Criteria for Recognising Cases of Demon Possession: A Response to John Woolmer – Part 1

What is required before we can rationally believe in something like demon possession? It seems to me that the defender of demon possession must clear 5 hurdles: 

1. They must provide a coherent account of what a demon actually is. 

2. They must provide reason to believe such entities actually exist. 

3. They need to present and defend an account of how possession is supposed to happen. 

4. They must provide criteria outlining how we can recognise a possession when one occurs. 

5. They need to present cases of actual possession. 

It is with Nos. 4 and 5 that I am concerned in these 2 articles. 

In his book “The Devil Goes Missing?” John Woolmer  – who for years has been involved in “deliverance ministry” – takes his cue from the story of the Gerasene demoniac in Mark Chapter 5, and presents five chief criteria for recognising a case of possession, criteria which he claims to have witnessed in his own deliverance ministry. 

Woolmer’s five criteria are: 

1. Being simultaneously attracted to and repelled by Jesus. 

2. Speaking in voices not one’s own – this can be unknown languages or manners of speech untypical of the person themselves. 

3. Possessing super-human strength. 

4. Engaging in self-harm. 

5. Having wild or blazing eyes. 

After laying out these criteria, Woolmer is careful to add: “they do not guarantee the presence of demons. Many psychiatric patients will exhibit similar signs and we must not rush to make diagnoses.” 

I think that’s worth noting, since the examples Woolmer himself provides are far from convincing.

In this Part I will look at the first two of these criteria, dealing with criteria 3-5 in Part 2. 

1. Being simultaneously attracted to and repelled by Jesus

Woolmer’s entire book is largely anecdotal. Concerning this first criterion, he tells us the story of a woman who came forward for prayer – willingly – but as she approached the altar there was a “violent reaction” and she “was thrown” to the ground. Woolmer adds: “We all had the impression that she was trying to levitate, which was something she claimed to be able to do.”   

As with so many of Woolmer’s anecdotes, there are few details provided. I’ve heard before the claim that possessed people would levitate if they weren’t being restrained, but frankly I wish people would just let go of them to see what happens! The upward force of a person on the ground trying to get up can easily feel like the person is rising – or, “trying to levitate.” Moreover, a person throwing themselves to the ground would look very much the same as someone who, allegedly, “was thrown.” These are certainly plausible aspects of an alternative explanation for what was going on. This woman may have had a personality that was prone to hysterical outbursts. She may have been suffering from schizophrenia – hence the attraction-repulsion episode. Perhaps she was an exhibitionist who was simply playing a scripted part. All these explanations are not even mentioned by Woolmer, and yet they seem eminently plausible in a case like this, and have been well known to feature in other similar cases of purported possession. 

2. Speaking in Strange Voices or Languages

Woolmer claims that people sometimes speak in languages not their own, or in tongues that “sound menacing.” He describes a creepy episode with a couple who called to his manse to make a complaint about something or other. In the course of the conversation the woman said, “I’m in league with the devil!” When Woolmer invited her to renounce the devil she screamed: “I renounce God!” Her demeanor then suddenly changed and she adopted the voice (and gait) of an old man. Woolmer describes her behaviour as “spiritually menacing” and tells us how she began speaking in a “strange guttural voice…like Latin backwards being spat out like a machine gun.” Woolmer began to speak in tongues himself and somehow calm was restored.  

What are we to make of this episode? Well, the key is provided by Woolmer himself: “We learnt from the medical profession that she had a personality disorder.” Seemingly, this woman would often speak in the voice of a person she called Hilda, and would show marks on her arms and throat which, she claimed, were from having been tied up and burnt at the stake in a previous incarnation. She also claimed that being anointed with holy oil burned her skin. 

Woolmer doesn’t say why he identifies this case as one of possession, since it is clear – and medically verified – that this woman was psychologically damaged. She had a personality disorder of some kind and was quite possibly engaging in a spot of imaginative play-acting, adopting certain cliches of possession: a guttural voice (the kind we are prone to imagine is used by evil spirits, thanks to movies such as The Exorcist) and being burned by anointing oil (hat-tip again to countless possession horror movies). 

In another case, Woolmer mentions an experience from his time in Zambia: “One of the women, or to be more accurate the spirit speaking through her, said “Go away. I m not leaving this person!” She was speaking in perfect Oxbridge English…a good mimic of mine.” Again, there’s little need for an other-worldly explanation when an appeal to something simple like mimicry will suffice.

Whilst it’s hard to judge from the scant details provided by Woolmer, we can at least say that thus far he’s presented precious little that would plausibly lead us to think that these criteria of demon possession really were instantiated.

I will discuss criteria 3-5 in Part 2.

Stephen J. Graham

The Date of Billy Graham’s Death is of no Prophetic Significance

Does the date of Billy Graham’s death have “prophetic significance” for the church? That’s the question raised by Claire Musters in a recent article for Premier Christianity Magazine, (https://www.premierchristianity.com/Blog/Why-the-date-of-Billy-Graham-s-death-could-have-prophetic-significance-for-the-Church). Musters begins with a statement made by Anna Graham Lotz, Billy Graham’s daughter, in which Lotz claims her father’s death is a sign of the end times.

“I believe from heaven’s perspective that my father’s death is as significant as his life, and his life was very significant. I think when he died that was something very strategic from heaven’s point of view. And I know that before the foundations of the world were laid February 21st 2018 was the date that God chose to take my father home. Why? I had a sweet friend who urged me to look that up on the web, so I looked up what was significant about that day and I found out that February 21st 2018 is the day when Jews focus on scripture readings that focuses on the death of Moses.

