Mark 5:1-13 “Then they came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gadarenes. (2) And when He had come out of the boat, immediately there met Him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit … (6) when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and worshiped Him. (7) And he cried out with a loud voice and said, "What have I to do with You, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I implore You by God that You do not torment me." (8) For He said to him, “Come out of the man, unclean spirit!" (9) Then He asked him, "What is your name?" And he answered, saying, "My name is Legion; for we are many." (10) Also, he begged Him earnestly that He would not send them out of the country. (11) Now a large herd of swine was feeding there near the mountains. (12) So, all the demons begged Him, saying, "Send us to the swine, that we may enter them." (13) And at once Jesus gave them permission. Then the unclean spirits went out and entered the swine (there were about two thousand); and the herd ran violently down the steep place into the sea, and drowned in the sea.”
It is important to note that in all the examples which we have discussed in this series that the visions occurred as the Holy Spirit willed and not as the individual willed. In other words one who has received this gift cannot choose when they will see a vision, the Holy Spirit does. Another point that we need to discuss is the fact that this gift is called discerning of spirits, it is not called discerning of clean spirits. In other words one who has this gift will see both clean and unclean spirits, depending on what the Lord wants to show the individual at the time. The examples we have looked at in this series have been primarily of the Lord Jesus and God’s angels appearing to men. Nevertheless there are also numerous incidents recorded in scripture of demonic spirits being encountered through the operation of this gift. The above quoted passage of scripture is an example of one such encounter. The context of this account is that this particular man had become demon possessed (Mathew 8:28). When one is demon possessed the demon is able to speak through the individual using the person’s voice. And so, we see in this incident that Jesus spoke to the demon and not to the man, and that the demon spoke to our Lord, using the man’s voice. Everyone present on that occasion heard this conversation taking place, because Jesus and the demon were speaking to each other in the natural. In other words the Lord was not operating in the gift of discerning of spirits at this stage. But then something else happened, for the scripture tells us that all the demons begged Him saying, "Send us to the swine, that we may enter them." No one else heard all the demons begging the Lord, only Jesus did, and the reason for that was because the rest of the demons were not speaking in this realm, for they were speaking in the spirit realm. And so it was at this point that our Lord began operating in the gift of the discerning of spirits, and He was able to hear what the demons were saying. Another example of seeing unclean spirits with this gift is when our Lord Jesus had the encounter with Satan in the wilderness (Matthew 4:3-11).
Michael E.B. Maher
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