Nuggets from Occult Invasion

Much of today’s “deliverance” takes place in the emotionally charged atmosphere of Toronto and Pensacola and their offshoots. Pastor Don Matzat reminds us that a skeptical student informed Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot, chief physician at the Salpetriere Hospital in Paris in the 1880s, that he had “invented rather than discovered ‘hystero-epilepsy.’” Because patients who were susceptible to suggestion were housed with genuine epileptics, they began to have what appeared to be seizures. Similar transference of behavior takes place in these revivals, as any sober observer can readily see.