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

- 178 - those devilish tricks.’ (pp. 66-67) Vianey, it should be explained, lived very modestly, and almost exclusively from potatoes, which he cooked on the first day of the week for the whole week and ate cold; by the end of the week, they had often become mouldy. “So, far from being a weak spirit who would become a victim to hallucinations, as his colleagues had convinced themselves, Pastor Vianey was by nature so hard to convince, that at first he would not admit it was devils that plagued him. It was not until he had sought in vain for an explanation of the peculiar noises that again and again disturbed him at night that he recognized their origin and nature. One day he heard loud knocking at the door of his house. Opening the window, he asked: ‘Who’s there?’ There was no answer, and when the sound was repeated at the door leading to the stairway, he repeated the question. Again, there was no answer. Inasmuch as he had stored in his parsonage some splendid vestments that had been given to him as a gift for his church, he thought that thieves had tried to break into his home, and considered it advisable to take precautionary measures. He therefore asked several courageous citizens to keep watch for him. They came and stood guard for several nights, hearing the same noises but discovering nothing. A watch that was set in the belfry was equally unsuccessful. Violent blows were heard, but nothing was seen. This alarmed the watchmen, and even the curate became quite frightened. One winter night, when he had again heard loud blows against his door, he sprang hastily out of bed, and went down into the courtyard, convinced that the culprits, if that was what they were, must have left their tracks in the new-fallen snow, and that one could thus finally catch them. However, he saw no one, heard no further noises, and could not find any footprints in the snow. There was now no further doubt in his mind that he was being persecuted by Satan. [pp. 68-69] “From the day on which he became convinced that the nocturnal rioters were demons, he felt much less afraid. In the meantime, the main efforts of the demons were obviously aimed at making his ministerial activities less fruitful by robbing his overworked body of its nightly rest. Everything about these annoyances seemed admirably designed to make it impossible for him to get any sleep. Generally, Vianey heard one of those monotonous noises that more than anything else are notoriously conducive to sleeplessness. Sometimes the noises sounded like someone sawing or drilling through a beam, sometimes, as though a row of nails were being hammered in. At other times it sounded as though regiments of soldiers were marching by his door, as though a herd of sheep were trampling overhead, as though a horse were galloping across the tile floor, as though someone were drumming upon his table, as though a cooper were hammering metal bands on casks, as though every wagon in Lyons were rolling across his entrance hall, or as though an uproarious assembly were conversing in his courtyard in a foreign language. This last nuisance continued for several nights in succession. On another occasion he heard the door being opened and someone calling him curtly by his surname. He was also subjected to a world of coarse witticisms, among which the most frequent was: ‘potato-glutton.’ Moreover, his furniture was moved back and forth, and his curtains were pulled at with such force that he was surprised to find them whole in the morning.” (pp. 66-70) Great were also the inner temptations he had to endure from the evil beings, through which they tried to drive him to despair. We meet with the same thing in Blumhardt’s case. Unfortunately, the descriptions contained in his (Blumhardt’s) report of the demonic influences to which he personally was subjected have been deliberately suppressed in his biography, as I have already stated. In Blumhardt’s case as well as in Vianey’s, the sole purpose of the demonic ruses was to completely destroy, or at least reduce, the effectiveness of these two men in leading their fellow human beings to God. For this reason, they tried to ensnare Blumhardt, through Gottliebin Dittus, in the unfamiliar (to him) field of the demonic, and when these efforts had failed, to confuse and discourage him by external and inner opposition. With Vianey, they first tried to discourage him and to drive him to despair, using the Catholic clergy of the neighbouring districts, who opened such a campaign of slander and insinuation against the poor curate of Ars and continued it for ten years, that anyone else would have given up. When this brought no results, the demons tried to undermine his health

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