THE DEMONS AND CHRIST
“Our wrestling is not
against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, the powers, against
the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in
the heavenly places.” Eph.
6: 12.
“During my thirty-five years’ connection with
Spiritualism,” says Dr. J.
M. Peebles (Jesus, Man, Medium,
Martyr, p. 30.) “I have met fully three
thousand mediums; and not so much as one intelligent spirit has denied the existence of Jesus Christ.” Nothing could be imagined more critical
of the person and mission of our Lord, nothing more dangerously searching, than
His encounter with another world when He came into violent collision with the
realm of spirit beings. As a matter
of fact our Lord is never more wonderful, never more the absolute master, than
when He stands on the threshold of Hell.
The
first miracle recorded by both Mark and Luke is Christ’s encounter with a
spirit. The mere presence of Christ
rouses Hell, and throws the other world into a tumult before He has uttered a
word. “And immediately”
- as soon as Jesus had entered the synagogue - “there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit” (Mark 1: 23). It is
very suggestive that Christ’s whole encounter with Hell was confined to
spirits on men. Apart from Satan in the wilderness,
He never met them separately: as with us, so with Him - Hell is behind
men. “Possession is a caricature of inspiration. The latter, attaching itself to the moral
essence of a man, confirms him for ever in the possession of his true self; the
former, while profoundly opposed to the nature of the subject, takes advantage
of its state of morbid passivity, and leads to the forfeiture of personality. The one is the highest work of God; the
other, of the devil” (Godet).
The spirit in
[* The Greek word translated ‘devil’ is applied to
no one in Scripture except Satan (Matt. 4: 1) and Judas (John 6: 70).]
But the spontaneous outburst of this spirit goes much
further in a tragedy of revelation.
“Art thou come to destroy us?” or as the Gadarean spirit puts it - “Art thou come hither to torment us before the time?”
(Matt. 8: 29). Negatively, how tragic a
revelation! They do not ask, Art
thou come to save us? but, “Art thou come to destroy us?” With the First Advent, and all its grace and salvation, they have nothing to
do: in the Second Advent, and the
judgment of all worlds, they know that
they are profoundly involved.
For look at what they say.
These spirits expect torment: they know that the date of it is fixed,
though they themselves are ignorant of the date: they judge, and rightly, that
the First Advent is not the date - it was (as they say) “before the time”: they have not a shadow
of doubt that the Lord Jesus is the Judge.
Hell thus gives a flawless testimony to Hell. So far from imagining that Christ empties
Hell, or whitens Hell or annihilates Hell, “they
entreated him that he would not command them to depart into the abyss” (Luke 8: 31), that deep underworld
where already, in its first flames, is “the
everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt. 25: 41). “The demons also believe, and SHUDDER” (Jas. 2: 19).
But the spontaneous outburst of the demon world on
meeting Christ is yet to be seen at its summit. These unseen powers scanned millions of
faces for thousands of years: their information, pooled, ranges over all
continents and oceans: their knowledge also embraces the knowledge of another
world [or ‘age’] - what then have they to say of Christ? “Jesus I know”
cried the demon in
[*
“Great leaders of thought, scientists,
politicians, thinkers of many types, and social reformers and revolutionaries
of various nationalities, have merged their thoughts and desires in a common
urge to build up, from the very foundations, a new world, a group of nations
who will become the inspiration for a harassed physical world, and an object lesson
for all to see and study” (I.
M. Everett Keeble). “This
sheds amazing light on Scriptures which assert Satan’s power to deceive
the nations (Rev. 20: 8), blinding their eyes as
‘the god of this age’ (2 Cor. 4: 4), and
imposing a mental pressure on whole communities; on demons, emanating from
Hell’s Trinity, mustering the peoples against God (Rev. 16: 14), even though
invisible; and on a single spirit entrapping an entire nation ( 1 Kings 22: 22).” - D. M. Panton.]
But
now we reach the actual
collision. Exorcism can be very dangerous. Seven men who attempted to expel one demon, when leapt upon and
mastered by the demoniac “fled out of that house naked and wounded” (Acts 19: 16) yet our Lord, confronting the maniacal
fury of a legion of demons - a
Roman ‘legion’ numbered some two
thousand, and the spirits that left the Gadarean must have been some such
number for they entered into two
thousand swine - was never even assaulted: one demon routs seven men; yet two
thousand demons dare not touch one Christ.
And more than that: they always instantly obey Him; and when He said
even to Satan, the Prince of Hell, “Get thee
behind me,” he does. In the face of the
maniacal fury of the Gadarean demoniac, which snapped steel like thread, and
made these mountain roads impassable, “He cast
out the spirits with a word”
(Matt. 8: 16). In one of Blumhardt’s exorcisms we read:- “A fearful outcry was heard by hundreds of people penetrating
to a great distance, as the demon yelled, ‘Jesus is victor!’ and
departed.” This is
what so impressed the Jews. “They were all amazed, insomuch that they questioned among
themselves, saying, What is this? with authority he commandeth even the unclean
spirits, and they obey him” (Mark 1: 27)
So now it becomes certain that something altogether
unprecedented, a new epoch of transcendent power, must have arrived with
Christ. Nothing is more startling
than the homage paid to the Lord by the unseen world; a homage for which He
never asked, and which, when given, He refused; but which the whole demon world
spontaneously and invariably gave. Christ, by their own admission, can send
them where He will: He can command the Abyss to receive whom He will: He can
even control a Spirit’s future actions - “enter no more into
him” (Mark 9: 25). With an authority which brooked no
contradiction, and a power that met no resistance, Jesus speaks; no protest is
heard, no refusal allowed, and even the direction of the spirits’
departure (Luke 8: 31) is under His command;
and more astounding still, He gave others authority to cast out spirits
(Matt. 10: 1), with not one angel-being
excepted (Luke 9: 1), and it worked. But such an utterly unprecedented
dominion over the unseen world is an entirely new revelation; and our Lord
Himself bases an appeal upon the fact.
“If I, by the finger of God”
- He alone can use the finger of God who is God - “cast out demons, THEN
THE
Finally,
perhaps the most wonderfully conclusive point in revealing Christ still
remains. “He suffered not the demons to speak because they knew him” (Mark 1: 34). Testimony, even if it be true, is
worthless from lying lips. Premature
testimony by Hell might have been planned so as to involve Christ in complicity
with Hell*: yet the demons obeyed, and
were silent. How divine! Only now, long after the Lord has won,
alone, the victory of righteousness, in face of a silent Hell, the testimony of
the demon world has become of extraordinary and convincing interest. The whole heart of their scheme for two
thousand years is to deny the Incarnation; yet when off guard, and when face to
face with Christ, their whole speech and conduct reveal nothing but the
Incarnation of God.
[* This very charge was brought against our Lord (Luke 11: 15), and rebutted on the perfectly
adequate ground that while an exorcism
may be staged, and sometimes is, habitual exorcism - and all demons fled
from Christ - can only come from an enemy of Hell.]
For
the two all-penetrating search-lights which expose the heart of Hell, combined,
express the Incarnation. The
unveiling of a spirit which has fallen on a man is his saying, not saying,
“Jesus is
JEHOVAH” (1 Cor. 12: 3);
and the unveiling of an angel who may approach us openly is his confessing, or
not confessing, that “Jesus Christ is come in THE FLESH” (1 John 4: 2). That is, the Incarnation - God manifest in the flesh - is the
plowshare that cleaves asunder, that splits apart, all inhabitants of all
worlds, dividing the saved from the lost, and Heaven from Hell.
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