Alien Invasion?

The inscrutable violence at Colorado’s Youth With A Mission Training Center in the dead of night followed only hours later by carnage at the huge New Life Church in broad daylight left four dead and five wounded. Coming on the heels of a youth’s slaughter of shoppers in Omaha, NE, many are simply asking, "Why?"

There are probable social answers, but few secular analysts will offer a spiritual basis. Dysfunctional families, drug abuse, media degradation, sexual immorality and the rejection of Biblical truth all combine to produce warped thinking and sometimes a reign of terror.

In the Omaha case, inadequate home life, loneliness and rejection will surely figure in. Feeling ignored, the young man desperately wanted to be remembered. Sadly, he will be. Gaining fame by murder is a fast track to infamy, but it leaves an indelible legacy of death, suffering and painful memories. The attack on YWAM and the church appears to have a more focused motive of revenge following a falling out with the mission. Perhaps a Scriptural truth about demonism best accounts for these irrational rampages.

In John 8:44, Jesus Christ exposes the Devil for the murderer he is—" murderer from the beginning." In John 10:10, He says he comes to steal and kill. According to the Bible, evil is first personified in the fallen angel Satan (Is. 14:12-16; Ezek. 28:11–19). Fallen human nature is essentially bad (Jer. 17:9). Evil is pluralized in those with poor spiritual defenses or who deliberately invite demons within.

Horrific events and the people involved that defy neat analysis may be caused by a demonic outbreak—the assassinations of presidents Abraham Lincoln and John Kennedy, the Laci Peterson case, the Nicole Simpson/Ron Goldman/O.J. Simpson issue, the JonBenet Ramsey murder, the numerous slaughters on high school and college campuses, and now death in Colorado come to mind as examples. Somehow, meticulous analyses and investigations leave unanswered mysteries that only an eruption of demonism might account for. The Devil hates God and the Gospel, and he warps minds, distorts reality and beclouds issues because he’s the great deceiver.

Revelation 12 may explain much of the madness. Satan (the great dragon) is seen ejected from Heaven and taking one third of the stars (apparently other angels) with him. Israel is the woman whose lineage gives us Christ. Surging spiritual warfare is described on the night Christ was born. "And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to give birth, to devour her Child as soon as it was born. She bore a male Child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron" (Rev. 12:4-5 – emphasis mine).

Rev. 4:11 indicates that there were at least 100 million unfallen angels originally. If the fallen are one third of the original total, that means that the number of fallen angels, or demons, would be 50 million—plenty to deploy for special chaos. This collision of demons with many good angels over Bethlehem is referred to in Luke 2:13. A multitude of the heavenly host actually means a plethora of the heavenly host indicating a vast number were at Bethlehem. It was a huge angelic warfare, which God’s angels won.

Rev. 12:11 announces, "And they overcame him (Satan) by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death." Receiving Christ as Savior and being filled with the Holy Spirit means we can resist and overcome these satanic attacks. It’s a defense that increasing numbers of people in our troubled world are without. The very end times are marked with demonic invasion. "Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and the sea! For the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, because he knows that he has a short time" (Rev. 12:12).

Believers need the resistance strength of James 4:7 & 8b: "Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you."

Dave Virkler