Sex with Demons?

An intelligent, talented and dedicated Christian woman involved in full time Christian work responded to my WebPages and we began e-mailing each other. She had never married and we grew quite close. After a while she confided that in the past she used to masturbate whilst imagining doing romantic or sexual things with a real or imaginary man. Presumably for reasons similar to those I have outlined above, she gradually began to feel uneasy about this type of fantasy. Rather than give up her self-indulgence, however, she decided to masturbate in a more “Christian” way. Instead of fantasizing about a normal man, she aroused herself while visualizing Christ, thus developing sexual cravings for the Son of God and even fantasizing about having sex with him.

Horrified, that she was mentally fornicating with the Holy One, I tried desperately to get my dear friend to see the gravity of her sin. Tragically, her conscience had become so jaded that, though I tried desperately on many occasions, nothing I could say was able to convince her that she should stop defiling the Son of God in her mind. There are fearful dangers for those who want to hold on both to their sin and their Lord. Not wishing to distort any of the following accounts, I point out that in at least some of them, masturbation was not involved. Their value to our spiritual examination of solo sex is in suggesting that deceptive spirits can exploit sexual feelings. After citing a few examples, we will attempt to see if there are any implications for those who seek to combine masturbation with spiritual fantasies.

A woman I counselled confided the following: Demons would stand next to my bed. One looked like Christ in a white robe and I felt safe. It then got in bed with me and I felt it holding me. I felt safe. Then it put its hand where it shouldn’t, and I knew it wasn’t God. It turned black. Another woman, a committed Christian, told of sexual visions of “Jesus.” For both of these women, solitary sex played a role, but their vulnerability to temptation was such that I did not probe to satisfy my curiosity as to how strong was the connection between solitary sex and their evil spiritual experience.

In an e-mail yet another woman wrote of demonic attacks she has suffered: It has paralyzed me, nearly suffocated me, and, worse, has raped me. I have never ever told anyone this, but I feel that out there, there are those who understand and I thank God for them.

Roxanne, a Christian of just a few months, had renounced her former Mormonism except for what Mormons call the “witness of the holy ghost” or “bosom burning.” This is a feeling that Mormons emphasize as confirmation of God’s approval and leading. Having been brought up as a Mormon, Roxanne had unquestioningly accepted this as being of God, although she puzzled as to why Mormons experience it as confirmation that the heretical Book of Mormon is of God. One day, Roxanne privately sought this experience to confirm God’s guidance. She shared the following with me: The spirit came: the bosom-burning, loving, beautiful feeling, beyond any explanation. Pure love. After I praised and welcomed it, this very real person/spirit purposely and forcefully sexually aroused me, followed by unearthly sexual pleasure. The sexual stimulation continued for hours.

It repeatedly claimed to be God, seeking my love and worship and praise. It would grow warmer and stronger when I praised it. While it was inside me it felt like the deepest love, affection and comfort that I’d ever felt. For four days I bounced between praising it and demanding it leave in Jesus’ name. Although it was very convincing that it had to be God, it blurred my eyesight when I tried to read my Bible and as I persisted with reading it kept giving sexual connotations to innocent things in the Bible. At one point, when it was moving through me sexually in an almost tangible way, I glanced in the mirror and the evil I saw in my eyes was bone chilling.

Based mainly on how it affected my Bible reading and what I’d seen in the mirror I made a clear decision to reject it. When I finally decided to do this and focus my thoughts solely on Jesus, it left in a dramatic way, causing me to cough violently. As it left, I felt light (it had made me feel slow and heavy) and scriptural knowledge was poured into me quickly. I heard spoken into my spirit the words, “Of course that was not me, but the God of the Book of Mormon, who you asked for. It is gone and has no legal right to return to you. I am with you. Do not seek signs or feelings because they are deceiving. My love for you is confirmed in the Scriptures and my Word is sufficient. Testify of this devil to the Mormons that you know.” I know my experience will puzzle many Christians, but it happened. My Lord never abandoned me. I had invited this deceptive angel of light. In fact, I had to welcome it constantly or it would stop; clearly still with me but not able to force anything on me.

