The newly sentenced B.T.K. serial killer of Wichita, Kan., Dennis Rader, has publicly blamed a "demon" that got inside him at a young age, says the New York Times. The one-time president of his local Lutheran church even reasons, "I just know it's a dark side of me."

Similarly, Joseph E. Duncan III, the sex offender who made prime-time news recently for his alleged kidnapping of Dylan and Shasta Groene, just before their 13-year-old brother, mother and her boyfriend were found bludgeoned to death in their rural Idaho home, speaks of being under demonic control.

In a web log entry Duncan posted four days before his alleged crimes, reports an article from last month's Times, he wrote, "The demons have taken over."

In another blog entry, dated just after he had jumped bail in Minnesota on charges of molesting a six-year-old boy in a playground, Duncan admits, "God has shown me the right choice, but my demons have me tied to a spit and the fire has already been lit."

A web post dated three days before the disappearance of Dylan and Shasta, reveals, "As far as 'taking people with me,' well, I don't know if that is right or wrong. In fact, I don't know much anymore what right and wrong even is."

Satan, the devil with the big "D", and "the god of this world," according to the Bible, has minions working for him 24/7. They are the devils with a little "d", or demons. These disembodied spirits have intelligence, emotions and personalities and can possess the lives of unsaved individuals.

"Demonic activity in the spirit world is all about us in a different realm than we live in," says my pastor, Richard Jordan of Shorewood Bible Church, Rolling Meadows, Ill. (www.graceimpact.org), in a taped study. "There are all kind of things going through this room right now where my hand is. I can feel the air, but there are pictures going through the air and there are voices going through the air. The television will pick up pictures and the radio voices.

"There are physical waves going through the air in the physical realm but we don't have a receiver by our perception. There's no way to know they are there without the right receiver. Right next to the four dimensions we live in—the three dimensions of space and then the phenomenal dimension of time—is another dimension of the spirit world. In fact there are several dimensions to that world, just like there are four dimensions in our experience."

From this spirit world there's a rank and file of various creatures who, while they don't function in the physical dimension of the physical creation, are literal and active.

"When you think about dimensions, at least in my mind, I think about them as right next to me; it's just there's a portal," says Jordan. "You learn all these words off the movies, you know. You watch Stargate and there's this portal from one dimension to the next and all that stuff is more true than those writing the books or movies sometimes realize. It's not like the spirit world is way out yonder somewhere and were over here. It's not isolated like that. These things run along."

The Bible uses words and terms common to man to describe things operating in the spirit world that are the same as in our dimension, only they're not made of the same material.

In II Kings 6, for example, it's revealed there are horses and chariots in the spirit world, they're just not horses as we know them. The concept is they're real and they'd be something we'd recognize as a horse, they're just in a different dimension.

While angels are spirit creatures who inhabit and are clothed with a celestial body, demons are disembodied spirits. "They are sort of like the foot soldiers in Satan's armies," explains Jordan.

Bible scholar Charles F. Baker, in his 1978 book, "Understanding the Gospels," reasons "they appear to be disembodied spirits who constantly seek embodiment of some kind. Some think they are the fallen sons of God in Gen. 6:4. They are characterized as being unclean. They are not like Satan who appears as an angel of light and a minister of righteousness (II Cor. 11:14). They are degraded and cause those they possess to engage in all kinds of filth and insane behavior."

Luke 8 presents the oft-heard account of the "Maniac at Gadara," in which Jesus Christ heals a man so completely riddled with unclean, disembodied spirits, or demons, he's called "Legion."

"And Jesus asked him, saying, What is thy name? And he said, Legion: because many devils were entered into him," reads Luke 8:30.

"This story not only shows the power of Christ over the Satanic world and the fact that these spirit beings recognized and confessed who Jesus really was, but it reveals a great deal about demons," writes Baker. "There can be degrees of demon possession. In some cases there was only one demon, in another the one went and found seven others worse than himself and entered into the man, and in this case there must have been a thousand, for their name was Legion.

"This may explain the super-human strength of the man that enabled him to break the fetters and chains with which the authorities tried to bind him."

Jordan reasons that only one of the spirits could actually be possessing of the man's personality, meaning the others were residing in his body, vying for control.

In the account, the demons, realizing their imminent expulsion from the man, ask Christ to send them into a swine from a nearby herd that was feeding on a mountain. Swine, at this time, was associated with the system of Baal worship, and the idolatry of Baal worship, that had captured the nation Israel and held them in Satanic captivity.

"Then went the devils out of the man, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the lake, and were choked," writes Luke, beginning in verse 8:33. "When they that fed them saw what was done, they fled, and went and told it in the city and in the country.
"Then they went out to see what was done; and came to Jesus, and found the man, out of whom the devils were departed, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind: and they were afraid."

While you would imagine the people witnessing or hearing about this miracle would gratefully want Jesus Christ to stick around, the passage reveals their superstitious fear prompted them to ask Jesus to depart, which He did, instructing the healed "maniac" to tell others of his deliverance. This actually represents one of three times in the Gospels where Jesus Christ was, in essence, run out of town.

"The general idea is these folks didn't want what Christ had to offer them because He comes and destroys what they're doing and their condition," says Jordan. "He came across the Sea of Galilee into their territory, right into the middle of the Satanic stronghold in the land of Palestine—the place where Satan had first gotten a beachhead in the nation Israel—and the importance of the land involved here is obvious in the context.

"Notice when the devils, or demons, were cast out of the man they said, 'Don't cast us out of the land.' They didn't care to be cast out of the man, they just didn't want to be cast out of the land of Palestine because they knew their job at the time was to be a part of the Satanic army holding the land for their master, the Devil."

A not-to-be missed phrase in this same Gospel account, also written about in Mk. 5: 1-20 and Matt. 8:28-34, is how Luke says the cured man was sitting "in his right mind."

"That's why the Apostle Paul, in II Timothy 2, talks about 'in meekness instructing those who oppose themselves that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil,' " explains Jordan. "You see in this Dispensation of Grace we live in today, rather than somebody coming and casting the Devil out of you, it's your responsibility to recover yourself.

"That's one of those great verses that demonstrates the difference from where we are today in God's program than with the nation Israel in prophecy. Even the dealing with Satan and his hordes is different."