Dungeons and Dragons, a Gateway to Evil?

“But one is tempted by one’s own desire, being lured and enticed by it; then, when that desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and that sin, when fully grown, gives birth to death. Do not be deceived, my beloved.” James 1:14-16

In a recent conversation I was asked about what influence Dungeons and Dragons had on my fall from Christianity to Satanism. Now for a lot of people this is simply an absurd question, but there are many people that remember the Satanic scare and the blame of Dungeons and Dragons in some murders and such. These things have taken hold in the mind of some Christians to the point that they can see D&D as a gateway drug to Occultism and Satanism.

For me, this was not the case. Yes I grew up playing Dungeons and Dragons and reading fantasy novels of swords and sorcery, but I don’t think that these things had that much impact in my life choices to follow the road to the Occult. There were a lot of reasons and influences in my fall from grace, if you will.

I was raised and taken to church by my mother up until I was five. We lived in Eastern Kentucky at that time and we moved to Tennessee at that time. When we moved my mother did not find a church so we stopped going to church until I was asked if I wanted to go to a Youth Group at a church when I was in 5^th grade. Mrs. Harris I thank you for that. Women English teachers have been some of the most influential people in my life.

I started going and by the time I was 11 I had been saved and baptized, but even by this time I had seen things that I didn’t talk about because people thought I was a weird enough kid as it were. I didn’t think that telling people that I have seen people walking around bridges and I knew they weren’t really there would not help my case for being normal, whatever that really means. When I was baptized things were not exactly as I had expected them to be.

I was attacked spiritually with waking visions, audible voices and typical schizophrenic activities. Of course when an 11 year old kid tried to explain this to my preacher, he thought I was telling stories or acting out for attention. Whatever the reason, I was not believed. If my preacher would not believe this spiritual thing that I was going through there is no way that my mom and friends would believe me.

So I felt isolated and alone and tried to deal with it on my own and eventually gave up. I thought at that time it was a Baptist thing. So I started researching on my own and learning what I could, but I was not going to church anymore. I was angry at God the situation and everything else about what I had gone through.  Eventually I just let go and gave up.

I would come back to it every few years but at that time I was seeking a higher understanding and enlightenment. I was changing and had a reputation for being an angry boy who would get into fights. I didn’t have too many friends and ended up reading more about Dungeons and Dragons than playing it.

My searches and studies had taken me to looking at the older religions. I was trying to find a truth among what people believed as long ago as I could find. I would look for themes and understanding and I found a few “truths” about the power that human beings have. A few of these are validated even in Christian thought. The biggest was that humans have dominion over spirits.

Humans have power of spirits. So spirits are real, and I can make them do what I want. I knew that spirits were real; I had seen them and felt them. By this time I was focused more on the power of the mind and not really concerned with fantasy stories. Then someone told me another truth that I knew but was looking for validation for. Magic is real.

This was not the sorcery magic from Fantasy novels. It was more akin to force of will and the ability to affect the world through your will. So I tested it, and it worked. I didn’t realize at that time I was already prey to demons and other energies that were leading me down the road to Satanism. The only thing that Role Playing games did for me was put me in touch with my wife.

I had studied magic and occult for a while and got involved with a few guys that practiced the darker arts, which showed me how to spot demons for the first time. Well these demons were just tormented spirits mostly, but I was still naïve. It would be years before I would be calling myself a Satanist.

What role did these games have in my fall? Not much of anything really, in fact that was the first thing to completely go when I converted to Satanism. The sinful man knows only toil. There is no rest for the wicked. All those saying are very true. I worked, lived and breathed sin. Rolling dice on Friday night and eating Cheetos did not condemn me. My actions and belief condemned me.

Video games did not corrupt my spirit. Rejection, judgment and condemnation corrupted what was supposed to be love. Isolation allowed me and the demons to do all the harm in the world to me. An abusive first marriage didn’t help things, and a lack of having time to play games and have fun certainly didn’t help. I had no release and was so obsessed with what I had become that I was blind to how stupid it all really was.

1^st Corinthians chapter 10 holds a truth I learned on that path as well. The deities that pagans worship are demons. I found that truth when I was a Satanist and it was an essential passage to help draw me back to Christ. That truth was very much needed for me at that point.

