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God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.  God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; (Gen 1:27-28 NASB)

With acceptance of gay marriage, the focus of LGBT agenda has shifted to the “rights” transgendered individuals have in demanding that government entities, state or national, pay for the expensive procedures of transgender transformations. For instance, the State of California has recently instituted in its state prison system a program to grant transgender operations and procedures to inmates who want them, and who have more than two years still to serve in prison.[1]

To the contrary, it is my assertion that those who believe they are in a “wrong body,” or have a “wrong gender,” and who wish to have these transgendered procedures are under demonic delusion.[2] Further, that this delusion can be healed by God’s healing grace and/or deliverance prayer. This assertion goes against what is upheld in the secular psychology and psychiatry establishments. In many American and European universities any discussion of homosexuality or transgender phenomenon as less than fully normal and acceptable is suppressed.[3] Unfortunately, many Christian pastors and leaders hold similar beliefs, especially those in the tradition of liberal theology.

To affirm the demonic influence on human thinking and whole sectors of the medical establishment is a contrarian position. This forces me to go through various levels of evidence and augmentation. The first level is a discussion of psychological and psychiatric authors who see the dangers in the various “I sincerely believe and feel” maladies which have arisen in the past decades.  This includes the transgendered belief, but also includes the newer delusion that various parts of a person’s body are “alien” and should be surgically removed. This obviously destructive belief has not received much acceptance, and thankfully is still viewed by the secular community as a psychological anomaly and abnormality.

My argument will proceed by citing secular psychiatric authorities who deal with the “voices” of schizophrenic patients. These therapists have discovered that treating these voices as real entities is useful in healing certain forms of schizophrenia. These voices have the classic characteristics of demonic entities. This alerts us via secular sources that the concept of demonic entities influencing and communicating with humans is not purely a “medieval myth.”

I will then return to the issue of persons who wish to be trans-gendered and present evidence that in the feelings, thoughts, and interior voices that suggest they are of the opposite sex stem from the demonic realm.  We will then see a case of a miraculous trans-gendered reversal that was brought about by God’s grace and instantly healed a person of his transgender delusion.

Lastly will suggest ways in which Christian leaders, and the church as a whole, must recover the will and ability to talk of the demonic, and thus help others avoid the destructiveness of these delusional beliefs.

Transgendered procedures as useless and dangerous:

We will begin by summarizing a seminal, and controversial, article on the transgender issue by Dr. Paul McHugh, “Transgender Surgery Isn’t the Solution.”[4] Dr. McHugh was the chief psychiatrist at John Hopkins Hospital and worked many transgender cases in his career. He argues against transgender surgeries and transformative hormonal regimes on two levels. First, he finds that although transgendered persons are initially “happy” with their transformation, that state does not last long. In fact one study found that suicide rates among transgendered were much higher than the normal population.  The second part of his argument is that to accept the wannabe’s transgender beliefs that he or she is really in a wrong body is to accept the fallacy of “solipsism.” This is a philosophical term which means that a person believes that what he thinks determines what is real. In fact, the disciplines of psychology and psychiatry are built on the assumptions that many people come to ideas that are objectively wrong and destructive (neurosis or psychopathologies) and can be helped out of these wrong beliefs.

Take for example, in the tragic life of Howard Hughes.  He was innovator and genius of aircraft design, but developed an obsessive –compulsive disorder that caused him to panic at the thought of germs and infection. Because of his great influence and economic power, he was never forced into therapy in spite of the increasingly destructive nature of his neurosis.[5] All of this is to say that wrong and destructive ideas should be challenged at their origins, as psychiatrists, spiritual counselors and pastors have done for ages.

