Avalon Chronicles #86: "Massacre and Veterans-Part 2"
by Allen B. Clark
allenbclark@aol.com
www.combatfaith.com
www.combatfaith.blogspot.com
It is time to get down to the core issue and the incident of pure evil of the Texas church shooter. My good friend and fellow veteran, Everett Cox, is the founder of Deliverance Ministry in Oklahoma City, where on Mondays he conducts training on deliverance, and individuals from all over the country travel to receive ministry by him and his team. His web site is www.delmin.org. He has been a guest in my home twice. At my age and at this stage of the final quarter of a life for which I am most grateful, especially after witnessing the horrors of my war in Vietnam and the atrocious events of death and suffering all over our country and the world, it is time to go past timidity and "political correctness." I believe decisively and unequivocally in strategic spiritual warfare, "demonization," and spiritual attacks on all us humans by the "tormenters" doing the bidding and orders of Satan. I will return to Cox's response to this massacre.
My dear readers, we are way beyond "touchy feely" and attempting to analyze wrongdoing by man's secular standards, environmental explanations, and conditions by skating around issues that have impacted all humanity since the fall in the Garden of Eden.
It has been my privilege in past years to have been a guest of chaplains serving the Warrior Transition Battalions of our ill and wounded military. I have sometimes been cautioned in my presentations about relating my own walk of healing from my wounds to refrain from direct proselyting of my Christian faith. It is agonizing for me not to tell the truth and the whole truth. So, this is how I approach the issue. I say, "I know there are in the audience Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, atheists, and Christians. If you desire healing, utilize whatever is your own faith methodology for your healing. As for me, it is my Christian faith that accomplished my healing from the body, soul, and spirit of agonies I faced."
In my Christian faith I recognize first and foremost the strategic war in the heavens above between God and Satan. I recognize that demonic spirits, the soldiers of Satan, have the assignment and authority at the tactical (personal level) to work us over to keep us separated from living a Godly life. These are the "tormenters" in our lives, who are allowed by God the authority to work us over if we have unconfessed sin and any lack of forgiveness. One of my favorite ministers is Derek Prince (now deceased). He was a prominent teacher worldwide and wrote prolifically. I have read twice his book titled They Shall Expel Demons. He wrote, "Demons continually seek to invade a person, but when the person is healthy spiritually, the spiritual 'immune system' within the person identifies and attacks the demons, and they are not able to move in and take control. Any kind of unhealthiness or emotional weakness, on the other hand, makes a person vulnerable to demonic attack."
I will say unarguably that all wrongdoing or instability in our lives is not necessarily due to sin, but can result from faulty choices. Also, all mental disturbances are not reflective of sin or demonic influence. Obviously, man's science through pharmacology must be utilized to heal or contain certain emotional and mental conditions.
In 2 Corinthians 7:1 (KJV) it is written, "Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God." In the Perry Stone New Testament KJV Hebraic Prophetic Study Bible his commentary on this passage is: "Sin affects the flesh and spirit, and it is manifested in our attitudes and actions. Some of the sins of the flesh are adultery, fornication, murder, stealing and so forth; but sins that corrupt the spirit are envy, jealousy, bitterness, unforgiveness, strife, and unbelief. Sins of the spirit affect our thinking, work against the mind, and defile a person's spirit. Fleshly sins are often visible, but sins of the spirit are internal and may not be seen, yet they are just as destructive." The shooter in Texas embodied many of the above characteristics.
Now, back to my friend Everett Cox and his conclusion on the church murderer. He says, "The only answer to this is he was demonized. Even President Trump says this was an 'evil act.' And more than likely in the '10% Group' as we call it where the demon (s) are in total control. We have had several cases lately of when the demons were manifesting, the person later had to be told what happened. No person in their right mind could go in and start shooting even children. Demons are the only answer. That being the case, we do have authority to shut demons down if we will use it. (Luke 10:19). Quite likely this was a demon of murder manifesting. I heard of a situation recently of where a man with a gun came in to a convenience store, the Christian clerk said, 'In Jesus' Name ...GO.' The man left even leaving his gun on the counter." Being disabled I have always reminded myself that this spiritual technique must be my weapon, if ever confronted by a bad guy.
For all of us, for ourselves, and in analysis of worldly evil and misdoings by ourselves and others, this is my conclusion. Evil or instability may have a medical basis that requires psychotherapy and pharmacology, but with the Christian spiritual dimension then especially necessary. It may require our own reflection and audit requiring our own confession of sin and imparting of forgiveness. But, it may require what is utilized by Catholics and formally exercised through exorcism or through a deliverance ministry such as that directed by my friend Cox. It is time in our lives to grasp the totality of mental illness, depravity, and sin in our own lives and in the world to grasp and take hold of these various means of addressing the issues. We veterans especially need these techniques for our healing.
Thursday, November 9, 2017
Wednesday, November 8, 2017
Avalon Chronicles #85: "Massacre and Veterans-Part 1"
Avalon Chronicles #85: "Massacre and Veterans-Part 1"
by Allen B. Clark
www.combatfaith.com
www.combatfaith.blogspot.com
allenbclark@aol.com
When the first reports came in about the massacre at the small church in a tiny town near San Antonio, I was numbed, devastated, and tearful. At 75 these emotions come over me more often in today's world. I had just returned from my own worship service and I pictured a group of faithful Christians in a rural Texas town worshiping our Lord, when someone entered and shot and killed 26 of them and wounded 20 more.
Information trickled in over the past two days about the murderer who is: from New Braunfels; a former Air Force member; apparently a legal purchaser of three weapons (for which the Air Force is possibly responsible by omission from reporting criminal charges it is stated he faced while on active duty); and in a dispute with a relative by marriage, who lived in the community.
