Greetings. This is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with a moment of truth where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith. And today I want to ask you, how do we account for the bizarre, widespread evil behavior of those in power over us other than that we are in days of demonic delirium? Days of demonic delirium. And what do we do about it?

Delirium is defined as an acutely disordered state of mind involving incoherent speech, hallucinations, and frenzied excitement. That's all according to the Oxford English Dictionary. And I would submit to you that we are in days of demonic delirium. Now, throughout history, there are periods where evil seems to be more present, more intense, more palpable, more evident, and widespread in society than there are other times. There have been, indeed, times when evil is ever present with us.

Indeed, since Adam and Eve first sinned in the garden. But there are historical cycles of waxing and waning, of increase and decrease, of ebb and flow, when evil seems sometimes more and sometimes less present in a society than at other times. Oh, we've seen that in the past. In the Bible, of course, we have Sodom and Gomorrah, a good example of a time when, indeed, evil was ever present. Lot, you remember, housed the angels for a night in his home, and there was the crowd of perverse men outside who wanted to have sex with them.

We also saw the days of Joshua and the conquest when the Nephilim were present, indeed, giants in the land, evil, demonic giants, or the days of Elijah versus the prophets of Ba'am. And in history, we see it in our own day, too, in our own present day, when we saw the demonic times in Cambodia, when, indeed, over two million people were slaughtered. And we see times of the French Revolution, for example, another period of time when, indeed, the demonic seemed to be ever present in history.

Such societies are at their worst when they reach the point of the antediluvian world, that is, the pre-flood world, when, we see in Genesis 6, the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. That is the absolute corruption of the human soul, the nadir of human behavior. What awful days in which to live, dear listener. God's wrath towards that generation was such that, the Bible tells us, the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.

So the Lord said, I will blot out man, whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things, and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them. Ergo, the flood. Yes. And although God subsequently promised Noah that he would never again inundate the world with another worldwide catastrophic flood, that does not mean that there would be no more days of demonic delirium, when man's wickedness is such that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

Note the thoroughness, the completeness of corruption, when every intention of the thoughts of man's heart is only evil continually. Three things I want to observe there. First of all, when those conditions obtain, man's whole will is committed to evil. We see this in many a person today. That's the sense of every intention.

He wills evil with intent. He propagates. He commits all his faculties towards evil. And secondly, we must observe that when these conditions obtain, evil is that man's precious. If you are familiar with Gollum from the Lord of the Rings series by J.R.R.

Tolkien, you know how completely given over, supernaturally obsessed, this fallen hobbit Gollum was with a ring of power when he had it in his possession. Every thought of his heart was for it. It was his precious. And so it is with evil in the heart of those in days of demonic delirium. And thirdly, we observe that in times like these, evil is exclusive.

It excludes all else. There's no room for good in the heart of the man living in the days of demonic delirium. He is too busy with a task before him to the exclusion of everything else. Only evil continually, as the Bible says, day in and day out, his feet hurry to do evil, as the Proverbs say. Now, I call these days of demonic delirium because the presence of the demonic is manifest.

In Genesis chapter 6, for that matter, it's preceded by the descent of the sons of God onto the earth, and that's reputedly on Mount Hermon, the descent of the sons of God in order to cohabit with the daughters of men, that is human women. These were the fallen angels spoken of by Peter and Jude in the New Testament, and by Enoch in the Pseudepigrapha. Consequently, what was born to them were the demonic monsters of the Old Testament, the Nephilim. As verse 4 in chapter 6 says, the Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man, and they bore children to them.

These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. Well, one of the reasons that pre-Diluvian man found every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually is precisely because of this fallen demonic presence of the Nephilim. The adversary of our soul, Satan, never ceases to tempt and coerce and beguile us to do evil, and this becomes transparent during days of demonic delirium. It is important to recognize the signs of days of demonic delirium, too.

We are not yet, nor will we ever be, hysterical sensationalists who see a demon behind every bush, but neither are we naive Pollyannas who deny the living intersection between the physical world and the spiritual world. Oh, just as our physical world teems with countless species of flora and fauna, so the spiritual world teems with countless spiritual creatures, both angelic and demonic. And the Bible is, in many ways, a historical account of the interaction between these realms. Oh, and we humans, made in the image of God, are the only creatures who inhabit both realms simultaneously.

That is, we inhabit both the physical and the spiritual at the same time. And as we have seen in our study of John's apocalypse, too, and we have just finished that in our teaching series in the church, we humans are destined to be lords of the new world that God will make out of these two realms. It will be a union of the physical and the spiritual, like both of them, but greater and fuller than either one individually, a new heaven and a new earth, as the Revelation says, and one city bride coming down from heaven, as the closing chapters of Revelation put it.

