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.”
When Jesus cast demons out of people, not always did the demons leave straight away. In the account quoted above, if we examine the sequence of events as they unfolded we can see that it took the Lord a bit of time to cast these demons out. The account started when the demon possessed man ran up to Jesus to worship Him. The reason he did that was because the demon recognized Jesus for who He was, for as we have already mentioned, after our Lord was baptized with the Holy Spirit all demons could then recognize Him for who He was. And so it was when the demon began to worship Jesus that our Lord then commanded the demon to come out of the man. But even though our Lord had commanded the demon to come out of the man the demon did not leave, but instead spoke back to the Lord, for the scripture tells us that the demon then 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.” It was at this stage that our Lord then asked the demon what his name was, and the demon gave his name as Legion. In this account we read that the demon then asked the Lord not to send him out of the country. Luke’s account of this incident gives us a bit more insight into what the demon actually said, for he tells us that the demon begged not to be cast into the Abyss (Luke 8:31). Up until this point the demon, whose name was Legion, had been using the man’s voice to speak to Jesus, for it was that demon that had possessed the man and therefore had control of the man’s voice. And so all the people present on that occasion heard the discourse that took place between the Lord Jesus and the demon. Then we see something else take place, which took place in the realm of the spirit, for the bible teaches us that all the demons then began to beg Jesus to let them go into the swine. And so it was only Jesus that could hear the approximately two thousand demons begging Him at this stage. Jesus then gave them permission and they came out of the man. The point that I wanted to make from this account is that it took our Lord a bit of time to get this man delivered. And so if there were instances where it took our Lord a bit longer to get people healed and delivered, then we can expect that there will be times when it will also take us some time to get people healed and delivered. The key is to be led by the Spirit when laying hands on people, and also follow after the examples given to us in scripture such as the one we have just read. As an aside, I need to mention that it is completely unscriptural to enter into conversations with demons when one casts them out, for we see on numerous occasions that the Lord Jesus would not allow the demons to speak when He cast them out (Mark 1:34). So why did Jesus seemingly enter into dialogue with the demon on this occasion? When the demon did not come out straightaway Jesus recognised that He was dealing with more than one demon, and so He commanded the demon to reveal his name. The demon’s reply was that his name was Legion, “for we are many”. Based on the demon’s reply Jesus knew that Legion had authority over all the other demons dwelling in the man, and He therefore did not need to cast each demon out separately. And so our Lord could then command Legion and all of “his demons” to leave the man, which is what then transpired. When an individual has more than one demon however, not always will there be a dominant demon that the others fall under, for there will be occasions when several demons have joint access to the individual and in those instances each demon will have to be cast out separately. You will recall the account when our Lord taught us that an individual had eight demons inside of them and that even though several of them were more wicked that the others there was no set hierarchy among them (Luke 11:26). Although the above account is the only example we have of our Lord casting out multiple demons from an individual, there were other occasions when Jesus cast out more than one demon from an individual. For example the scripture teaches us that He cast seven demons out of Mary Magdalene (Luke 8:2). So how did Luke know that Jesus had cast seven demons out of Mary? He knew that because either Jesus made each one reveal themselves by name so that He could cast each one out, or if, as in the case of Legion, a dominant demon had possession of Mary and then revealed to Jesus how many demons were dwelling in her at the time.
Michael E.B. Maher
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