Before the hate mail begins to flood my inbox (lol), I’d like to state that though my personal take on spirituality is very diverse, I am not only a former Christian pastor who served as an associate pastor and a music minister in three different non-denominational Christian churches, but to this day, I am still a licensed Christian minister. As such – I have an observation on the way that the generalized non-denominational and Evangelical Christian church system addresses the issue of angels, demons, and anyone who would exercise spiritual gifts. This observation is in no way a condemnation of anyone’s personal belief path. It is an observation of a religious system.

My last blog on angels, and my communication with them with the intention of helping those who ask for life path assistance, brought forward the typical concern:  How can I be sure that I am not being deceived by demonic entities, pretending to be angels?

The interesting part was that every person who voiced this concern identified themselves as “Christian”.

I was astounded at the number of people who were willing to write rather pointed emails, wagging the “warning Christian finger of doom” while admonishing communication with angelic life — when they weren’t entirely sure of the role angels play with humanity. In fact, some of them thought that angels never have appeared on earth, so the entities I was in contact with must surely be demons.

I found the latter surprising, considering one of the showpieces in the Christian culture, the Christmas narrative, involves shepherds in the field who are addressed by the angel of the Lord, delivering the good news of the coming of Christ. There are countless Biblical stories of people being visited by angels, and those people recounting the angelic visit to others, thus “spreading a message”. It has been made expressly clear to me over the years that if Christians read in the Bible a story in which an angel is interacting with mankind, that’s okay. It’s in the Bible. If anyone else in modern society recounts an angelic experience, or any spiritual experience… it must be a demon, duping the poor sucker who thinks they’re talking with an angel.

This is incredible marketing genius on the part of Darkness, in Darkness’ attempt to keep human kind distracted enough into finally believing we are “cut off” from our Parent Creator God, but I’ll get to that a little further down.

Overall, the modern non-denominational Christian church system treats spirituality like a memorial service. Like a history lesson, where all the beautiful, inspiring, miraculous spiritual things that have ever happened, have already happened, so tough luck, brother, you’ll be lucky as a mere sinner to be able to listen, and long for, tales of God’s glory days among men – every Sunday, followed by donuts. (I have to say – I like the donuts.) The congregation is encouraged to hold these Biblical figures in reverence, as if these people in the past were somehow more special than we could ever be. The pastors will, of course, remind the congregation that “Joseph was a poor carpenter” in an attempt to drum up that “everyman” sympathy in a teaching, but when it comes right down to it, the church believes that Joseph has a backstage pass to God, and we modern people get to stand behind the ropes.  

This could not be further from the truth.

If one is to believe that the Bible is a literal description of events (that wouldn’t be my take on it, but it is many people’s take), then one must accept that the average, everyday Joe of 2000 years ago was having incredible spiritual experiences, back in the day. Peter was a poor fisherman. Jesus was homeless. It doesn’t get any more “everyday in the trenches” than that.  If one is a Biblical literalist, then one must accept the precedent set by those historical figures, which would dictate that any everyday Joe, past, present, or future, is able to have the same incredible experiences – even greater experiences – than those figures in the Bible.  Jesus himself said, “Everything that I do, you shall do, and greater.”

But not according to the church.

There is a difference in truly wishing to enlighten people spiritually, and wishing to have people believe exactly what you believe, in order to run a church. The latter involves keeping butts in the seats, and paying the light bill, and though I know there are many well-intentioned churches out there, most Christian churches struggle with the responsibility of teaching people how to be spiritually independent. Congregations are not encouraged to reach out to the spiritual world around them, even though that was one of the main focus of Jesus’ teachings. They are not encouraged to educate themselves on the mystery and sheer magnitude of everything God has created. They are not encouraged to study other religions, to see how God has exercised Itself/Himself/Herself into other cultures, because heaven forbid these other cultures be able to articulate facets of God better than The Book can. Congregations are encouraged to look backwards, into one singular history, at past spiritual events and mysteries, and to marvel, in past tense, at the spiritual power of what once was. A memorial service for the human race’s relationship with its Creator.

This is fundamentally wrong, and sends a message to people that God has, indeed – left the building. Which again, is not even close to the truth. In one breath, the church will indicate that speaking to the dead is wrong, but then preach a sermon about Elijah hearing prophecies from his dead ancestors. The following is a truncated version of a discussion I had with a head pastor of an Evangelical church that I once worked for. I’m recounting it for you because, well – it says it all:

Me: “So, Elijah was a medium, talking to the dead?”

Church: “No. Elijah was a prophet, being visited by ancestors because they were sent by God.”  

Me: “So, God no longer sends ancestors forward to anyone, but only to Elijah?”