But until then, we live in both discrete worlds simultaneously, discerning between the two as best we can, as God gives us grace. What then does a period of unusually heavy demonic presence that intrudes upon us look like, such that we call it demonic delirium? Well, some point to the increase of the sensational. Indeed, they do. There is indeed, at times like this, an increase of the sensational.

The acutely disordered state of mind, as our definition of delirium puts it, that accompanies those demonically possessed, like we see in the New Testament, who live in the tombs, like the gathering demoniac, or throw themselves into fire or water, like the poor son of that father who appealed to Jesus for exorcism. Or even incoherent speech, right? The howling of the gathering demoniac, or the muttering, peeping, and chirping of the prophets of Baal in Isaiah's day. Or the hallucinations, as Paul says, those insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind.

Or even, as our definition of delirium puts it, frenzied excitement. The priests of Baal, who cut themselves, leaped and danced in great agitation. Or the twisted men of Sodom, who lurked outside of Lot's house all night, seeking to have sex with his angel guests. These kinds of sensational outward manifestations are indeed present in days of demonic delirium, but they are not the surest and most objective way to index when demonic delirium is on the increase. The sensational is but the tip of the iceberg.

Nine-tenths of the demonic delirium lies below the surface and must be identified for what it is, that is, evil behavior by the bulk of mankind. We are able to tell when we are in such periods. And this is because we can know evil when we see it, because God has identified for us it as sin, right? As wrongdoing, as transgression of his law. In times like these, men practice evil and they enjoy doing it.

Solomon puts it this way in Proverbs 2. He calls it the way of evil. Men of perverted speech, who forsake the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness, who rejoice in doing evil and delight in the perverseness of evil. Men whose paths are crooked and who are devious in their ways. Unquote from Proverbs 2.

In short, we know when we are in days of demonic delirium, when sin increases such that every intention of the thoughts of our heart is only evil continually. Only evil continually. And this now characterizes enough of us, I think, that we can confidently assert that we are in days of demonic delirium. And one metric that helps us measure the extent of our demonic delirium is an old one that's long employed by the church, and that is the seven deadly sins. The seven deadly or mortal sins.

There are as many types and kinds of sin in the world as there are human sinners, but seven of them in particular have been identified as death-dealing. That, when practiced as a way of life in which one rejoices and delights, as Solomon says, these seven deadly sins kill the soul and condemn the man to eternal damnation. And consequently, they are mortal sins, that is, deadly sins. The seven deadly sins are, as articulated by the church, pride, envy, wrath, sloth, greed, gluttony, and lust. The church throughout history has used this list as a kind of shorthand for what the man given over to evil looks like in the particular sins he commits.

If a man can be likened to a prism, evil is a hole when it enters a man, as is a ray of light entering a prism. It is one whole indistinguishable ray, but as a prism breaks down the single beam into a separate colors, so man is the prism of seven deadly sins, breaks down evil as a whole into its ugly dark spectrum and separate components so that we might more easily identify it and fight it. One of my favorite examples in history is a tract called The Lantern of Light written by an early English reformer. These early English reformers were called Lollards.

In the early 15th century, that is, 1409 or 1410, it's speculated that this tract was written. But in any case, by its tone and spirit, this author was most likely a follower of John Wycliffe. The anonymous author felt that evil had become especially manifest in his own day, too, within the established Roman Catholic Church, which he identified with the spirit of Antichrist. What is of added interest for our purposes, though, is that church tradition assigns a particular fallen angel, then, from each of the seven angelic rebels who led a third of the angelic host in rebellion against God.

That's chronicled in a rollicking good tale in the book of Enoch, too, by the way, if you can find access to it. And they were called Nephilim, from Genesis chapter 6. And to each of the seven deadly sins, they were assigned as chief tempter of that sin, ergo, for every deadly sin, a deadly demon, to lead it in luring the human race to its destruction. Now, these deadly sins, with their corresponding Nephilim, tempters are, and I quote, pride, and Lucifer as chief demon over it. Envy with Beelzebub as chief tempter of envy.

Wrath, with a Nephilim called Sathanas, tempting humans to wrath. Or Abaddon, tempting humans to sloth. And then over greed, there is Mammon, of course, from the New Testament. And then Belphegor, who was chief demon tempter, over gluttony. And then finally, Osmodeus, who was the chief tempter for lust, the seven deadly sins and their tempters.