Someone commented to me that as a "veteran" he should have had counseling. If he committed a crime while on active duty, he would not have been honorably discharged and therefore would not have been eligible for veteran benefits, ie: no counseling, which at any rate would have primarily involved extensive medications as it does for all of us in VA therapy. If he had been placed in a mental institution from which another report indicated he escaped, he was supposedly mentally impaired.
Veterandom with its sometime attendant impairment of body, soul, and spirit, is a condition of which I have had extensive personal experience. Allow me to relate again my Army and Veterans Affairs background and my and other's healing process from our military experiences in wartime and other challenges of life. My Army psychiatrist treated me with antidepressants and "therapy" only of a secular nature. There was no "spiritual/religious" therapy as I later recognized was critical and essential to my healing from a distinctive spiritual Christian perspective. After my medical retirement from the Army due to wounds in Vietnam, necessitating the amputation of both my limbs below the knee, I continued to be treated by civilian psychiatrists until about 1975. Since then I have required no psychiatric therapy nor drugs, purely because I got my faith act together and Jesus healed me. Fast forward to the late 1990s when I was employed at the Dallas Veterans Affairs Medical Center. I attempted a personal outreach to the Mental Health section to inquire about meeting with their patients to relate my healing journey from my spiritual walk. I was refused, as I was also refused by the top medical center chaplain when I offered my service to him. He said I would need to be ordained to visit with patients. I was too old for that. I inquired as to whether one of his ordained staff chaplains could accompany me in any gatherings I might conduct to satisfy this understandable policy. Without inquiring for any volunteers from his staff, he categorically and immediately proclaimed that none of his chaplains could be a part of my outreach offer. As an aside, one of my veterans friends, a Marine combat veteran from Khesanh in Vietnam, who was also in the meeting, told me later he was ready to come across the table to punch that chaplain. Righteous indignation perhaps? Obviously, there is no "religious" element to the healing process of our military and veteran patients through the medical systems established to treat us.
A very close and valued friend of mine is a retired psychiatrist with experience in both Army and veteran mental health environments. He was officially denied the opportunity to impart any Christian element to his therapeutic endeavors. The deck is stacked against us to heal from our traumas derived from our challenges and pressures of military service and all the ancillary issues of family, finances, and anger management.
Stay tuned for Part 2 to follow. Part 1 indicates the challenge. Part 2 will portray what I perceive to address the solution, psychotherapy, deliverance, or spiritual.
by Allen B. Clark
www.combatfaith.com
www.combatfaith.blogspot.com
allenbclark@aol.com
When the first reports came in about the massacre at the small church in a tiny town near San Antonio, I was numbed, devastated, and tearful. At 75 these emotions come over me more often in today's world. I had just returned from my own worship service and I pictured a group of faithful Christians in a rural Texas town worshiping our Lord, when someone entered and shot and killed 26 of them and wounded 20 more.
Information trickled in over the past two days about the murderer who is: from New Braunfels; a former Air Force member; apparently a legal purchaser of three weapons (for which the Air Force is possibly responsible by omission from reporting criminal charges it is stated he faced while on active duty); and in a dispute with a relative by marriage, who lived in the community.
Someone commented to me that as a "veteran" he should have had counseling. If he committed a crime while on active duty, he would not have been honorably discharged and therefore would not have been eligible for veteran benefits, ie: no counseling, which at any rate would have primarily involved extensive medications as it does for all of us in VA therapy. If he had been placed in a mental institution from which another report indicated he escaped, he was supposedly mentally impaired.
Veterandom with its sometime attendant impairment of body, soul, and spirit, is a condition of which I have had extensive personal experience. Allow me to relate again my Army and Veterans Affairs background and my and other's healing process from our military experiences in wartime and other challenges of life. My Army psychiatrist treated me with antidepressants and "therapy" only of a secular nature. There was no "spiritual/religious" therapy as I later recognized was critical and essential to my healing from a distinctive spiritual Christian perspective. After my medical retirement from the Army due to wounds in Vietnam, necessitating the amputation of both my limbs below the knee, I continued to be treated by civilian psychiatrists until about 1975. Since then I have required no psychiatric therapy nor drugs, purely because I got my faith act together and Jesus healed me. Fast forward to the late 1990s when I was employed at the Dallas Veterans Affairs Medical Center. I attempted a personal outreach to the Mental Health section to inquire about meeting with their patients to relate my healing journey from my spiritual walk. I was refused, as I was also refused by the top medical center chaplain when I offered my service to him. He said I would need to be ordained to visit with patients. I was too old for that. I inquired as to whether one of his ordained staff chaplains could accompany me in any gatherings I might conduct to satisfy this understandable policy. Without inquiring for any volunteers from his staff, he categorically and immediately proclaimed that none of his chaplains could be a part of my outreach offer. As an aside, one of my veterans friends, a Marine combat veteran from Khesanh in Vietnam, who was also in the meeting, told me later he was ready to come across the table to punch that chaplain. Righteous indignation perhaps? Obviously, there is no "religious" element to the healing process of our military and veteran patients through the medical systems established to treat us.
A very close and valued friend of mine is a retired psychiatrist with experience in both Army and veteran mental health environments. He was officially denied the opportunity to impart any Christian element to his therapeutic endeavors. The deck is stacked against us to heal from our traumas derived from our challenges and pressures of military service and all the ancillary issues of family, finances, and anger management.
Stay tuned for Part 2 to follow. Part 1 indicates the challenge. Part 2 will portray what I perceive to address the solution, psychotherapy, deliverance, or spiritual.
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