomes an excuse for us to justify our bad behavior. In other words, when we do something bad, we try to weasel out of our own guilt and blame it on some abstract demon that may or may not exist or be oppressing you. I do not know if demons have ever been 'oppressing' me or not. Fortunately, I have never had a classic horror-movie style demonic experience where I saw some monster or something of the sorts. But are demons tempting me and responsible for my horrible temptations? I honestly don't know. Maybe they are and maybe they are not. Either way, it is sort of irrelevant to me because I know that either way I still possess the power to either resist or give into the temptation.

[Kerdy]

"The greatest trick the devil ever played on humanity was to convince us he didn't exist."  Demons are part of that.

[psalm110]

"The greatest trick the devil ever played on humanity was to convince us he didn't exist."  Demons are part of that.

That is true and it is a sad fact in our society.

I have a question, we constantly battle with our thoughts when we try focusing on God i.e: In Church, reading the Holy Bible and Prayer, are these thoughts of our own ? or are they demons giving us these thoughts ?.

[Ashman618]

"The greatest trick the devil ever played on humanity was to convince us he didn't exist."  Demons are part of that.

That is true and it is a sad fact in our society.

I have a question, we constantly battle with our thoughts when we try focusing on God i.e: In Church, reading the Holy Bible and Prayer, are these thoughts of our own ? or are they demons giving us these thoughts ?.

It's most like a combo deal

[Kerdy]

"The greatest trick the devil ever played on humanity was to convince us he didn't exist."  Demons are part of that.

That is true and it is a sad fact in our society.

I have a question, we constantly battle with our thoughts when we try focusing on God i.e: In Church, reading the Holy Bible and Prayer, are these thoughts of our own ? or are they demons giving us these thoughts ?.

It's most like a combo deal

I agree.  I would say mostly its our sinful nature, but sometimes I'm sure there is some outside influence.

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