Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - What Are Demons Actually Like? | New Testament | Mark 5

Episode Date: October 5, 2023

Are demons real? Does the Bible confuse evil forces with mental illness? How do demons work? Should you be afraid? In today's episode, Patrick answers all this and more as he walks through Mark 5. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Join the TMBT community in reading the entire New Testament in one year. Get your FREE reading plan here. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Mark 5

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. A few years back, a Yale-trained researcher and author and professor and practitioner of psychiatry named Dr. Richard Gallagher made quite the splash in the mental health community. He wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post explaining how evidence from over 30 years of psychiatric practice had led him to believe in unseen evil, the demonic. His article begins with a story of a patient he met in 1980 who could tell people their secret weaknesses.

She had never met him, but she described in detail how his mother died painfully from cancer, and this wasn't his last experience like that. It led him to ask a question in the Washington Post, quote, Is it possible to be a sophisticated psychiatrist and believe that evil spirits are, however seldom, assailing humans? Most of my scientific colleagues and friends would say no, but care. careful observation of the evidence presented to me in my career has led me to believe that certain extremely uncommon cases can be explained in no other way. His point is clear. He knows mental illnesses and he has seen things which are not mental illnesses, which are after his careful observation, nothing less than unseen evil. Personally, I identify with Dr. Gallagher's

critics. I've never had supernatural experiences of the demonic. Demons don't figure much, into my daily life or my picture of the world, and I can't help but feel some level of skepticism when I read stories about Jesus casting out demons from people who are having epileptic seizures and multiple personality disorder. I find myself thinking, maybe the Bible is confused, was Jesus mistaking mental illness for demon possession? And yet, Dr. Gallagher makes a compelling point, doesn't he? Shouldn't we at least ask the question? There are realities that he and others have experienced which demand us to at least ask, could unseen evil be real and really influencing our world? And that's a question we need to ask about large scale, seemingly cosmic events,

without at least considering the possibility of unseen evil influencing our world. Speaking personally, I've wondered if the reason that I struggle to believe in an unseen realm where there is unseen evil is because I've grown up in a naturalist culture, where supernaturalism is always suspicious. Not because I've got a good case against unseen evil, but just because that's what people like me believe. And as a result, I think maybe our thinking about unseen evil is atrophied. It's immature. It's not adults because we've totally written the category out of existence. A little story makes my point. A few years back, a nine-year-old named Jack Davis heard about what sounded like the coolest job in the world, possibly the whole galaxy. NASA has

had posted a job for a, quote, planetary protection officer. And Jack promptly wrote a letter explaining that even though he was only nine, he'd like to take the job. He explained that he'd seen almost all of the space and alien movies out there and is fully committed to rewatching Men in Black as many times as he needs to in order to take the planetary protection job. He signed a note, Jack Davis, Guardian of the Galaxy, fourth grade. It's a cute story, but a planetary protection officer doesn't protect our

earth from aliens. They track asteroids that could collide with Earth. When it comes to the demonic, sometimes I feel like we're all nine-year-olds who've seen the movies and TV shows. And I wonder if our picture of the demonic is shaped more by horror movies and stranger things and images from our culture than it is by the Bible. Jesus and Mark's thinking about the demonic isn't based on horror movies or TV shows. It's not childish thinking about the demonic. It's mature thinking, and it's deeply realistic. It cuts straight to the heart of our bigger questions about evil, injustice, what's wrong with the world and how all of that might be fixed. In Mark 5, Jesus gets off a boat and confronts a foreigner living amongst tombs who cannot be physically bound.

Let's just read along in Mark 5. And Jesus asked him, what is your name? He replied, My name is Legion, for we are many. And he begged him earnestly not to send him out of the country. Did you catch the demon's name? Legion, for we are many. What's that mean? Did you catch the demons request? Don't send us out of this country. Wouldn't you expect him to say something like,

don't send us back to hell instead? Why are demons afraid of getting sent out of one particular country? Well, we need to put on our first century sandals for a moment. Mark's original audience would have understood both of these things. They would have known, for example, that Legion was the name of a country. a division of 6,000 soldiers in the Roman military, Rome used legions to occupy foreign countries like Israel. The Roman legions gave a very clear message, rebel against Rome, your occupier,

and die. And believe me, people did die. So what do you think the average Jew hoped his or her Messiah would do? Well, they expected their Messiah to come and to kick the legions of Rome occupying Israel out of the country. Do you see what's happening? and Mark, we have a Jewish Messiah confronting a legion occupying a man. And what was that legion's request? Don't kick us out of the country. Don't end our occupation. What does Jesus do? We'll pick up in verse 11. Now, a great herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside, and they begged him saying, send us into the pigs. Let us enter them. So we gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the pigs. And the herd, numbering about 2,000,

rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the sea. With a single word, their occupation ends. The Legion has a momentary reprieve and a herd of pigs before Jesus deports them from the country altogether. They rush off the side of the cliff. The occupation is over. The Messiah has one point, unseen evil. It has zero. And Jesus hasn't even broken a sweat. But don't miss the irony here. It's thick. On the one hand, this story is exactly. what Jesus' Jewish audience would love. Sending a legion into a herd of unclean pigs who run off a cliff and die? That's awesome.

That's exactly what they want to have happen to Rome. Get the unclean swine out of Israel. But you see that it's a two-edged sword because the man Jesus rescues isn't Jewish at all. He's Greek. And the problem Jesus is dealing with isn't Rome. It's the powers of unseen evil behind Rome. The Jews in Jesus' day had a serious political. problem, Roman occupation, and they wanted a political solution. But the throne of the Roman emperor

is too small for Jesus. Political solutions are too small for Jesus. He didn't come to take sides. He came to take over and to defeat the powers of unseen evil behind every Rome, behind all evil political machinations. We think that the answer to all of the world's ills is to defeat the other tribe, to fight the bad guys, which is usually the other political party. or people who don't share my gender, or don't share my race, or my sexual orientation, or my whatever. But Jesus shows us that the real problem behind every problem, behind Nazi Germany, behind American slavery, behind the Rwandan genocides, the real power behind it is spiritual darkness, sin, and death.

And much to people surprise, he hasn't come to deal with the superficial problems, the ones that we tend to think of as the main problems, but to deal with the root issues. The demons take this Greek man off the field of God's purpose for his life, the same way the powers of darkness take cultures and civilization off the path God would set them on. And so today I want you to pray for yourself. Ask that King Jesus would set you free from the powers of sin, darkness, and death. But likewise, I want you to pray for this world. Not that your enemies would be destroyed, dismantled, or defeated,

but that God's kingdom would destroy the powers of darkness behind those. evils that the people held in its grip would be set free.