God, in his glory, allowed this awful, experience to show me the true nature of Mormonism. Without it, I would never have believed that the church I had felt safe in for all my childhood, filled with people who love me, praised God and taught about moral, kind, selfless, charitable, conservative living, could be of the devil. A few weeks later Roxanne told her parents of her experience, hoping it would help them understand why she was no longer a Mormon. Afterwards she went to her bedroom and again encountered this spirit, but this time the spirit: felt so completely dark and evil, the total opposite of how it felt when it was inside of me. It sent me such a strong message that it was extremely angry with me. This was frightening but at the same time gave me hope that my parents would awaken spiritually, because obviously sharing my testimony was a threat to the devil.

The person who sins, pointed out Jesus, is a slave of sin. Evil is a drug that creates addicts by offering a degree of pleasure. In general, every form of evil offers its own unique pleasure and every time one repeats the evil, the bondage intensifies. Even if the pleasure is experienced just once and then fully repented of, a person is typically plagued for the rest of his or her life with the occasional craving for that feeling. We end up like the Israelites in Moses’ time. God had delivered them from slavery yet for the rest of their lives they occasionally found themselves craving for the pleasures of Egypt, even though they knew it meant slavery. This is a powerful practical reason for shunning all experimentation with anything that could turn out to be evil. Even when genuinely repented of, dabbling with evil, whether it is sexual sin, heroin or whatever, usually leaves its victims with cravings and a new source of temptation that hounds them for the rest of their lives. Roxanne says: To be honest, even clinging to my Lord with all my might after it was gone, and despite being so spooked over the realization that this beast was pure evil, I had to struggle against the desire to invite it back. As is the risk of all sexual experimentation, Roxanne confesses: I pray that the memory of the pleasure will fade because I find myself praying that my husband will be able to do what it did and I know it’s unfair to compare. Unfortunately I have a strong memory of this aspect.

A friend of mine was born into a cult. “Jesus” would regularly appear to them. He had an innocent face, a white robe – and ready for sex. He regularly raped female cult members. Another friend of mine had suffered the horror of being present while a woman she knew was being painfully raped by someone neither of them could see.

For me to have heard so many accounts first hand, despite my very limited experience, indicates that deceptive spirits associating themselves with sexual experiences must be disturbingly common. This suggests that deliberately combining sexual feelings with spiritual fantasy might not be the safe option one might otherwise suppose. Could this practice attract unwanted attention from the dark side of the spirit world? I am not into scare tactics. We must, however, be at least alert to the possibility of this leading to spiritual deception. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines two disturbing words: Incubus: an evil spirit that lies on persons in their sleep; especially one that has sexual intercourse with women while they are sleeping

Succubus: a demon assuming female form to have sexual intercourse with men in their sleep It would seem that anyone seeking sexual excitement when no human is present must be on guard about opening oneself up to demons. I am not saying that auto-eroticism will inevitably lead to demonic activity, nor that those suffering demonic sexual experiences have necessarily engaged in self-stimulation, but if one lets one’s sexual fantasies stray to the spiritual, an opening to the demonic might possibly be created. Christians so desperate for sexual gratification that they are unwilling to wait for a human partner, might decide to seek God’s help in sexually stimulating themselves. If so, the “god” who responds might not be the God they want.

A married man wrote to me, greatly disturbed because he had reluctantly concluded that he had been a victim of sexual demons. For years he had been sure it was spiritual. For him the only question was the nature of that spirit. It had all started when he was single and craving sex. He said two very strong, widely-admired Christians from a respected church had told him that God wants to have sex with us. I do not know if this was what they meant or if he was hearing what he wanted to hear.

