The Devil Can Sound Like Mercy

According to hospital chaplain Sheila Cavanaugh, Lindsay Clancy said that after her three children were dead. Cavanaugh testified that Clancy also described a voice warning that she and her children would not be safe unless she followed its command. Prosecutors challenged the account, including why the voice disclosure was absent from the chaplain’s notes.

My friend Joel’s latest episode of The Soul Trap examines this case and raises the question of spiritual evil. The word that deserves our attention is safe. In that reported account, a promise of protection was attached to destruction.

That does not establish possession. Clancy’s criminal responsibility remains unresolved after a mistrial. And postpartum psychosis is a real medical emergency from which people can recover with appropriate treatment. If someone is hearing commands to harm themselves or another person, get emergency medical help. Prayer is no reason to delay it.

A podcast cannot settle what caused this woman’s reported experience. Scripture does give us something we can examine: its warning about spiritual authority that looks trustworthy.

Paul wrote:

Now read the verse before it.

Then the verse after it:

Paul puts the disguise in a pulpit.

The men he is warning about can pass for servants of Christ. That ought to disturb a church full of people who think a religious vocabulary is a character reference.

A Bible in a man’s hand does not settle whose work he is doing.

If a preacher tells a family that reporting abuse will damage the ministry, the word ministry does not make his instruction righteous. If he calls their silence protecting the church, look at who gets protected. The person doing the harm gets another day. The person carrying it gets another sermon about loyalty.

You do not need to know every secret in that preacher’s heart to refuse that instruction.

That is also the trap in Cliff Richard’s Devil Woman: a man looks to a medium for help and discovers she is responsible for his trouble. A promise of relief has made him trust the wrong person.

Look at Saul in 1 Samuel 28. He is frightened. The Philistine army is in front of him. He has sought an answer from the LORD and received none. So he asks his servants to find a woman with a familiar spirit.

His need for an answer was real. It did not make the forbidden source trustworthy.

That is a warning worth carrying into a world selling spiritual answers to frightened people. Desperation can make an offer feel merciful. It cannot make that offer true.

John tells believers what to do with a spiritual claim:

Read on. John immediately addresses what those spirits confess about Jesus Christ. He gives the church a test of teaching and spiritual claims. This passage is not a license to diagnose the frightened woman down the street.

Before you accept someone’s spiritual instruction, put three questions on the table:

1. What is this person teaching about Jesus Christ? John starts there. Follow him.

2. What, exactly, am I being asked to do? Name the action without the comforting language wrapped around it.

3. Does the passage actually support it? Read the verses before and after. Let the speaker’s claim face the same examination you would give a stranger’s.

Keep those questions where you can use them. Teach them to your children. A confident adult saying God sent him ought to be able to withstand an open Bible.

If you want to work through the passages on familiar spirits, including Saul at Endor, that is the subject of Familiar Spirits, my 55-page KJV study at Dead Hidden. It is a downloadable PDF, $25 once.

Get Familiar Spirits — $25

Your purchase also supports the writing and free Bible tools I build at Dead Hidden.

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P.S. Use these questions on my work too. I do not get an exemption because you like me.