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.