The difference in the transgendered narrative is that this delusion has come to be accepted without much challenge. It dovetailed with the acceptance of homosexuality an normal and acceptable. As such it now plays a role in many persons’ structure of self-esteem, as they imagin themselves morally enlightened by considering transgendered longings as normal.  In a matter of a few years transgendered reached a “tipping point” where it was socially and professionally unacceptable to oppose it.[6]

Dr. McHugh’s article garnered a storm of criticism, mostly focusing on his assertion that the long term results of transgender procedures were counter-productive and negative. In the current atmosphere it would be difficult to get an impartial study funded or completed to clarify this issue. Unfortunately, his argument about the solipsism of the transgender desires was not contested, and merely brushed aside. But this leads right to a more dramatic and extreme destructive solipsism that is currently gaining momentum.

It’s not my arm! Please cut it off!

So now let us consider a new aberration of the post-modern solipsism. It is the growing phenomenon of persons who believe that parts of their do not really belong to them. Further, these persons often have a compulsive desire to have their “alien” parts amputated. In fact, after they execute their desire on this matter they often are happy and more content than before unnecessary amputation was performed.

This increasingly popular aberration (Biblical sin – Lev 19:28) is fueled by the ease of communication of the internet where likeminded persons can contact and encourage each other in chat rooms or Face Book pages about any myth, conspiracy theory, or agreed solipsism. This limb amputation aberration even has psychiatric nomenclature. The feeling that a limb or body part does not belong to you is called “somatoparaphelia,” and the strong desire to have the “alien” part removed is called “apotemnophilia.” As of now, in comparison to the highly politicized and effective trans-gender movement these aberrations have little public support. So far no public monies have gone into providing these delusional amputations.  But wait a decade when amputees begin demanding special vans and other government funded benefits.

A masterful (and non-controversial) article on apotemnophilia appeared in the Atlantic Monthly.[7] Its author, Dr. Carl Elliot is both a medical doctor and a PhD. in Philosophy. He is currently the leading authority on apotemnophilia. The starting point of the article is that persons with this disorder are usually quite normal in other aspects of their mental health. As for the origins of this desire, “Nobody really knows, including the wannabes themselves, who often say they have had the desire since they were children.”[8]

The wannabes universally use the language of identity to describe themselves.

“My left foot was not part of me,” says one amputee, who had wished for amputation since the age of eight. “I didn’t understand why, but I knew I didn’t want my leg.” A woman in her early forties wrote to me, “I will never feel truly whole with legs.” Her view of herself has always been as a double amputee, with stumps of five or six inches.[9]

One of the many persons Dr. Elliot interviewed shared his obsession to be happy with his “real” self (i.e. minus amputated limb). “Just as a transsexual is not happy with his own body but longs to have the body of another sex, in the same way I am not happy with my present body, but long for a peg-leg.”[10] Dr Eliot does not use the word “solipsism” for this attitude, but the similarity with the Dr. McHugh’s article is obvious.

In another case, Dr. Elliot recounts a telephone conversation with a wannabe, Mr. Price:

I ask Price whether he feels that his desire is more like an obsession, a fantasy, or a wish. He says, “Well, it was definitely like an obsession. Until I cut my leg off, of course.”

That brings me up short. I had been unaware that he had actually gone ahead with an amputation. “Ah,” I say. I pause. Should I ask? I decide I should. “May I ask how you did it?” Price laughs. “It was kind of messy,” he says. “I did it with a log splitter.” He then explains, in a thoughtful, dispassionate manner, the details of his “accident” ten years ago—the research he had done on anesthesia and wound control, how he had driven himself to the emergency room after partially amputating his limb, the efforts of the hospital surgeons to reattach it. He lived with the reattached leg for six months, he said, until medical complications finally helped him persuade another surgeon to amputate it.

Dr. Elis concluded:

Clinicians and patients alike often suggest that apotemnophilia is like gender-identity disorder, and that amputation is like sex-reassignment surgery. Let us suppose they are right. Fifty years ago the suggestion that tens of thousands of people would someday want their genitals surgically altered so that they could change their sex would have been ludicrous. But it has happened. The question is why?[11]

He speculates this was caused by a form of “contagion.” That is, once an idea is out there on the internet people can interact with it, and, even if bizarre and destructive, some will adopt it. (I would add here that psychiatric term “contagion” is secular language for what is often demonic influence – but that is the subject of a blog in the future).

