Acts20.com

www.charismamag.com/native-ads/41279-why-a-christian-can-have-a-demonThis teaching is 100% completely and totally false according to COG, AOG, and any and all historic Christian doctrine, Pentecostal or otherwise.Yet here is Charisma Magazine, wanting you to know why Christians can be possessed with demons and how a ministry of deliverance can get that demon that's been roommates with the Spirit of God right on out of you.This is heresy and it's coming from the flagship magazine of popular hypercharismatic thought.

How many times have you all had to deal with tripe like this

Re: Theological garbage

Yup! It's not my fault for continually yielding my flesh to the sin that my wicked heart desires. It's gotta be a demon of [whatever]!This excerpt from the article is chilling:

Unless the Bible is crystal clear on a doctrine, then experience has a place in helping us develop our understanding. We hold doctrines that are often not at all crystal clear in scripture. No one can defend the doctrine of the trinity from all the scriptures that apply. Nor can Oneness defend itself from all that apply.I do not believe a Christian is possessed. However, if you have ever known of a Christian that cannot seem to rid themselves of some dark habit, etc., you will find that it LOOKS pretty much the same as what we might expect from a possessed person. And if we stretch the Turing Test just a bit, we might ought to ask this question: If you cannot tell the difference between a possessed person and just an oppressed one, then....Yes, ON FAITH we believe that a Christian is not possessed. By empirically, there are situations where we would not be able to determine.Consider a Christian--say, Ray Boltz or Kirk Talley--that clearly was anointed to sing and compose, but was wrestling with same-sex attraction. Many ministers claim that is the devil (and it is). But why is the sinner apparently possessed, but the Christian--who behaves the same way--is only oppressed.Yes, I know the arguments. I get it. But let's not act like it is impossible for anyone to fairly conclude that a Christian is possessed. The best way I ever heard it argued (this was back in the 80s, I suppose) was that Jesus saves your SOUL, but the devil can still possess your FLESH.I don't give a lot of weight to it, but I'm not sure we are right to smugly look down on those who do, as if they have not the slightest reason to hold their position.Yeah, they do. I have found that in 100% of the cases where I argue against Jehovah's Witnesses doctrine--and there are no actual Jehovah's Witnesses present--I am utterly victorious! I decimate their doctrine!

The Bible is crystal clear on this, as generations of Christians, Pentecostal and non-Pentecostal have affirmed. It is dangerous and deadly to play these games of what if.

Dave...

Here is the problem: You are saying that NOWHERE does the Bible teach flesh possession. But that's not exactly right. Or at the very least you are not on absolutely solid ground.Do you recall the woman that Jesus healed that had been bound by the devil for lo, these eighteen years? That is not a clear-cut statement of possession, of course, but it does lend itself to that understanding. As best we can tell, it seems the woman was perhaps a sincere believers (in Judaism). You said that Nowhere in the Bible is this stuff taught. But that's kind of the argument the Church of Christ uses to exclude instrumental music, isn't it? Now, again, I do NOT believe Christians can be demon possessed, certainly not in the way that we tend to understand possession. Could the devil possess someone's flesh? Well, I think it's downright obvious that most people do not have the Holy Ghost possessing their flesh. If so, the Holy Ghost is doing a pitiful job with me, since my flesh is sometimes more than He and I together can handle (SMILE).

Sure, everything bears consideration and investigation in light of Scripture. Otherwise, we'd all hold to whatever we believe now and would never have the opportunity for God to enlighten our hearts regarding something we have believed incorrectly.With that said, though, we can also be so open-minded to new things that we become completely rudderless and no longer allow Scripture to serve as our anchor and guide.There are enormous theological problems with the notion of a Christian being possessed. Some of these problems concern the very core of the gospel transformation and what Christ does for man. It is for these reasons that this sort of error must be steadfastly resisted, even though there may exist a proof text or two that could indicate an alternative understanding.

Oppression, yes. Possession, no!