Over the last few weeks I’ve been following Charlie Bentley-Astor’s reporting on the case of Axel Rudakubana. He has just been sentenced to 52 years in prison, after stabbing three young girls to death and wounding many others in Southport in July of last year.
Since it happened, I’ve said very little about it online — not least because the details were hidden from the public at every opportunity. It seems that this was indeed an extensive cover-up operation and numerous questions remain unanswered — such as why the Crown Prosecution Service leaned on Merseyside Police not to report it as a terrorist incident.
One of the reasons I think this story grabbed people’s attention was the identity and motivation of the killer. Initially we were told virtually nothing about him; then that he was a Welsh-born choirboy from a Christian family. It took a while for his name to be released, and some details were not released until the hearing before Christmas (i.e. that he had an Al-Qaeda training manual and had manufactured ricin). It turns out that he had an obsession with violence, including ethnic cleansing and ‘white genocide’.
But was there a spiritual dimension to what was going on? Charlie’s piece contains a testimony from a 14-year old survivor, which begins:
“The beginning of my nightmare started when I saw you. I thought you were playing a joke. I saw you in your green hoody and face mask. The thing I remember most about you is your eyes. You didn’t look human, you looked possessed.
You didn’t look human, you looked possessed.
Was Axel Rudakubana demon-possessed? And how does that tie in to what else is going at the moment?
Was Axel Rudakubana demon-possessed?
As far as I know, I’ve never seen anyone who has been “demon-possessed”. However, that was my first thought when I saw Rudakubana’s mugshot when it was finally released. He did not look at all normal, especially the mouth and eyes. There is something really not right about it. But was he “demon-possessed”?
Before we answer that question, let’s think about the biblical definition of demon possession. The reason I put “demon-possessed” in scare quotes is because it doesn’t mean what people think it means. People tend to think of something like The Exorcist, where an evil entity takes over a human body to the point of controlling everything that they say and do. The biblical picture is much more nuanced than that.
The word which is usually translated “demon-possessed” is the Greek word daimonizomai, which might be better translated ‘demonised’. It simply means to be afflicted by a demon or evil spirit in some way. There are few examples in the Scriptures of what I just mentioned — controlling everything including actions and speech. The main example in the gospel which springs to mind is the man who lived among the tombs (Luke 8:26-39). This man had superhuman strength and was violent — no more so than towards himself, it would seem. But evil spirits (or “impure spirits”, as they are often called in the gospels) are also associated with an inability to hear or speak (Mark 9:25), and seizures (Matthew 17:15).
We are also told that Judas was influenced by Satan:
Then Satan entered Judas, called Iscariot, one of the Twelve. And Judas went to the chief priests and the officers of the temple guard and discussed with them how he might betray Jesus. Luke 22:3-4
In summary, it is possible for evil spirits to manifest in this world through physical action and speech. It is possible for people to open themselves up to malign spiritual influence and for that to lead to evil actions.
It’s important to stress at this point that none of this implies a lack of guilt. Saying that someone is afflicted or influenced by an evil spirit does not absolve them of responsibility. I do not believe evil spirits can make someone perform evil actions against their will. It seems to me that, often — as in the case of Judas — evil demonic influence follows a turning of the individual heart to evil. The individual needs to open the door, so to speak.
In the case of Axel Rudakubana, it seems to me that he absolutely fits the bill for being influenced by spiritual evil. He was obssessed by violence for a long time — which shows that he was not turning away from evil, but towards it. He was opening himself up to spiritual evil. And that evil influence can be seen in many ways through his life.
He seemed to have no concern for anyone apart from himself, he seemed to show a callous disregard for everybody in his life — as the reports of him at school would suggest. This in itself, is evil: it’s the very opposite of love — love which comes from God.
And, if you look at what he did on the day, he didn’t simply go in and stab the girls once — it was a frenzied attack. I don’t wish to recount too many of the details as they are distressing, Charlie Bentley-Astor has described them here. I will only mention two things: one of the girls, Bebe King, suffered from “122 sharp force injuries”. Think for a moment about the state of mind of someone who would stab someone over one hundred times. When he was interviewed by the police he said nothing, but then said unsolicited: “I’m glad those kids are dead”. He has shown no remorse at all. His overriding desire seems to have been to hate and destroy rather than any particular ideology. He gave himself over to evil in a way that it’s difficult for most people to even comprehend.
Make no mistake, this attack was one of the most evil things we have seen in this country, in my lifetime at least. If ever there were a case of “demon-possession”, or being influenced by spiritual evil, this is it.
What I’d like to do now is turn to think about how this fits in with the wider picture of what’s happening in society.
