DID JOHN LENNON REALLY DIE ON DECEMBER 8, THE FEAST OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION?

Yes, I know John Lennon was murdered on December 8th, 1980 when he was only 40. And that assassin Mark David Chapman riddled Lennon's emaciated body with bullets outside the musician's apartment in New York City and that Lennon was pronounced dead at 11:15 pm. But bear with me, my point rests on the time his death occurred in Europe, place of Lennon's birth and where some of us believe he made his pact with the devil on December 9th, 1960. 

My main source for believing Lennon made a deal with the evil one is the controversial, warts-and-all biography, The Lives of Lennon penned by Albert Goldman who makes a very good case for Lennon being so famished for fame that he sold his soul in exchange for 20 years of stardom when he was 20. Then I pored over Joseph Niezgoda's The Lennon Prophecy and he makes a compelling argument that Lennon did make such a deal and that the devil came calling exactly two decades to the day Lennon had pledged his soul, December 9, 1980. 

Our exorcists tell us that the demons are strictly legalistic and there is not a second of clemency for those who have sought satanic subjugation for a certain period of time. Father Chad Ripperger holds that Lennon sold his soul, but I add that the true date of Lennon's demise was December 9th, and that this deserves more intense scrutiny because it speaks to the nature of how such a contract with the prince of darkness ends. 

Such a rich discussion will also help distance the tragedy of Lennon's passing (and perhaps the fate of his eternal soul) from the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. If all Goldman and Niezgoda report is true, Lennon did not die because it was the day dedicated to celebration of Our Lady's conception in the womb of her mother, Ann, but because his time was up, the 20 years of earthy renown had been granted, and so swiftly his soul was snatched. 

I remember being a very small child when Goldman's incendiary and lurid biography came out, and throughout my life I've witnessed the shock and denial that has met his findings, how on earth could Lennon - who informed so many - be at best as snarly as a bag of wild cats, and at worst a demoniac?

Goldman was accused of being deliberately sensational so as to drive up book sales, he was called mean-spirited because he portrayed the deeply tormented and tortured sides of Lennon's personality and those who did not look deeply into his sources were quick to say he fictionalized much of his book's content. 

As a biographer myself, I have to disagree with these cavils. Had Goldman wanted to ensure more royalties, he'd have written a love letter to Lennon, a panegyric to satisfy the most on-fire fans. His portrait of Lennon as intrinsically troubled is accurate, anything else would have been fatuous flattery, and he got hundreds of people on the record which rather quashes the claim that he fabricated his claims. 

But perhaps most concerning of all is that those who protest too much about Goldman's book are often the ones who hotly deny the devil exists, evidencing they are victims of the evil one's greatest trick. I see, however, God's mercy here because were more people to believe that such a Faustian pact can be made, they would be prone to make them all the more readily, a la Lennon.

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The first photo of Lennon was executed by Bob Gruen, and is in the public domain.