Well, dear listener, let me be clear. This is all apocryphal stuff. It is not inspired scripture by any means. And I use this template merely to illustrate what is real. And that is the oscillation of good and evil in history.

When evil reaches such a pitch of manifestation in the world that we can call it days of demonic delirium. Indeed, evil is practiced to such an extent at times like this, that we can use this grid of the seven deadly sins as a kind of metric to gauge its extent. And what I want to do over the next few weeks is take these one by one and illustrate the extent of the demonic delirium in our world today. So let me first take pride. Pride, indeed, as the first of the seven deadly sins.

And we see it rife in our culture, in our day and time today. Now, the Oxford English Dictionary, once again, defines pride as a high or overbearing opinion of one's worth or importance, unquote, from the Oxford English Dictionary. It's a nice, clean, economical definition of pride, isn't it? And Lucifer is certainly the appropriate fallen angel to tempt us with this deadly sin. It is, after all, the first and original sin which caused Lucifer to be cast down from his exalted place as the angel of light.

Here is how Isaiah puts it in Isaiah chapter 14. He says, how you are fallen from heaven, O day star, son of dawn, from which we get our term, Lucifer as an angel of light. How you are fallen from heaven. You said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven above the stars of God. I will set my throne on high.

I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will make myself like the most high. Indeed, pride was the first and original sin of the serpent, right? And Ezekiel says of Lucifer, your heart was proud because of your beauty.

You corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. Yes, pride is the first and original sin. Behold the heart and soul of the demonic, dear listener. Do not think for a minute that Satan or any of his lesser minions care one wit about you when they tempt you. Indeed, Luke tells us that Lucifer, that Satan took our Lord and he took him up, as Luke says, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time and said to him, to you, I will give all this authority and all their glory for it has been delivered to me and I give it to whom I will.

If you then will worship me, it will all be yours, unquote. It is no coincidence that power either is the chief drug this peddler of pride uses Satan to addict men to evil and manifest himself through them. And since we, as human beings, aspire to be like our Lord of the covenant, who is Lucifer, the serpent, being our covenant Lord since the fall in the Garden of Eden, pride becomes our overweening sin as well. Can you see it in yourself, pride, as well as those manifesting it all around us? Oh, indeed, pride is the ruling sin of our age.

Saint Augustine puts it this way in his work, The City of God. He says, pride is the beginning of sin. And what is pride but the craving for undue exaltation? And this is undue exaltation when the soul abandons him to whom it ought to cleave as its end and becomes an end to itself, unquote. Yes, when the soul of the proud becomes an end to itself.

Undue exaltation is the essence of pride. Pride is the beginning of sin. Others have since observed this too. Henry Fairley, in his book, The Seven Deadly Sins Today, he calls pride the keystone of the arch of sin. It runs through everything we do, everywhere in our natures is pride.

Pride is the cause of disobedience to God's law, right? Satan said to Eve, God knows that in the day you eat of it, you will become as God's knowing good and evil. Pride also prompts boasting and hypocrisy. The Pharisees were hypocrites, or the magistrates and their lockdown orders, right? Ah, pride motivates scorn and presumption and arrogance.

Pride trips the wires of impatience and abstinence. Pride sets off the flares of self-centeredness and vainglory. Your heart was proud because of your beauty, Ezekiel says of Lucifer. You corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. And we will see pride then.

We will see pride in all the other deadly sins as well. Men are delirious with pride, and few even in the public eye then bother to hide it anymore, do they? Men have sold their souls for power and riches and fame. And this they have done for centuries, but how empty and dark and open it has become in our day of demonic delirium. For example, all of modern entertainment has become the haunt of demonic pride, as Luciferian rites are a regular feature of everything from Super Bowl halftime shows to rock concerts.

And recently I saw it in the simple inauguration of a transportation system in Europe. Scratch the surface of Hollywood and its stars, and you will find wormwood crawling with fallen stars. Souls from the pit stinking with sulfur are our entertainment stars. Arrogant, mindless entertainers presume to lecture us on everything from climate change to racial hatred to our Second Amendment rights. In it all, it is the undue exaltation of the self, self being the end in itself.

And in exchange for their wealth and their power and the fame, they have traded their souls, empty husks now, fearing the grave and their eternal destinies. And then when carried to its logical conclusion, when one is completely surrendered to pride's power, a demonic delirium begins to set in, where in place of logic and reason one begins to see in these people, acutely disordered states of mind, as our definition for delirium puts it, right? Characterized by incoherent speech. Do not expect to hear a logical reasoned argument from the likes of Joy Behar or Robert De Niro or Keith Olbermann.

