Author’s note: Jesus claimed that all authority in heaven and on earth was given to him (Matthew 28:18-20). Although his authority blazes from every text of the Gospels, perhaps his most impressive displays of authority happened when he would confront a demon possessing and tormenting a human. In the Gospels, no account of demon possession was more hopeless than the case of the “legion” of demons inhabiting a man living in the Gentile region of the Gerasenes. In what follows, I will recount the story imaginatively, based on a close study of the details in the Gospel account in Mark 5:1-20, as well as Matthew 8:28-34 and Luke 8:26-39.
It’s possible that some weeks may have passed from the first troubling signs to the last undeniable signs that led to his banishment.
Family and friends offered sympathy and encouragement when episodes occurred, hoping each would be the last. Instead, whatever help they offered, or resistance Legion initially mounted against the invading power, thoughtful minds noted that each attack seemed loaded with greater menace that lasted longer than previously. When each attack passed, it consequently left Legion in greater turmoil, less aware of himself, less able to resist when sooner re-captured by the frightening, invisible power.
When attacks came, his friends bound him with rope. As fits of rage increased, chains replaced rope, alarming everyone. Especially since, while he at first appreciated their efforts and welcomed their solicitude, he grew ominously resistant, hateful and sarcastic to every kindness.
When forced to choose between community safety and the man’s worsening condition, they gathered stones in white-knuckled fists, or armed themselves with clubs held aloft and ordered him “Out!” And he, suddenly alarmed by their concerted mayhem, gave ground before their mob mentality and fled as they drove him away.
His Degeneration
He turned from village life to the wilds, where he could be alone and self-willed. However, the exhilaration of being with nature lasted only briefly. For, while the community couldn’t be safe with him among them, he couldn’t prosper in isolation. Without their stabilizing influence, chaos followed. As demonic leverage, passions, and wickedness grew in him, he fell into hopeless depravity, possessed by cruel, harsh, vindictive others.
Broken by the ceaseless tide of suggestion and insinuation, Legion collapsed, lost to hope of recovery. Failing to torment others, he brutally turned on himself. Without knowing or realizing it, he dutifully obeyed the presence he hated but couldn’t withstand.
As a symbol of his new state, he disrobed—at a time when society valued covering every part of the body. He stalked the tombs, the unclean man living among unclean corpses and bones. He became the outcast from a community in the manner of lepers or dangerously mentally-ill mortals. There he existed, possessed by demons too many to count or control; filthy from head to foot, hair matting, teeth decaying, fingernails and toenails curling, worn into jagged shards by rubbing against rocks; stalking mountains, plains and hillside tombs; attacking other unfortunates banished to the periphery of society.
Erratic behavior increased. He alternately sat, then instantly rose and raced forward or backward with equal alacrity. While sitting passively, he hardly breathed. Suddenly in motion, he stormed ahead, laughing hideously, as the spirits within vocalized.
Legion in the Bible: “While sitting passively, he hardly breathed. Suddenly in motion, he stormed ahead, laughing hideously, as the spirits within vocalized.”
When in motion, he couldn’t direct his steps. As he walked, or shuffled, or staggered, he hurled himself forward, arms flailing. Or, suddenly suicidal, he put his head down and rammed into bushes, trees, and tombs, knocking himself unconscious—awakening in unspeakable pain, which he assuaged in wild, cackling despair and hideous moans. In wild satisfaction, he gathered stones and slashed at arms and legs until blood oozed, then thirstily sucked at the gore.
On cue, each evening at sunset, or sometimes in the dead of night, his frightful screams awakened sleepers in the village beyond, disturbing and ending their rest. With utter abandon, he wailed his defiance, howled into the empty sky and bayed at the moon, filling their ears with blood-curdling screams. He became the possession of other beings he couldn’t shake, and finally lost his desire to try.
Legion’s Initial Response to Jesus
He remained on the plateau above the lake that evening . . . when the first boat full of men approached his hill country. Standing near the cliff face, his fevered eyes surveyed the seashore, watching spastically as passengers disembarked. He saw two men jump from the lead craft, rope in hand, to the narrow beach margin, where they secured the boat to a tangle of bushes. Others followed, carrying lanterns and torches and baskets piled with clothing and provisions. Other boats landed and disgorged their passengers.
Nothing interested him—until—as he wearied of the scene and began a turn to sights among the tombs, askance he glimpsed another man, another someone. The last man exiting the boat, the last man ashore, the only one of dozens he really saw! Noticed! Feared!
Legion’s eyes instantly flew into his head. He tore at his face, pulled at his hair, and threw himself so heavily on the ground that air burst from his lungs in a shriek so baleful it brought upward everyone’s face below.
