Matthew 8:14-17
14 When Jesus came into Peter’s house, he saw Peter’s mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever. 15 He touched her hand and the fever left her, and she got up and began to wait on him.
16 When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to him, and he drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick. 17 This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah:
“He took up our infirmities
and bore our diseases.”
and bore our diseases.”
Addressing why demons seemed so common back then, http://www.net-burst.net/demons/demonic.htm says:
ReplyDeleteWould you recognize the demonic if you saw it? “Of course I would!” we each retort, “Who could miss “Legion” or the boy that demons kept throwing into the fire or water? And what about all those evil spirits that manifested when Jesus and the apostles drew near?”
Keep reading and, despite it seeming impossible, you’re likely to reach the staggering conclusion that most Christians today – myself included, although I’m hoping to improve – wouldn’t recognize the demonic if it literally bit them.
To understand whether there are less demons in Twenty First Century western civilization, we need first to consider if we should expect the biblical record to detail average examples or bypass the usual to feature spectacular instances of demonic activity.
John 20:30-31 Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God . . .
To say nothing of the expense of copying Scripture by hand with painstaking accuracy, the cost of writing materials in the First Century was so exorbitant that it would take the average person very many years of sacrificial saving to scrounge enough money for just the paper (papyrus) for one gospel (Source). Add to this the fact that very many copies of the gospels and Acts were to be made, and it is hardly surprising that, relative to the immensity of Jesus’ ministry, they were kept brief. In the light of that brevity and of our need to know that Jesus can handle extreme cases . . .
The gospels were written not so that we would know about demons or sickness but so that we would know that Jesus is the Son of God.
scholars insisting that many cases of Bible leprosy were physically much milder than most of us imagine. Many cases were not what modern medical science has chosen to call leprosy. The Bible refers, however, to diseases dreaded not so much for their medical consequences as for their horrific social and religious consequences.
Just as we can get an exaggerated view of the physical symptoms of biblical leprosy, so we could get an exaggerated view of the symptoms of demonic oppression.
The words “demon possessed” suggests a crazed, evil, uncontrollable beast of a person, but there is no such expression as “demon possessed” in the original text of the Bible. It is not two words – one meaning demon and the other meaning possessed – but a single word daimonizomai derived from the word demon (daimon). “Demonized” is a more literal translation. It might be better to think of someone being victimized or harassed by a demon, rather than “possessed”.
All of the above lines of biblical evidence point to the conclusion that, as distinct from the cases Scripture chose to highlight, the effect of having just one minor demon might be so small as to be hard to detect.
Jesus and the apostles acted as searchlights exposing demons lurking in the shadows of people’s lives. Consequently, the demons yelped and blew their cover in a way that even inexperienced observers could recognize as demonic. One could not expect such a reaction, however, when the only Christians present have little practical awareness of their authority over demons.
(there's actually a lot more things the article discusses on this topic)
My 2 cents:
ReplyDeleteI don't know the answer to why there were so many demon "possessions" back in Jesus day. I agree that there is as much demon activity these days as there was back then. What I don't know is what form that takes. I think it is possible that the reporters of the Gospels identified any mental illness or aberration as demon possession, not knowing the science or psychology behind it. On the other hand, mental issues could all be demon related (I don't really believe that, but I'm throwing it out there as a possibility).
My opinion is that there is as much of what they called demon "possession" now as there was back then. We just call it something else these days. I don't know whether we are being more accurate or less accurate.
My 2 cents:
ReplyDelete"He took up our infirmities and bore our diseases." Matthew said that this fulfilled this activity of Jesus. I think Matthew was giving us more drash (a common Jewish teaching method teaching a lesson with scripture).
The scripture in Isaiah 53 is pretty clearly about Jesus death and His taking away our sins. But once again, prophecies can be about multiple things. At the same time, it seems Matthew uses a lot of Old Testament scripture in novel ways - which can be pretty disturbing to modern day Christians.