A gracEmail subscriber asks "What did Satan do to be cast out of heaven?"
A Christian in the South asks, "who or what are demons, of which we read in the New Testament? Alexander Campbell suggested that they were spirits of the departed dead."
A gracEmail subscriber asks: "What is your view of ministers who claim to bind Satan or chase out his demons?"
A gracEmail subscriber writes: "What is the New Testament specifically talking about when it says that Jesus and the apostles 'drove out demons?' . . . This is very hard to get my head around since I have never to my knowledge met anyone possessed by a demon."
I have just read twice and highlighted The Dragon Slayer: Reflections On the Saving of the World (2004, privately published, 202 pages, paper), the latest book from my eloquent friend Jim McGuiggan of Northern Ireland. As usual, McGuiggan devotes his considerable mind and poignant pen to the profound realities that matter most, this time the atonement for sin which Jesus Christ accomplished once for all.
"Last year some people in my church hosted a Halloween party," writes a gracEmail reader. "When I got there I was very uncomfortable with the decorations, which included pictures of witches, ghosts and demons. ... Am I making too much of this?"
A gracEmail subscriber asks, "What do you think of the Harry Potter witchcraft issues? With books and a movie coming out, is this something we need to be informed about so as to defend the faith?"
An e-mail ... describes a series of prayer meetings at which the author says that God's presence was visibly manifested by "weeping, violent shaking, loud groanings, ... trembling, tongues ... and the glory of God swooping around the room like a iridescent blueish light." Do I have any comment?
A gracEmail subscriber writes that a relative who accepted Christ later became addicted to drugs and alcohol. "What is a proper prayer on behalf of an addict?" this reader asks. "How would you specifically pray for someone like this?"
GracEmail subscribers from several states ask about the Antichrist or the Abomination of Desolation in biblical prophecy. Will there yet arise such a specific individual on the stage of world history? Need we fear such a one?
A gracEmail subscriber asks: "What is the mark of the beast mentioned in Revelation 13:16-18? Is it a RFID ('radio frequency identification') chip that will be implanted in the hand or forehead?"
spirits in prison (series of three)
A brother writes: "First Peter 3:18-22 stumps me. I just can't understand that preaching to the spirits in prison. Do you have any clue to what Peter is referring?"
devil, beast and false prophet
A gracEmail subscriber asks for an explanation of Revelation 20:10, in which John sees the devil, the Beast and the False Prophet thrown into a lake of fire where they are "tormented day and night forever."
special gracEmail essay: Pat Robertson on Haiti
The ground had hardly stopped shaking in Haiti when Pat Robertson, the affable but loose-lipped founder of Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) and President of Regent University, started a rumble of his own by saying that the stricken nation was "cursed" because of a 200-year-old "pact with the devil" supposedly made by rebellious slaves to obtain freedom from their occupying French masters.