The moral law preached to us by Christ is that we must treat others how we wish to be treated. We are to treat other people as if they are ourselves. However, the sad truth of the matter is that many people are mind controlled by Satan, or inhabited, tormented or influenced by demons, which are often the perpetrators behind cruelty. This means at times when we are dealing with a person that is troubling us, it is not only the person who we need to manage, but also their spiritual puppeteer.

I can completely relate to those diseased, possessed, and bleeding in the Gospel of Mark. I may not have had literal leprosy, but I carried the spiritual equivalent — trauma, guilt, shame, and self‑loathing from childhood sexual wounds. I wasn’t physically paralyzed on a mat, but I lived with depression, burnout, and chronic fatigue that made every day feel like dragging a lifeless body through thick mud. I wasn’t possessed by a legion of demons, but I knew what it felt like to be fragmented inside, pulled in many directions by fear, addiction, confusion, and despair.

The short book of Joel is often treated as a prelude to the Book of Revelation — a smaller prophetic storm hinting at a larger one. As explored in the previous essay, Revelation is not a geopolitical forecast but a portrait of the spiritual commotion within a person. Joel belongs to the same tradition of inner apocalypse, but it approaches the human soul from a different angle. Joel is the apocalypse of the wounded inner self. Joel reveals the personal psychology of the spiritual battle — the locusts that slowly eat away at joy, the famine of the inner life, the return to honesty, and the valley where God confronts the internal enemies that have ruled a person’s story. Joel not only prepares you to understand Revelation, Joel exists to help you understand yourself.