The article ends with Dr. Ellis’ complete befuddlement as to why this destructive abnormality has taken hold. There is no consistent pattern of child abuse, sexual abuse, physical trauma, or other pathologies in the case histories of these people.

The fact is that nobody really understands apotemnophilia. Nobody understands the pathophysiology; nobody knows whether there is an alternative to surgery; and nobody has any reliable data on how well surgery might work. Many people seeking amputations are desperate and vulnerable to exploitation. “I am in a constant state of inner rage,” one wannabe wrote to me. “I am willing to take that risk of death to achieve the needed amputation. My life inside is just too hard to continue as is.” These people need help, but when the therapy in question is irreversible and disabling, it is not at all clear what that help should be.[12]

The secular evidence for the demonic:

Some secular evidence for the demonic came to my attention early in my renewed Christian life – about 1976.  After years as an atheist and a return to belief in Christianity I read a book by Dr. Wilson Van Dusan, The Natural Depth of Man.[13] He was a psychiatrist who treated schizophrenic patients in the California mental health system. His patients often heard voices or saw visions of persons harassing them with negative thoughts. These voices and entities invariably encouraged the victim to suicide or self-mutilation. Van Dusen concluded that these “delusional entities” were a lot like the biblically described demons. Further, he discovered that the voices/entities diminished in power and intensity as the patients learned to disregard their instructions, and significantly, read the Bible consistently. [14]

The schizophrenic torments that Van Dusen described were pictured in the brilliant auto-biographical novel and movie, “I Never Promised you a Rose Garden,” written by Joanne Greensburg (movie in 1977).[15]  Greensburg’s experience with the schizophrenic entities took the form of a tribe from the “Kingdom of Yr.”  They began as friendly companions, but devolved into ruthlessly harassing entities. They encouraged Joanne to severely cut herself as an “initiation” into the kingdom, etc.

Right after I saw the “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden” movie, an acquaintance informed me of a mutual friend who was having schizophrenic episodes in which she heard negative, tormenting voices. She was placed in treatment at a psychiatric ward and under medication for several days, but discharged in spite of the fact she still heard the negative voices. With a prayer partner I visited her and did a rapid and successful deliverance of several afflicting entities.  The entities (demons) never returned.

The new Literature on schizophrenic patients: 

That was over three decades ago. Since then the secular psychiatric literature on schizophrenic voices/entities has increased greatly. A review article on the literature and current practice of treating the delusional voices/entities was done by T.M Luhrmann, “Living With Voices.”[16]  Luhrmann reports that many psychiatrists still treat schizophrenia exclusively as a chemical disorder of the brain, and try to medicate it to submission – but wind up never really curing it. Many others have learned to treat the voices as if they were real entities. They encourage the patients to ‘negotiate’ with the voices and come to some sort of understanding and livable arrangement.

The central case study that Luhrmann cited to demonstrate the negotiation technique was of “Hans,” a German patient from a nominal Christian household.

Hans used to be overwhelmed by the voices. He heard them for hours, yelling at him, cursing him, telling him he should be dragged off into the forest and tortured and left to die. The most difficult things to grasp about the voices people with psychotic illness hear are how loud and insistent they are, and how hard it is to function in a world where no one else can hear them. It’s not like wearing an iPod. It’s like being surrounded by a gang of bullies. You feel horrible, crazy, because the voices are real to no one else, yet also strangely special and they wrap you like a cocoon.[17]

The psychiatrist first treated him with medication, which made him sleep much and gain weight, but he was no better in his waking period as the voices continued to harass him. But then Hans joined a new patient support group in the psychiatric center which was using negotiation technique with their voices. Han’s voices declared they would cease harassing him if he became a student of Buddhism for four hours a day. He negotiated it down to only one hour, and achieved relative peace, and was able to discontinue all medication and function again in normal society.

Success! But wait.

