Sep 05 2008
The Devil’s Perfume
The devil may wear Prada, but what’s his favorite fragrance?
Recently we had an interesting and telling incident occur in one of our house churches. The family hosting the house church had relatives visiting for the weekend. The relatives joined us for church, but really did not participate much in the singing or the discussion of the text that evening.
The couple who were visiting are spiritists. Their religion includes the channeling of demons by mediums, offering sacrifices to demons and invoking demons for protection and benefits. Theirs is a very dark religion which is masked by “good deeds” and “peace seeking”. The promise of a “good life” for the adherent is very attractive to many.
Our Bible study that night included aspects of the Christian life that deal with suffering and persecution. The Tribulation even entered into the discussion. It was quite a study that dealt with the realities of life and future upheaval that awaits the human race. Even before we finished, this couple excused themselves from the study. Our studies sometimes run late.
The next day, the hostess began preparing lunch for her guests. The man who was visiting entered the kitchen and began peeling and cutting up onions. The hostess thought he was helping her prepare some of the ingredients for their lunch. But, after he finished cutting up the onions, he took the peelings over to the wood burning stove and tossed them in the fire. This is not what people usually do with their onion peelings when preparing a meal.
The hostess asked him why he threw the onion peelings in the fire. He explained that the study the previous evening, all the talk of suffering and persecution, had disturbed his spirit. He threw the onions in the fire as an offering to his spirit protector to restore balance and peace in his spirit.
This type of offering or sacrifice is a part of spiritism, but it is not usually done in the home of someone else, especially in the home of someone else who is not a spiritist. It was quite an offense to the hosting family that this man would practice his religion in their home knowing that it was against their religion. Such an act is very outside the norms of the culture here. But, that is how disturbed this man had become. The host summed it up well. He said, “It is fitting that the devil would find the aroma of burning onion peelings a pleasing smell.”
It is very affirming for us knowing that the presence of the Holy Spirit and the power of the Word of God perturbed this man, it rattled his cage. He seeks the protection of the spirits, demons, but came face to face with the power of God to the point that he was shaken. For his family, we were the smell of death. Please pray that this family will come to know the true source of their religion and that they will come to be followers of Jesus Christ. Please pray that we would become to them the fragrance of life.
II Corinthians 2:14-17 (NASB)
But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place. For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to the one an aroma from death to death, to the other an aroma from life to life. And who is adequate for these things? For we are not like many, peddling the word of God, but as from sincerity, but as from God, we speak in Christ in the sight of God.