What got me on that road? Being isolated, judged, condemned, hated, outcast, different, and too smart for my own good without the wisdom to see how foolish I was. There is a whole list, but movies, video games and Dungeons and Dragons are not things on the list. Could it for someone? Yeah, but more times than not it is a collection of things.

I fully believe that it is not one thing that drives people from Christ and into any other direction they go. It is a collection of influences that draw us down into the darkness. For without the light of God we live in darkness. I am always nervous talking about my fall. I used Christian writing to learn more about demons many times. I know that temptation and curiosity can lead to further studies into the dark, and it’s dangerous.

In several movies, philosophies and stories there is a message that has led to the warning that I give now. Nietzsche I think says it best, “And if you gaze for long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.” Don’t go there… just don’t. Not for the sake of understanding. Don’t open those doors, leave them alone because each one you open lets something know who you are and gives you more you have to fight.

Spiritual Warfare is hard enough without a Smite Evil spell in our back pocket. No matter how long you play D&D you will not be able to throw fireballs. No matter how many times you read Harry Potter you will not produce the patronus charm. And if you think these things are evil, but approve of Narnia because the author was a great Christian Scholar I feel you may want to reconsider the prior. Stories, games and movies do not make people evil.

If you do not know love, you will replace it with hate. A bully will create more evil than every book that has been written. A bully can be more dangerous than the “Satanic Bible” by Anton LeVey. The story that the Satanic Bible preaches is one that we hear every day. We are in control of our lives and can do what we wish. We are an army of one.

We hold the true power, and thus our own little gods. But let me tell you friends, there is only one God, and his son died for us all. He came to tell us to love God and love others. You can try to drive the car all you want, but if you want to get where you’re going, you might want to give dad the wheel.

“D&D was a training ground for our imagination.” Vin Diesel

Power of Words

It’s not what goes into the mouth that defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man. Mat 15:11

The power that our tongue has is one that is hard to understand. How such a small part of our body as a whole has so much power that it is a constant warning throughout the entire bible. This is something that I did not understand until after I began going through counseling and preparing for Deliverance Ministry.

The topic of Deliverance Ministry is a touchy one for a lot of people, but it is one of the reasons I’m doing as well as I am doing right now. During my life wandering spiritually I spoke many things that harmed me and my soul. There are things that I allowed for the sake of understanding, knowledge or power that wounded me deeply.

I profess with my word that these things were wrong and I know that now, but when you are wandering in the dark it’s hard to tell friend from foe. My first steps were in tests. If this flame will change color then there is truth to these words. I wanted to see a response, and I received one. Well if that worked what else will work?

Down the slope I went until I began to allow spirits, demons, into my being. I swore oaths turning myself over as a vessel for the evil ones to use. With these words I allowed them to do with me what they would. It was depravity after another as I carved out sections of who I am and who I was becoming to allow them to do with me what they will.

For my seeking I did receive knowledge and wisdom through my folly. However, by knowing the names of demons, they also learn yours. As you go deeper and deeper into the abyss you see things that you cannot unsee. You learn things that you cannot forget. And you do things that you cannot undo. I had become a man filled with Hate, Lust, Anger, Destruction and filled with dreams of a truly violent death and being happy with it.

I am very glad that things happened when they did. God is good. He warned me to turn away, but I would not listen. Who knows how many demons where walking around in my flesh at any point in time. Was I hearing voices? No… just thoughts. Was I schizophrenic? No… Possession is much different from that. When you open yourself up to the demonic host, you get what they want… not what you want.

All of this was done with words. I swore oaths. Dedicated myself to thoughts and uttered blasphemies. Many of them I can still bring to mind even now. I have not spoken those words in over 5 years, but I still hear them. I denounced my salvation, my right and privilege as a child of God. But even with that, God did not give up on me.

I was the wayward son, lost in the depths of the ocean. He was waiting on me to make my choice and to say the words that he told me to say. All I had to do was ask for forgiveness.

As a fool’s tongue leads to strife and folly (Proverbs 18), only with wisdom gained from folly did I see how much of a fool I had become. I had to be put in a situation where there was nothing to distract me from the truth. I needed my Grey Door.

