Wake Up, Look Up

Foreign. Hello, everyone, and thanks for listening to Wake Up Look Up, a podcast where we connect events happening in real time to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm, um, Zach Weirock, and in today's episode, we're asking the question, what does demonic look like today? Uh, this is prompted by an interesting but disturbing article I read recently in the New York Times about undiagnosed medical conditions. Let me give you a little background. Uh, you know, obviously, when you go to the doctor because you're not feeling well, you'll hope that the doctor can tell you what's wrong with you and then treat it. Of course, the problem with that is what's wrong with you may not fit in a neat category of what a doctor normally sees. Right. The consequence of that can be you are undiagnosed. We don't know what's wrong with you. Or misdiagnosed. We got what was wrong with you. Wrong. Uh, this article was about one particular condition called delusional infestation. A, uh, condition that at least last year affected about 1600 people in the United States. This is a condition where you feel as though your body is infested with bugs, but there is no actual condition going on. In other words, the doctors can't pinpoint. This is why you feel like that. They certainly can't find any bugs in you. They can't find any neurological condition. They don't know why you feel like your body is full of bugs, which, of course, is a terrifying thing to feel. Uh, doctors are coming up against this phenomena without much answers, resulting in it being placed in an undiagnosed category. Even the name delusional infestation suggests there's nothing real happening. But try telling that to the person who feels like their body is infested with bugs. The reason I found this article so interesting is because, of course, we live in a scientific age, and that's great. Ah, science can explain many natural phenomena to us in a way that 100 years ago, 300 years ago, you just couldn't do. We understand things in a deeper way now than. Than maybe we ever have. But the consequence of living in a scientific age is often that we feel we can understand everything or rationalize or explain everything with a hard scientific answer, but we can't. And I couldn't help but read this article and then think about Luke 13:11, about the woman who comes to Jesus who's been dealing with an issue for 18 years. This is what Luke says. Luke, a doctor writes this way. A woman was there who had been disabled Listen. But by a spirit for 18 years, Luke attributes her physical condition to a spiritual reality. Now you might say, well, Luke was a first century doctor, they probably did that all the time. If you had a headache it was because this spiritual force, or if you had a stomach ache, it was because of this one. But the problem is when you read Luke's gospel, he doesn't do that. There are times he talks about physical blindness or physical disability in just a physical way. Jesus brings a physical healing to a physical problem, but not this time. This time Luke connects the physical manifestation to a spiritual reality. And I can't help but think that the reason he does that is because Jesus did that. Because the commentary on the situation Jesus gave to the apostles was that this time the physical manifestation is connected to a spiritual reality. And here's my question. If at times the things people experience are a consequence not of physical forces but of spiritual ones, if in other words, the same things that were happening in the first century and the New Testament were happening today, that physical manifestations are signs of spiritual attack, how would we know that? Well, I imagine one way we would know that would be doctors wouldn't have any answers. They wouldn't be able to place it into a neat scientific category. They wouldn't have any medicinal pharmaceutical solutions to the problem. I'm not saying that the 1600 people who are experiencing so called delusional infestation are under demonic attack, but can you say they're not for sure? I guess this article to me was more a challenge to my modern sensibilities. Because Satan is present and active in our world today, demonic forces are present and active in our world today. And the Bible tells us that Satan is out to kill, steal and destroy. And certainly one way he could do that is by making you think your body is infested with bugs. My point is this. If we see every problem as a physical problem, we, we will only bring physical solutions. And when they don't work, we'll throw up our hands and say, ah, uh, well, we gave it our best effort. But if we begin to recognize that some problems in our world are not purely or at least fundamentally physical, they're spiritual, we might go looking to God for bigger and better answers. Uh, I don't know how it shows up in your day to day experience, and I don't even always know how it shows up in mine. But ours is a world under the influence of a satanic evil and doctors do a lot of good, but they can't help us with that. Hey, thanks for watching this episode of Wake Up. Look Up. If you enjoyed it, please help us get the word out by sharing it with someone you think might benefit from it. And while you're here, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to get further content or even download the CCC app, where you'll find even more resources to help you grow in your faith and relationship with Jesus Christ.