Demonic Foes: My Twenty-Five Years as a Psychiatrist Investigating Possessions, Diabolic Attacks, and the Paranormal (October 6, 2020 release )

Amazon Books ^ | October 6, 2020 | Richard Gallagher M.D

[tired&retired]

The world’s leading psychiatric authority on demonic possession delves into the hidden world of exorcisms and his own transformation from cynic to believer over the course of his twenty-five-year career.

Successful New York psychiatrist Richard Gallagher was skeptical yet intrigued when a hard-nosed, no-nonsense Catholic priest asked him to examine a woman for a possible exorcism. Meeting her, Gallagher was astonished. The woman’s behavior defied logic. In an instant, she could pinpoint a person’s secret weaknesses. She knew how individuals she’d never known had died, including Gallagher’s own mother, who passed away after a lengthy battle with ovarian cancer. She spoke fluently in multiple languages, including Latin—but only when she was in a trance.

This was not psychosis, Gallagher concluded. It was, in his scientific estimation, what could only be describe as paranormal ability. The woman wasn’t mentally disturbed—she was possessed. This remarkable case was the first of many that Gallagher would encounter

[amorphous]

Nothing indicates that a person WILL be with the Lord immediately after death.

There are thousands of reports out there by those who've had a near-death experience.

There is the thief on the cross with Christ. There are Enoch and Elijah, the firstfruits who rose along with Christ.

But there are scriptures which point to time spent in the grave. The prophet Daniel was to "go thou thy way till the end be: for thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days." Paul teaches the Thessalonians, "For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first" indicates even Christians will spend time in the grave until Christ returns.

We can make general assumptions but let's not put the Almighty or those beings who serve Him in a box by claiming something is either-or. I doubt we know all there is to know about their powers or how things work in the domain they control.

[tired&retired]

Been away for the day and just returned.

Thank you GreyFriar for your comments.

Folks, I provided the above comments for your information. I have no need to convince anyone of anything.

As I stated earlier. My comments are based upon actual experiences and not theories. I’ve had my share of difficult learning experiences and share that others may learn without replicating them.

Blessings

[GreyFriar]

T&R,

My pleasure.

G-F

[fortes fortuna juvat]

There is only one such book, and that is the Bible. There are demons, and there are angles. That is it.
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And you know this how? And in addition to demons and angles are there not also ANGELS?

[GreyFriar]

And there are centuries of teaching/preaching by ministers that the dead will lie in their graves until the 2nd coming of Our Lord. I will not opine the validity of the teaching but I remember both hearing of it and hearing it preached. Thus I can see that some Christian souls staying in their graves until that time, rather than rising immediately to heaven.

[fortes fortuna juvat]

I’m partial to acute angles myself. :)
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Being a hardcore right winger my preference has always been right angles!

[amorphous]

Thanks for the book recommendation. I intend to have a look. My daughter started a behavior clinic in a medium-sized city. A national provider bought her out but kept her as the director.

I've had several unexplained experiences. None on the level of what you describe but enough for me to know there is much more to this reality than what most of us know or can begin to understand.

I agree with others that it is a shame today's licensed psychiatrists and therapists are discouraged from using the tools pastors, and church leaders use every day in helping those with problems.

[GreyFriar]

I think the problem here is that “spell check” doesn’t know the difference between angles and Angels.

[fortes fortuna juvat]

I believe that a human can be possessed, as the scriptures show, but it seems clear that no truly saved person of this dispensation can ever be one of them.
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So the pastors named in post 36 are either not saved or are liars?

[fortes fortuna juvat]

If you maintain a paranormal ping list, add me. Or start one and add me ;)
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If you have one or start one, please add me too!

[NetAddicted]

Interesting book.
You piqued my interest some time ago with your spiritual sensing posts. My only problem now is your focus on Jesus Christ. That statement will probably get me into a lot of trouble, but I started spiritual searching at 18. After 15 years approx., I came into contact with Chabad, in which I found all the answers. No, I haven’t converted yet.
Chabad is called ultra-Orthodox Judaism.

[fortes fortuna juvat]

The Bible is accurate. Your interpretation is not.
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But I’m sure your interpretation is accurate, isn’t it?

[fortes fortuna juvat]

Possession is fake. It’s an attempt to excuse and a proxy for the evil within us. Exorcism is an elaborate fakery.
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Damn I’m glad you posted that and set everyone straight!

[fr_freak]

The things you MUST believe to be a psychiatrist/psychologist are antithetical to Christianity and the things of God.

Eh? Where in the heck do you get that idea? It is well known that the exorcism process (of the Catholic Church) requires consultation with psychiatrists before the exorcism, just to be sure that the problem isn't a mental health one rather than a spiritual one. Now why in the world would the Catholic Church consult with psychiatrists if their field is "antithetical" to the things of God?

[imardmd1]

So the pastors named in post 36 are either not saved or are liars?

When you clear up the context, the answer will be apparent. There is no way to answer it without describing each case.

[fortes fortuna juvat]

When you clear up the context, the answer will be apparent. There is no way to answer it without describing each case.
............................................
You’re the one who made the nonsensical categorical statement which suggests that the pastors referred to in my post are either not saved or are liars!

[imardmd1]

>V

Where did you ever get that idea? Enoch and Elijah have yet to die, but they will in the fullness of time:

"And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: " (Heb. 9:27 AV).

"And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth. . . . And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them" (Rev. 11:3,7 AV)

So much for Enoch and Elijah.

About the "firstfruits" you are referring to, you are in error that you think it is plural:

"But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits^{Greek singular} of them that slept. . . . But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits^{Greek singular}; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming" (1 Cor. 15:20,23 AV).