Upon my release from my Grey Door, my journey was only still beginning. I was a new child of God once more, but my tongue had still opened doors that were not yet closed. I had not done this alone either, and because it was with a union of souls with my wife. We had to be separated for God to begin working on us.

We began receiving counseling. We had a church that supported us as we were a challenge to the leadership of the church. Thank God for Providence Road Church of Christ (http://prcoc.org). We were going to Celebrate Recovery on top of the therapy. Our counselor quickly realized that we were outside her area of expertise and had found someone in the area that works on people with Occult pasts.

Clay Barnes met with us. He was the one that shined the light of the true power of words. In the first session I found myself renouncing oaths with the same verbiage that I used when speaking them. They had to be the same in order to close the doors that were opened. He too felt that we needed something rare. He suggested Deliverance Ministry.

We went into it and again had to be separated. The spirits within myself and my wife could not be removed is we were together. We went through six one-hour long sessions before we were turned back over to Clay. It was a very long process and we came a long way. Still It’s been three years since we finished with that and only now am I speaking about the power of words.

Still now, still so young in Christ with everything that I have seen and gone through. James knew what he was talking about:

“So too, though the tongue is a small part of the body, it boasts great things. Consider how large a forest a small fire ignites. And the tongue is a fire. The tongue, a world of unrighteousness, is places among the parts of our bodies. It pollutes the whole body, sets the course of life on fire, and is set on fire by hell” James 3:5-6

So what’s next? It is time for the truth to spew forth from my mouth. With that said. Mind your tongue; do not let it become wild and untamed. My journey is not one I wish any of you to follow. I was Christian, then nothing. I then became Wiccan then a practitioner of Witchcraft. From there I became a Satanist. I became a leader for the enemy. Then I became nothing once more, which was better than what I was, and then once more a Child of God. I came back home and the Father was waiting for me.

If I can blaspheme his name, renounce his gifts, spit on his image, walk with those that would stand against him and make friends among the demons of hell and he forgives me…. I know he would forgive you.

Where's Your Seed?

The old parable that calls back to me on many occasions is the one about the three different kinds of soil. You have the seeds cast in with rocky soil; thrown among the thorns; thrown to the way side, and then finally you have the good soil. The parable has always been taught to me to be about the condition of someone’s heart when you or someone approaches them about the message of God. For me I get a little bit of a different message about this passage.

Something that always rang to me is how much tending needs to be done to make the soil good soil. For a long time I have seen myself to be the seed that was thrown among the thorns. It’s got good dirt, but the thorns make it difficult to grow. Looking through life that is how much of my life has been. I get a good spell right after the garden’s been weeded. Go for a while then the thorns grow right back up around me.

Let’s be clear, none of us were gifted with the perfect soil. Everyone that has started a new garden will know that no patch of ground is perfect. Things were growing there before, there are rocks in the dirt and many times it takes many years of tending before you have good dirt. Now that is not to say that it does not help to have the soil prepared for you. I see this as people that were raised in good Christian homes. That does not mean that your seed cannot fall to the wayside, and certainly doesn’t mean that if left alone that thorns and weeds cannot creep back into the garden.

The biggest issue with good healthy dirt is that it is good healthy dirt. Thorns and weeds love to grow in the same place as fruits and vegetables.  You must always tend to your soil. But back to what I’m talking about today. Each of us has inherited this plot of soil that is who we are. This is our heart, mind, body and soul. There are many things that factor into how hard, rocky, thorny or good our soil is. A strong seed can grow in nearly any condition. It’s just harder.

Why is it important to know what kind of dirt you have? Well once you know what you are working with you will know how much work will needed to be put into it. Also the more work you put into it the better it will grow. Any dirt can become good dirt. It takes TLC. The worse your dirt is the more you have to do to fix it. That is part of how we grow as Christians, and as people for that matter.

I started out with really fertile soil, yeah there were plenty of rocks in it, but it had been worked for me for a few years to start out life. The problem is, it was left untended for a good number of years. By the time I first walked to Christ, I had plenty of rocks still there and the weeds had taken over. But the dirt was fertile.

The seed took root and grew. The weeds had been cleared out enough for this one seed. That wasn’t enough. The weeds liked the dirt and grew back up. Well then I began to ignore it even more and threw more junk in the garden. Bottles, cans, distractions, magazines, people and many other things were thrown in this place. I then realized how much of a mess all that had become wanted to pave over it with something else.