Screaming, he leaped up, groaning and gesticulating, his arms and legs throwing punches and kicks, his voice haunted with dread. Motoring forward, the naked figure ran along the crest until he found the path to the beach—and, to the consternation of all but One below, stood and bellowed guttural threats and maledictions. Out of the gloaming he came, like something from empty graves, from darkest nights, from deepest space.
Legion in the Bible: “Screaming, he leaped up, groaning and gesticulating, his arms and legs throwing punches and kicks, his voice haunted with dread.”
He seemed sure to hurl himself downwards, when he paused and, as quickly, bolted up and away into the hills . . . secreting himself in the tombs from that Man he despised and feared in equal measure—the hated face in whom lived the ancient, hideous, holy presence he had long before betrayed and since abjured, but could never forget.
While racing into the tombs, the miserable refugee from reality glanced furtively behind every few steps to see if the hated Man below crested the ridge—hoping he wouldn’t, fearing he would. Taking one last look before finding security among the dead, the demoniac saw His head behind half a dozen more rising in succession from the path below.
His head. His face. His nature. While Legion’s egotism wanted to flee, subservience to that Man compelled a reluctant retreat to the cliff.
Back to the well-worn path downward he rushed, entered, and plummeted to confront that Man and have it out with him once-for-all.
Below him two hundred yards, the disciples looked up and feared the worst. The man rushed at them, every step laced with sacrilege, each word hideously loud, every shrieked sentence darkened with ever-filthy verbiage until he seemed to shout dozens of blasphemies in dozens of equally vile languages at once.
They hid behind Jesus, their heads popping out on each side, watching, fearing, as God’s point Man confronted the wild fury hurtling like arrows at a bullseye.
“They hid behind Jesus, their heads popping out on each side, watching, fearing, as God’s point Man confronted the wild fury hurtling like arrows at a bullseye.”
Standing with the disciples, with Legion at a distance, but closing in wild strides, Jesus heard the shouted violent sounds and appeals the disciples missed by hearing only the expletives. The sounds telegraphed the presence of demons coming to confront, but ultimately confess, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? Swear to God that you won’t torture me” (Mark 5:7).
Hearing those words, Jesus led his fear-filled men and followers toward the mayhem flying ever closer; their terror ballooning since the closer the maniac came, the louder he screamed. Jesus meanwhile advanced, right arm lifted, right index finger pointing at the trouble, shouting in exorcism, “Come out of this man, you evil spirit!” (Mark 5:8).
A stalemate seemed unavoidable. Jesus wouldn’t stop ordering their exit, the demons wouldn’t go. A certain physical collision between demoniac and the now statue-still Man-God seemed certain.
However, as the distance between Legion and Jesus diminished, the difference in the two burgeoned. Until, at 25 yards, the demons whimpered an appeal sputtering for mercy, contrasted with Christ’s steady, majestic, insistent refusal to understand their misery—his unequivocal authority remaining undisputed.
Legion in the Bible: “Jesus wouldn’t stop ordering their exit, the demons wouldn’t go.”
There the man began to physically wilt under the weight of Christ’s authority. His strength failing, he began to stumble forward, his rage gone, his voice a whisper. He staggered to within five yards of Jesus and fell to the ground, then, clawed and crawled his way to Christ’s feet and collapsed, the demons within murmuring for mercy they had never shown and wanted never to admit. And Legion, poor wretch, still under the influence of their power, continued mouthing words like mercy, torment, judgment, help.
Above him stood the majestic Preacher, as exhilarated by the spiritual battle as Legion had been exhausted.
Christ’s Appeal to Legion
To expedite Legion’s return to the person he had once been, Jesus knelt and rolled the human wreck on his back, called for a lantern, then hovered over him like the Holy Spirit over the formless, empty deep (Genesis 1:2), with the same purpose: to create new life from existing chaos.
Hearing Legion’s returning voice muttering repeatedly, “Swear to God…swear to God….” Jesus interposed his own appeal, calmly, quietly, “What is your name?” Only to see the man’s eyes fly open, flashing defiance, darting wild glances at everyone, at no one, at everything, at nothing.
Undaunted, Jesus repeated the question, gently but firmly, his summons confident that Satan couldn’t bury Legion’s personhood in mental canyons so deep and steep Jesus couldn’t reach there and snatch it to individuality.
Until that occurred, Jesus wanted the man aware of the possibility, by calling Legion to divorce himself from demons who brutalized him, to personal mental, emotional, spiritual and physical consciousness apart from them. At last, the prone victim belied the exhaustion he had evinced moments before. He sat upright, eyes full of fright and fight, voice rising, terrifying everyone but Jesus, who became the object of Legion’s attention. “Name, sir?” he shouted at the Savior, his voice a tangle of respect for him and alliance with demons. “Name, sir,” he bellowed, “I can’t tell you my name, for we are a mob—and every one of us is evil!”
