There is an interesting thing
that we should note here going back to Acts chapter six. There is a tendency, because
of the way the choice of the seven has been presented in a lot of churches, to
think that this is the original choice of deacons because of the verb for
deacon when they were serving the widows was used in that chapter. They are a
prototype of what later developed but they are not deacons. They are extensions
of the apostles; they are their assistants. They are not even like Timothy or
Titus later on as protégés of the apostle Paul, they
have a much closer, tighter connection to the apostles. So they are seen as
being extensions of the apostolic mission and authority at this point.
We are looking at the
impact of the gospel in
One of the things that happens here is
what is described in v.7 and down into v. 13 talking about Simon who believes
and is baptized, and is amazed because he sees the miracles and the signs that
were performed. That causes him to want to pay off the apostles for their power
and that becomes known as simony.
We have in verse 7 reference to such an
important doctrine related to demon possession and demon influence. There is so
much confusion over this because there is a complete failure on the part of not
only certain experience-based theologies like the Charismatic and Pentecostal
movements but also of many good Dallas Seminary graduates and church pastors
who ought to know better who get sucked into this. We should be warned that
there are experiential deceptions that Satan puts out in the world and it looks
on the surface to us as if it has to be demon possession, what else can it be?
We are just so convinced by our experience that that is what this must be that
we immediately block out the fact that there could be other explanations, and
rather than relying on our experience to define these things we need to rely
upon the Word of God to define them. When we get away from the Word of God and
start letting experience define things then we start down an extremely slippery
slope.
Acts 8:7 NASB “For {in the case
of} many who had unclean spirits, they were coming out {of them} shouting with
a loud voice; and many who had been paralyzed and
lame were healed.” We have three groups of people here: demon possessed,
paralysed, and the lame. There are those who want to say that the paralysis and
the fact that they were lame was related to demon
possession. That may or may not be true but it is not inherent in the meaning
of this verse. It is clearly speaking of three separate groups of people. Those
who are demon possessed have the demons cast out and those who are paralysed
and lame are healed. The word there for “healed” is a word that we should all
be familiar with. In Greek it is the word sozo
[swzw]
which is the same word we have for salvation. The word can mean to be healed,
to be delivered, to be rescued from some kind of problem, and ultimately the
biggest problem that we face is the problem of sin and spiritual death, and to
be rescued from sin and death is spoken of by this verb. But it can also mean
something much less than salvation. It can mean simply to be healed of a
disease, or it can refer to someone who is cured of paralysis,
or something like that. In other passages it is even used to describe those who
have been delivered from demon possession. So it doesn’t necessarily means
salvation, it can simply mean being healed. So this is just a general statement
and there are about five or six general statements like this in the Gospels
related to Jesus’ ministry where it simply says that many who were lame or
blind or crippled or demon possessed were brought to Him and they were healed.
It is just a generic term and we really can’t use these kinds of statements for
any sort of specificity.
There are three terms that need to be
identified in this verse because they are very important. And of we don’t understand
them we will commit exegetical errors, and some of them are of the most basic
kind. It is really sad to watch men who ought to know better make these sorts
of error because it makes one wonder if they ever should have been in the
ministry to begin with—and this is talking about some very well-known seminary
professors and educators because they do well to a point and then they throw
out the Bible in favour of experience.
The first word is “unclean spirits.” This
is pneumata [pneumata]
from the basic Greek word pneuma,
the word for spirit. It can refer to the Holy Spirit, the human spirit, an
attitude, wind, a way of thinking. It also refers to
immaterial beings that we call demons, and because contact with them would
render a person ceremonially unclean they are called unclean spirits. There are
other terms for them, as we will see. These unclean “came out of them,” verse
7. This is an extremely important word. In fact, if we don’t take this as a
technical term to define this whole situation of demon possession and we throw
this word out as a technical word, then we don’t have any understanding of what
demon possession is or what demon influence is. Everything hangs on this word
and two other words.
