As many of you may know my wife and I went on a last minute excursion to Bournemouth, we had finished church on Sunday (great service and fellowship) and decided to have a date by ourselves at an IKEA cafe, when on the drive my wife randomly says "Why don't we go down to Bournemouth today?" . Ideal time too as I'm not due for my new job yet.
It was a great holiday- coffee, tea and scones (Devon way of course 😏) in tea rooms that hadn't been redecorated in decades (love it), a walk admiring God's creation in the New Forest and of course some swimming in the sea.
Right, now time for some background to the main point of the article. My wife's family own a holiday home in Bournemouth. When my little nephew was aged 2 a few years ago, he kicked a football to the sides of the house, in a non visible part, it was a light kick, didn't go up and didn't go to the neighbours fence. It briefly disappeared round the corner and then an unseen force kicked the football back to him, he ran off scared.
While waking up (same house mentioned above, holiday home) I saw a figure slowly moving out of the room, no matter, my wife just getting up. However, to my horror I saw she was sleeping right next to me- and the figure was still moving slowly and ominously (wasn't sleep paralysis as I could freely move).
A bit scared, I must admit, but sleep still found me. I later woke up to a demonic voice whispering in my ear.
I would have thought this was all a hallucination, but on the cameras around the house, the same night, my wife tells me in the morning during our drive, that that very night she had seen a shadow figure on the security cameras, she got creeped out and went out of the living room as the cameras had it very close to the living room windows.
We can take away something theological from this- what stopped both of us from being scared long term is that we are both from the Reformed tradition (or at least my wife attends the Reformed church) and we knew that God is sovereign, even over demons, yes, even the devil himself. If that makes you uncomfortable go read the beginning of Job.
Some proffesing Christians obsess about demons, demonic influence, thinking learning more about it will protect them. They couldn't be more wrong. Satan even appeared to Christ Himself and tried (in vain) to tempt Him. When proffesing Christians get fixated on demons they are actually taking away fixation on God's glory which is a shameful irony as they are robbing God of glory due to Him.
Could this have all been a mass hallucination? Very possibly. If I saw these things regularly i would indeed go for a psychiatric check up but my wife and I don't see these sorts of things regularly. Either way, we were both reminded of God's sovereignty over ALL creation.
