The Dark Sacrament Read Online Free PDF Page B

Leah. They have five daughters and thirteen grandchildren.
    Since his ordination, Canon Lendrum has served in four parishes in Belfast, was a chaplain in four hospitals and chairman of theChurch’s Ministry of Healing committee for many years. He began his deliverance and exorcism ministry in the early 1970s.
    â€œI have to admit that there was a time in my life when I might have agreed with removing the Devil from the official teaching of the Church,” he explains. “I’d been brought up with a scientific worldview. I had never found it easy to grasp the concept of a being whom we call Satan, Beelzebub, or the Devil, whose purpose and aim was to lead people away from God and into sin and rebellion. Just as difficult for me to accept was the New Testament teaching which tells us that, under this being, there is an army of lesser beings called demons whose job is to control, influence, or destroy lives.
    â€œI have no doubt that there are men within the Christian ministry, including bishops, who hold the same view. I cannot criticize them or impute blame, for that was my own vague notion for some years after my ordination.”
    However, in 1974, when the minister turned fifty, he met a young woman who relieved him of all doubt that Satan was real.
    â€œIt was while I was carrying out my duties as chaplain in a Belfast hospital that I met Alice. She was in her twenties and had deep emotional problems. I prayed with her regularly, and she made the decision to repent of her sins and put her trust in God.
    â€œShe was discharged from hospital, and my wife and I helped out as best we could. Then one evening, I got a call from a parishioner whom Alice was staying with. The lady asked me to come over because Alice was being very difficult.”
    Reverend Lendrum arrived and was shocked to find a very different Alice from the one he thought he knew. She was “scowling and ugly” and ranting loudly, hardly making any sense at all. Then he noticed something very odd about her speech. She was talking about herself in the third person, using she and her instead of I and me. It was the first indication that a demon, and not Alice, was doing the talking.
    During that first exorcism, the minister was taunted continually by the demon. It would say: “You can’t get rid of me, little man! You’remaking a fool of yourself. She belongs to me. I knew her before you came along,” and so forth.
    At one point, Alice fainted. When she came around, she asked why the minister was in the room. It was obvious that since his arrival, Alice had been shut out and the demon had taken her over, body and soul.
    Canon Lendrum made inquiries into her background. He discovered that when she was younger, Alice had been initiated into a satanic cult. She had made vows to obey and serve Satan.
    He decided that a major exorcism was called for. He gathered a small group of people, including a medical doctor, to assist him and succeeded in casting out several demons. But not all. Halfway through the ritual, Alice ran into a corner of the room.
    â€œThey’re trying to take me away from you but they will not succeed,” she was heard to say. “I’m going to stay with you.”
    â€œI knew then it was hopeless,” the canon says. “After that, she passed out of my influence. I’d see her occasionally, prostituting herself in the red-light district of Belfast, looking haggard and worn-out by a life destroyed by the demonic. She died in her forties—was found lying in a doorway. Oh, you can’t imagine the melancholy horror and sadness I felt when I heard that!”
    During the past forty years, Canon Lendrum has seen a huge increase in interest in the supernatural. He believes that the more materialistic a society becomes, the more people turn to other philosophies to find meaning. He points to the New Age movement as an example of this alternative “soul searching,” and notes