Evil

Correct on all points. Evil only exists in the mind of men.

I feel a sermon coming on... but there is so much to say, I hope it comes out in a cohesive, understandable fashion.  We’ll see, I guess:  Feel free to skip over this if you don’t want to get a theological perspective.

Evil comes to us from the spiritual realm.  Specifically, there is an entire, organized hierarchy of evil commissioned and overseen by a fallen Angel named Satan (formerly “Lucifer “ and popularized in movies and books as “the devil” ... my favorite of which was Tim Curry as the Prince of Darkness in Legend).

Satan used to be a highly placed Angel who got too big for his britches and decided he had better ideas about how to run things and rebelled against God.  Scripture notes he had a third of the Angels with him in the rebellion which made no difference to the outcome and all of them got booted from Heaven.  Theologians argue over this part but there is Scriptural evidence that “the fall” (from Heaven) occurred prior to the creation of the universe in Genesis 1.  From that point, it has been the satanic realm’s intent to destroy what God has created, the initial effort of which we are aware was the fall of Man in the Garden of Eden (of which I am not sure if it was literal or figurative, but it’s not important to this).

A key point is, neither Satan nor any of his demons have the attributes of God, namely, they are not omnipresent, omniscient, or omnipotent.  This becomes important to your question of whether they reside in us because, if they do, they cannot be anywhere else.  However, they certainly DO indwell people because we have some examples in Scripture of Jesus and His disciples casting them out. 

Another key piece is, demons (who are the minions who carry out the plans of Satan who, remember cannot be everywhere at once) can indwell non-believers, but cannot indwell believers who have the Holy Spirit in residence.  So their activity is limited to influencing us.  Which they do (or try to do) through our spirit.  As a practical matter, we experience these suggestions as our own self-talk and it really does take a lifetime to be able to effectively discern which “voice” is mine, which is the Holy Spirit, and which is a demon trying to get me to do something damaging.  A general rule is, a demon is always trying to destroy, lie, and drive me away from God, the Holy Spirit is always driving me towards God and His will, my own self talk is... well, all the rest.  If you are interested in how demons work  I commend you to The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis.  While a work of fiction, it does as good a job as I’ve seen at showing how they work.

SHIFTING FOCUS:

since the fall of Man in the Garden, we all inherited a sin nature.  God gave us a free will to choose good or choose bad (called “sin”) and our nature... meaning our temptation... is to choose bad (which the Bible defines as “anything that drives us away from Him”).  So, yes, Hitler and Stalin (et al), but also you and I all have/had this proclivity to puff up ourselves, ignore God, even do things that further separate us from Him.  God allows us the freedom to choose, but He also, always, exacts a consequence for our choice (consequences can be either good or not so good).  On the physical plane, consequences are just the natural consequences of our actions, much of the time.  But in the spiritual realm, the consequence ... the price for sin is death.  In the Old Testament, God gave the Jews sacrifices and rituals to cleanse them from sin.  Almost all of them only cleansed for a year, so these sacrifices had to be done annually.  Then Christ fulfilled all the sacrifices for the cleansing from all sin by dying on the cross as a substitute for all of us.

but non-believers like Hitler or Stalin (et al) had an extra measure, if you will, of evil.  Every one of us, believer and non-believer, has at least one demon assigned to us, who’s job it is to know us and attempt to influence us.  Some Non-believers, like those particularly evil guys you mentioned, draw the attention of higher level demons who work through them to “better” help destroy God’s creation.  I don’t believe these “lieutenants” are with the Hitlers from birth.  It seems to me they are maybe geographically assigned and only get involved “guiding” an individual that shows a heightened proclivity towards evil.  

people still choose their behavior, but the truly evil people, like Hitler, start off with normal sin nature’s but through their families or other influences, steadily give in to those demonic suggestions until at some point, (I am assuming this part, based on Scripture), they draw the attention of these higher level demons who work through the legions of demons present in that locale to further destroy (or try to) Gods creation.

now, I’m happy to discuss “why” God allows evil to exist, if you want, but that is really separate from this question, so maybe I should end it here.  

Yes Dave, no one has anything to add...to that.

Thanks for sharing that @bick, it may not always be easy to talk about such things.

One of the primary motivators of the demonic world is to remain unrecognized.  

we lack the ability to fight spirits on our own, but that feeling of calm and warmth, and the wisdom to ull close and speak directly leads me to assume you were not operating in your own power. 

God’s blessings on your family and, particularly, on your son. 

Yes, stealth is always their goal, but remember they can’t read your mind so do not know what we know until we tell them, either by what we say or what we do.  In fact, more people DON’T have that kind of an experience because demons don’t worry about anyone who isn’t showing signs of growing closer to God, through Christ.

i don’t speak for them, but my study into them and their behavior suggests they have no control over a person, so what you saw from your son was his reaction to the influence of whatever demon was influencing him at the time.  If you read in Luke 8, about Jesus healing the wild man of Gadarenes, you will notice Jesus had that same calm authority because He knew they had to obey Him... and they knew Him, too.

i can go on and on about this, but I usually end up scaring whomever I’m talking to.  One of the good treatments of this topic is a book, Victory Over the Darkness by Neil T Anderson. And one of the better books, if you can find it (maybe Amazon?) is The Adversary, by Mark Bubeck?