This dear man was flabbergasted that he could have ended up in the mess that he now believed he was in, since he had earlier sincerely believed the spirit giving him sexual sensations was the Lord lovingly meeting his needs. “I desired sex so bad,” he wrote, “and how many times have we heard that God can satisfy every need? Well is it every need or not? Is it God or is it another who will satisfy it?”

I replied: Will God satisfy the “need” of an addict for heroin? Will he satisfy the “need” of a hate-filled person for revenge? Will he satisfy a rapist’s “need” for a victim? When Jesus was hungry in the wildness, it was Satan who offered a way to satisfy his need.

In stark contrast to a God who meets our every lust and craving, we have a God who repeatedly told us to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow our crucified Lord. We have a God who says: Colossians 3:5 Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Romans 13:14 Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.

Galatians 5:16-17 So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, Ephesians 4:22 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires;

2 Timothy 2:22 Flee also youthful lusts 2 Timothy 4:3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth And on and on we could go.

In bewilderment, he replied that until they turned into anal sexual sensations he had accepted these sexual sensations as being from God because they would come to him while speaking in tongues or reading the Bible or when he could feel the Lord’s presence. He had assumed that these things would have protected him from evil.

When our desire for selfish pleasure exceeds our willingness to deny ourselves for the glory of Christ, we are spiritually in grave danger. If we passionately yearn both for illegitimate pleasure and a clean conscience, our wish can come true. We can reach the point of sinning with a clean conscience. And it’s the scariest thing in the universe. It’s called delusion. We all know that our spiritual enemy is the Deceiver who masquerades as an angel of light.

It is most rare for God to lead anyone to research – even academically – incubus and succubus spirits. And anyone daring to attempt such research without the Lord’s specific leading is foolish. Nevertheless, a young man clearly felt such a leading from God. Since he would prefer to remain nameless, I’ll call him Tim.

To his horror, Tim read of occultists citing not weird rituals, unusual practices, or calling upon demons, as the key to encountering sexual spirits, but simply the use of masturbation coupled with fantasizing about the partner of one’s choice. The expectation was that a spirit would appear in dreams or whatever, not as a hideous creature, but in the form of the imagined person. What alarmed Tim was the realization that although attracting demons was the furthest from his mind, the prescribed occult practice for enticing sexual spirits was essentially identical to what he – along with vast numbers of other masturbators who have no occult interest – had done. He had broken that habit years ago but although he was no longer indulging in this practice, the fact remained that he had engaged in it in the past.

Before proceeding, I had better insert a quick note about wet dreams, lest someone reading this become unnecessarily concerned. There is no question that nocturnal emissions can be perfectly natural and harmless. This does not mean, however, that they must be associated with lust-filled dreams. Dreams are largely beyond our control, but they tend to reflect what we think about, and expose ourselves to, in our waking hours. If we do what we can to curb our conscious thoughts and commit our sleeps to the Lord, we can expect unwanted dreams to decline.

Despite never having experienced any obvious manifestations of sexual demons, Tim wondered whether there might be a link between demonic activity and his wet dreams. He chose to renounce as sin his past sexual fantasies and masturbation, acknowledged that it could have opened him up to demonic interference, and exercised the authority over demonic activity that Jesus has bestowed upon all believers. The result was a dramatic change in his dreams. First, he suffered a full-on attack in which he had lurid sexual dreams like nothing he had ever experienced. After a week of intense spiritual warfare, however, the power broke and the dreams completely vanished. In short, there has been a pronounced change in the sexual activity he is subjected to in the time all of us are most vulnerable to attack – when asleep.

Scare tactics are not on my agenda. I simply suggest you check with the Lord about Tim’s experience to see if it could have any relevance to you. Our Lord, not the claims of occultists, nor someone’s personal experience, is our highest spiritual authority. We need to keep looking to the Lord for spiritual discernment, however. Unclean spirits are usually too devious to appear with horns and tails.