What is missing is spiritual discernment. The voices could have been totally dismissed from the Hans’ environment with deliverance prayer, or his own persistent Bible reading and prayers as Van Dusen had indicated decades earlier. In Hans’ case the demons were apparently satisfied that they were making Hans into a Buddhist, and he would thus be shut off from the Bible and the saving grace of salvation (and true healing) in Jesus Christ.

Secular psychiatrists have yet to “connect the dots” and conclude that the delusional entities are really demons whose task is to “steal, kill and destroy” (John 10:10).

Transgender desires as demonic confusion:

My presentation thus far has been molded to prepare groundwork to tackle the main subject of this article, the demonic origins of the trans-gender confusion. The first piece of evidence for this I encountered came from a popular book on exorcism, Hostage to the Devil[18]  The author, Fr. Malachi Martin (1921-1999) had been a Catholic priest and Jesuit, a noted linguist and professor at the Vatican Pontifical Biblical institute – in addition to being an exorcist himself. Fr. Malachi left the Jesuits as he saw they were betraying basic Catholic doctrines by accepting liberation theology and other forms of modernism.[19] His writings continue to be highly esteemed by traditionalist Catholics.

Fr. Marin’s Hostage to the Devil is not a book for the faint hearted, as it describes the sort of demonic horrors the public saw in the movie “The Exorcists.” The book is both tremendously insightful and deeply deceptive. The insightful parts of book come from Fr. Martin’s post exorcism de-briefings where both the liberated victim and exorcist were extensively questioned on how the possession came about and how the exorcisms developed.

But unfortunately the book suffers from certain Catholic exaggeration of exorcism doctrine. For instance, traditional Catholic exorcism literature sees exorcism as a “hero’s battle” of the priest versus the demons, with little or no attention to the use of the gifts of the Spirit in the exorcism process. (In fact many anointed and effective exorcists are lay persons of different denominations, especially Pentecostal.) The most serious error is Fr. Martin’s adherence to a minority Catholic exorcist’s view that in the course of the exorcism the main demon can be forced to reveal the truth about the possession process and other spiritual truths. This is nonsense, and what the demons say in the process of exorcism is similar to mediumistic utterances – mixtures of truth and error crafted to confuse and spiritually injure the hearer. To be clear, what I cite about the following case comes from the exorcism de-briefings, not from the demon’s utterances.

One of the five cases cited in Hostage to the Devil, “The Virgin and the Girl Fixer” is an exorcism performed on a transgendered person. The person, Richard, was born male, but underwent the surgeries and hormone treatments to change his sex to female.  After the exorcism Richard returned to male identity.

This case is especially bizarre. Richard as boy had two mystical events in his life where he experienced an awe and union with nature, and a profound admiration for the male and female aspects of nature. He desired to be like “all” of nature, both male and female, at the same time. In other words, unlike other trans-gendered wannabes, he desired to be an androgynous being. In one of these mystical events a voice said “I don’t want to leave you.”[20]

After he switched gender he experienced many complications and much unhappiness. Androgyny was not blessing, but confusion.  A marriage he entered into was a one night disaster. Later he underwent a Satanic ritual to find happiness and there he entered into a deep level of possession. This was marked by a strongly negative change in behavior. His brother summoned psychiatric and ultimately religious help which led to the exorcism and release from his demon and delusion.

To be clear, the possession came from the Satanic ritual, not from the voice or the feelings he had during his nature mystical experiences. Nor I am not claiming that all or even many trans-gendered persons are possessed. Rather, I am pointing out that the feeling and the voice that Richard had as a boy were deceptive and of demonic origins. The specific take-away form this case is that, contrary to post-modern prejudices, following an inner voice and feelings can be dangerous. It places a person in a spiritual mode without the supporting elements of a discerning church to advise the person if the voices, feeling and tendencies are godly or demonic. A post-modern secularist would be clueless about this. It is safe to say most mainline churches in America would not have helped Richard either since the traditions of discernment and awareness of the demonic side of spiritual experiences have been forgotten.

Last evidence: A miraculous transformation.