Shopping around I found the thing that was as different from the garden as I could. The salesman was good, “You want knowledge, wisdom, understanding and power… I’ve got all that for you. All you got to do is add a little water, mix it up and poor it over all that and you’ll never see it again. Once you’ve done that you can do whatever you want. Risk free! Satisfaction Guaranteed! No conviction, just pleasure and indulgence.”

“Hell yeah, where do I sign!” was my reply.

Hell indeed. So now this fertile ground was covered in a slab of concrete. When I fell I hit this concrete and it did not give way. Jesus then showed up with a sledgehammer and a shovel. You’ve got the dirt down there, all we have to do is get back to it and get it cleaned up. Here I’ll help. Jesus then began breaking the concrete.

If you have read the “Grey Door” then you know this portion of the story. For 115 days Jesus pounded away at the concrete. Somewhere in there I began to help. We got back down to the soil and started clearing it out. Man it has been hard work. Still 5 years later, people still see all the junk in my garden. Those that do not know Christ says, “Man what a mess you are. I can’t help you.”

This is not my concern though… The story that I have to hear to keep my strength is with the ones that look at my garden and say, “Wow, you’ve come a long way. You’ve got a ways to go, can I help. If you need another shovel just let me know.” These people are my brothers and sisters. My garden is still a mess, but it’s a work in progress. Luckily God loves works in progress just as much as he loves the well-tended gardens.

Mark 4:3-9, Ecclesiastes 4:7-12, 1 Timothy 1:12-17, 6:12-16

The Power of Faith

Faith, we are told, is one of the most powerful tools that we have to combat spiritual, emotional and physical conflict or strife. We are told that if we have faith the size of a mustard seed we can move mountains. For many these statements work, they sound great and life you up. For others they just see pretty words. Faith is a powerful thing.

I believe in my Lord God, and I believe in what he can do. In dark times it is challenging to faith. Why are we suffering so? Then we look to the Book of Job and see that faith will be challenged. What Job went through, in my opinion, no man should have to go through. It was horrible and awful, but Job stood true. My focus here is not about strife that one will meet in that regard. No, here I will discuss the power of Faith when you are under direct attack.

Now to get a few things in the open: 1) I am a Christian, 2) I believe in the power of God, Jesus, the angels of heaven, 3) I know that demons and Lucifer exists in as physical of a form as angels, 4) I believe in deliverance ministry, and 5) I believe in what the bible tells us about how to deal with the darkness. The path that I have walked to return back to Christ was not a pretty one, but I learned a lot along the way that I hope to share with others to assist them in life.

The darkness is not to be dabbled with. It will grab hold of you, once you look into that darkness once it will see you forever. Even worse, everything that you promise to the darkness, it will hold you to. Once you find out how bad things are and just want to leave it alone, you can’t just stop looking at it. You opened the way and it will remain open until it is shut, and to do this requires you renouncing the paths that you walked, every promise that you made, every vow you swore to EVERY being you talked with or worked with. This is deliverance ministry in a nutshell.

For the next section I will probably get a lot of criticism from my friends at church because the passage I am about to quote is not one that is in most bibles. The Catholics have this book in their bible and I feel it is a book that anyone that is dealing with demonic warfare should read. The book of Tobit is a book of the Apocrypha, and is a story about a righteous man named Tobit. Tobit was struck blind, and he begins to pray a lamenting prayer begging for death. Well at the same time a woman names Sarah begins to pray a lamenting prayer begging for the same.

Sarah, at this time, had been married seven times, but a demon killed the husband before the marriage could be consummated. So an Angel of God comes to Tobit and allows him to see again, and promises to Sarah Tobias son of Tobit. So Tobit calls in his son and instructs him to go to Gabael to get the family money. Tobias sets off and meets a traveler to go with him to assist him on the journey. So the story goes on Tobias catches a fish and the traveler tells him to keep the gall, heart and liver for they are useful as medicine. He eventually finds his way to Sarah, they marry and the Angel reveals himself as the traveler.