Legion in the Bible: “He sat upright, eyes full of fright and fight, voice rising, terrifying everyone but Jesus.”
The verbal explosion flashed shivers up and down the disciples. They instinctively recoiled, expecting any instant to see the sitting maniac leap into the vertical terror of every demon he had been, terrorizing even himself.
Jesus, however, remained greater than any dark power contesting him. He continued probing Legion’s mind with specifics: “No, no, not what is their name, what is your name,” punctuating your, by touching his chest with his index finger, stirring his personhood awake from its lethargy, to trim and thin and finally remove the baggage of impenetrable contradictions, confusions, and corruptions Satan had grown in his mind.
Legion’s Intermediate Response to Jesus
In his deeply disturbed state, Legion responded with a conflicted response when first hearing Jesus speak.
But when in the final instant he asked Jesus not to send the demons away, he hesitated . . . pondered . . . interrogated himself . . . looked uncertain. Then, remembering the positive presence of the benevolent, wholesome Christ, he cast a glance at Him that became a stare, then a fixed gaze imploring his help. Suddenly Legion began murmuring aloud to himself, to Jesus, to all who stood by, “Wait . . . that’s not what I want.” This was the first time personality had surfaced since his ordeal had begun long before. And when he cast a longing look at Jesus, and saw him smile and wink, Legion for the first in a long time, felt sure of himself.
“I don’t want them to stay at all,” he murmured. “I want them all to go!”
That awareness as quickly helped him see his new position. Once without an understanding of his actions, he now accepted responsibility. As Jesus released him from the hold of demons, he freed him to face and accept the demands of his new life.
Over a few minutes’ time, freedom dawned on Legion like a sunrise and expanded with each second. Following that in rapid order came a strengthening grip on himself. The demons remained inside him, for Jesus had not yet exorcised them. But they had become helpless invaders, like Romans before Hannibal’s genius at Cannae.
Legion in the Bible: “Freedom dawned on Legion like a sunrise and expanded with each second.”
Jesus had reached the person inside the mob. He stimulated the man’s mind to think clearly. He increased his ability to be independent. As Legion continued gazing at Jesus, the Master’s overwhelming grace incited his reason and calmed his emotions until both cleared. His eyes unclouded until they focused; his brain thought rationally until he regained his reason.
The Demons’ Appeal to Jesus
Like an army panicked, driven headlong by irresistible opposition, the demons inside the man fled mentally, going nowhere in desperation, while accusing and damning each other for a fault each shared. The One they knew could, had delivered their victim. He had seen inside a tormented man to a person and recalled him to self-awareness. That left the demons forlorn and helpless.
The farther Jesus released the man to individuality, the louder came howls of protest from satanic forces besieging him. They groveled before Jesus, moaning, whining, shouting, yipping their misery, the awesome One before them implacably refusing all appeals while demanding their exit.
The demons knew it would come to that. They had desperately hoped he wouldn’t climb that hill because they knew they couldn’t survive once he did. They would necessarily flee to him, begging mercy from this God who created them, from whom they were cast when they joined Satan’s insurrection, but whom God had never forgiven and never would. Now that God had personally come into view, what could they do but seek understanding and patience—though he had isolated them from their victim by breaking their control over one who had been their helpless playground for months.
The Man’s New Life
The man remained energized by his freedom and appealed to Jesus for a role in the Twelve. “As Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon-possessed begged to go with him” (Mark 5:18). Jesus gently refused while offering him a challenge to which his life-change gave substance.
Conclusion
The British landings at Gallipoli in WWI turned from hopeful at first to impossible at last. They finally decided to withdraw their troops. Neither Turkey nor Britain could bring to bear the overwhelming military power to finalize the contest. In April of 1915, the Turkish Minister of War confidently ordered attacks to drive Britain into the sea. They failed. In May of 1915, Lord Kitchener predicted Britain’s breakthrough, which didn’t happen. A ferocious Turkish attack was blunted, then destroyed by the French. In January, 1916, the British began disembarking their army.
Unlike those armies clashing without dominance, there never was, never is, never shall be a spiritual stalemate between God and Satan. The conflict between Jesus and the demons possessing Legion proved what all previous encounters between them proved: Jesus ruled, Satan submitted. Jesus advanced, Satan withdrew. Jesus triumphed in every way possible; Satan left shattered, lacerated, bludgeoned.
Excerpted from Virgil Hurley’s book series Their Own Best Defense. For more, check out his resource page here.