In the course my life as Christian scholar and pastor I learned of one case of a person who went through the trans-gender processes and surgeries, and later, at a Christian service was miraculously healed and restored to his God-given gender. That is, the transgendered surgeries and hormone treatments were miraculously nullified and reversed, and the mental sexual confusion eliminated. As I had no intention of writing about this matter, I did not keep record of that instance. A recent internet search proved of no avail in recovering that case. But I asked my Face Book buddies and blog followers if they had specific references to such transgender reversals. One case was referred to me. I am sure there are many more out there (please enter as comment).

The case is of a Mr. Dimond Dee.  Although born into a Christian household and born again as a lad, he abandoned his faith and lived an extremely sexually permissive life. After decades of full time licentiousness as a male he experienced a desire to experience sex “the other way” as a female. He invested in the considerable cost of the surgeries and hormonal treatments to achieve his new female identity and sexuality. But at a revival meeting Dee was totally healed of his sexually excessive past and his attempted gender change. The memory traces of all his sexual activities were erased, and his desire for new sexual experiences was also nullified. He was restored to his male identity, and lives in peace and true happiness, desiring now only to do God’s will and share his witness with others.[21]

Connecting the dots:

It is time to “connect the dots” and  to affirm that the movement is demonically inspired and generated. First, the context is the weakened philosophical and moral state of contemporary Western societies where Post-modernism in its many aberrations reigns. That is, the post-Modern way of thinking has taken hold from the graduate universities down to the street, and affirms that “story,” “narrative,” and “feelings” trumps rationality and clear thinking. This has made easy the triumph of solipsistic forms of thinking in the sexual matters, from simple homosexuality to transgendered longings. Thus a transsexual wannabe or homosexual can claim, unchallenged, that he or she is “really” the opposite sex because he believes it and feels it to be true. In former eras this would have been analyzed as solipsism or deluded thinking that needed to be addressed and corrected. But now these solipsism are protected by a powerful network of elites in the psychological, education and media establishments. We have a small widow of sanity left in the fact that apotemnophilia, limb amputation, is still considered and abnormality and a “wrong idea” that needs to be treated rather than celebrated.

We next showed that certain forms of schizophrenic disorders indicate the continued presence of the demonic on the human mind. This is especially difficult for the Post-modern secular person to accept, for it goes beyond New Age forms of spirituality and right to the Biblical description of the demonic. After this we examined one well documented case of transgender change that was fully uncovered from an exorcism debriefing. It showed that the mental suggestions to sexual confusion were demonic and came very early in childhood. Lastly we gave an example of a person miraculously freed of all gender confusion and transgendered procedures  via a church revival.

We can connect the dots, not as absolute proof, but as a reasonable affirmation. The demonic kingdom and personalities are at the root of the transgendered confusion. The remedy for its continued spread is a Christian Church that truly understands and discerns the demonic and will not compromise with the solipsism and post-modern irrationalities.

I can already hear many of the critics of this article say that I have built my argument on too few cases. This is only partially true, and I certainly welcome further evidence and case studies as this article is propagated. But on the other hand, in scientific and truly logicl ways of thinking, anamolies are very important. If a case or an observation contradicts normal expectations it should be persued vigerously until it is understood in refrence to current theory (or overthrows it). I have written in my book, Agnes Sanford and Her Companions, how seeking out what was not understood helped Agnes Sanford and her fellow pioneers break the hold that cessationism had on Christiantiy. I further suggested that most traditional theology is pre-modern and guild like, in that it avoids anomalies and transmits mostly conventionally received opinions – now predominantly of the liberal variety.[22] The cases I presented must be taken seriously, especially in view of the fact that there are no contrary miraculous cases. That is, there is no case of a pious Christian praying, “Oh Lord, you put me in a wrong body, I want to be another sex! Change my body!” and the Lord miraculously changing that person as he desires.

Talking points for Christians:

As Christians in an increasingly non-Christian Western world we need to recover both our understanding of the universal demonic presence and our ability to witness against it and its confusions.  We need to “come out of the closet,” to borrow a phrase from the pan-sexualists, and affirm publicly that Satan is alive and well, and his minions are doing everything to destroy us, including deluding persons into believing that their leg is not theirs (they may still listen to at least that).