He tells him to use the gall and burn it in the bed chamber and it will drive out the demon.  So the question is, will burning a gall of a fish really drive away the demon, or was it the faith of the follower that put his trust in an Angel of the Lord to drive it away? That is a question of semantics. I am no biblical scholar by any stretch so I leave that to others. However I see that in this story it illustrates things that many other books of the bible do not.

We humans have the power to fight off demons and drive them away. However, our bodies are made of sin, the substance that the demons use to fight us and enslave us. This complicates things. So when things are complicated by man, we must turn to God and his angels. Between the Holy Trinity and his Holy Host of workers, and our Faith in them, the demons can be driven away.  As you are wondering what the point is, allow me to ask you a question, a few actually.

Have you ever experienced a time when more than one person in your home had bad dreams? You ever wake feeling a weight about you? You ever see an illusion of the eye that looked like a round ball in the dark? You ever get angry for no reason and words come out of your mouth that are not your own? You ever do something that is REALLY out of character that you know would hurt someone? These are a few of the ways Demons attack us, beyond addictions, bad habits, depression and lust.

You need to know what to look for; you need to know how to keep your family safe. This is not a scare tactic. I just want you to be aware of the dangers that are out there. I know many Christians out there that do not believe in demons in the physical and real sense. I wish that were true. The demon of depression or the demon of lust; well they do exist, and have names. The angel in the book of Tobit is Raphael and the demon is Asmodeus. Asmodeus is a demon of lust and not a nice guy.

So how does the power of faith help with this? It is our strongest weapon against them. Where the flesh is too weak, the spirit must be strong. And faith is how we strengthen our spirit. It will be forged by our trials and tempered by our struggles. You don the Whole Armor of God, and you pray. You bring the light of God into your home and into your heart. Where there is light Darkness cannot exist.

Once you are prepared you call to God, to Jesus Christ and you call forth their Angels. Ask for the angels to push away the darkness, evil and the demons that are trying to hurt those you love. Go through every room of your home praying this in Christ’s Holy Name. You push the spirits out and anoint the doors and windows with oil that you have prayed over to bless with God’s love and light. Ask for the angels to keep these boundaries safe and secure. Go through every room, every door, every window. Then say one last prayer to let the Love of God shine throughout this home. Welcome to spiritual warfare 201.

Keep the faith strong in the house. Let the love of God flow through it because it is true, “Where there is light Darkness cannot exist.” Sit the candle up high for everyone to see, shine as a true example of God’s love. Know your power, the power we receive through the blood of Jesus Christ. Your faith will keep you vigil. Your love will keep you diligent. Do not fight fair, use everything that God has to offer you, because the demons do not fight fair. With God’s Love and Grace.

God Forgives, the world Forgets

One of the things that life has taught me since I have once again turned my life over to Christ is one simple fact. God forgives, however the world does not, it forgets. This fact leads to many more trials and challenges than I care to acknowledge. So we will look at this thought over the next few pages.

For those of you that do not know me, I was raised in a Christian environment at an early age. I was saved and baptized by the age of 11. It was a wonderful day, which I still remember vividly. This day lead to trials of faith and challenges that proved to be too much for me at that time. I turned from the church and began to look through different denominations of Christianity other than the Baptist church that I had always known.

This led me eventually to the occult through not finding what I was seeking in all branches of Christianity. As I spiraled down darker roads, I found a road that fueled hatred and anger. I embraced Satan as my savior. He was the adversary of the one that I felt abandoned by. There was power in magic; knowledge in the unseen. I stared into the abyss and truly it gazed back upon me.

As my morals decayed and destroyed the good man that I had tried so hard to be for so long, I became something that I did not recognize. Through a coven that was started by my wife and myself, we allowed the darkness engulf us and swallow us whole. In that time of darkness we performed deeds that were punishable by law. We hurt others that were involved with the same dark deeds as we were. One of them, rightfully so, went to the police.

Prior to all of this, God was yet there. I heard the warnings, “If you do not turn back, then you will not like where this road goes.” I was warned not once or twice, but at least three times I was told to turn from this path. Yet my heart was hardened. I would not turn away. So me and my wife were arrested and given charges that would take the fight out of nearly anyone. Locked away with no way to get out, God began to wrestle me.

