Matthew 8:28-32 / Mark 5:1-13 / Luke 8:26-33…
Jesus and the demons…
Because we believe in the authority of the Bible, we cannot look at the vivid demonic encounters as just the imaginations of superstitious people in an ancient society. Jesus dealt with Satan as a real person, and demons spoke to Him. This wasn’t simple minded people who were just using the language of the spiritual battle to identify psychological problems. There are several symptoms of demonic activity indicated: unusual physical strength, fits of rage, self-mutilation, resistance to spiritual things, occult-like awareness, an alteration of voice, and of course, the transference of the demons from the man into the swine.
In this episode, the people tried to control the situation, and could not. Jesus asserts His authority over the demonic realm (Matthew 9:31-33, 12:22-28 / Mark 1:32-34 / Luke 6:17-19, 9:37-42). People can have their whole lives ruined by indulging in the demonic, but Jesus is the answer, He comes to rescue, redeem, and restore (John 10:10 / Acts 10:38).
Mental torment, physical abuse of the body such as cutting and other forms of self-mutilation, murder, suicide, and the like; the thoughts that lead to these things are not from God. However, life can be under the infernal influence without having seen these obvious signs (John 8:44). Wrong attitudes about God, rebellion, sinful activity, false religion, false unity, the exaltation of other things, including mankind, as equal to or above Jesus, these are also demonically driven.
There are always as many demonically informed, inspired, and even indwelt among “polite society” as there are down in the gutters. The power of deception is that you don’t know it. Yet even pigs know they don’t want demons, so stop swimming in the cesspool of Satan (2 Peter 2:22).
3 comments:
In the course of one year we will read
• Every Verse
• Every Passage
• Every Gospel
We welcome your comments. We are not looking to be copying and pasting previous material...we are coming at this with a fresh look, each day, and going with whatever we see. We can send you a copy of the reading schedule (primesoul@hotmail.com). You can check www.voiceofvision.org for each day’s reading, or go to www.voiceofvision.blogspot.com to leave a comment. God bless you as you join in the walk with us...
stop swimming in the cesspool
A nasty but fitting analogy. We must see sin this way in order to know God and understand his character rightly.
stop swimming in the cesspool...of Satan
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