As you witness to the reliability of the Scriptures and the power of God’s grace over the demonic, many, including some Christians, will accuse you of being a “fundamentalist fanatic.” Let me suggest that you immediately affirm with confidence that they are mistaken and are ill-informed or totally ignorant about the issue, no matter how much academic education they have. Suggest they inform themselves by reading such books as Fr. MacNutt’s, Deliverance from Evil Spirit, or other fine works on the demonic, and suggest they open their eyes to the anomalies that will present themselves if they only ask God for wisdom on this issue (James 1:5).

[1] Sam Levin, “California Prisons Implement Policy Allowing Transgendered Inmates to Access Surgeries,” East Bay Express, Oct. 21, 2015. http://www.eastbayexpress.com/SevenDays/archives/2015/10/21/california-prisons-implement-policy-allowing-transgender-inmates-to-access-surgeries

[2] See my earlier blog posting: “The Demonic Factor in Mass Shootings,” a view of another kind of demonic influence, in the  Anglican Pentecostal (blog). Posted April 25, 2013.  http://anglicalpentecostal.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-demonic-factor-in-mass-shootings.html?_sm_au_=iMVF0WPNMN9805WM

[3] See for example: David Robertson, “The Germaine Gree fiasco shows we no longer value free speck,” Premier Christianity. Posted October, 2015.  http://www.premierchristianity.com/Blog/The-Germaine-Greer-fiasco-shows-we-no-longer-value-free-speech

[4] Dr. Paul McHugh, Transgender Surgery Isn’t the Solution,” Wall Street Journal, posted, June 12, 2014.  http://www.wsj.com/articles/paul-mchugh-transgender-surgery-isnt-the-solution-1402615120

[5] His tragic story was well told in the movie, “The Aviator,” (2004).

[6] Time, “The Transgender Tipping Point: America’s next civil rights frontier,” June 9, 2012.  This article should be ranked right beside the spiritual destructiveness of the 1965 cover story that Christian theology now accepted the Nietzschean ‘ “The God Is Dead Movement.” Time, October 22, 1965. Online: http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,941410,00.html.

[7] Carl Elliot. “A New Way to Be Mad,” Atlantic Monthly, December 200.  http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/12/a-new-way-to-be-mad/304671/ See also his earlier and briefer article: “The victims of a growing mental disorder are obsessed with amputation.”

Slate,  posted July 10, 2003

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2003/07/costing_an_arm_and_a_leg.html

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid

[12] Ibid.

[13] William Van Dusen, The Natural Depth of Man (New York: Perennial, 1973).  The story of my Catholic upbringing, fall from faith, and then recovery is found in my work Forgotten Power: The Significance of the Lord’s Supper in Reviva (Zondervan, 2003) chapter 1.

[14] Van Dusen, Natural Depth, 157. Sadly, operating in a spiritual vacuum, or perhaps in a church that had only a cessationsit or liberal misunderstanding of the demonic, Van Dusen drifted into the spiritist cult of Swedenbourgism to interpret his findings.

[15] Joanne Greenburg, I Never promised You a Rose Garden (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1964).

[16]The American Scholar.  Posted June 1, 2012. https://theamericanscholar.org/living-with-voices/#.VgKjvMtVhHw

[17] Ibid.

[18]Malachi Martin, Hostage to the Devil: The Possession and Exorcism of five Living Americans (New York: Reader’s Digest Press, 1976).

[19] See his work The Jesuits: The Society of Jesus and the Betrayal of the Roman Catholic Church (Simon & Schuster, 1987).

[20] Hostage, 196. To be clear, I am not against mystics per say, but only non-discerned mystical experiences.

[21] Craig Gross interview with Diamond Dee. December 27, 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YywDBENRT_A&index=13&list=PLC288F509FA067A98

[22] William L. De Arteaga, Agnes Sanford and her Companions: The Assault on Cessationism and the Coming of the Charismatic Renewal (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2015), chapters 22 and 23.