They “came out.” That means it has to be
where? In! It can either be out or in, and that tells us what demon possession
is. The Greek word is exerchomai [e)cerxomai].
That ex at the beginning is from
the Greek preposition ek [e)k]
which means to go out of or to leave. That’s where we get our word “exit.” erchomai is just the basic Greek word
meaning to come, to go, and exerchomai
means to come out of something or to go out of something. Then we have this
other word, “many who were possessed.” It doesn’t say “possessed” in the Greek,
and what we will hear when we have people trying to make a non-biblical case of
this is they will say: see, all we have is these ambiguous phrases to describe
demon possession. But what it really says literally is, they had a demon or
they had demons. Now I can say: I have a dog, but that doesn’t say the dog is
inside of me. Having a demon can be a mascot, any number of things, but that is
an ambiguous term. It is not a technical term; it is a very generic term.
So what does it mean to have a demon? The
way language works is that there are ambiguous and generic phrases that are
clarified by other terms in context. What would be the term in the context here
that would tell us what having a demon meant? It is the verb, “coming out of.”
That is why it is so important. So we will look at the doctrine of demon
possession, and the debate is over whether or not the Bible really teaches
demon possession. Part of the problem here is that even the English word
“possess” is ambiguous. What does it mean to possess something? If we look the
word up in the Oxford English Dictionary it basically says that it indicates
ownership. And when we read some books on dealing with what the Bible teaches
about demons and they will say demon possession means ownership in the sense
that a person is not owned by Satan—even an unbeliever is not owned by
Satan—and this really isn’t a good word. Possession may not be a good word but
there is a meaning to possession that does fit. To be possessed by something
did at one point have that idea of being controlled or indwelt by a demon. So
it will only be one of several meanings: ownership, having an ability or
quality, he possesses great talent, he possesses a beautiful voice, great
intellect—indicating some sort of ability, quality or characteristic of
someone. Or it can mean to have power over someone, as in the idea of demon
possession, that something has control over someone. Then there is also the
idea of dominating the mind of someone. That comes very close to the biblical
idea of demon possession. So yes, that fits within the semantic range of the
word “possess.”
Webster’s says that possess means to be
influenced or controlled by something. But influence is different from being
controlled by something; they are two different ideas. Then Webster’s says “as
in an evil spirit, a passion or an idea.” Well if I am controlled by an idea or
a passion that is very different from being controlled by a demon. This is why
the English word is ambiguous and why we find shifty theologians and pastors
who try to drive a truck through the ambiguity of the English word. So we have
to be careful because the English word is imprecise.
But there are imprecise Greek words as
well. The words for demon: There is the basic word daimonion [daimonion] which refers to a demon, a fallen
angel. This is a class of angelic beings that followed Lucifer in his rebellion
against God. The problem is that today, due to the influence of “scholarship,”
there are a lot of Old Testament scholars who have gone to European
universities, or American universities influenced by European universities, and
they have come under the influence of a form of teaching that says neither of
these passages (Isaiah 14; Ezekiel 28) is talking about Lucifer. What they say
is that Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 are just borrowing from Canaanite myths and
that they are not talking about some primordial fall of the angels. If we look
at just about any study Bible—except for the LaHaye
Prophecy Study Bible, The Ryrie Study Bible, The Scofield
Study Bible—the editors take this non-Satanic interpretation of these two
passages. Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 clearly are talking about a primordial being
who was at the highest level of God’s creation and who entered into sin, and
there is nothing in the description of this individual in either passage that
fits a human being. So this is Lucifer, and he enticed one third of the angels
to follow him in his rebellion and these are the demons, the fallen angels, the
unclean spirits or the evil spirits.