What you will hear from them, however, is a disordered state of mind in frenzied excitement, exactly as our definition of delirium describes. And then also as a second example, most of government across the world has become the haunt of demonic pride, hasn't it? Indeed, government has always been the stronghold of Lucifer. What he dangled before our Lord as a bauble of pride was power. Remember, he told him the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time and said to him, to you, I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me and I give it to whom I will.

If you then will worship me, it will all be yours. Now, our Lord, of course, resisted this temptation, did he not? He certainly did. But most men fall prey to this irresistible temptation. Eric Hoffer puts it this way, it is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.

Eric Hoffer, indeed a philosopher of the 20th century, had it right. They worship Lucifer and the power that he bestows as an illusion. Scratch the surface of Washington, D.C., the district of Columbia teeming with politicians, and you will find demonic D.C., the district of criminals crawling with goblins and ghouls, empty husks of humans bought and sold and compromised doing the will of their master, Lucifer, driven by subdemons like Xi Jinping in China or Nancy Pelosi in Andrew Cuomo.

The revelation of Jeffrey Epstein and his Lolita Express were politicians and, as well, powerful then, powerful politicians, right, and businessmen were compromised at Mediterranean getaways with young girls and drugs. That's only a small segment of the devilish modes of behavior that formed the regular lifestyle of these empty-suit demons. And then when carried to its logical conclusion, when one is completely surrendered to pride's power, a demonic delirium begins to set in where, in place of logic and reason, one begins to see in these people are politicians acutely disordered states of mind characterized by incoherent speech.

Don't expect to hear a logical, reasoned argument from the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Kamala Harris or Joe Biden. What you will hear from them, however, is a disordered state of mind in frenzied excitement, exactly as our definition of delirium describes. Well, we can go on and talk about the mainstream media. The same thing obtains there. Pride has been cultivated in the United States of America to the point of demonic delirium now for generations.

We have been taught to crave undue exaltation, as if it were a legitimate thing to us. Kids growing up would rather be famous than good. When they do seek virtue, they preen their egos with empty virtue signals like being anti-racists or giving to Black Lives Matter or wearing useless masks to save lives, ostensibly. People are nurtured to live their truth. Howsoever contradictory or incoherent it may be to reality, pride in one's gender.

There are now over a hundred genders at last count, is an unquestioned fact of life, even though it qualifies as a hallucination of a disordered mind from our definition of delirium, if anything does, right? Pride drives us to see ourselves as the original self, the center of all things, despite our prime directive given by God in our creation. And that was when God created man, he made him in the likeness, did he not? In the likeness of God. Male and female, he created them and he blessed them.

Our very imaging of our creator requires the other. We cannot be a true self until we look beyond ourselves to the other, most intimately and authentically in our spouse. And our prime directive, when acted upon, also drives us to humility, to suppress pride, if we are to fulfill that prime directive, which is from Genesis chapter one, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth. Oh, dear listener, the proud man does not multiply in the biblical sense.

The proud man may bear offspring, but only as baubles orbiting his fear as the center of the universe, as mere extensions of self, even as the devotees of Lucifer are nothing more than contemptuous creatures of hubris, objects to be destroyed and stripped from their creator for Lucifer's pride. Even subduing the earth, taking true dominion of it requires humility, not pride, if it is to be done according to God's will. True husbanding of the earth requires sacrifice and cooperation with one's fellow man. The proud man may crush and tyrannize the earth, but it's not the same thing as subduing it.

The proud man indeed may rape and pillage creation in satisfying his pride, but it is not the same thing as taking dominion of it, which requires careful husbanding of resources, nurturing of one's fellow man and the animals entrusted to his domesticating care. Oh, let us be true men who sacrifice so that there is a next generation, dear listener, that's one of the solutions, so that there is indeed a creation that is fruitful and multiplies rather than being consumed in a frenzied excitement in one generation, his generation. And for the proud man, it's more to the point, it's about him. Dear listener, it's not about us.

Indeed, the solution is to focus on Christ, for it is about Christ and not about us. It is about him. So let us begin to solve this problem of pride in our demonic delirium, in the days of demonic delirium by humbly submitting unto Christ and proclaiming him in this day. This has been Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church. We meet for holy worship on Sunday at 10 a.m. And we indeed are not taken by demonic delirium, but we indeed see the world for what it is, and we have the solution in Jesus Christ, and we preach him every Sunday.

Come and join us on Sundays at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. And you can call us for feedback, give us some feedback on this or more information perhaps at area code 208-523-0196. That's 208-523-0196.