Church: “It’s wrong to want to speak to the dead. We don’t need to speak to ancestors, because we have Jesus to speak to.”

Me: “If it’s wrong, why did God send the dead to Elijah, to counsel him? Why didn’t God send Jesus to Elijah? Jesus was still in heaven at the time.”

Church: “Ours is not to question the grace and wisdom of God.”

Me: “If that’s true, then shouldn’t we accept people who see the dead, instead of judge them, and tell them that they’re evil?”

Church: “That’s different. These people who claim to see the dead are occultists.”

Me: “But wouldn’t that make Elijah an occultist?”

Church: “No, because Elijah believed in the one true God.”

Me: “I believe in one God, and I can talk to the dead. But I don’t think that makes me a prophet.”

Church: “You are enticed by evil spirits and led astray. You need to repent and pray for forgiveness.”

Me: “Why am I praying for forgiveness, if in the grace and wisdom of God, He granted me the ability to hear messages from people’s dead ancestors?”

Church: “Because you are being led astray.”

Me: “Why am I led astray and Elijah was not, then? I don’t understand.”

Church: “Look, you’re not Elijah. Elijah was a prophet. You’re a music minister, and you’re nineteen, and you’re confused. Pray for your soul and repent.”

The message was clear: The guys in the Bible were somehow magic, and the rest of us suck. They were miraculous, but “miraculous” died off as God lost interest in us, somewhere along the way. That miracles, and spiritual communication, and being able to feel the Universe, were a thing of the past, belonging to a generation who was much more deserving… the exact message of unworthiness that was originally taught to the Jewish nation by the Sanhedrin, the religious power at the time, who sought to control the masses by keeping God sequestered in over 1,200 Rabbinical Laws. The same message that Jesus Christ, who was also a Jewish person, came forward to amend. Jesus came to teach that all were worthy of God’s love, that all were capable of miracles, all were to heed great signs and wonders, in the NOW. Not the past. Somehow, in the Christian church’s jockeying for world political power – that message was replaced with the Sanhedrin’s original message of “you will never be enough, so cling to God, and keep coming back to the elite few who actually have backstage passes”.

It’s sickening to me, how spiritually crippled the church attempts to convince their congregation that they are. As long as the church keeps God trapped in a book, they will have control over the administration of people’s spiritual growth. It is not The Universe that wishes people to stay ignorant and stifled. It is Darkness.

Which leads me to a very intense, but true, point: If I am Darkness, and I am trying to win a losing war with Light, and one of the greatest collateral damages I can rack up is the human spirit, and human beings are already tipped off that I’m the bad guy, then I have to change my approach. I have to start to work on corrupting those who administer God, since I can’t take on God, full on. I have to work on the egos of these pastors, church officials, anyone in church power, a little bit at a time, until I can convince them that isolating people from their spiritual center is what God wants – when in fact, it’s what Darkness wants. It’s what a corrupted church organization wants, because it holds people captive to the church to administer God every week. If people truly believe that they are incapable of trusting their own spiritual instincts when they hear and feel angelic prompts, or a whisper of peace from Grandma who passed away a year before, or a hug from the Holy Spirit during a time of great grief – if they truly believe that are incapable of staying on a right path without a pastor to interpret what a “good spirit” and a “bad spirit” is, by referencing a five thousand year old book full of middle-eastern tribal histories, allegories, and cultural myths, then the sheer spiritual power of the human race has been brainwashed into paralysis, limiting itself to one third of its overall spiritual capacity. That’s an awful lot of Light Potential down here on earth that has singlehandedly shut itself down, before it ever got started. Not a bad war strategy.

Jesus attempted to come and liberate people from this age-old war tactic. His message threatened the powers-that-be so much that it got him killed. Nothing says, “Yep, you were right” than someone else wanting you dead.   

The fact is – contrary to what many Evangelical fear factories want you to believe — there is absolutely no way to mistake an angel for a demon. Though they are both technically the same genus – one being a “fallen angel” – they have different components, most of them physics issues. Since we live in a physical universe, these “tells” are ridiculously apparent. Angels and Demons have different vibrations — angels are very high vibration creatures. Their vibration is accompanied by a sensation of peace and levity. Demons are very low vibration entities, and the low vibration feels very heavy and oppressive to we creatures of light. Angels and demons have different agendas. A demon will never offer any true assistance to any human being. They will flatter an ego in an attempt to win over allegiance of the person, so that they may encourage them down wrong paths. A demon will keep appearing and appearing in order to manipulate a person into doing what they want them to do. An angel will always seek to assist, and never want to be the focus of attention. An angel will turn the attention to the person’s highest life path, or to God, and then disappear. A demon will never, under any circumstances, refer to God in an uplifting way, or praise God. An angel will refer to God frequently and often praise God in a passing reference. The list here is very long, but you get the point.