“Moses was the great liberator – he brought millions of people out of bondage to slavery, got them to the edge of the Promised Land and God took him to heaven. Then God brought Joshua to lead them into the Promised Land to take them home. My father also was a great liberator; he brought millions of people out of bondage to sin and he gets us the edge of heaven, the edge of the Promised Land and then God has called him home.

“Could it be that God is going to bring Joshua to lead us into the Promised Land, to lead us to heaven? And do you know what the New Testament word is for Joshua is? It’s Jesus. I believe this is a shot across the bow from heaven – I believe God is saying wake up Church, wake up world, wake up Anne. Jesus is coming. Jesus is coming. And Jesus said…in Matthew 24:14 when the gospel is preached to the whole world then the end will come.”

One could be forgiven for simply writing this off as gross narcissism on the part of Lotz, as if the entire world revolves around her father – it most assuredly does not. In any event, it illustrates the silliness of these kinds of prophetic pretensions. It’s a form of Christian stargazing, a kind of holy reading of the tea leaves, in which one reads into an event what one wants to find there. There is nothing remotely significant about the date on which Graham died. In fact, had Graham died on any other date we could quite easily read into that some sort of religious significance. Take my birthday – 31st May. There are events that happened on this day that could be given religious significance with nothing other than a little imagination: for example Rome captured the first wall of the city of Jerusalem (70AD), and Adolf Eichmann (the Nazi SS officer who helped organized the extermination Europe’s Jewish population) was executed for his crimes against humanity. Or select any other date, perhaps my friend’s birthday – 20th July. On this date we got the first moon landing in 1969, and the US Viking landed on Mars (1976). I’ll leave it to the imagination of the reader to think how dying on these dates could also be construed as having “prophetic significance.” The world has been around for a very long time and there are billions of events every single day. It really isn’t difficult to play such a game.

This sort of imaginative reading of the signs of the times is all the rage in prophetic circles, and always has been. Predictions that the “end is nigh” have rambled on now for two millennia, in utter disregard to what Jesus himself said on the matter. Yes, that’s right, even God incarnate didn’t seem to know the time and date of his return. What chance then for Lotz and the motley crew of wannabe soothsayers bumbling along in her wake?

In her article, Musters points out that others have made similar prophecies concerning Billy Graham (hardly a surprise given that he’s been one of the most significant figures in US evangelicalism for over half a century). She points out that, in 2011, Maurice Sklar suggested Billy Graham’s death would be prophetically significant, adding – with a classic gloomy prophetic flourish – that there would be financial disasters, wars, terrorism and rioting in America, and “all-out war in the Middle East.” In typical “thus saith the Lord” prophetic style, Sklar (God, it seems, in this case) spaketh thusly: “I am taking Billy Graham home to heaven soon. When you see this, know that my time of grace for the Gentile nations is coming to a close.”

It all sounds very specific, until you think about what he is actually saying. It doesn’t take a professional historian to tell us that the history of humanity has been one of financial disasters, wars, terrorism, and rioting. Such things are routine for our species and predicting them is hardly a sign of divine insight. “All out war in the Middle East?” In 2011 that was hardly an unlikely event! (Did “all out war” happen, anyhow? Not to my mind, but there’s been enough war and unrest to allow the prophetic pretender to claim his proclamations are coming true). Moreover, did it really take a word from the Lord to tell us that Billy Graham was soon going to die? Graham was, after all, 92 years old when that prophecy was given.

It’s always the same old vague prophecies – there are rarely any specific details given, and when that happens the prophetic words turn out to be flat-out false. Witness Harold Camping’s constant specific predictions concerning the date of the end of the world, (or the Jehovah’s Witnesses for that matter also). But that doesn’t stop every wannabe soothsayer from jumping on the prophetic bandwagon. Musters mentions also “controversial preacher Benny Hinn.” A quick look at Hinn’s prophetic track record is telling, including his prophecy that the 1990s would see the collapse of the US economy, the death of Fidel Castro, and the homosexuals of the world destroyed by fire. This is, of course, the same Hinn that engages in multiple fake claims of divine healing, who travels the world gladly taking money from the sick and impoverished on the implied promise of divine healing, and who once preached that each person of the trinity was actually 3 persons, thus turning the trinity into a conglomerate of 9 persons. One might be forgiven for thinking that Hinn’s Hotline to Heaven is experiencing a technical fault. But on this occasion concerning Graham, he keeps it nice and vague, such that his proclamations could be interpreted in many ways and thus could be claimed to fit all manner of subsequent events.

In the final analysis Musters simply writes, “Ultimately, only time will tell whether the finer details of the prophecies are true.” However, there are no finer details. The prophecies are of such a nature that pretty much anything that happens can be squeezed to fit and then subsequently claimed to be a fulfilment. Specific details are the bane of any prophetic ministry, but sadly we rarely ever find them, and things are no different here. There isn’t the slightest scrap of decent evidence that any of these pronouncements should be taken more seriously than 1000s of others that have been made in the course of Christian history. Perhaps wisdom dictates taking a leaf out of Jesus’s book rather than making a silly spectacle of yourself by feigning knowledge that even the Son of God didn’t claim to have.

Stephen J. Graham

For some tricks of the prophetic trade, see my article: https://stephenjgraham.wordpress.com/2017/09/08/ten-prophetic-techniques-to-amaze-your-friends/