Then there is the whole vocabulary fro
demon possession. The two key words that describe demon possession are somewhat
ambiguous. The first is the phrase echon
daimonion [e)xon diamonion]
– the verb echo means to have or
to hold something; daimonion =
demon. It simply means to have a demon. This is seen in Luke 8:26ff, the story
of the demon possessed man. In parallel to that in
Three different verbs are used: cast out,
go out, and go in. Words like “cast out, come out, go in” are words that talk
about in and out. A person who has a demon, a person who is demonised, is a
person who has a demon come of them and go into something else. Or they are a
person who has had a demon go into to them. That is what is meant by
possession. It is very different from influence, which is the influence through
thought, through ideas from an external position; whereas demon possession is
when a demon takes up residence inside of a person’s body and controls them
because that person has allowed that to take place. That doesn’t mean that that
person’s volition and personality is completely obliterated, because that
person is still there. They are still somewhat conscious and can still exercise
a positive volition toward God, and the only way they can be delivered from
this demonic possession or control is through faith in Jesus Christ.
The words used here are eiserchomai [e)iserxomai]—and
in this case in Luke chapter eight it repeats the preposition eis for double emphasis; it “entered
into him.” The verb itself would mean entered into but it adds the preposition
so that we get the point. This is used in
Luke
He is not coming to Jesus to be delivered, he is still hanging out with the dead people in the graveyard. Jesus is coming to him to cast the demon out. It was the demon who was speaking to Jesus, not the man. The demon knows exactly who Jesus is, and is saying, “Don’t send me to torments.” Torments is where some demons are bound right now and he doesn’t want to go there.
Luke
The point is that what we see here is the
biblical usage of the phrases going into, coming out of and casting out of which
define what it means to have a demon or be demon possessed. It is not just some
generic thing of having some sort of situation where one is acted upon by a
demon. It is a very precise kind of situation where the demon has taken up a
place of dwelling inside of a person. This can’t happen to believers because
what happens at salvation is that we are physically set apart to God and our
bodies become a temple for the indwelling of the Father, the Son and the Holy
Spirit.
The question is sometimes asked: was Judas
Iscariot saved? No, Judas was not saved, for the same reasons articulated here.
Because in John chapter 13 which describes the whole upper room situation, first
of all Jesus comes in and sits down with His disciples and in verse 2 towards
the conclusion of the Passover meal: NASB “During supper, the devil
having already put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, {the son} of Simon, to
betray Him.” The devil is not in the heart of Judas Iscariot, the devil is
putting something into the heart of Judas Iscariot. That is demon influence.
The devil puts all kinds of things into our hearts by means of the world system,
enticing our sin nature, all kinds of things; but that is not demon possession;
that is not the internal control or residence of the demon inside the body. It
is influence.
But then of we go down to verse 10: “Jesus
said to him [Peter], ‘He who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is
completely clean; and you are clean, but not all {of you.}’” “Bathed” (washed
all over) is a picture of being positionally cleansed
or saved. Being completely clean = being saved. Jesus addresses the disciples—“you
are clean.” Then he says, “but not all of you.” There
was one there who wasn’t clean, one who was not saved. Why? [11] “For He knew
the one who was betraying Him; for this reason He said, ‘Not all of you are
clean.’ [21] When
Jesus had said this, He became troubled in spirit, and testified and said, ‘Truly,
truly, I say to you, that one of you will betray
John
Demon influence is what we have described
in James
What is more
evil, a legalistic Pharisee or a Hindu? They are
just different forms of cosmic thinking. A Hindu is a pantheist. The Pharisee
may be a monotheist but he is still trying to get to heaven by works. His whole
system of thought is just as screwed up, out of whack and unbiblical as the
Hindu. So what is the difference between a presidential candidate who follows
liberation theology (pure Marxism and operating is operating on pure carnality)
and a presidential candidate who is Mormon, and a presidential candidate who is
into replacement theology and would hang
The other thing that happened was “signs and spirits.”
Signs are important. The casting out of demons was part of the signs and this
is why Jesus did it. John
So this is what happens; Simon believes. Acts