Communicating with God’s World of Spirit – its laws and its purpose | Pastor Johannes Greber

- 167 - Coming to her senses, she cried out: “For God’s sake! No, I will not do such a thing.” But the lucid interval quickly vanished, and as her delirium returned she seized a rope, which she artfully tied to a beam and at the end of which she fashioned a noose that could easily be pulled tight. She had almost thrust her head completely into this noose when a second stroke of lightning, flashing through the window, caught her eye and, like the first one, brought her back to consciousness. On the following morning she burst into tears on seeing the rope that dangled from the beam with its complicated knots, which, in a normal state of mind, she could never have tied so artfully. At eight o’clock of the evening of the same day, Blumhardt was summoned again and found her literally bathed in blood. Nothing need be said about the other terrible distresses she had undergone. Fervently Blumhardt began to pray, after having tried, with little success, a few words of cheer, while the storm raged outside. The prayer was so effective that, within fifteen minutes, all of her alarming symptoms had disappeared. She became quite normal again and Blumhardt left the room for a few minutes to allow her to change her clothes. Quite unexpectedly the patient suffered a renewed fit, just like previous times when she was demonically assaulted. Suddenly, however, the full rage and annoyance of the demons burst forth in a chorus of exclamations, uttered for the most part in howling and whining tones: “Now all is lost; we have been betrayed. You are upsetting everything. Our whole league is breaking up. It is all over; everything is in confusion. You are to blame with your everlasting prayers; you will end up driving us away altogether. Alas, alas, all is lost. There are 1,067 of us, and many more who are still alive. They should be warned. Oh, woe be to them. Woe, they are lost: pledged to God and lost forever.” The roar of the demons, the flashes of lightning, the peals of thunder, the splashing of the pouring rain, the seriousness of those present, the prayers on my part, in response to which the demons left her in the manner described above – all this combined to produce a scene, the likes of which hardly anyone can imagine. Although this particular disorder now disappeared completely, it was not long before other demonic phenomena appeared. The demons that appeared from this point on, however, showed marked differences in their behaviour. Some of them were defiant and filled with hatred for Blumhardt, often uttering words that would have been worth recording. They felt a dread of the abyss they now felt themselves close before, and said among other things: “You are our worst enemy and we are yours. If we could only do as we liked! If only there were no God in heaven!” At the same time, they admitted that only they themselves were to blame for their perdition. Gruesome indeed was the behaviour of one of the demons, which Gottliebin had seen before in her home, and which now confessed that he had been a perjurer. He distorted his face, stiffly held up three fingers, shuddered suddenly and moaned. Many similar scenes occurred, of which Blumhardt would gladly have had more witnesses. But most of the demons that appeared from August 1842 until February 1843, and even later, were among those that fervently longed for release from the bonds of Satan. They spoke numerous languages, but for the most part non-European ones. The attempts of individual demons to speak

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