Without argument, Jesus of Nazareth is the only human whose body has been resurrected as a spiritual body of flesh and bone. At the present time, He is the only human present in God's Heaven, at the Father's right hand. This does not include Enoch or Elijah. They have not died physically, so they cannot yet be resurrected from the dead ones. The idea of Jesus' surrogate birth mother, Mary, being with him in Heaven physically is a figment of the Roman Catholic imaginative dogma. It is not so, and has no scriptural support.

Your opinion will have to take a back seat to that of the Holy Spirit as recorded in the Scriptures.

These "near-death" experiences are very much open to question. The control group would be humans that have never heard of The God or His Christ of the Bible previously, but have experienced such events, then returning to life and reporting that they have seen and heard God or Jesus in their temporary loss of animation.

I have never heard of such. Have you?

[mdmathis6]

They can be “buffeted” by messengers of Satan as Paul described, they can be allowed as a “thorn in the flesh” that Christ won’t necessarily remove right away, perhaps as if to say, as Christ said to Paul(when he besought the Lord 3 times to remove it)...”My grace is sufficient for you”. Paul said it was to keep him humble before God because of the many prophecies and gifts God had wrought thru him.

So our internal selves can’t be possessed. Yet we can be tested, tempted and harassed even with the tolerance of Christ or his grace for disciplinary purposes. It forced Paul to stay close to his savior.

King David as Chronicles states was tempted by Satan and was induced to order a kind of census that the Mosaic law forbad. God’s purposes were to punish the nation of Israel,(not necesarilly David interestingly enough), literally the people for their faithless to him. It would take David’s offer of self sacrifice and his building an altar for animal Sacrifice before the Lord to stay the hand of God as the plague had killed 70 thousand lives in Israel.(consider 200 thousand people killed by corona in the US with a population of 338 million souls)

Errant Christians can even be given over to Satan for the destruction of the body so that the spirit will be saved in the day of Resurrection as Paul also says.

So the biblical record is rather interesting in the telling of demons, spirits and Satan in terms of how and why God uses them or allows them to interact even with mighty believers. And if God does so with his chosen mighty believers, one can only accept that he allows certain controlled interactions, for his own purposes, amongst the smallest of us.

The church at large may be on the thresh hold of an expansion of power and a renewed knowledge of the authority it has in Christ while facing at the same time increased persecutions because of that renewal. Where lawlessness abounds, grace abounds more.

It will happen perhaps when some certain believers or leaders whom God has specially chosen lay prostrate before God asking that their lives be taken on the spiritual altars, if it might mean that the salvation of all humanity might be realized.

***Some experts have posited that David’s building of his altar on the threshing floor of Ornah(at Jerusalem) was at or near the place that our Lord was crucified. What wonderful foreshadowing....David interceding for the people and later Jesus, son of David, son of God and LOGOSGOD made flesh, dying in order to become our intercessor before the father who pleads for the souls of Men!

[imardmd1]

And there are centuries of teaching/preaching by ministers that the dead bodies will lie in their graves until the 2nd coming of Our Lord.

There, fixed that. You must take into accunt that there are three kinds of life, and three kinds of death. Life is about union and death is about separation, disunion.

o Physical life (biological) is the union of soul ans spirit in a material body of flesh and bone, with the life being in the circulatory system. in the temporal sphere.

o Physical death is the parting of the never-annihilated soul and spirit from the body, such that it is no longer animated, circulation ceases, and it no longer supports the transformation of chemical energy into mechanical and electrical energy. The body is goes to the grave (be it earthen, watery, or fiery), and the soul either to Paradise or to Sheol/Hades/Hell.

o Spiritual life is the union and interaction of a human's spirit with that of the Godhead, which occurs in this Age of Grace, the Mew Covenant, for every truly regenerated child of God.

o Spiritual death is the separration beteren a human'sd spirit from any sensation of, or interaction with, the Spirit of God/Christ, which is a human's state at conception and birth, ever since Adam's rebellion and the entrance of Sin into this world. This state continues to and through physical death, unless the human has believed in and permanently subjected him/her self to God through His Son alone. This spiritually dead person can never satisfy God's righteous demands through physical works, emotions, or intellectual feats, because they are foreign to God's Will for that person.

o Absolute Eternal Life isthe reunion of the soul and spirit of the obedient human who trusts Jesus as Lord and Christ, with a resurrected spiritual body of flesh and bone that shall never die again, being motivated by the union of his/hetr spirit with that of The God, always doing everything right and in peace with The God, a permanent resident of His Eternal City.

Eternal death is the reunuon of the soul and spirit of the human who physically died in disobedience, with the resurrected physical body in which he/she dued, never to go through that disunion again, separated from any contact with the God forever, to be tormented by and with the Devil amd his angels, eventually in a n ongoing Lake of Fire, without hope, and without end.

So just don't speak of "death" without qualifing which kind of context it refers to, otherwise other ignorant people will take it lightly, though sorrowful, not realizing which horror it entails.

For more on this, I refer you to a clear, detailed web site:

THE MYSTERY OF LIFE AFTER DEATH -- THE PIT (GRAVE) Grave-Chart (click here)

[imardmd1]

In general, I agree with your precise summary of the situation. But, this I don't:

It will happen perhaps when some certain believers or leaders whom God has specially chosen lay prostrate before God asking that their lives be taken on the spiritual altars, if it might mean that the salvation of all humanity might be realized.

That amounts to a demonic approach. God will never permit this. No other human than Jesus of Nazareth, God Manifest In The Flesh, can alone satisfy The Father's standards of perfection of a sacrifice. He is the only Human able to declare the New Coven=ant in His Pure, Perfect Blood.

Jesus died once, for all and for all time(Heb. 10:10). He says to each individual, essentially, "Choose or choose not; there is no after-death reprieve."