The demonic agenda
One of the things about evil spirits outside the gospels is that their operation is usually much more subtle. It usually involves trickery and deception rather than outright violence. Satan, we are told, likes to disguise himself as an “angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14).
There’s a fascinating insight into this in 1 Kings:
Micaiah continued, “Therefore hear the word of the Lord: I saw the Lord sitting on his throne with all the multitudes of heaven standing around him on his right and on his left. And the Lord said, ‘Who will entice Ahab into attacking Ramoth Gilead and going to his death there?’
“One suggested this, and another that. Finally, a spirit came forward, stood before the Lord and said, ‘I will entice him.’
“‘By what means?’ the Lord asked.
“‘I will go out and be a deceiving spirit in the mouths of all his prophets,’ he said.
“‘You will succeed in enticing him,’ said the Lord. ‘Go and do it.’ 1 Kings 22:19-22
Evil spirits here do not influence the king directly. Rather, they influence the prophets, who then entice the king to do something foolish and go to his death. This idea of demons causing false teaching is found in the New Testament as well:
The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. 1 Timothy 4:1
“Things taught by demons” — that’s about as clear as you can get, isn’t it!
What I am driving at here is that Axel Rudakubana demonstrated evil spiritual activity ‘in the raw’, so to speak. It was the demonic agenda without a mask. But the normal way they operate is through deception and trickery, at the level of ideas and teaching.
Think about what happened during covid: The Powers That Be (whoever they are) didn’t simply come out and say “we want lots of people to die”. But lots of people did die as a result of their ideas and actions — think about the numbers of excess deaths over the last few years (just as I am writing this, I notice that John Campbell has just recorded another video about excess deaths, this time in young adults). Of course, at this point we don’t know whether The Powers That Be intentionally wanted people to die (despite the fact that many of them have spent years talking about the problem of overpopulation). The point is that, intentional or not, death was the result.
It’s not just covid — the green movement is similar. Spiked, for example, have written several pieces over the years outlining how anti-human the green movement is. The green movement seems to think that human beings are a cancer on the planet, and the best thing for us human beings is simply to stop breeding.
Although these ideas around covid and climate change are not killing people directly, they are — in a sense — motivated by the same underlying philosophy: they hate us and want to see an end to us. The difference between them and Axel Rudakubana is that the former tries to make a pretence at a disguise.
Perhaps that was part of the reason the establishment were so keen to cover it up: not simply for self-preservation, but because they wanted to keep their own agenda free from scrutiny.
The point here is that there is an evil, spiritual agenda at play. There always has been and there always will be until Jesus returns and makes all things right. Most people can recognise the demonic evil in Axel Rudakubana for what it is. I hope that they will also recognise there is an equally evil, demonic agenda going on in the wider things happening in society.
The other day I happened across this astonishing speech by Paul Harvey, originally broadcast in 1965, entitled “If I were the devil”:
I think this is the most extraordinary expose of the evil spiritual agenda going on in our society which I’ve ever heard — all the more so as it was recorded 60 years ago.
Fighting Back
The riots after what happened in Stockport were understandable. However, I believe they were ultimately misplaced: the root cause is not the government, or Muslims, or Amazon (!). The real culprit is Satan. This is not to excuse either Axel Rudakubana or the government, or even to lessen their culpability. It is, rather, to direct our attention to the solution the Scriptures give us. Ultimately the solution will not be found in Westminster and the ballot box. The solution is found in Jesus Christ.
The other day, my daughter was listening to C.S. Lewis’ book The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. I was listening in, and I was particularly struck by this exchange as the children are discussing what to do about the evil White Queen with Mr. and Mrs. Beaver:
“It's no good, Son of Adam,” said Mr. Beaver, “no good your trying, of all people. But now that Aslan is on the move—”
“Oh, yes! Tell us about Aslan!” said several voices at once; for once again that strange feeling—like the first signs of spring, like good news, had come over them.
“Who is Aslan?” asked Susan.
“Aslan?” said Mr. Beaver, “Why don't you know? He's the King. He's the Lord of the whole wood, but not often here, you understand. Never in my time or my father's time. But the word has reached us that he has come back. He is in Narnia at this moment. He'll settle the White Queen all right. It is he, not you, that will save Mr. Tumnus.”
As Mr. Beaver says — it’s no good your trying to overthrow the White Queen. The White Queen can’t be voted out at elections! But “it is Aslan, not you” that will settle the White Queen. There is one who can deal with evil, who has defeated Satan once-for-all.
If we are to fight back against this evil spiritually agenda, we need him — we need Jesus. It’s the only way.
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Anything less than hanging for someone like this is not biblical justice. 52 years for what he did is nothing.