I was placed in a cell with someone that was raised in a Satanic household as a child. The damage that was done to him caused him to be pulled from his parents. This man had become a Christian in jail. It was one of the best things that could have happened to me. It put more weight on me to reflect at my life and how I was living. Through stories and testimony, my heart was broken enough to look at the word of God with an open mind again.

God did not tire. He broke me down with isolation, separation and reflection. He brought me to a point where I had to realize that the only way to get through this ordeal alive was with him and him alone. I gave my life back over to him. The whole time my wife was going through the same thing. Independently she found her way to Christ for the first time. We both were scared to tell the other that we had become a Christian because we did not want to lose the one that we loved.

Scared and nervous we eventually told one another that we had become a Christian and was overjoyed to find that the other had as well. This is an important part of the topic that I am discussing here. We had been forgiven of our sins, cloaked in the blood of Jesus. God took those that were fully ready to kill his followers and do anything we could to defeat the Church of hypocrisy and lies. He took us in and forgave us. He showed us grace and mercy. Our charges were reduced from Felony to Misdemeanors and we were given one year of probation. Certainly less than what we deserved in the eyes of the world, and much more than we deserved where the spirit is concerned.

God gave us a new beginning, a new start on life. He gave us another chance to know what love truly is and how good Grace is. He gave us a Church family that showed us how to support and love as Christ. He gave us councilors that were capable of helping us deal with all the wounds that we had dealt to ourselves and allowed the demons in hell to do to us.

God even blessed me with a job that was beyond my wildest dreams. I am more than a bit of a computer nerd, and he gave me a job working at Microsoft. With our past I never thought it would be possible, but there I was. He kept our sins hidden from the HR department and blessed me with a year of work there.

Things were looking great; I thought that I had finally made it all the way out of the darkness. I had a chance to interview for internal positions within Microsoft and was extended a job offer. The background check was going through and I even revealed the sins of my past to everyone involved to ensure that nothing would stop me from this dream. Even though HR said everything would be fine, the legal department had an issue with my past.

The world has not yet forgotten my past. And because of my past, they felt it was necessary to terminate my temporary contract as well. I cannot stress this enough. Anything is possible with God at your side, but that does not mean that the world will just open up and let you in wherever you happen to be. The world looks at me as a violent man and a safety risk. I have been turned down for six different jobs because of my past in the same number of weeks.

The world still remembers good and well the monster that I had become and will not take a chance to allow me another chance. This is how the world deals with mistakes. If you made one mistake you will make another. So it is best that they just stay away from you and your mistakes as they can. The world will ignore you and look away until they forget why they are looking away from you.

Once the world has forgotten your past, you will be damned by it. When we give ourselves to the Lord, we are no longer of the world, we are of God. With that we are no longer of the world. So the world does not understand how we can be transformed through God. The world still thinks as it has and as it will. John tells us this in his first letter to the Church in 1 John 4:4-6. The world cannot see the fact that we are clothed in the Blood of Christ that we have indeed been forgiven.

The world really does not care about that fact either. Why should they? They are not of God so they do not know Grace. My salvation resides in the Grace of God for no man is worthy of the salvation that is offered through Christ Jesus. Even now as I face these struggles I know that the Lord is at my side and as the Psalmist stated, “If God stands with us, Who can stand against us?”

The answer is plain with that one. No one can stand against us if God stands with us. As we all struggle to understand God’s plan. I am confident that he will lead us all to salvation and our home build upon stable ground. What this will look like, none of us will really know. We must not resist God in times like this. He knows what he is doing, as long as we are ready to move when God says move then he will do amazing things with us.

Our struggles revolve around our sin. We are imperfect people all lacking the grace of God. Our spirit is of God and through that spirit we are able to do many wonderful and miraculous things. God is preparing me for the next position in life that he will use me for. I know not what it is, but I would like to think I am ready now for the move. God opens doors that the world would keep shut from me.

The Lord is providing all of our needs for us. That is his promise to us. Be a good steward of what you are blessed with and know that just because the world does not forgive, you can be forgiven if you look to the Lord and accept Christ as your Lord and Savior. If God can forgive again and again men and women that set to destroy all good works that he has done, occultists and demon worshipers, what sin have you committed that he could not forgive? All is possible with the love of the Lord.