This post was originally published on October 8th, 2015.
Larry Dinkins was tired. His two-week ministry trip to Thailand had been fruitful, but intensive. He’d led 10 one-on-one counselling sessions, attended three church services and 5poke at several seminars.
Now, he was on the plane headed home. His plans for the 13-hour flight from Taipei to Los Angeles included relaxing and watching a few in-flight movies. Larry was pleasantly surprised when he was given a seat in the bulkhead with extra leg room. This was going to be a quiet, peaceful trip.
Or so he thought. Halfway across the Pacific Ocean, Larry noticed a dishevelled woman sitting in a cubby hole next to the bathrooms in the bulkhead area. The woman, who was visibly upset, apparently had an altercation with her seatmate and was asked to find another seat. Since all the seats were ful1, the woman settled in the cubbyhole near Larry.
Larry soon noticed the woman’s bizarre behaviour. As passengers gathered near the bathroom, she would shoo them away, saying.”Get away! Can’t you see I am sitting here?” Larry discerned that this was no ordinary case of cabin fever.
As the stewardesses brought her a meal, she took the foil off the entree and used It to cover her feet. She then took her knife – international flights allow metal knives for meals – and began to aggressively eat the food in gulps. As she did, she would growl like a dog and bare her teeth. Seeing the woman’s strange behaviour – and the knife in her hand – two of Larry’s seatmates fled to the back of the plane. Larry began to pray against the demon in the woman.
He then decided to gently speak to the woman and try to comfort her. As he looked into the woman’s wild eyes, she threw a piece of sausage and scrambled eggs at Larry, hitting him in the chest. Larry, however, had an unusual peace. He knew it wasn’t the woman, but the power controlling her. He contemplated standing up and confronting the demon, but in this age of terrorism, thought it would be more prudent lo keep talking to her and wait for the stewardesses to come.
After their arrival, the woman reluctantly agreed to move to another seat. However, as the plane landed, the possessed woman got up and rushed to the front of the plane, with two of the stewardesses quickly following her. Finally, she returned to her seat and Larry’s eventful trip came to an end.
Larry says the experience taught him that, as believers, we must always be on guard against the evil one.
“Satan takes no holidays,” he says. “He is truly like a roaring lion seeking to devour. During my counseling, I encountered one tribal lady who was oppressed by Satan. Yet, on my plane trip, I was reminded that it isn’t just the animistic tribal peoples of North Thailand that are controlled by Satan, but my own countrymen. Satan is usually much more subtle and deceptive in the west, but sometimes he raises up his ugly head in direct confrontation. We must know our authority in Christ and be willing to use that authority. Greater is He that is in us than He that is in the world.”
