This Halloween I discovered something that might surprise most people: The Exorcist was not intended to frighten its audience.
You're probably thinking, "Yeah, right. It only scared the living daylights out of how many people?"
Still, it's true -- at least according to William Peter Blatty, the guy who wrote both the novel and the screenplay. Before writing The Exorcist, Blatty had been a comic novelist. But while he was a student at Georgetown University in 1941, he got wind of an actual case of demonic possession going on nearby. Blatty remembers thinking, "Someday, somebody's got to write about this, because if an investigation were to prove that possession is real, what a help it would be to the struggling faith of possibly millions, for if there were demons, I reasoned, then why not angels? Why not God?"
Blatty's intention was to write a "novel of faith in the popular dress of a thrilling and suspenseful detective story -- in other words, a sermon that no one could possibly sleep through...." Well, my guess is that most who have seen The Exorcist have not slept through it!
When I was a freshman in Bible college, the professor who taught the angelology/demonology course showed excerpts from The Exorcist to the class. I remember little to none of it -- probably because I had my eyes closed. I had always questioned his wisdom in showing the film, but now that I understand more of its backdrop, I get his reasoning. That's not to say that I agree with it, but I do get it.
Having just preached on Mark 1:21-34 this past Lord's Day, I'm convinced that the record of Scripture provides all the fascinating, factual accounts that we need to understand that demons are both real and powerful. They can completely overcome a person, dominating his thoughts, speech, and behavior. People tormented and possessed by demons tend to be the most repulsive and pitiable. Yet one word from Jesus, "the Holy One of God" (Mark 1:24), sets the demons packing and the people free.
Interestingly, Blatty discovered in his research "that in every period of recorded history, and in every cluture and part of the world, there have been consistent accounts of possession and its symptoms going all the way back to ancient Egyptian chronicles." We who know the Word of God should not be surprised at this, for since mankind's fall into sin, "the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one" (1 John 5:1). But "for this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil" (1 John 3:8). Melvin Tinker has noted, "Nowhere in the New Testament are believers ever depicted as living in servile fear of demons, that is precisely the state from which they have been delivered by the gospel."
That's "good news" worth celebrating.