February 2
“So the demons begged him, saying,
‘If you cast us out, permit us to go away
into the herd of swine.’
And he said to them, ‘Go.’
So when they had come out,
they went into the herd of swine.
And suddenly the whole herd of swine
ran violently down the steep place into the sea,
and perished in the water.”
Matthew 8:28
The world will snicker at you if you speak about demons. “C’mon, we’re not in the dark ages anymore!” Doctors, psychiatrists, counselors, will put more “sophisticated” labels on anything that’s actually demonic. People have seizures, not demons, they’ll say. They’re schizophrenic, not demonized. Anything but demonized. However, in the Gospels we even see people being set free from spirits that caused deafness (Mark 9:25-27). A doctor would laugh at that.
If you believe the Scriptures, don’t be ashamed to see things as they really are. This passage in the Scriptures shows Jesus casting DEMONS out of a man, and going on to cast demons out of many others. The demons spoke. Seizures don’t speak, demons speak. They conversed with Jesus until he cast them out. Demons are real.
The last verse in this passage has always stymied me:
vs 34:
“And behold, the whole city came out to meet Jesus,
and when they saw him, they begged him
to depart from their region.”
They were so “spooked” by what he did that they actually asked him to leave the area! Incredible! Here was a mad man who was suddenly made whole, yet the people asked Jesus to leave.
What would you do? If you saw Jesus ministering to someone and casting a demon out of a person who was made well as a result, would you be so spooked that you’d ask Jesus to leave? Or would you realize that he has the power to set people free from something that held them in bondage all their lives?