Hollywood has sensationalized a demon’s ability to cloak itself, and given darkness a lot more credit than it deserves. The church, often infiltrated by Darkness through cracks in church leader’s spiritual armor,  has given darkness HUGE amounts of power, more power than God, by preaching what I call The Doctrine of Evil – “The DEVIL is all-powerful! The DEVIL watches you in your sleep! The DEVIL is with you, every step of the way! So cling to Jesus as a default, or the ALL POWERFUL DEVIL will get you!”  …Really, with that? Darkness is a pitiful little parasite, nothing more, nothing less. It must be invited in. It can do nothing without a host. All powerful DEVIL? Puh-LEEZ. Yes, there are very rare accounts of demonic possessions, but those are so few and far between, with such extenuating circumstances, that it certainly does not merit the church preaching an entire Platform of Evil.

People do sometimes become “duped” by dark spirits when they are noodling around with something they shouldn’t be noodling around with, like a dime store divination tool such as the Ouija board. Those things are just plain irresponsible. It’s like leaving your front door open in the middle of an inner city high-crime area, and being surprised when someone comes in and loots the house. Dark spirits use divination tools like Ouija boards to dupe people because typical users of these things aren’t people with honed extra-sensory abilities. The demographic for these dorky things tend to be teenagers looking for a thrill, and people who can’t determine what is going on in the environment by using their own spiritual aptitudes. These people are spiritually blind going in, and get blind-sided.

However, for most people, there is an “alarm” that is tripped, when Darkness is around, a gut feeling that says, “Whoa, man. Time to back up.” This alarm is brought on by the fact that we are light beings, and the physics of light and dark are very different. We feel uncomfortable to Darkness, and Darkness feels uncomfortable to us. Let‘s face it – deep down, people know darn good and well that they are dabbling in Darkness, when they are doing it. They just don’t care, because they see it as “exciting”, for whatever reason. That one escapes me, but so does jumping out of airplanes, riding roller coasters, and petting tarantulas.

No matter what our spiritual belief system – God is bigger than all of it. ALL roads to God are good, and ALL spiritual aptitudes come from God. Many religious world texts including the Christian Bible are FULL of people with intense spiritual aptitudes: John the Baptist was a Clairvoyant — he foretold the coming of Christ. Elijah was a Medium – he talked to dead people. Daniel and Joseph (coat of many colors) were Intuitives – they interpreted dreams for the Pharaohs. Jesus was the original paranormal investigator, casting out demons and freeing trapped spirits, plus, he was an intense energy healer. Ezekiel saw a UFO. God is much, much bigger than the human need to categorize It/Him/Her. God represents Itself to different cultures in different ways, because the nature of God is so complex, there’s no way that one culture would be able to document It/Him/Her. No two people will ever experience the same spiritual path, even if, on paper, the path is identical. Until humankind can stop fighting with one another over which spiritual modality is “right”, and tally up all the cool perspectives of spirituality that each culture has managed to keep track of, and compare notes on these perspectives in an attempt to understand the fullness of our Parent Creator so that we may discover more of our own innate gifts – humanity will continue to serve a Deity created in its own image. A giant golden calf, in the shape of a cross.        

I think back on my Native American heritage, growing up in Montana. Three braves from three warring tribes were sitting around a fire in deep winter, trying to make peace. Even though all three warriors were staring at the same exact fire, each sat a different side, all around. When the fourth brave came to sit, he was tired, and demanded to be told which side of the fire was the warmest. Each brave claimed their side was the warmest, and the fourth brave sat, and claimed his was the warmest. This argument escalated until one brave picked up a weapon, and was going to have a go at the rest. He was stopped by a medicine man of a neighboring tribe, who happened to be passing.

“What is the quarrel?” he asked.

The fourth brave spoke up. “It is this fire. I have the warmest side of the fire, yet these three claim that theirs is the warmest, and I won’t be mocked.”

“How can you claim four climates but have only one fire?” asked the medicine man. “The fire is not the source of your quarrel. Your quarrel came here with each one of you.”

Trust yourself to have spiritual discernment when you need it. You are built with an intrinsic ability to sense the good and the bad around you. Darkness wants you to doubt yourself, so you don’t use your gifts. Doubt, Fear, and Condemnation don’t come from God, no matter how many Bible passages someone quotes to you to try and convince you otherwise. If anyone tries to shut down the use of your own spiritual gifts for the highest good of those around you, it is Darkness, not the Light, that is trying to discourage you from connecting with your own spiritual guidance system.

Know yourself. Know your God. Know your angels. Know Peace. It is your spiritual birthright, as Child of Light.