Question of the week: “I have a question about 1 Samuel 18:10, where ‘an evil spirit from God came forcefully on Saul.’ Why would God send an evil spirit? It doesn’t seem to me that humans need any help being evil. Can you shed some light on this for me?”
My answer: It was through his rebellion against God that King Saul opened himself up to demonic influence and invasion. While all the demons are under God’s control, God allows demons to inflict humans who of their own free will have chosen a reprobate path. If one reads all of 1 Samuel 16–19, one notes that in allowing the evil spirit to do what it does, God uses the spirit’s actions and words to accomplish his ultimate good purposes.
In a 2006 lecture at Emmanuel College, Cambridge,1 Dr. Graeme Finlay, an immunologist, cancer biologist, and Christian, made some remarkable observations about the genetic...
