The Most Disturbing Demons Jesus Confronted In The Bible
Possession, hauntings, and temptations occur throughout the Bible, and among the most prominent of the exorcists is Jesus himself. Here are some of his most fleshed-out encounters with demons and unclean spirits.
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00:00Possession, hauntings, and temptations occur throughout the Bible, and among the most prominent
00:05of the exorcists is Jesus himself. Here are some of his most fleshed-out encounters with
00:09demons and unclean spirits.
00:12Mark 1 and Luke 4 both tell the story of how, when Jesus came to Galilee, he set himself
00:16up in the synagogue of the town of Capernaum. The passages relate that a man came forward
00:20to confront him. This man was possessed by what Mark refers to only as an unclean spirit.
00:26Luke calls it both a demon and a spirit. The demon asks Jesus,
00:30"'What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you
00:34are, the Holy One of God.'"
00:36Jesus commanded the spirit to come out of the man and leave him be. In Mark, the demon
00:40cast down his mortal vessel and fled with a shriek. In Luke, the demon leaves silently.
00:45But both Gospels agree that the demon did the man no harm. This display of power over
00:50spirits only enhanced Jesus' reputation among the people, and the story quickly spread throughout
00:54Galilee.
00:55"'Praise be the Lord.'"
00:58One of the most elaborate stories of demonic possession and exorcism in the New Testament
01:01appears in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In all three accounts, the story says
01:06that, after taking a boat to cross a lake, Jesus found himself in a region that has been
01:09translated as the Gadarenes and the Gerasenes. Matthew describes the scene as two men possessed
01:14by demons emerging from a tomb. The spirits within them were so violent that they barred
01:19all from crossing. For the record, in Mark and Luke, there was only one man — the same
01:23half-crossing incident.
01:24"'What's your name?'
01:27"'Belial, spawn of Oriax, fifth knight of legion.'"
01:34His fellow villagers tried to keep him in chains, but the demon broke the chains, carried
01:38the man into the tombs, and, in Mark, cut him on the stones. In Mark, when Jesus asked
01:43the demon its name, it replied,
01:44"'Legion, for we are many.'"
01:46In Mark and Luke, the legions begged Jesus not to torture them, and in Luke, they expressed
01:51their fear of the eternal abyss. Matthew presents the demons as more contemptuous and defiant,
01:56but all the Gospels agree that when they spotted a nearby herd of pigs, the demons asked Jesus
02:00to let them possess the swine, and Jesus commanded them to go henceforth.
02:04"'Out! Out of him!'
02:06The possessed herd then stampeded into the lake and drowned. The incident so terrified
02:11the people that they asked Jesus to leave. He did, but in Mark and Luke, he left behind
02:15the cured man to spread word of the Lord's power.
02:18Another story of demonic possession described in Matthew, Mark, and Luke is the incident
02:22to the boy.
02:23In all three Gospels, after the Transfiguration, Jesus, Peter, James, and John went to reunite
02:27with the other disciples. They found them with a large, agitated crowd. There, a father
02:32begged Jesus to save his son. The boy was possessed by a demon that gave the child seizures,
02:37compelled him to scream and foam at the mouth, and forced him to walk into fire and water
02:41in an effort to kill him. In Mark, the most detailed of the three accounts, the demon
02:45is said to have tormented the boy since early childhood.
02:49Jesus had the boy brought before him, and lo and behold, he banished the spirit from
02:52the boy, never to return. In Mark, when the disciples asked why they had failed to banish
02:56the demon, Jesus replied,
02:57"'This kind can come out only by prayer.'"
03:00He goes into greater detail in Matthew, adding that,
03:03"'If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, Move from
03:07here to there, and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.'"
03:11The books of Matthew and Mark tell the story of a plight of a Canaanite woman who sought
03:14out Jesus and begged for help. The woman's daughter was possessed by a demon, though
03:18neither Mark nor Matthew gives much detail as to what the demon was doing to the girl.
03:23Basically, it's the exorcist, 2,000 years early.
03:25In Matthew, Jesus' disciples urged him to send the woman away, and Jesus told her,
03:29"'I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.' But the woman persisted. Jesus answered her
03:34second plea by telling her,
03:36"'It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to the dogs.'"
03:39In other words, the Gentiles were the dogs left at the feet of the Israelites. But the
03:43woman kept on, saying,
03:44"'Yes, it is, Lord. Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table.'"
03:49In other words, even the lowest is entitled to some measure of sustenance from the Lord.
03:53Hearing this, Jesus said,
03:54"'Woman, you have great faith. Your request is granted.' When she returned home, she found
03:59her daughter healed."
04:01Greatest of all the demons and spirits that Jesus confronts in the Bible is, of course,
04:04the devil himself. But the confrontation isn't the epic clash you might expect. The 40-day
04:10Temptation of Christ in the Wilderness doesn't make it into John, but it does appear in the
04:13other three Gospels. Once again, however, they differ from Mark, which treats the Temptation
04:17as an almost perfunctory moment described in two sentences.
04:20Are you one of those preachers, looking for something here in the desert that you can't
04:25find anywhere else?
04:27Luke and Matthew both list the three temptations Satan put to Jesus, but in different order
04:31— to make bread from stone, cast himself from the highest point of the temple to prove
04:35his divinity, and to inherit power over all the kingdoms of the world if Jesus would worship
04:39Satan.
04:40Now you can have what you want. Any country you want. All of them.
04:48But the point of the story is that Jesus rejected Satan's temptations and affirmed faith in
04:52God. Satan then left him, and in Matthew, angels attended Jesus before he left the wilderness
04:56to return to civilization and begin his ministry.